Let's all go to the movies~

[Niku]

i could just spoiler tag every joke that i remember laughing at i guess. And while I don't think "we're making fun of the formula, so we get a free pass on using the formula!" is ever worthy of a complete free ride, I think when your plot is deliberately a parody of the hero's journey then it is pretty much going to be a hero's journey plotwise. It would be cheap and easy to append a "for a kid's movie" to every compliment you could give to it, but it feels like one of the rare non-Disney kid's movies that is legitimately a family movie in a lot of ways and people of all ages can actually find something to like about it.

also i just thought it was really funny

like I don't know if you don't laugh every time they cut away to the boat zooming away maybe you are just an awful person

But I do legitimately feel that The Bit At The End is one of those twists-that-inform-everything-that-came-before. It's not a MASSIVE revelation or anything, but it really ties the entire film together in a way that it would have been a genuinely lesser film without it, both in what happens in the movie itself and in the themes it's trying to push (including BUY LOTS OF LEGOS)

[Mongrel]

I don't know how anyone could not laugh at the boat zooming away. Or the wild west river full of angry alligators with police sirens on their heads.

No joke, that was probably the greatest toy commercial I will see in my lifetime (but then, there are already eleventy-billion pounds of Legos at my parents' house, sooooo...).

[Büge]

There are two reasons that I don't buy Lego anymore.

[Mongrel]

Annnnd you want us to ask you why.

"Okay, Buge, why don't you buy Lego anymore?"

(Disclosure: I haven't bought any Lego since I moved out of my parents house 16 years ago. But for those first 19 years, holy shit).

[Büge]

I thought the answer would be obvious.

One of them's probably sleeping on my chair right now.

[Mongrel]

One of them's probably sleeping on my chair right now.

Correct.

[Brantly B.]

Let's just say the surgery did not go well.

[Mongrel]

[Brantly B.]

I was a bank teller.

[Mothra]

Saw The Lego Movie at this place called Chunky's with my brother, sister-in-law, parents, and my brother's kids.

Chunky's is a place where you sit at these tables in the theater, and your reclining chairs have wheels, and you order food and margaritas, and you watch the movie while eating and drinking and talking to people at your table. It's amazing. And! The Lego Movie was pretty amazing -- particularly the entire last half -- and The Lego Movie is best seen with kids, so basically this was an amazing time.

[Disposable Ninja]

Yeah, Cinema Restaurants are the best.

[Mongrel]

Breaking news: The Guardians of the Galaxy movie might actually turn out to be... good? Maybe?

[Blossom]

... I wasn't aware that people were expecting it to not be good.

[ocksi]

I've been looking forward to it since the announcement and they've only made good decisions in production, as far as I know.

[Mongrel]

Well, the thing is, the people who make trailers have gotten really good at their jobs in the last couple of years.

So I tend to be skeptical until after a movie is actually released.

[Thad]

Via Heidi MacDonald, quoting Mike Mantlo himself, it appears that Bill Mantlo is actually going to receive money -- potentially a good deal of it -- from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

Think I may have to reconsider my boycott -- at least in this case. As legitimately shitty as Marvel's treatment of Kirby and damn near everybody else has been, Mantlo needs that money a fuck of a lot more than the Kirbys do.

For those who don't know, Bill Mantlo is the co-creator of Rocket Raccoon -- and he's been institutionalized since 1992, when he was the victim of a hit-and-run and suffered permanent brain damage.

Heidi notes that, while it's great that Marvel is compensating Mantlo (and, apparently, other creators, despite its rather public smackdowns of the likes of Gerber and the Kirbys), it could still do more; that this doesn't wash away all the rotten things the company's done.

But Bill Mantlo getting a payday from the Guardians movie? That's a pretty fucking good thing.

[Büge]

It's been almost ten years and one Brittany Murphy. Can this recapture the magic?

[Thad]

Not to mention Michael Clark Duncan. :(

[Niku]

Really digging the animation style here.

[Disposable Ninja]

I don't know how to feel about that.