On practically every best-of-2014 movie list, from newspapers to blogs, there was one familiar title that seemingly struck a chord across all demographics. Emerging as possibly the greatest movie based on a children’s toy, The LEGO Movie swept up audiences worldwide. And who’s to argue with the box office and critics? It’s a fun, frivolous and heart-warming tale that never forgets to cram in a heavy dose of jokes whenever possible.
Of course, a large portion of its success can be attributed to writer-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who recently opened up to Empire about their writing process for the sequel: The LEGO Movie 2.
Initially, the duo weren’t signed on to write the follow-up, but admitted that there were certain areas left to develop. “There are some really fun new themes that we didn’t explore in the first movie and got us really excited, so that it’s its own thing,” said Miller, before divulging the closest thing we’ve had to a plot-point since the sequel was announced:
“Well I don’t want to give you spoilers but we were really interested in what happens to that boy who’s in the meta story in the first movie when he’s four years older. When he’s an adolescent how does that change his point of view?
“And it’s nice to have the characters start in a different place from the first movie. Emmet, for example, was in an existential crisis of having seen another dimension and was questioning the whole point of his existence.”
That final twist in the tale, a dab of self-referentiality to the LEGO medium itself, was a fantastic turning moment in the movie. Linked in to the rest of the film’s mythology, it could only have come from Lord and Miller, whose successful Jump Street series achieved similar feats. It’ll be intriguing to see how they intend to expand on that element of the first movie while still keeping the concept fresh.
Still in the early stages of construction, The LEGO Movie 2 is destined to arrive sometime in 2018.
