‘We lived the theme’
Teamwork pays off for creators of The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
If you’re going to make a Lego movie, it helps to have a bond with the brick. Mike Mitchell, lead director on The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, says he’s long been a fan. “My kids now play with Lego; it’s all over my living room floor.”
Co-director Trisha Gum does him one better: “I don’t have kids but I play with it. It’s all over MY living room floor.”
Love of Lego extends to Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the directors of the original Lego movie and producers of the new one.
“The spaceman character (in the movie) is based on my favourite Lego minifigure from my childhood,” says Lord. “There were many moonscapes on my bedspread over the years. I made a lot of elaborate, impractical spaceships.”
Adds Miller: “I built a thing with my friends called the ultimate juggernaut; it was a castle on wheels so it could drive around and destroy things.” He’s pretty sure the makers of Mortal Engines owe him some money, or at least a thank you.
The new Lego Movie picks up from its 2014 predecessor, with the tiny Lego citizens facing an invasion force that has forced them to rename their city of Bricksburg to the more appropriate Apocalypseburg. When Lucy (Elizabeth Banks), Batman (Will Arnett) and others are whisked away to the Systar System by Tiffany Haddish’s Queen Watevra Wa’nabi — Lego names are not known for their subtlety — it’s up to Emmet (Chris Pratt) to rescue them. Along the way he meets Rex Dangervest, also voiced by Pratt.
The job of directing an animated film strikes some as akin to conducting an orchestra — even a rabbit could pick up a baton and do it — but Mitchell notes that the role requires directing twice; first the voice actors, then the team of animators.
What’s more, the filmmakers found themselves re-writing, storyboarding and animating different portions of the movie simultaneously.
“We have a rough storyboarded version that we show on the big screen in front of an audience,” says Mitchell, describing the process. Then it’s literally back to the drawing board. “It’s kind of like workshopping a play. We probably made the movie 11 times over.”
Mitchell has a long history with Lord and Miller; in 1997, he had just vacated an office into which they were moving. “He and Mike Kim were developing a Mr. Toad TV show,” says Lord.
“There were like a thousand drawings of weasels in the office,” says Miller. “We met (Mitchell) when he came back for his Tom Waits CD that he’d left.”
“Which we’d been using as a coaster,” Lord chips in.
Gum was head of story for 2017’s The Lego Batman Movie. She’s also someone’s little sister, which gave her insight into the live-action characters in The Lego Movie 2. But it was a background in the art department of TV’S Robot Chicken that proved especially useful.
“It has all kinds of different techniques,” says Lord, beyond the computer-generated animation that makes up the bulk of the film. “Puppetry, hand drawn, stop-motion; fabric and craft all over it. That just comes from us feeling like animation is a medium with a lot of different possibilities.” (For more proof of that statement, see the Lord-and-miller produced Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse.)
“My background is in stop-motion animation,” Gum explains. “I took all the things I learned in stop-motion and brought them to the Lego Batman film and this film. The charm is that it feels physical.”
With so much going on, the two directors were kept busy. Says Gum: “Much like our movie, we really worked as a team and a partnership, and expanded our imaginations.” Adds Mitchell: “We lived the theme.”