Genre: Family Film
Premise: A young man in the Lego universe learns that an evil villain plans to glue all of Legoland together, thus stripping future Lego generations of the ability to create stuff.
About: These writers worked in TV for a good 8 years before getting their first big feature break, which was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. That TV work consisted of shows like How I Met Your Mother and Clone High. They also directed 21 and 22 Jump Street. And are directing this movie! Slash Film asked the Lego writers a good question. How much of this was you guys writing a story and how much was it Lego pushing a product and wanting to sell toys? Chris Miller gives a great answer: “Well, we were very clear up front that the only way this movie was gonna succeed was if it didn’t come from the top down. It didn’t feel like it was a corporate commercial. It didn’t feel like Lego was saying, “We wanna sell these toys, tell a story around them.” It had to feel like it was coming from outside the company. It was filmmaker and story driven and that it was using Lego as a medium. Now obviously, you know, they’re gonna wanna sell toys based on the movie. And we said, obviously if we’re making something that doesn’t have cool vehicles in it and interesting characters, then we’re not doing our job anyway. We’re not gonna make a Lego movie that isn’t about cool Lego stuff. And we went to Denmark to visit and see the type of things that they make there and it definitely inspired us from what Lego’s core values are about and the type of things. But we were thankfully not in a situation where they were dictating anything to us as far as what we were doing. And sort of reacted to the things we made and thought “Oh yeah, we can sell toys based on this, this and this.” You can read more of the interview over on Slash Film.
Writers: Chris Miller & Phil Lord
Details: 110 pages (2010 draft)
I feel left out of the joke. Everyone I run into is like, “Oh my God! Oh my God! Lego movie!” I see these reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, which are like, “Lego Movie makes Toy Story look like Movie 43!” By and large, everyone thinks this flick is going to be awesome. Don’t get me wrong. Legos are cool. But are people really THAT into this??
When I watch the trailer, it looks like one of those “everything and the kitchen sink” trailers. I guess that makes sense because it’s the Lego universe and the Lego universe encompasses… well, all of pop culture (I’m sure there’s a Kim Kardashian lego figure available somewhere – probably in Japan), but it looks like sensory overload to me.
Still, I got to thinking and realized we don’t cover the family film genre here on Scriptshadow much, and because it’s such a huge piece of the Hollywood meal plan (read – studios pay lots of money for people to write these things), it wouldn’t be a bad idea to dissect how they’re written. Not only that, but after reading the Lego script, I learned something HUGE about how to pitch assignments. So you’re definitely going to want to stick around for that!
Emmet lives in Legoland. This is a very structured city where everything is the same. People follow rules. They do things by the book. And most importantly, they’re NEVER CREATIVE!
Unfortunately, the 22 year-old Emmet (who lives with his mom), doesn’t operate that way. Emmet is different. He’s creative. He LIKES to step out of the norm and do silly things every once in awhile. At the same time, he’s ashamed of it. Emmet wishes he could live the easy life and be like everyone else. He wants to be your normal average predictable person.
As Emmet tries to come to terms with all this, his mother is kidnapped by the evil overseer of Legoland, Black Falcon! And his ex-girlfriend, Lucy, who now happens to be a superhero, drops in and tells him that they have to get her back. You see, Emmet’s mom is the chosen one, the one who’s going to save Legoland from becoming boring and stagnant forever!
This requires recruiting a bunch of the masterbuilders and taking Black Falcon down. So Emmet and Lucy get a pirate named Neckbeard (who’s just a lego head – and Lucy’s current boyfriend), Batman (of course), a space lego man named “Benny the Spaceman,” and a half-retarded lego-creature named Duplo.
What they find out is that Black Falcon is planning on using the “Kragle” (which turns out to be short for “Krazy Glue”) to permanently GLUE all of Legoland together forever! So that no one can ever take legos apart and put them back together creatively! Everything will always be boring and the same. Noooooo!!! Measly Emmet will have to find the strength within to defeat this mad Lego… creature. And save Lego-mania forever!
So, is it true? Do we have the next Toy Story on our hands? Well, granted this is not the final draft (I saw Wonder Woman in the trailer, and she isn’t in the script), but it’s safe to say, no it is not.
Whereas Toy Story is a meticulously crafted screenplay that marries character, story and theme seamlessly in every minute of its running time, The Lego Movie feels more like one giant ride of cute. Actually, it’s almost identical to Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs in that sense. It’s not amazing. But it’s just really really cute.
Halfway through the read, Miss SS turned to me and said, “Isn’t… that movie supposed to be funny?” “Huh?” I asked. “Isn’t the Lego movie supposed to be funny? I haven’t seen you laugh.” And that made me laugh. And then I realized that the first time I had laughed since I started the screenplay was in reference to something outside the screenplay. And that wasn’t good.
I think with these really big family tentpole scripts, you’re basically trying to write the best Screenplay 101 script you can. It’s a family film, so it’s not about taking chances. The key demo isn’t going to be upset if your midpoint shift isn’t that original. The studios want Blake Snyder beat sheets for these films, and your job is to be as inventive as you can within that “beat sheet” framework.
And I think Chris and Phil do a good job. This is straight down the middle, 3-Act, unabashed Hero’s Journey stuff from start to finish. You have Emmet, who’s “different” because he likes to be creative. He doesn’t fit in (quick note: main characters who “don’t fit in” are used effectively in 7 out of 10 animated/family movies). His world is thrown into disarray when his mother is kidnapped. Emmet must join forces with an old girlfriend (unresolved relationship that leads to lots of conflict during journey!), face tons of obstacles, and, in the end, find the strength/belief within himself to defeat the evil villain.
We have clear goals/stakes/urgency (stop the villain/world will be super-glued together if you don’t/only hours left before the villain enacts his plan). It’s all laid out how you’d expect it to be. Which was why I was never all in. I think you guys believe that I’m about following rules all the time. Not true. You follow rules MOST of the time, then break them strategically in certain spots, in ways that will separate your script from everything else out there. If you follow EVERY rule, your script is going to be predictable and (probably) boring.
As far as how to write these specific TYPES of films, you’re always looking for your hook, then exploiting that hook as much as possible. Here, the hook is the legos, obviously. What makes legos different? Creativity, right? That you can turn them into anything your imagination can think up. So there are a lot of fun little moments where lego vehicles crash. All the legos get scattered, and the characters quickly rebuild the pieces into, say, a helicopter, then fly away. There was a lot of that.
But the creativity kind of stopped there. Seeing things leap in the air, then be turned into something else – that’s cool the first couple of times. Then it becomes “been there done that.” Then there was the story, which, while well-executed, never got past the amusing stage (at least for me). It was fun. But never rip-roaring funny. It was exciting, but never “Holy shit! I’ve never seen that before!” And I think if you have a lego movie, you should see some things you’ve never seen before. Who knows, maybe they’ll have added this in the final cut. It just wasn’t here in this draft.
Amusing. But could’ve been better!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I learned a big one today. Now I have no idea IF this is how the writers got the job, but remember, when you’re a writer, you’re basically rushing around town, trying to win the big assignments, the movies that are going to pay out 7 figures, movies like Legos. And I think I know how today’s writer-directors’ pitch won them the job. If you really want to impress producers, find out what their property is REALLY ABOUT, then pitch a STRONG THEME that explores that aspect. So think about it. What are legos really about? They’re about “creating,” right? They’re about building something completely crazy out of your own imagination. So our writers pitched a movie of a lego world that didn’t allow creativity, that didn’t allow the very thing that legos represent! Our main character, then, was secretly the only creative person in the city. He was an outcast. And he must go on a journey to free the people from this structured boring life. This pitch had a theme that explored the core of what legos represent! So the next time you get coveted to pitch one of the big assignments, find out what the property is about, and pitch a story with a strong theme that explores it!
