There’s certainly plenty of reason to be cautious about a big picture and big budget LEGO movie, especially for people who have seen what happened to their favorite Smurfs and the huge cash haul that it generated. But the co-directing team of Phil Lord and Chris Miller have been out talking about another movie they’re promoting and got pegged with some LEGO questions as the whole thing comes together. And it’s rather heartening to see what their real inspiration is and with the addition of Chris McKay from Robot Chicken being involved it’s going to stay true to its roots.
Asked to expand on the film’s plot and tone, Miller and Lord referenced The Matrix, The Magnificent Seven, Time Bandits, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars, adding, “it’s pretty crazy.” Lord then dropped a clue about the movie’s storyline: “It involves many worlds. Basically, the least qualified Lego characters in the universe having to keep the world from being frozen together.” I’m not sure what “frozen together” means, exactly, but at the most basic level, it sounds like a plot about the Lego equivalent of unlikely underdog heroes stepping up to save the world. According to Miller, the film is currently titled Lego: The Piece of Resistance.
The team is also looking to make sure it’s not going to be like some other LEGO based adaptations we’ve seen or in the videogames where movement is pretty loose. “One of the challenges that we’ve given to everybody, is that they can’t move any differently than the real minifigs, so they have to have like a punching fight where they can only do this and this.”
Lord also revealed to Collider that “our character design is ‘What if we put this head on this body, and we could give it these legs from this horse.’” But don’t expect to see just the classic, standard-issue minifigs — Miller told the site, ” there are some IP characters… it’s not just all original characters, there are some from other things that you might recognize.” Which may mean the Lego film could just wind up being the site of the Star Wars / Harry Potter crossover we’ve all been waiting for.
When talking about their inspiration for what they’re doing , they went and talked about what many have seen online with “those brick films online that people make in their basements” as one inspiration for their project, only “with a much bigger budget and better resources. Better lighting and cool camera moves and stuff.”
[Source /FILM]