Im a Barbie girl.

With the imminent release of Barbie this week, we thought we’d take the opportunity to spend some time discussing the best toy movies (Sorry all you Nolan Fanboys).

Author

Tyler Clark
July 17, 2023

Good morning Consumers. Good morning Consumers. This is please consume, film newsletter that says “Come on Barbie let’s go party!” way too often.

The Lego Movie (2014)

With the imminent release of Barbie this week, we thought we’d take the opportunity to spend some time discussing the best toy movies (Sorry all you Nolan Fanboys).

These are our favorite films in which we, the audience, get to see our favorite IP come to life and interact with the world.

So, to kick it off, we thought we’d start with a big one. One of the biggest surprise critical and commercial hits of the 2010s, by some of our last great comedy auteurs.

Innovation Out of Necessity

When making The Lego Movie directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller had a big choice to make: do we do stop motion or CG animation? They ended up deciding to go for CG animation, but never wanted to break the reality of how Lego bricks function and have been used over the years in stop motion short films.

Their main focus when creating the look was A) they were not allowed to make the characters move in ways a Lego mini figure couldn’t and B) they would only use Lego bricks that were already in existence.

This creates an inflexible style that is very frustrating for animators, but the final result looks absolutely incredible and replicates the look of stop motion animation brilliantly

The Beginning of the End

This is just a theory, but I also kind of believe it wholeheartedly. Everything Everywhere All at Once may not exist and certainly would never win Best Picture if The Lego Movie hadn’t come before it. In fact, I don’t think any of these multi-verse movies we’re getting now would be what they are without The Lego Movie.

Sure, you could argue that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was really the turn key, but I would argue you don’t even get Spider-Verse without Lord and Miller writing a movie in which Batman is able to interact with Abraham Lincoln, Voldemort, and Gandolf. The way Lord and Miller are able to entangle IP into each other is the first step in opening up the world of multiversal travel and the reason we’re getting incredible works like this year’s Spider-Verse and less than grave work like 2021’s Space Jam: A New Legacy.

Whatever you think about it, you have to admit it’s pretty incredible, how a film as goofy and ridiculous as The Lego Movie has had such a far-reaching impact on pop-culture and modern studio screenwriting.

Creating Chris Pratt

To say this movie created Chris Pratt is a bit of an over exaggeration, but it certainly was a fantastic appetizer to get the world ready for his ensuing 16 month run of The Lego Movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, and what was the biggest opening weekend of all time up to that point, Jurassic World.

It’s easy to hate Chris Pratt now, but at that moment Pratt was the hot new thing and this film helped build that enduring movie star persona we’re all familiar with.

Apart from that, he is genuinely just so winning in this film; perfect casting choice for a charming character in a wonderful movie. That being said, he’s not Italian enough for Mario. There, I said it.

In Closing

The last thing I want to mention is attached with today’s clip. You are also getting a bonus video of Director Phil Lord’s Ted Talk discussing his process along with his partner, Chris Miller, on how they make movies.

The piece focuses a lot on their previous venture, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, but has some interesting content about The Lego Movie.

Enjoy!

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