Quick Review: The Lego Movie

THAT WAS PRETTY DAMN SPECTACULAR!

So this movie was beyond entertaining when i saw it last week. The story took unexpected turns, the characters were all charming and the animation was incredible at parts. After having seen Frozen i was sure there wouldn't be another animated movie in a while that i enjoyed as much but nope. Phil Lord & Chris Miller weren't having any of that. I dare say the movie wouldn't have worked quite as well without their involvement. At this point they have proven more times than needed that they are some of the most talented directors working in feature animation after launching the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and this movie. 

Now getting down to what i really found mesmerizing about this movie was the animation. Unlike the Lego games we so often get, they chose to make the characters look like real legos and gave them the textures and such to accomplish that rather than the overly shiny look of the Lego games. The most interesting thing that the animators chose to do on this project is that from looking at behind the scenes interviews it seems that they looked into stop motion as reference for the kind of style they were going for and seeing as Lego fan films are so prevalent it makes sense and as a business move as well since seeing this movie will give you the overwhelming urge to want to buy Legos. The thing about the animation is that to accomplish a stop motion aesthetic they went ahead and cut the frame rate down and it works so well for the movie. When i heard they did this i immediately thought of Sanzigen and other japanese CG houses and started to think to myself "why does it work here and not there?" The thing is that its not like its much cheaper cutting frames in CG but my beef was always that if you're going to bother doing CG why cut the frames. The excuse is always to look more 2D but when you have whole full CG sequences there is no point in it. Smooth animation looks really nice and choppy animation for for the sake of it doesn't (Choppy only works when the animator knows how to appropriately use frame modulation and in The Lego Movie they most certainly do). The reason it works in  the lego movie is everything is made of Legos and they want you to feel like you yourself are playing with Legos so with the characters looking like real Legos and moving like a lego fan film you have your goal accomplished. The more impressive sequences come as a result of that decision with the Lego oceans looking particularly impressive and those being things you know could only work in CGas doing that with real Legos could take too long. 

So tying this back to CG anime, just take a look at the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm games. Those also try to copy 2D style and do it well because the animation is nice and smooth. If that animation was choppy it wouldn't be nearly as impressive. They also manage to do that with it rendering in real time so when you are doing an whole sequence that you can make look really nice why would you then try to ape 2D choppiness. 2D animation and CG have their own benefits so why choose to ignore one of the major benefits of CG? I doubt discussion on the work of Sanzigen or other studios will end anytime soon but this was one example when cutting frames on CG actually ended up working. Gonna score this movie an animation rating of 4.5/5 for the great simplified character animation and Lego FX animation.