The LEGO movies are a chaotically vibrant bunch of films, full of shiny surfaces and erratic plotlines. The LEGO cinematic universe is gradually expanding, with the recent addition of Pharrell’s musical biography Piece by Piece and several more productions in the works.
Here’s all the LEGO movies so far, ranked worst to best (note: this list doesn’t include direct-to-DVD/streaming releases).
5. The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)
While The LEGO movie is a family-friendly version of The Matrix, this batty spin-off is an all-ages Deadpool, anchored by a motormouth protagonist who grabs the the film by a stranglehold. It’s less a Dark Knight movie per se than a yabbering cultural conversation with the Batman franchise, tongue so firmly in cheek it’s come out the other side. Similar to Deadpool, if you’re not entertained by the protagonist, in this case Will Arnett’s comically smug and gruff-sounding Batman, you’ll be trapped in hell until the credits roll.
I wasn’t quite in the bad place, finding the film at times quite funny and yet increasingly exhausting, eventually grinding my senses to pulp. The plot is capricious and jukebox-y, even be this franchise’s standards. It gorges on pop culture references even before the Joker recruits the “greatest villains you will ever see,” summoning the lines of Voldemort, King Kong and the Witched Witch of the West.
4. The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)
The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
Lego meets Mad Max! It’s good fun watching this sequel salute George’s Miller’s dystopian classics. The story picks up immediately where its predecessor left off—showing cute beasts from another reality infiltrate the Bricksburg—then jumps ahead five years, to a ruined desert-like city. Old mate Emmet (voice of Chris Pine) is still awfully cheerful, walking around with a big silly grin on his face while chaos reigns. After this prologue, the film moves into a plotline laced with zany locations, including a bizarro Barbie-esque world where characters are brainwashed by an earworm they can’t stop singing.
There’s some annoying musical numbers; at least they’re mercifully short. The plot is a kingdoms-colliding storyline involving the marriage of a brainwashed Batman to the shapeshifting Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi (voice of Tiffany Haddish). The arrival of Emmet’s girlfriend Lucy (Elizabeth Banks) into our world feels very much a repeat of that great twist (more on that below) from the first movie. This draws attention to the sequel resting on its laurels, following a template, disobeying the original’s key message—that messy imagination is better than neatly ordered existence. Even so, it’s a solid sequel.
3. The LEGO Ninjago Movie (2017)
The Lego Ninjago Movie
Beginning in live action, with a young boy entering an antiques and trinkets store, The LEGO Ninjago Movie satisfyingly balances knowingness and earnestness, inviting the audience into a cultural conversation while grounding them in an adventure narrative with a father/son dynamic. It exaggerates the “superhero gets no credit” element by having the protagonist, Lloyd (Dave Franco), being despised by the population of Ninjago for being the son of a maniacal warlord, Lord Garmadon (Justin Theroux), who wreaks havoc on the city. They don’t know that Lloyd is also “The Green Ninja,” who repeatedly saves the day.
At the intersection of the first and second act, the film dabbles in monster movie parody when Lloyd’s use of “the ultimate weapon” summons into his realm a cat. As in, a real cat, from our world, which for Ninjago’s population is the equivalent of Godzilla, building-sized and monstrous. This is where the LEGO movies are the most fun and peculiar, blending realities, frolicking in the Venn diagram overlay between their world and ours.
2. Piece by Piece (2024)
It’s a bit of a puff piece, so to speak—but with a film this full of colour and life, who cares? The central concept of Piece by Piece—a biographical documentary about Pharrell Williams, presented in Lego form—works bizarrely well, enlivening a crusty format and pushing the experience into a constant state of aesthetic invention. Otherwise ordinary interior shots—for instance of recording studios, a high school, a McDonald’s—become delightful, peppered with objects, furniture and other small details embraced as opportunities for reinvention.
There’s drawbacks to this gimmicky presentation style, its push towards the make believe undercutting elements intended to have more gravitas, relegating profundities to the play mat. But the benefits are manifest. And underneath the pretty surfaces (I love the sight of LEGO waves crashing into a LEGO shore!) there’s a feeling that these plastic environments have become a uniting space, bringing people and stories together. This film is less interested in the events of Pharrell’s life than how they felt.
1. The LEGO Movie (2019)
The LEGO Movie
The protagonist of The LEGO Movie, Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt), lives a cheerfully subservient existence, sticking to society’s instruction manual and literally singing “everything is awesome.” But like Neo he’ll smash free of the simulation, saving his realm from annihilation and fulfilling a messiah-like destiny as the “special one with a face of yellow.” This franchise curtain-raiser borrows liberaly from The Matrix, but still feels fresh—with a likably benign lead character, a wink-winky script and a healthy jokes-per-minute ratio.
The script dabbles in multiversian ideas to incorporate various LEGO universes without feeling too much like a melange of worlds. Deep into the runtime, a surreal masterstroke is delivered when, in a breathtakingly audacious twist, Emmet lands in our world and the production switches to live action, triggering a final stretch that trumps messy imagination over rules-driven existence.
