The Lego Movie

Everything IS Awesome!  Though in the film, that anthem is the great symbol of conformity and lack of self-identity and all that, I still love it as much as those brainwashed, miniature brick figures did; not to mention, when it comes to The Lego Movie, pretty much everything is awesome!

Okay, so I could talk about how many laugh out loud moments there are (too many to count, even on a second or third watching), I could talk about the exceptional voice acting by some really big stars (and some cool cameos, i.e. Billie Dee Williams), I could even talk about the really cool visual effects that are more true to the Lego world that any production before it (water, fire, smoke, everything is Lego), but when it comes down to it, a great movie is first and foremost a great story.  This great movie, however, is two great stories.

First great story: It's been done where someone is mistaken for a chosen savior/hero/etc. and that's always comical.  It's been done where the hero has to look inside himself to discover their inner worth and save the day (usually this happens when the hero's more superficial power is taken away).  But I don't think I've ever seen something where we assume the hero is actually a mistake because he has no skills, but then it turns out he is the chosen one specifically because he has no real skills.  Then we find out he's not actually really the chosen one because the prophecy was made up.  Then the hero saves the day by believing in the prophecy anyways and telling the bad guy it's about him.  I mean, seriously, this is a pretty original story.  Plenty of less than conventional twists and turns.  But, the best part is, it's not even the actually story.

Story number one is completely made up by a kid in the completely unexpected turn in which we realize this is a live action movie, with CGI just standing in for a boy's imagination.  The story up to that point was really a metaphor to one of the worst realities that has ever faced the world, people that are meticulous and precise and exact that plan everything and are super organized don't function very well with those that are spontaneous and creative that don't care about details or being perfect.  Whether we're more left or more right brained, there are few out there who haven't clashed with someone who leans more strongly the other way.  I've seen it in offices and schools and on basketball courts and stages, between husbands and wives and between complete strangers.  It seems to be universal that when someone cares about specifics and another person doesn't, they'll clash at some point.  Never is this more true, though, than with kids and toys.

There's no doubt that the creators of The Lego Movie had a similar experience to mine when they were little.  I had lots and lots of great toys, but few as cherished as my Lego collection.  Unfortunately, I shared it with my brother.  He grew up to be a computer programmer and I grew up to teach music, so you can imagine we weren't quite on the same page when it came to how important instructions were.  He'd build something flawlessly, only to have me take a couple piece from it to build some hodgepodge castle/spy headquarters/car thing.  He wasn't super anal about it, but it was frustrating at times as we clashed.  In the film, this frustration is taken to a new level as a dad that is meticulous about his Lego creations keeps the vast majority of his collection strictly off limits to his highly imaginative and talented son.  When the dad plans to glue his sets together, his son feels like he's destroying all the potential those little bricks have.

The reason I love the story is it spends 90% of the time in this fanciful, magical, impossible to relate with fantasy world.  Then, unexpectedly, everything becomes familiar and relate-able and suddenly this fantasy you've been watching is no longer disassociated.  More than anything about The Lego Movie, I love that they placed meaning behind a franchise that has always been relatively meaningless.  No one expects a great moral lesson or true life experience to be at the heart of a movie starring little plastic men, but Lego Movie changed that forever.

Overall, The Lego Movie is a must have.  Absolutely worth owning, whether you have kids or not.

Man of Steel

So, I don't know how many of you out there were looking forward to seeing Man of Steel as much as I was, but all I really knew about it was that Christopher Nolan was behind another super hero film. It's been years since felt like DC could hold a candle to Marvel, with the one exception of Batman, and Nolan's take on Batman took even that exception to a new level.  Batman has always been a deep and complex character, but never reached his potential until the Dark Night trilogy. So, my hope was that Nolan could manage to add depth to the flattest super hero of them all.
Let's face it Superman is awesome, but ultimately boring. He always does what's right, he has so many powers that there are hardly any real challenges for him, and his greatest weakness is a special rock. No character flaws is more or less the same as no character.  That and his arch-nemesis is only able to come close to touching him through incredibly brilliant schemes, only to be crushed by Superman's superhuman abilities.  Are we trying to teach kids it's better to be strong than intelligent? If it weren't for Lois and  the occasional alien invasion, I wouldn't be too surprised if Superman wasn't any more known, and loved than, say, Aquaman.
That being said, Nolan's original story pulled into play one of the least addressed, but most interesting, of Superman's real struggles.  So many children in the world today have the same struggle, which makes it even more compelling. Superman has two sets of parents; parents with different perspectives and different hopes for their dear son.  The classic struggle of a boy trying to please his father is taken to another level when one has to choose which father to please, and to an even higher level when one is an incredibly powerful alien being hiding amongst a visually identical species.  I mean, the potential was astounding, and there were plenty of hints that Man of Steel was playing it up to the fullest.  Released on Father's Day weekend and cast with two huge stars as Kal's dads (I mean there aren't that many giants out there that are as popular and well respected as Costner and Crowe).  The idea was there, but it just never really felt like Clark felt torn.  It felt more like Clark was constantly being repressed by his adopted father (who he had a real relationship with) and so he used his biological father (who he had no relationship with) as an excuse to betray everything he let his adopted father die for.  Except, of course, that doesn't even happen, because the concern for the first half of the movie that the world isn't ready to know there are super powerful aliens hanging around is put to the test, not by Superman, but by Zod and his gang.
Okay, I'm done complaining about the missed potential.  Really, I was just let down because I felt certain this would be the best Superman story ever told on the big screen, and it was only just one of the better ones.  Maybe still the best, but not as clear cut as I'd hoped.  Despite that, there's plenty to love about this film.  First off, spoiler alert, Kal kills Zod with his bare hands by snapping his neck in one of the most un-"truth, justice, and the American way" moments in Superman's history.  I said earlier that Superman is boring mostly because he never has to make a choice.  He always picks being the good guy.  We see him here being put in a much more brutal lesser-of-two-evils situation than I've seen him in in quite a while.  The brutality of his actions is obviously not his first choice, but he has to become a monster for a moment to save a small family.  If it were really, he may be lying in bed right now reliving those moments and asking himself if he's really sure he made the right choice.
Second thing I really loved is it made my mother-in-law sick.  It takes a fair amount of visual intensity to make a person motion sick while they're not actually moving.  The depictions of superhuman speed are the best I've ever seen.  Whether it's superman flying past natural wonders or one of the bad guys punching a bunch of soldiers or whatever, the effects team never resorted to just blurring the movement and speeding up the background or changing frame rates or any other cheep and unconvincing tricks.  It looked like someone really doing stuff, just crazy fast.  Pairing that one effect with a wide array of other well done special effects makes for a visually stunning (and apparently nauseating for the weak stomached) production.
Finally, Henry Cavill is not Christopher Reeves and he knows it.  Reeves is Superman in so many ways.  Filmmakers have two choices, either become so sold on the fact that Reeves defined Superman for the silver screen that you try to make everything exactly like it was, or you consign yourself to making something that's not exactly what some fans want but is at least your own movie and not a sad attempt to recapture something long gone.  The first choice gives you Superman Returns.  The second choice gives you Man of Steel.  Now that we've seen both options, it's not hard to tell which route is preferable.  Cavill is his own Superman and I love him for being himself.
A couple shout out praises as well:  Cavill is pretty, so the young ladies will love watching this with their comic book nerd boyfriends and Nolan is still the master of telling a story without getting too locked into place with chronology (though I'm sure Goyer played a part, I'm going to credit Nolan, 'cause that's kinda his thing, so I'm sure he palyed a main role in the sequencing).
All in all, I would have to say this is a movie that though it's probably not own it material, it's certainly watch more than once material.  We'll have to wait as the franchise pushes forward to see if I end up purchasing this one, but I'll be thinking about it from time to time.