Young or old, everyone loves LEGO. You could, in fact, say that everything about it is awesome. The same could be said for
The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, Mike Mitchell's well-received sequel to Phil Lord and Chris Miller's animated adventure which finally brought the iconic toy line to the big screen.
Last week, I had the opportunity to speak to Mike about the sequel just in time for its release on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital Download.
During our conversation, we talked about just how involved LEGO was with the designs we saw in the movie, why characters from the Marvel Universe didn't appear, the most surprising cameos, and how that amazing scene which brought LEGO Minifigures to life in our world was created (something tells me that the filmmaker's in-depth explanation will definitely surprise you).
Check out the interview below, and many thanks to Mike for taking the time to talk to us!
The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part comes to Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Download June 3.
When it came to the design process for the movie's vehicles and locations, how closely did you work with LEGO to ensure that those are something they can ultimately make toys out of for fans?
We worked quite closely and, in fact, it was a really creative process and for me and one that I've never done before where the ideas were flowing back and forth. For Sweet Mayhem's spacecraft, which I'm a big fan of, we would do a few versions and then we'd send it to LEGO and they would do a few rough versions and actually build a few versions for us and then it would come back to us and we'd tweak it and make changes so it was a real collaboration between the toy company and the animation design team. It was something I hadn't experienced in such detail before.
The sequel doesn't shy away from letting us know the story plays out in the real-world too, so what were the challenges that came with mixing those scenes with the animated ones?
The biggest challenge is that it was such a wonderful surprise in the first movie and so even for me before I started working on the film, Chris [Miller] and Phil [Lord], who were the writers and producers, were just putting the story together and talking to me about it before I was directing it. I was just like 'I'm not sure you can make a sequel to such a perfect movie' and that was such a delightful surprise at the end to find out we're in the basement with the little kid and his father and it's all been in the child's imagination. Then, Chris and Phil described that this time, it would involve another imagination of the little sister and it's picking up exactly where the last movie left off and that we might be introduced to another family member. Like, mother might come along and make an appearance. The more they talked about it, the more it got me invested and I knew we had to tell this story. I was really up for the challenge after that and I thought it was a really smart and clever way to expand the story from something that we've done before. The difference with this one is since everyone knew that there's a live-action component, we introduced it a little earlier and then shot a lot of footage and figured out later through the editing process where it would be best to have those scenes.
We hear but don't see Will Ferrell in the movie, so I was wondering if there was any particular reason he didn't return this time around?
We wanted to focus on the mom and we knew that if Will came back, he's such a presence [Laughs] that we didn't want to overshadow the mom and it was already very busy with the little sister as well. It was really a brother and sister story and not so much a father story. We just didn't want so much to remind people of the first one and make it so that the story was continuing on. Furthermore, we just thought it was so funny with his disembodied voice of just being one of the most checked out dads of all-time when the kids start to fight which is kind of a stereotype which is often the way of, 'Well honey, I'm off to work, the kids are fighting. Goodbye!' That's something early on we thought was funny that we couldn't even see him, he was so out the door. Even his character President Business (that's who represents the father in these LEGO films), at the very beginning as the kids are fighting and in the LEGO world, buildings are crumbling and society is at war, President Business just gets in a golf cart and says, 'See you later! Gotta go get some nine holes in. Gonna go play some golf.' We just thought that was such a fun way to play with Will.
Bruce Willis' cameo really took me by surprise, so can you talk about how and why that came to be?
I've worked on a lot of animated films from Shrek to Spongebob to Kung Fu Panda and so many other franchises and Trolls was the last film I worked on before this one but never have I worked on a film where you can just grab any character that is in our world from the past, present, or future. We could grab anyone. We had the whole cast from the Wizard of Oz make an appearance in this thing, and it was really strange to grab any DC character; we could comment on Marvel, both of the wizards from Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings show up.
There's a very funny joke about Marvel not returning your calls in the movie, but were there ever any discussions to use any of those characters, especially after we saw characters from Star Wars in the first movie?
We loved that joke so much and it got such a huge laugh in one of our first screenings. When you make an animated film, you're kind of writing it and making it as you go along and so you would probably screen the film like eleven times and the story changed dramatically from one to the next. That was a very early joke but we figured with Marvel and Star Wars that a lot has changed since that first LEGO movie and so we just put that joke in there and it got such a laugh that we never changed it [Laughs]. For Star Wars, I believe that was a deal where the toy rights had somehow expired with LEGO or something and we should have made a joke about that now you've reminded me but, yeah, that was a positive thing to do and it wasn't that Marvel turned us down, we just put that in there because we thought it was funny.
Were there any other franchises you would have liked to include had you had the opportunity?
Oh gosh, you know what, the problem became containing what we could do. I found it daunting because when your choices are everything, you can do anything and these films kind of become a 'Where's Waldo?' form of directing as there are layers and layers and layers of characters in there. We had Ruth Bader Ginsburg which I thought was an amazing, weird addition that she happened to be in there for no reason and it coincided with a documentary that came out about her at the same time and I thought that was strange. Working on these LEGO films, they're very much in the Zeitgeist and I think probably more American than anything else because that's where the producers and writers are from but it really is a strange Zeitgeist and it was more coming up with any new characters we wanted and then to have a grab bag of characters from other films, it was really strange.
Was it at all difficult to get DC to allow you to play around with Batman's appearance in such a big way here, or were they pretty open with you doing something new with the character?
They loved it and they didn't care and I think it's a testament to DC that they know we're making fun of Batman but we're doing it with love. We're definitely fans of Batman and I was excited that this is the only Batman in any film that's actually aware of all the other Batmen and the actors who played him. It was really fun to put together a whole song where you can have Batman actually sing about all the other Batmen like George Clooney and Val Kilmer and Adam West. It was really great for anyone that's a fan of Batman and I think that song's really going to stand the test of time. I think that song goes on the shelf with all the best Batman films as it's actually Batman singing about all the others. It's crazy.
Jason Momoa's Aquaman cameo was also a fun surprise. Was it easy to get him to come in and do that cameo or was it just a case of corporate synergy?
He was so cool. And by the way, I don't know if people know how funny he is. He was ready to do this and, you know what, I think it came about by accident because we had the original Aquaman and Jason Momoa's Aquaman do a little scene together for Comic-Con just to promote his movie. They asked us to do it and so Jason came in and he had such fun with the character we were like, 'We've got to put this guy in our film.' I remember we somehow forced him into the film because he did such a good job on the shorts we made for Comic-Con so that's how that came about. We also had not just one or two but three Wonder Women in this film in one scene. It's very disconcerting and very strange.
The scenes of Emmet walking around the real world are so much fun. Were those sequences 100% VFX or did you consider utilising a practical LEGO figure or even stop-motion?
That makes me so happy that you recognised that, man. That is so cool. Everything comes about by trial and error in these films and I've never worked on one that has such an improv style of storytelling and when we started filming that, and this is embarrassing to say as it's almost like saying I'm a magician or mime, but I am a puppeteer and I love puppets and I've always worked with them. I did these shorts called 'Shut Up, Little Man' that are on the internet and I love puppeteering and so when it came down to this film and in all these hybrid films I've worked on, you have to have something for the actors to react to, so I'm always coming up with ways to manipulate these little guys even though we're going to replace them with CG later.
You have to have some sort of puppeteering on the set and I usually step out from behind the camera to do I myself. It's really handy for the animators to see the movement that I'm looking for. I hooked up these little rigs that were basically just sticks that were glued to the LEGO and started to have them puppet around just for the shots so the editor could know what was happening and so the animators could tell roughly where we wanted the characters. The producer saw the puppeteering and thought it was so funny and so silly and it looked how a little kid would play with a figure. So we ended up, and I think it saved a lot of money, instead of animating those, we did rod removals. We took my hand out of it and took the rod out and kept the puppeteering that was there.
So, many times, it's what's actually happening on the set. You're just erasing my hand and then sometimes we did place it if it was a really complex thing, we did replace it with animation but it was really interesting because then the animators had to gimmick that really weird, chunky style of puppeteering so it went back and forth. I think there's two shots in the film we didn't do until mixing the film that we wanted to add with Rex Dangervest that we did shoot live-action later on. It was like many forms of animation but the primary one for those live-action scenes was real-time puppeteering. I'm so glad you noticed it because Chris Miller, Phil Lord and myself would just laugh and giggle at how stupid it was and we made jokes about how no one would notice it and it was just for us to enjoy and so it's so great that you noticed it and brought it up. It makes me so happy.
You're no stranger to superheroes now, so are there any Marvel or DC superheroes you'd like to tackle in a live-action setting somewhere down the line?
Oh yeah, I love superheroes. I did a superhero film years ago, Sky High, and I'm such a fan. It would be great to see a DC and Marvel character in the same film...that would be fantastic. Maybe just cram them all together into one ultimate film! I'm sure it's gonna happen at some point but I couldn't be more happy to work on something like that. It would be fantastic! Plastic Man! They need to make that guy someday. I don't even know if he's DC or Marvel.
He's DC, but now you've said it, we'll get it out there for you - fingers crossed!
Yeah! 'Mike Mitchell, his next film is Plastic Man for DC!' [Laughs]