Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink The LEGO® Movie and The 2014 Winter Olympics.
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I don’t like to self promote but if we’re going to be talking about The Lego Movie I’d like to share a little bit of the overthinking that I’ve already done.
http://nooneispayingmeforthis.blogspot.com/2014/02/immediate-thoughts-on-lego-movie-gender.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X_dnUMf4JA
I think the most blatant commercial message for me was this quote. “You don’t have to be the bad guy. You are the most talented, most extraordinary, most interesting person in the universe. You are the special and so am I. And so is everyone.” Everyone is special. All you have to do is believe and you can be special. Wyldstyle also had a line about building the things that only you can build.
And also, aside from all the different sets and characters in the movie they would also flash different sets on the screen.
Pete, did you feel that the dad had created his Lego universe as a hobby? I got the impression that he was supposed to be an architect and that the building set (as opposed to the medieval set, etc.) was a part of his job. I did think the movie had a confusing message which I touched on in another equally confusing post on my blog.
Yeah, I though the guy was a kind of weirdly defensive and obsessive lego hobbyist — thus the aggressive DO NOT TOUCH signs and the petulance of Lord Business not wanting people to “mess with his stuff.”
It doesn’t really make sense for him to be using his Legos for professional architectural design for a lot of reasons — not the least of which being the importance of rando bystanders and trucks on the street, or the large installations for the Old West and the Middle Ages. Also, Lego buildings don’t resemble how actual buildings are designed very much. Having to line everything up on right angles, with all the structures aligned in the same orientation is a pretty big restriction for an architect.
Maybe it’s just that I’m so used to seeing architects in movies or because of the emphasis on “business” that I assumed his work on the Lego set was a part of his job. I could see putting the people and trucks in the set if you wanted to give someone an impression of what the area would be like… maybe that’s more urban development than architecture.
I think either way you read it, it doesn’t quite come together. If the town where Emmett lives is for work, then it doesn’t explain the other Lego sets. If he’s just a really obsessive Lego hobbyist that also feels wrong. So, this movie is made for all the really obsessive Lego hobbyists who don’t let their children play with their sets?
This is underthinking but I suppose it’s possible that there was more than one draft of this script and they got mashed together.
I don’t think gluing models together is standard practice among (gag) AFOL’s. Without having seen the movie, I suspect if this was a movie about a Transformer collector instead of LEGO, you could swap the dad being someone who keeps his robots in their original boxes and the son wants his Michael Bay Bumblebee to play with his dad’s 1980’s Optimus Prime.
(Sorry for the double-post. I forgot to finish my thought.)
I don’t think gluing models together is standard practice among (gag) AFOL’s. Without having seen the movie, I suspect if this was a movie about a Transformer collector instead of LEGO, you could swap the dad being someone who keeps his robots in their original boxes and the son wants his Michael Bay Bumblebee to play with his dad’s 1980′s Optimus Prime. In this case I think the gluing is a metaphor for people who value nostalgia over the present more than directly speaking to adult collectors.
I’d say that in the 90’s era “Pax Americana” era the ennemy was oddly enough aliens and the american goverment. The 90’s were a very strong time for conspiracy in the style of X-files and so the ennemy either was one really far out (because humanity was “united”) or within.
The world would be a better place if adult fans of LEGO called themselves LEGO Maniacs, but sadly they call themselves Adult Fans of LEGO (AFOL).
That acronym is afol.
Thank you for having the courage to make the pun for which too cowardly.
First there was the Muppet movie…now there’s this.
http://www.slashfilm.com/lol-fox-news-upset-over-the-lego-movie/
Fox “News,” the gift that keeps on giving.
I don’t have a problem with the narrative foundation of the Dad’s Lego hobby. In fact, I think it is arguable another part of the subversion of the Lego corporate paradigm. Lego has been making and marketing architectural sets such as FLW’s Falling Water or the UN Building to adults for a few years. You KNOW these are being bought by adults who display them for other adults to signify ostensible youthful creativity and simultaneous erudition. In that respect, putting down unchanging architectural Lego sets is subversive. Nonetheless, Farrell isn’t displaying his, perhaps because he is too emotionally repressed to engage in that kind of symbolic exchange with other adults (who might be truly erudite)and thus become vulnerable. There are many adults I know who have these strange hobbies in amber that prove their anal retentive adultness as the ostensibly demonstrate freedom from same. The business man with the 1974 Corvette Stingray that he never drives above 40 mph, the million dollar audiophile stereo he never cranks. Farrell fits right into this and I never needed a narrative reason for him to have a Lego city in his basement. And his unwillingness to let anyone “mess” with his display fits right in. Remember, in the movie, although Farrel has Krazy Glue and must be using it for something, the model world isn’t wholly glued together already or his son couldn’t take it apart to play with it. It isn’t until Farrell finds his son is playing with his set that he starts gluing everything together. He goes full President Business, THEN becomes redeemed (as happens with Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi).
“Remember, in the movie, although Farrel has Krazy Glue and must be using it for something, the model world isn’t wholly glued together already or his son couldn’t take it apart to play with it. It isn’t until Farrell finds his son is playing with his set that he starts gluing everything together.”
Is that true? I only saw the movie once so I can’t be sure but I thought he decided to glue the set because he had finally gotten things perfect. And the line “the way I’m using it makes it an adult thing” made me believe it was for his job and not an adult hobby. I think you would phrase it differently if you were talking about a hobby. But that’s just my opinion after seeing the film.
Yeah, you’re into very interesting territory when you’re talking about hobbies. What part of creating a lego city is the “productive” part of Farrel’s hobby? In collecting, it is often the pursuit of a complete set of something and/or the arrangement of that something into a display that communicates something personal to a target audience. I don’t THINK that Farrel is pursing a collection. As has already be mentioned, he doesn’t seem to be displaying his collection for any audience you might typically think about. I think the parallel to a model train layout is better than to a stamp collector, for instance. Model train layouts are often private in basements, with the practitioner coming out to meetings not to display his work but to participate in the society that his (invisible) work at home admits him to. Train layouts are almost never “finished” (most collection-type hobbies aren’t) but they being worked on as if they will some day be permanent. So does his son’s tampering with the layout “accelerate” Farrel’s urge to glue the thing together? Allowing himself to be accelerated is perhaps what is most revelatory of the true pathological part of his personality.
As to the difference between an “adult thing” and a hobby, I think you’re thinking of hobby wrong. A significant part of the enjoyment of these displayed complex systems seems to be either in the construction itself or the private enjoyment of those sections that become completed, and not entirely in the “play”. In fact the inappropriateness of play comes from the fact that it is retrograde with respect to the urge to build the perfect layout and Farrel is probably just explaining that to his son when he says it’s an “adult thing.”
So just on the basis of parallels with the psychology hobbyists I would say the layout is certainly already partly glued together and intended ultimately to be completely glued together but also that it is certainly NOT entirely glued together yet (nor is is likely ever to be though Farrel wouldn’t admit that). This is confirmed by the observation that in the movie the boy is able to take apart a pretty decent chunk of it to play with.