Better Than Awesome

As usual spoilers lie ahead

Three years ago Warner Brothers tasked Phil Lord and and Christopher Miller (who had previously co-directed the likes of Cloudy With A chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street) with writing and directing The Lego Movie.

The film followed the adventures of Emmett who along with a varied cast of characters including Wyldstyle, Vitruvius and Unikitty tried to thwart the plans of Lord Business. The cast of the movie was made up of an array of talent but there was one character that stole the show from all the others, that being Will Arnetts self centred, egotistical Batman who cared more about himself than saving the world.

The Lego Movie was a hit at the box-office taking in over $460 million against a budget of $60 million. This combined with the positive response the Batman character led the studio to greenlight a follow up film centred around the Lego Dark Knight. The job of directing was given to Chris McKay (who has been linked to a potential Nightwing movie) and gave the film a budget of $80 million.

Lego Batman opens with The Joker undertaking his latest scheme which he believes cannot fail because he has every single notable Batman villain (and several lesser known ones) onboard so Batman has no chance of overcoming the odds. This leads to Batman kicking all of their asses whilst engaging in a song about how great he is (a song by the way which rivals Everything is Awesome from the Lego Movie). At the end of the battle the Joker escapes but not before having his heart broken by Batman telling him that he is not his greatest villain and that he means nothing to him which flies in the face of Jokers own opinion that the two of them need each other.

We are then treated to an insight into Batmans life at home as he eats alone before settling down to watch romantic comedies on his own all under the sad gaze of Alfred who wishes Master Bruce could admit how alone he feels and how much he misses his family.

At a gala Bruce Wayne falls for Gothams new commissioner Barbara Gordon who is replacing her retiring father, whilst he also inadvertently adopts a young boy by the name of Dick Grayson. The party is interrupted by The Joker and co who rather than causing mayhem actually all give themselves up which brings an end to crime in the city and plays into Barbaras stance that Batman is not needed.

So Batman has nothing to do, Dick discovers the Batcave and becomes Robin and all the bad guys goto prison. Without a cause to fight Batman decides that he needs to steal the phantom zone generator gun from Supermans fortress of solitude in order to use it send the Joker away for good and whilst in the act of stealing it we see the Justice League partying without inviting Batman to further hammer home just how alone he truly is.

Batman and Robin break into Arkham and send the Joker to the phantom zone which leads to Barbara locking them up. We also learn that the Joker wanted to be sent to the phantom zone in order to break all of the evil doers out to help him destroy Gotham once and for all.

This leads to the Joker unleashing the likes of King Kong, the Gremlins, Voldemort, Dracula and Jaws on the city and Batman having to rely on the help of Robin, Alfred as vintage 60's Batman and Barbara as Batgirl teaming up to try and take the villains down, a plan that seems to be working until Batmans arrogance leads him to trick them and go into the final battle alone despite the fact that he needs their help to win.

Eventually of course Batman learns the merits of teamwork and the Joker gets his wish as the Caped Crusader finally admits that he hates him and that he is in fact his greatest rival which above all else is all the crazed clown wanted.

Now obviously I have not covered every single intricacy of the plot in this review as I like to just provide a general overview of the plot for the purposes of giving you the reader an idea of what the film is about and with that in mind I will admit that I am not giving the finer points of the film the justice they deserve.

There are ample easter eggs and nods to the Batman mythos in this film although I will admit that if you are not a fan of the character then many of them may go over your head but for fans of all things Bats (like my good self) there are many many instances in this movie that will fill you full of geek glee. The opening ten minutes are particularly fantastic and whilst the rest of the film doesn't quite reach the same heights it is still incredibly entertaining and even raised some laughs from my wife who hated the original Lego movie.

I started this review by briefly covering the history of the Lego Batman character and how based on the love for him from the Lego Movie the gamble was taken to give him his own feature film, a gamble I think it is is fair to say most definatley paid off especially when you consider that it has been out for two weeks and has already taken $226 million at the global box-office.

Warner Bros are a weird company when it comes to the superhero genre as since 2012's The Dark Knight their live action output has been terrible at worst and divisive at best (in my humble opinion all three DCEU movies have been fairly poor) yet their animated films are almost all amazing and include the likes of The Flashpoint Paradox, Son of Batman and a two part Dark Knight Returns, this trend has continued with Lego Batman in which Arnett blows Afflecks Dark Knight out of the water (again only in my opinion).

So we come now to my score for Lego Batman which I feel is throughly deserving of an 8.5 out of 10. It is a follow up that is better than the original Lego Movie and has enough great stuff in it to please fans and casual movie goers and both adults and kids will be entertained for the duration of its 129 minute running time. I don't know if there will ever be another Lego Batman movie but if it came down to more Henry Cavill as Superman or more Arnett as the Dark Knight then I know which choice gets my vote.