Not Worth Cancelling The Apocalypse For

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Pacific Rim: Uprising begins with director Guillermo Del Toro being strapped into a metal cage above a fiery pit by a creepy (and racially problematic) Temple Of Doom-style Thuggee Priest. Not literally of course, although that at least would have been a momentary detour from the two hours of mind-numbing predictability that we actually got. Del Toro directed the original 2013 Pacific Rim which has only become an increasingly better movie on the extensive re-viewings that I've given it. His was a film of colour and majesty that had both hidden depth and a message of unity that our shitty species has so far failed to understand. Every frame of Pacific Rim was laced with Del Toro's passion for art, whether it be his love of classic paintings, old Jerry Anderson shows, or simply the sub-genre of seeing huge monsters being twatted in the face by giant robots. For various reasons, he failed to sign on to this sequel having instead decided to win an Oscar for his latest fish-fucking masterpiece The Shape Of Water. Quite right too as for me, Del Toro is an artistic genius that we've been blessed to live at the same time as. His films will one day be remembered in the same way that we remember Hitchcock's or Kubrick's and if I was a director I'd want to follow in his footsteps as keenly as I'd want to be pegged by a psychopath with a cactus for a strap-on. Del Toro's heart went into his Pacific Rim film and as this sequel began I saw that Thuggee Priest rip it out and set it on fire as though showing it off to Indiana Jones, a screaming woman, and a small Asian stereotype. 

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Stuck And Running From The Bullets

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Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk begins with a soldier frantically trying to find a spot on the beach in which he can take a dump. Or maybe, he was just ticking off things he could do from his bucket list and having a literal shit on France was one of them. And who even knew this movie would be set in France at all? You'd think there would be a clue in the title but a few years ago a friend of mine let slip that he thought Dunkirk was actually a place in Scotland. After initially making fun of him for this lapse in his general knowledge, it quickly became annoyingly apparent that Dunkirk may actually be the most Scottish sounding word I've ever heard in my entire fucking life. When the English soldiers were stuck and desperate on the beach at the start of this film I genuinely had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't going to end with Mel Gibson riding over the hill, face painted blue and screaming for fucking 'Freedom!!!”

It's Snoring Time

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Who remembers Power Rangers from back in the day? It was basically a playground code word for 'lets have a fight'! You'd find somebody that you didn't really like, invite them for a game of Power Rangers, and then spend the next thirty minutes kicking the shit out of them. I was always White Ranger because I was male and, most importantly, I was white. If anything was ever squarely designed to wean kids onto the BNP it must have been fucking Power Rangers which put labels onto its characters and then colour co-ordinated the shit out of them. Pink Ranger was the girl, Black Ranger was a black guy, and Yellow Ranger was.. well, I'm sure you can guess. Apparently the chap that played the original Blue Ranger ultimately felt that he had to leave the show because of his sexuality and the rampant homophobia that was prevalent behind the scenes. In which case, I'm honestly fucking surprised that he didn't morph into the fucking Rainbow Ranger with his assigned Zord being a 70ft mechanical recreation of Freddie Mercury on all fours.

Shifting Bricks

Quantitative Easing, how aeroplanes actually fly, and Mickey Rourke's face are just a few examples of things that I don't understand. Another example might be the message of The Lego Movie which to me seemed about as conflicted as a by-the-book Bishop with both a cum stained collection of jazz mags and the words “cunt off” etched into his forehead. In case you've not seen the film yet it centres around the journey of a run-of-the-mill everyman named Emmet whose friendliness and positive attitude more than make up for the fact that he's also a massive thick fuck. Through a series of unfortunate events however, our cheerful average Joe becomes embroiled in a conflict between the films uber-villain known as Lord Business and some free-thinking hippy radicals. Where they want to simply sing and dance and revel in their anarchic creativity, he just wants them to be glued into place and to shut the fuck up. Oh, and because everybody believes Emmet to be 'The One' prophesied to bring down this villainous capitalist bastard, Lord Business has released Liam Neeson's schizophrenic Policeman to track them down and twat them into oblivion. So basically this film is sort of what a person might see if they choked on some Lego and then spent a few seconds hallucinating their way into the afterlife.

I suppose before we get into the nitty gritty of things I should say that, above all else, The Lego Movie is more than enjoyable. As somebody who'd have to think twice before swerving to avoid driving over a lost child during a busy school run, I'm glad that we're tricking them into seeing the world for the massive, evil bollock that it really is. Personally I can't think of a better way to introduce kids to the horrors of both fascism and the oppressive nature of big business than through the movie adaptation of some interlocking plastic bricks. Which is lucky because this film is littered with genuinely enjoyable satirical jabs at pretty much everything from logo'd coffee shops to the brain-dead fuckwits who pay for those drinks that, let’s face it, taste as though they've been blasted across a dirty wall from the arse-end of a scabby goat. The film also seems to poke fun at society’s obliviousness to the world around them, as Emmet casually dismisses death threats from his leader when distracted by a shitty catch-phrase based comedy show. If you've ever laughed at a fat Italian American man mumbling the phrase “how you doin'?” then this film basically thinks you’re a fucknugget... because you are!

Gotta love a good cum face...

In many ways you really have to admire the Lego company who have shown such expertise in attracting kids to their product that in an alternate world, they could have made one hell of a pedophile. In the past, children have existed in a grim black and white land of boredom where their only toys were broken sticks, dead animals and unexploded German bombs. To that generation, being introduced to the concept of a plastic brick must have seemed like a golden shower of creative joy... but not anymore. Nowdays our youngsters are frightened of reality preferring instead to face-plant some sort of technological device and absorb its flashing lights with the crazed desperation of an electronic crack-whore. It's to Lego’s huge credit then that it's kept up with this by taking the basic concept of their design and applying it to video games which, fuck me stupid, actually also turned out to be pretty damn good. Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Harry Potter are all surprisingly good fun. I mean, if you've played one of them then you've played them all, but movie tie-in games are generally shitter than shit and for Lego to do as well as they are with them is quite an achievement. Sure, the idea of a Lego film might on paper sound like a load of old wank in the same way that a porno based on a bashing game of Marbles also might. However in reality it seems like the company knows exactly what they're doing with this movie only being further proof of that.

However this is where my confusion regarding the film’s overall message kind of comes in. I think things are going to get a little spoilerific about now so if you've not seen the film you might want to toddle off for a little bit. Or not... up to you but don't complain when I ruin the ending in a second. So basically, Fox the corporation accused this film of being anti-capitalist which, to be fair, for the most part it does seem to be. It's not a subtle film and so if the villains name is Lord Business and he acts like a total cock-end then that might be a clue as to the movie’s overall theme. However despite having what Fox thought was an anti-capitalist agenda, the other thing that it very obviously is is an advert for Lego which is itself a big fucking business. So on the one hand the film is saying that people who can be manipulated into buying things for the shear balls of it are unthinking mongtards but then on the other it's saying STOP THINKING AND BUY OUR SHIT!!! At the same time as being shown how evil Lord Business is, we're also shown every possible Lego product you could possibly imagine in a musical montage that repeatedly sings the lyrics, “Everything is Awesome”. What a sly bastard this film is!

And then to confuse things even more, the concluding twenty minutes reveal an extra layer to the movie that kind of comes out of nowhere and possibly changes the message? Basically the entire world that our story is taking place in seems to be located in the basement of some real life boy’s house with the kid facing a parallel crisis with his father. The child wants to be creative and fuck shit up whereas his Dad wants everything segregated to their various themes and glued into place. So I guess that means that all the anti-capitalist stuff isn't actually an anti-capitalist message but simply just metaphorical of how some kid views his uptight and workaholic Dad? Considering the film ends with the father and son bonding at the same time that Lord Business realises the error of his ways and undoes all his evil work, I'd guess it has to be. Because if this film really was trying to make any sort of political comment then there's no way it could end with a corporation changing its ways and basically ruining its own business. If the end of this film was to be applied to the real world it would be along the lines of Donald Trump giving up his money before ending his life as a massive evil cunt. Although I don't think that's going to happen any time soon, do you?

I suppose therefore that the politics of this film aren't necessarily the politics of the filmmakers but instead the ill-informed brain rambles of a young boy with daddy issues. Which I guess means that the film isn't quite the hypocrite that it might initially seem. But surely we can still slag it off for trying to subconsciously manipulate the viewers into buying its shit can't we? Well I guess you could but then what the fuck did you expect? The film spends its first half openly admitting how evil large businesses can be and so if you weren't expecting a Lego film to promote its own products then more fool you for being such a fucking stupid knobhead. On the bright side though, and yes I'm aware this is still to help it sell stuff... but on the bright side, the other thing the film seems keen to celebrate is the power of the imagination. One second we're seeing a dance routine around a construction site and in the next, Batman and a deformed Pirate are chilling out on a bunk-sofa in the middle of a Lego sea.

His hair is still less stupid than Donald Trump's

To kind of conclude, I guess an obvious comparison to this film might be The Transformers franchise which is also based on a toy and is also obviously also an advert for them. However if the message of The Lego Movie is that ‘imagination is good, oh, and buy our shit’, then it beats The Transormers franchise hands down. Don't get me wrong, as Michael Bay's cinematic cancer does agree with the bit about buying their shit but prefers to replace the celebration of the imagination with racist robots and images of women that add nothing to the film but wanking material. Fox business might not like this film but I did and so I reckon you should check it out too... although hopefully you've already seen the thing considering I warned you earlier to stop reading before I gave away the entire end. In which case, just... I don't know...  stop reading now and let’s all just get on with our lives. Bye-bye!

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