I was watching the new trailer for The Lego Movie. It has a villain named 'Lord Business', as if The Lego Group were a philanthropic society standing against modern capitalism. It has a full stable of DC superheroes, because brand synergy is really in now. It has a Lego homeworld where 'everything is awesome', the implication blatant as hell.
Yet, as I was watching, I thought to myself, 'I really want to see this'.
Meanwhile, Thor: The Dark World has recently opened. But nobody's just talking about Thor; they're talking what Thor means for Guardians of the Galaxy, for Avengers 2, for Captain America 2, for Avengers 3. Thor's not just a film and can never be just a film; it's part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and there are narrative and aesthetic obligations that come with that.
And I couldn't give a toss.
Yeah, both films are carriages on a corporation's money train. It should be easier to justify Marvel's overuse of product previews and sequel hooks, though, because they're a byproduct of telling a series of stories within a shared universe. Narrative appears to be their main concern. The Lego Movie, on the other hand, is explicitly a movie about the primary product of the world's most valuable toy manufacturer.
Part of the appeal of The Lego Movie is consumer nostalgia, obviously - I grew up with Lego, telling stories on the lounge floor every weekend with those little yellow minifigures, whereas I never read comics or engaged with superheroes until Bryan Singer's X-Men came out in 2000.
Most of it, though, has to do with the identity the films are making for themselves. The Lego Movie is written and directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, a duo whose inventive, madcap approach to comedy is shot through their previous projects - Clone High, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street. And it's there in the trailers for The Lego Movie, their energy, their attention to detail. Even the explosions are made out of Lego blocks! In other words, it doesn't look like a film where the final cut's been given to the Marketing Department.
Then there's the MCU, with its 'certain obligation'. In films like Thor, the stakes can't be that high because whatever's happening has to be a skirmish compared to whatever's coming in Avengers 2 and 3. The climax can't actually be a climax because the audience knows bigger ones are coming in 2015. Further, the film can't look or feel too different to Iron Man or The Incredible Hulk or The Avengers because it's a universe and a universe has to be consistent. Of the eleven films in the MCU, only two - Kenneth Branagh's original Thor and Shane Black's Iron Man 3 - bear the prints of their directors, and that's being generous.
If you'd told in 2008, the year Iron Man came out, that in five years I'd be more excited for a film about building blocks than the latest Marvel blockbuster, I'd have looked at you like you were a lunatic. But here we are. Because, in 2013, the film about building blocks looks like it has more personality, more vitality, more life. The film about building blocks has its own identity. What does Thor have?
