I was pleasantly surprised – I think we all were – by The Lego Movie, which ended up being
more heartfelt and entertaining than it had any right to be. Its ostensible
spin-off, The Lego Batman Movie, is
quite fun, albeit in another direction; rather than critique what in 2014 I
called “Hollywood’s remake-happy philosophy,” The Lego Batman Movie lasers its vision on Batman for a loving
farce of all that the character can be, has been, and ought to be.Will Arnett returns to voice The Dark Knight, darker than ever with a new theme song and a smashing set of gadgets, vehicles, and outfits. He’s a Batman that has it all, except for a family, and at the insistence of his trusty butler Alfred (Ralph Fiennes, delightfully droll), Batman takes under his wing the young orphan Dick Grayson (Michael Cera). While Batman learns to work with new police commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), The Joker (Zach Galifianakis) plots his latest scheme, smarting from Batman’s declaration that Joker is not his greatest enemy.
With The Lego Movie, there was a sense that anything was possible and everything was awesome. For The Lego Batman Movie, everything is still awesome (though that earworm won’t wend its way to your brain in the movie proper), though there’s less a sense that anything can happen and more a focused attempt to bring every aspect of Batman to bear on this adaptation. I’d venture to say every corner of the Bat-mythos is spotlighted here, from the 1940s serials to Batman v Superman, from Crazy Quilt to The Mutant Leader.
For this reason, I’d hazard a guess that I loved this movie more than more filmgoers because it engages with my favorite aspect of my favorite fictional character – this idea that Batman is a conceptually rich figure with a myriad of possibilities built into his very nature. It’s difficult to imagine Captain America in space, or Superman in a mafia noir, or Iron Man in a detective story, or Green Lantern in World War II. Yet Batman works in all these settings, and so I reveled in the idea that The Lego Batman Movie embraces everything that’s ever been done with the character as equally valid (even if, as Alfred says, 1966 was “that weird one”).
There’s something of a farce at play, but it’s one done in earnest and without a trace of malice. Batman is the same grim-n-gritty caricature from The Lego Movie, snarling and petulant, but it’s giddy fun to watch him serenely chow down on lobster thermidor in his Bat-dinghy. Batman’s aversion to teamwork gets turned up to eleven here, providing the framework for a fairly boilerplate “learn to get along” plot that works largely because it’s dressed up in a cape and Bat-ears. In spite of gently spoofing the Bat, there’s something very accurate about the film’s portrayal; Joker’s obsession with Batman rings quite true with the comics, which have leaned toward interpreting his hate as repressed love, while Batman’s “master builder” status (inherited from The Lego Movie) feels of a piece with his apparent canonical ability to create any gadget.
If I have a critique about the film, it’s that its marketing was a little misleading in the sense that the trailers and posters promised a coterie of Bat-villains running the gamut from The Riddler to Egghead. Yes, these characters all do appear, as does the entirety of the Justice League, but I can’t help feeling that they’re somewhat underused, particularly considering the all-star voice cast behind them (Channing Tatum returns as Superman, while Conan O’Brien debuts as Riddler). Only The Joker gets any considerable amount of screen-time – appropriate, naturally – though the reduction of the other villains to near-cameo status feels a bit like someone wafting cake beneath your nose, only to deliver pie. (Fortunately, though, it’s not Joker’s preferred “cyanide pie in the face.”)
The Lego Batman Movie is delirious in its satire and throws everything into the mix for a playful romp through the Bat-mythos. I’ve seen a lot of critics take Lego Batman as an opportunity to turn up their nose at Batman v Superman, as if two competing interpretations of Batman can’t coexist. Rather, I think Lego Batman makes quite the opposite argument – that Batman can wear any suit he likes (with apologies to Henry Ford, even if it’s not black; even if it has rabbit ears, Bat-nipples, or a tutu). Batman goes through cultural evolutions all the time – about every four years, by Alfred’s math – and so Lego Batman ought to be something that cultivates our appreciation for the character’s infinite possibilities, not something that we use to tear down the past. Heck, it’s a Lego movie. Let’s build something.
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