Episode 40; 2014: THE LEGO MOVIE

I know, I know: ANOTHER kids film? But what a film- so much funnier and cleverer than anyone was expecting, Everything really is Awesome! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello everyone, welcome back. My name is Dave, and this is Milestone Movies, the podcast that looks at the last 50 years, uh my first 50 years, uh, by looking at the best films from each of those years, in my opinion. Thanks very much for joining me again. Uh we are talking today about 2014, which means this is our 40th episode. We're turning 40 today. Over the hill officially. Um, but you know, as we approach the end of this little project, you know, it's 50 episodes uh all in. So as we're getting near the end, you know, slightly uh bittersweet, but on the other hand, you know, life begins at 40, so they say. Uh I I don't know if I would actually back that up from experience. I think most of my 40s were a blur, but um certainly in terms of 2014's movies, plenty to talk about. Um now, a little confession actually, I discovered this week when I was doing my uh uh little research, which is usually quite minimum, obviously. Um but what I tend to do is obviously I bring up a list online of all of the films of the year, so I'm not sort of missing any. Sometimes I've already got the the movie sort of planned out what I'm gonna talk about, but um, you know, I was going through a little list, all the releases it's sort of um for the year, uh jot down any that I want to sort of mention. Um, and I always give at the start, at this point of the podcast, the sort of top five. Now I realised this week that looking, so I look at IMDB, I look at Wikipedia, things like that, um, that some of the lists that I'd been using weren't listing the top ten films in terms of actual box office. Sometimes it was, you know, in relation to how much they cost. So, you know, the most profitable, sometimes it was uh, you know, uh the top films in certain territories, so it might have been, you know, the domestic grossies rather than worldwide grosses. So I've got to say, 40 episodes in, that some of the information I've been given about what were the top five movies in those years isn't necessarily as accurate as it could be. Um so I think from what I'm gathered the top five I'm about to run down for 2014 should be. But I considered briefly going back and uh redubbing all uh 39 previous episodes with the correct information, but I figured what they do know what I mean. At least those films would have been somewhere in those most successful films, and then we're talking about so many other films each year that we've probably got all the bases covered, but you know, um apologies if you uh lose any pub quizzes based on some of the information I've given, you know. But the uh the top gross movies for certain years weren't bang on. But uh anyway, we we digress and move on. Um certainly, to the best of my knowledge and to the best of what I can gather, the top five movies of 2014 in terms of box office were at the top uh Transformers Age of Extinction. So this is the fourth Transformers film, so still uh sort of Michael Bay franchise. Uh you've lost um Charlotte Booth, um people like that from this one, but you've got Mark Wahlberg coming in. So it started uh what it was essentially a new trilogy, I suppose, um, with this one. So yeah, I I mean I've I've talked a bit more length previously about the Transformers films. I like them, they're good fun, but I do sort of tend to get a little bit confused about who is what in terms of the robot characters. I mean, visually fantastic films to watch, but yeah, not always the best plots, not always easy to figure out who's who, but you know, this is the fourth one. It was one of the biggest films of the year, so clearly they're still doing something right. Um yeah, they the the franchise sort of continues to this day. Uh the second biggest was the third Hobbit film, Battle of the Five Armies. Uh, pretty much like the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, you know, it builds up to a big, big battle, um, as the title suggests, and it's you know, visually brilliant. It doesn't have the same problems ending as the Lord of the Rings, you know, famously Return the King finished and then finished again and then was another 20 minutes and then another ending, and it just sort of, you know, when you'd sat through, not sat through, that makes it sound like an absolute ordeal, but when you've been present for you know nine hours worth of movies plus, uh it you kind of want it to wrap up towards the end. Um but yeah, Hobbit's not like that, it's a bit more short and sweet, um, even in its extended forms. And yeah, taken as a whole, those six films are visually you know amazing, storytelling-wise, you know, there's a lot more liberties taken from the original books, I guess, with the Hobbit ones than based on uh compared to the Lord of the Rings ones, but you know, I think they're really good. I think they're very much of a piece, um, as I've said before, so you feel free to go back, and there's a previous episode all about the Lord of the Rings films um for more of my misguided opinions. Um the third biggest one. So this is the biggest uh of the MCU films for this year, not the only film, but certainly the biggest, uh, and it was Guardians of the Galaxy, which you know it's a job to remember now because you know they're so well established, and that sort of sensibility and the the offbeat humour and the fact that you know it worked was a huge surprise to all of us. You know, we'd all well to varying degrees, all of us, but certainly myself, massive fan of, you know, everything from Iron Man right up to the you know previous years, sort of Iron Man 3, Thor, we've been through an Avengers film already, and every film seemed to be sort of building on this shared universe and creating this great stuff, and even with the as Guardian Bits from Thor, it was still quite a grounded series. So the idea of it going way off into tangents of you know space and aliens and talking trees and talking raccoons, toting guns, just seemed like it might have been a bit too silly, it might have been a step too far. Um but to be fair, James Gunn, you know, who I've got issues with since when he's um handling the DC films. But I mean, when it comes to the Gardens of the Galaxy, you absolutely created a franchise, it was just hit the ground running with it, absolutely brilliant, casting spot on, performances amazing, funny, funny script, really touching at times as well, and yeah, it's an absolute banging MCU film. Really, really is you believe all the characters immediately, uh, even the ones that are purely CGI, uh, certainly for the human or the humanoid uh characters, so you know, Peter Quill and Gamora, and you know, Dave Batista as um uh what's his chops group what's his what's his name? Um you know, him. Uh why do I get these mental blocks when I'm trying to talk about stuff? Um Drax, there we go, Drax. Um amazing, and yeah, just it all works, it so works, and it was such a real pleasant surprise that it somehow this film that was had nothing to do with those existing MCU properties, you know. Eventually, when it comes to sort of you know Infinity War and Endgame, you know, they they're meshed completely into the the universe of all the other sort of more earth-based uh Marvel characters. Brilliant, you know, absolutely amazing, real knocked out of the park there. So fantastic film. Uh Maleficent. So this is one of the Disney sort of live action remakes. So they'd already sort of started doing that at this point, but this is a sort of a off a tangent, really. Also, I think it's kind of a prequel to um Sleeping Beauty. Uh Angelina Jolie is playing uh top character, and yeah, uh I've not seen it to be fair. It's uh uh yeah, by all accounts a very good film, and I think there's been a sequel as well, um, but not something I'm a massive fan of, but clearly it was working. And the third Hunger Games film. So this is one knows that they've split the uh finale into two. So Hunger Games Mockin' Jay Part One, and yeah, again, we've talked at length about uh the Hunger Games films, even though I've not actually seen them. I think I've seen this one. I think Mockin' Jay Part One might well have been one ONC in the cinema. Um Jennifer Lawrence got a lot of time for. Uh so yeah, what else we got? We're gonna list through a few. I mean, some really notable films this year. Um I mean, while we're virtually on the subject of the MCU, which I've sort of careened out of a little bit. Uh Captain America 2, Winter Soldier, um brilliant, brilliant film. I think the Captain America films initially, from you know the original one through this one into Civil War, uh, have been just some of the absolute best MCU films. They're quite consistent in the producers and the writers and the directors of those films. Um, Marcus and McFeely are the writers, and the um brothers whose names I can't remember, um which direct them and went on to do obviously Infinity War and Endgame as well. Uh names will come to me in a moment. But yeah, the the consistency of those films and you know the brilliant way it introduces new characters, so Winter Soldier flawlessly introduces the Falcon into it, who will eventually become the Captain America in the um post-endgame universe, and yeah, it's just great, and there's some real high-stakes stuff in there. So, this is the film that basically bought the fact that Shield was actually a front for Hydra, and the what we thought were the good guys were actually the bad guys, and everything that sort of spiraled out from that, and you know, had a massive, massive impact on the rest of the series to date, really. Um, it all starts here, and you know, Chris Evans is amazing in it, um Scarlett Hansen is amazing in it as well. Um, and yeah, I think it's you know, pretty flawless, pretty damn flawless. Um I've said it the all of these sort of years now from 2008 onwards, I could easily name the Marvel films for that year as my favourite films of the year. I could easily do that. Um, but I'm just because I've you know I'm conscious that I've talked about them a lot, um, I'm trying to sort of you know pick out other things as well rather than being a bit too one note with it. So um, but yeah, certainly don't take that to mean that they're not among my favourite films of all time. Definitely, definitely are. Um yeah, so so some great sequels this year as well. Uh How to Strange Dragon 2 was a massive, massive step up from what was already a really, really brilliant original. Uh what I found even from the point of the first trailers for this, which was kind of almost a teaser of a scene from the beginning of the film, is that they let the characters grow. They let them mature, let them grow up, and this is just animation, but you know, but the kids are that much older, and as that much has gone on, and it's picking up you know, quite a few years later in the timeline of the film, and then actually they did go and fill in a lot of that with the um sort of spin-off cartoons, uh, prequel stuff that came into uh Netflix and stuff later on. But yeah, in terms of if you were just watching the sort of three films in isolation, you know, there's a real maturity that comes to the characters, and you know, the the world is the world of Burke is a lot different because they're now living with dragons as opposed to fighting them and stuff, and it's great, really, really good film. Um fantastic sequel. Um another great sequel uh from a surprise hit uh is 22 Jump Street. So obviously follow-up to 21 Jump Street, which was a remake of an old TV series, but um again, brilliantly in the hands of um Phil Orden Chris Miller, um who we're gonna talk about a little bit more uh later on in this very episode, as you may have gathered from the uh title picture of this one. Uh but yeah, brilliant. Uh Channel Tatum and um Jonah Hill, really, really good in those characters again. It teases at the end as uh like an owner the the well, the end credit sequence essentially sort of teases all these potential sort of sequels and uh remakes and reboots and mash-ups and stuff like that, and you know, just purely for the the joke of doing that, but you know, they could have all worked really to be fair. There could have been some brilliant ones in there. Um and I do kind of hold out hope that there will be more, even though it's sort of you know 12 years since the last one, so who knows, who knows. Um more great sequels, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Not quite hitting the heights of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I don't think, from a couple years before, but certainly continuing the story, it becomes much more about um Andy Circus as Caesar and really building that story to what we know eventually will become, you know, the downfall of the humans and the um the dawn of the planet of the apes, I suppose, really. But again, absolutely flawless CGI in it. You know, you genuinely can't believe that these aren't real apes for a lot of it. Really, really good. Uh we had um Third Expendables, which is very notable for uh Mel Gibson's turn as a villain. I mean, he at this point off-screen has been through a lot of sort of personal problems, he's pretty much been cancelled, so it's I guess easier to see him as the villain than it used to be when he was purely the hero all the time. But he's great, he's so twisted and mean in this film, and he really, really good. Considering he's you know coming up against your proper sort of action icons like Stallone and stuff like that. He really, really holds his own. I think he definitely steals this film, and he's gone on to do similar sort of villain duties in a lot of other films, tend to be a bit more sort of straight to video these days, but or straight to streaming, I suppose. Um, but yeah, certainly Expendable's free, definitely worth checking out purely for um film Mel Gibson. So I would recommend that. Sin City 2, bit of a delayed sort of sequel, got quite a long while after the original Robert Rodriguez uh Sin City. This is a Dame to Kill for. Uh, and you've got the original cast bat, you've got Bruce Willis, you've got your um uh Jessica Alba, people like that, Mickey Rourke, you know, all really, really good um characters and very good uh uh adaptation of the Frank Miller comic book. That's great. Uh we had a couple of new franchises starting up this year as well. So Maze Runner. So this is you know in the same vein, I suppose, as Hunger Games. It's young adult series of novels, um and basically about these kids who are sort of stuck well, they don't really know where, they don't really know what's going on, and they've got to kind of try and escape from a maze, essentially. And there's some uh Dylan O'Brien, who at that point I think was only in sort of uh Teen Wolf TV series and stuff like that, but it'd been quite a you know quite a standout sort of performance in that. Uh he becomes kind of an action um star and he's still going on. I mean there was there was um there was a great film with uh Costner, I can't remember where it was. It was like is it American Assassin, I think, a couple years later. Uh I think it's called American Assassin, and he was really, really good in that. Uh and he's still this year he was in Send Help, which was a new Sam Raimi horror film, and he's great, he's a really cool young actor, actually. He's very, very good, well worth watching. Um but Mage Runner, yeah, went on to I think a trilogy of those ones. Certainly it's uh it was an original trilogy of books. I'm pretty sure they managed all three of the movies as well. Uh, and Equalizer. So this was an odd proposition. So you if you're as old as me, you may well remember the sort of tail end of uh the 80s was a TV series with Edward Woodward as a sort of crusading um ex special forces guy. Um British TV series, but kind of that American sort of sensibility. Um saying that actually, I don't know much about it, and it could well have been an American series with a British actor, I'm not 100% sure. But Antoine Fouquard and his uh frequent collaborator uh Denzel Washington decided to make a film series of it, well initially a film, um and later became one of the very few things that Denzel Washington's done um sequels for. Uh as a trilogy currently, and yeah, it's great. I mean it's it's kind of like his character from Man on Fire, I suppose, if you've seen that, but you know, very much a vigilante thing. There was a big thing at this time of uh what became known as geriaction, so as in geriatric action stars, so older stars that were you know kicking ass as good as the young guys did, I guess. Um and it's very, very good, very, very violent. Um I th you know the sequel's great as well, and the third one I think is probably among the best one. That's the one where he's uh settled in Italy trying to have a quiet life, um, and yeah, ends up sort of kicking a lot of ass in that one. Uh so yeah, we may well actually be back to talk about Equalizer later in the series, although um not locked in as these things aren't. Um but while we're on the subject of Jerry Action, there was I guess it kind of qualified. He was probably sort of in his fifties by the time he was doing this. Um John Wick. So Keanu Reeves, who's you know, it was kind of a comeback, but he'd never really been away, you know. He'd he'd had his career's gone in sort of various sort of uh cycles, I suppose. You had your initial sort of Bill and Ted, uh, you had things like Point Break, uh, then you had obviously The Matrix, which was some of the biggest films ever made, and yet again he sort of almost disappeared from view for a while, probably did the odd romantic comedy or whatever, and then all of a sudden comes back in John Wick, which is an absolutely outstanding kick-ass movie. It's um made by basically ex stuntmen, you know, the uh written and directed by, and you know, it's just relentless action, and there's this sort of mythology that is sort of built up around the sort of League of Assassins sort of thing, um, who use this hotel called the Continental as a as a sort of base and there's sort of rules there where you know you could literally be there in the foyer with a guy who's trying to kill you, but the rules are that you can't kill anyone in the in the um continental, and yeah, brilliant performances from people like Lance Reddick and um Ian McShane, particularly in there. And yeah, I mean there's been four proper John Wick films. There's been a Continental TV spin-off, and last year there was also Ballerina, which was a um spin-off from the world of John Wick with uh Anna de Armas uh as a as another assassin, a similar sort of story, and they sort of teased it as being from the world of John Wick, and the the um trailer sort of hinted that there might have been a cameo from Keanu in there as well. But actually, you know, when you watch the film, not too much of a spoiler, but um essentially, you know, John Wick is a you know pretty strong supporting character in it, and um, you know, he's in it for quite a bit more of the runtime than I expected, but yeah, very, very good in its own right. And yeah, this was the first one, first one in 2014. If you don't know the story, he's a kind of a uh retired assassin hitman, um, you know, the best in the business, but he decided he was going to settle down with his uh wife and dog, and they're killed, uh, I think from villains that basically had something to do with many, many years ago, and it kind of gets him reluctantly back into the game. Um, and yeah, he does not quit. It's very, very good. He's almost like a terminator when he gets going. Um but yeah, really, really good, and definitely has done Keanu Reeves' career no harm whatsoever. Um, yeah, another um part of a franchise that they've sort of tried to come back to many, many times is Jack Ryan. So they've um been several attempts at that. Obviously, there was some 90s movies initially with um Alec Baldwin and then more um successfully, I suppose, with Harrison Ford, things like Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, um, and then there was this there was one with uh Ben Affleck as well after that, and this one is Chris Pine. So bizarrely directed by Kenneth Branagh, who you know, I suppose not that bizarrely, just come off of Thor, but you know, still well known as a sort of classic Shakespearean British theatre actor, I suppose. Um but yeah, I really like it. Uh Kira Knightley as well in it. A very, very solid action film, I think, from the um from from a you know a character who Tom Clancy's you know had no end of success with in books, um, but they never seem to quite nail on the movies, they keep trying to sort of remake them and things. And since that there's actually been a successful Amazon Prime series with uh John Krasinski. So that I think they've done like three seasons of that, and I think I read something about that. It's coming back as a as a sort of TV movie as well. So yeah, it's just one of those characters that keeps on keeps on coming around. Very, very good. Um What else we got? Well, talking of TV spin-offs, we had the movie of the Veronica Mars TV series, which was uh Kristen Bell's uh teenager in the TV series she was, uh sort of schoolgirl investigator. Uh and this is the movie spin-off, and it actually led to another little revival series as well after this. Uh we had the second amazing Spider-Man with Andrew Garfield. Uh we had the beginning of the so-called Monsterverse with um Godzilla. So this is the one that then links into a couple of years later Kong Skull Island, and then you've got your Godzilla 2, and you've got your Godzilla versus Kong and um I think there's the TV series on Apple now, so I've not seen any of it. I don't know Apple. Um Apple TV Plus, which is Monarch Legacy of Monsters, I think it's called, with Kurt Russell, uh and his son playing the younger version himself. I'd like to see all them actually. I would hopefully they'll get a DVD release at some point because I've really got any uh intention of forking out for another um pay subscription service at the moment. Uh what else we've got? We've got um uh another uh Marvel film, technically, which is still in the Fox universe at this point, and this was X-Men Days of Future Past, uh, which is a really good uh almost like a multiverse sort of mashup before that was a thing on the films, uh, where you've got the cast of the new X-Men films, so you've got the ones from First Class, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, uh, etc. Uh, and actually link up with their previous counterparts from the other films, so you're Patrick Stewart, your um Ian McKellen, uh, and Halle Berry and all that. And so, yeah, it's it's just a mashup of you know, the only consistent character within the whole universe has been uh Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, and he's travelling through time, and it's based on uh John Byrne comic, uh I think it was John Byrne anyway, certainly an 80s uh comic, classic comic strip, and just works really, really well, and it really gave you the idea of this sort of you know, mashup of of characters from various franchises all sort of coming together, and it was really sort of leading the way into um you know things like Doctor Strange Multiverse and Madness and stuff like that, where you've got characters from disparate sort of movie series all coming together and becoming one big thing. Um and it's just a great fun film as well, really, really good um sci-fi film, um set in the X-Men universe. Very, very good. Um to rattle through the last couple now. Um Monuments Men, which is a very good George Clooney directed film um based on the real exploits of a gang of soldiers trying to recapture or reclaim the art that was stolen by Hitler during World War II. Very good. People like Bill Murray, John Goodman, awesome in that. Um there was a remake of Robocop, probably not the last time we're gonna see something like that, but this one uh didn't really work on many levels at all. Uh A Million Ways to Die in the West, which is a Seth McFarland comedy. Um, starring himself, Charlie Saron. Uh I love it because there's an amazing cameo from a character from my all-time favourite film, which you'll know what it is if you've watched uh or listened to this podcast in the past, uh, but I won't spoil it if you haven't seen it. But it is a very funny film, set in the old west. Uh you've got Tusk, which is an absolute departure for Kevin Smith, who usually does the Jane Silent Bob stuff, but this is a kind of horror film based on a podcast. So he was mentioned before, he used to do smogcasts and they talked about this movie, uh this news story about a guy who wanted to go and live on an is he'd spent years on an island with um sea lions and it's it's walruses, walruses, sorry. Um and he wanted to kind of pay someone to live in his house and to dress up like a like a war. And it's mental and it's it's crazy, and it goes to the you know a sort of crazy horror film, sort of where it's over. Justin Long is brilliant in it. Um it is odd, but it's well worth a watch. It's very, very good. And it all literally spun out of a sort of conversation on the podcast where Kevin Smith and um Scott Mosier were sort of joking about how that could be made into a film, and you know, the fair play to them actually did it. And uh, yeah, yeah, very, very odd film. Um yeah, Muppets Most Wanted, which was a um sequel to the Jason Siegel starring Muppets from a couple of years before. Uh Edge of Tomorrow, pretty solid Tom Cruise sci-fi. Uh yeah, the f the new version of uh Teenage Mutant Ninja Tales. This was again from the makers of uh uh the Transformers films, Michael Bay and stuff like that. Uh Platinum Dunes, I think it's known as a production theme. And yeah, pretty good. Megan Fox is really good in it. Um bit of a comeback for her after the Transformers sort of debacle and everything that came from that. But yeah. Um, Interstellar is a film that people absolutely love. Christopher Nolan film. I kind of found it a bit samey, I kind of found it, you know, nothing much more imaginative than your general episode of sort of Star Trek or Stargate that you've seen a million times before, really. But people really latched onto it and love that sort of space stuff that they were doing in there. Uh it's a bit like contact as well. Remind me a lot of uh Robert Zemakis' contact, which wasn't as well received as Interstellar, unfortunately. But yeah, the movie that I want to talk, I mean, I've I'm nearly half an hour now for God's sake, I cannot stop rambling about movies is the Lego movie. So it might be surprising. I was I was thinking today actually how many of these films sort of as we've gone on for the later episodes of sort of been going for kids' films, going for, you know, um animations and stuff like that. Uh whether that's to do with, you know, uh being the father of young kids at this point, you know, 2014 was the year that my um youngest was born, um, which is great because my kids have grown up knowing the Lego movies, you know, Lego Batman, Lego Ninjago, you know, they've always been there for 'em. And, you know, they've been a lot of fun. They're very family-friendly films, but they completely, you know, work on levels for their adults as well, not in a you know, rude way. They're they're used, they're not um, you know, uh in terms of like British ratings, it it's it's perfectly acceptable to watch at any age. There's nothing out of order in them, but they are very funny films, they're very well-made films. There's loads of little in-jokes and uh references to stuff as well. So they do they do work for the whole family. Um, and particularly with this one, yeah. This one, uh Lego movie and the Lego Batman movie from a couple years later. Absolutely superb. I mean, they've visually they're amazing. I mean, Lego, I can remember being very pessimistic about oh, yeah, they're doing a le a film based on Lego, oh yeah, that's gonna be amazing. And it was, because it just it looks great, it's as fun and as watchable as Lego, but they've put these characters in that are just really relatable. Um, you know, the voice cast is fantastic, and they just the characters come through these, you know, almost inanimate objects, and and it's you know, the animation itself was done so well that it looks like it deliberately looks like it's made of stop motion, so it's quite jerky. It's all entirely computer generated. Um there was some sort of previous Lego stuff from a company called Brooke Film, so they've done, you know, Lego Ninjago series, they've done a lot of DC um superhero stuff, little sort of mini movies, um, which are good fun as well, to be fair. But in those, the animation is kind of you know completely computer generated, so that you know the the limbs are all sort of bendy and all this sort of stuff, and they're they're sort of talking characteristic uh you know, it it looks like a a general cartoon with a sort of a Lego feel to it. Um but with the Lego movie, it literally looks like it was done in stop motion with genuine Lego, you know, the movements of what the you know the restricted characters would be able to do with those blocks, uh, and it just looks amazing. It was you come out of it and you're like, was that stop motion? Was that actually CGI? Or it it could easily have been a proper stop motion film the way it is made, and that only got better, I think, as it went on for like the you know, the second LEGO movie, the Batman one, the Ninjago one. It just actually looks like it was done for real, you know, in stop motion. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. Um, but genuinely funny. Uh some brilliant jokes in there, brilliant little set pieces, the characters are great. Emmett, who was just, you know, he starts off as this ordinary construction worker, you know, very much doing everything as the instructions show. I'm sure even that is sort of tied into how Lego works. You know, you get the instructions and you follow it, and the people who don't follow it are kind of thought of as, you know, evil or whatever, um, and the whole thing is sort of based around it's again, I'm not worried about spoilers, but the way it is framed is there's actually like a real life man who's Lego obsessive, which you know, met many of them, and I'm sort of borderline myself, um, who they want to make the sets and they don't want them moved and they don't want to mix bricks from one set to another, and so he glues everything together to stop it getting messed around by his little teenage son, um, probably pre-teenage, and so that reveals itself eventually in the film as to what the object of uh the adventure in it. I'm not making much sense. If you know if you if you've seen the movie, you'll know what I mean. But it's basically there's an adventure going on in the Lego world, there's real life going on in the real life world, and there's some live action stuff in there as well, Will Ferrell. Um, and yeah, it just works really well. It's a really good message about you know the most generic it guy can also be an individual and can be a master builder without even knowing it. Um and yeah, letting your creativity run, you don't have to follow all the rules all the time and all that sort of stuff, and it's really good, it's it's fun, but there's a little message in there for people as well, for kids, I suppose, essentially. Um, and just about how you know you should have fun, you should play with toys, toys are made to be played with, and you know, it's it's a really, really sweet film, it's a genuinely funny film. Uh there's so many great little cameos in it, not only from you know Lego characters, but the actors doing them and stuff as well. Uh this again is a Phil Lord Chris Miller um film. We talked briefly about uh Jump Street films earlier, and this again is their sort of sensibility, and they started in Cloudy with the Chance of Meatballs, they did this and um 22 Jump Street at the same time, and were very involved in the the sort of follow-ups as talked about as well. Um, and just this week went to see um Project Hail Mary, which is their new um I say live action, I mean there's some CGI in that as well, but it's really, really good, and I just love their I guess their collaborative way that they approach stuff and have a great sense of humour and you know it doesn't need to be all fart jokes and stuff like that. Some of it is just subtle comedy and it just works, you know. I Project Hell Mary I went to see because it was based on a book by um Andy Weir who did The Martian as well, uh which again we might get to, um and just thought it was an interesting thing about you know a guy in space and whatnot, but I didn't expect it to be as genuinely funny as it is as well. So yeah, that's uh you know, a real-world sort of tip for uh for going to the cinema to watch this week and watch Project Hail Mary, very, very good. But yeah, it's a Lego movie is just one of those really, really surprising treats, I suppose. A bit like How to Train Dragon that I talked about a couple episodes back. You go in, I suppose you just deliberately go in with relatively low expectations because you can't really imagine that a film about Lego is going to be that much fun, but it just is, you know, it's brilliant. Uh it probably helps that you know I've got young kids and you know they've grown up watching it over and over, and the characters have just really sort of attached themselves to me. Um but yeah, brilliant. I mean I hope we haven't seen the last of it. I think by all accounts the um the sort of the franchise as it was probably uh probably wound up now after the four films that they did, but it'd be a shame if we didn't see them again because they are, you know, genuinely brilliant characters, and it's a very, very funny film. So yeah, check that one out if you haven't. If you've been sort of holding off and thinking it's not for me, it is, it really, really is. It will work for you, whatever age, whatever your relationship to Lego is, whatever your relationship to animation is, uh almost worth it alone for Will Arnett's Batman. It's not surprising he got a spin-off, uh, which again merits an episode of its own because it's such a good film. Uh, and if you're a DC comics nerd like myself, you know, that just endlessly rewarding uh Will Arnett, very, very funny guy. Uh, some brilliant stuff in that as well. So yeah, it you know, really it sparked off even more. I mean, Lego's never really been away, it's always been a massive, massive toy. Uh, and I think the movie and the fact of the ongoing success of things like Ninjago as well, just really, really just put it back on everybody's sort of radar, I think. And since then it's just been I I don't know anybody who doesn't collect Lego, you know, a young, old, male, female. Everybody loves it now, you know, it's great. Uh, we all know it. Uh, I'm sat here in a room now with surrounded by it, basically. It's it's all over the place. Um, but yeah, amazing. So the Lego movie, please go and check it out if you've never seen it. Uh let me know what you think. And wow, we are really winging our way to the end now. I mean, that was the 40th episode. Uh 10 more to go. Amazing. Um yeah. I I talked to um someone this week. I had a message from someone who was sort of making suggestions for a 51st episode, and uh I had to say, no, I'm sorry, I've always planned it to be 50 episodes and done. Uh that was my sort of intention with it, and I do plan to stick with that. Um I I wanted to keep doing podcasting definitely, um, and I hope that you guys would uh follow me whatever I decide to do. But yes, certainly in terms of uh milestone movies, initially it was a 50 episode uh run, and that's what we're gonna stick with. So um all being well, I will see you back here same time next week for our 41st episode with 2015. Uh amazing. So we will see you then. Thanks ever so much for listening. Uh we'll speak to you next week. Thank you very much. Uh oh, and this next week's episode actually will be landing after Easter. We should be on uh Easter Monday. So uh as I'm speaking now in real real time. Have a lovely Easter, eat lots of chocolate, um, and I'll see you back here just after. Take care, bye bye.