Although Wonder Woman is currently dominating the box office, we cannot forget the other landmark DC film that debuted this year. Chris McKay's The LEGO Batman Movie completely changed the definition what a silver screen Caped Crusader can look like, and it has handily gone on to become one of the best Batman stories ever committed to celluloid. The film features an insane attention to detail, but there's one minor (yet endlessly fascinating) aspect of the production that you probably never even noticed. As it turns out, every LEGO design used in The LEGO Batman Movie can be made if you have the appropriate bricks. CG supervisor Damien Gray explained:
Everything that you see can actually be made in real life.
Like The LEGO Movie, Chris McKay's Lego Batman Movie leans headfirst into ideas of imagination and creativity. Will Arnett's version of The Dark Knight remains a "Master Builder, " and that quality allows him to create incredible designs for ships, weapons, gadgets, and anything else that he might need while fighting LEGO Joker (Zach Galifianakis) on the streets of Gotham City. As Damien Gray points out in the special features of The LEGO Batman Movie home release: the team behind the film broke the LEGO designs down to their most essential elements and built everything (the characters, the structures, etc.) from the ground up. Because of this major creative decision, anyone who goes out and acquires the right set of LEGO bricks will have the ability to recreate entire segments from the film in the comfort of their own homes.
That leads to what could easily be considered the most entertaining job on the entire crew. To help conceptualize the brick designs before plugging them into the computer, the crew of The LEGO Batman Movie dedicated an entire department to tinkering and toying with LEGO bricks to see what someone could realistically make. From there, the designs were handed over to the animators -- who put them in motion and then added smaller details like scratches and fingerprint smudges that an average kid would find on his or her own LEGO bricks.
That said, while virtually everything made of LEGO bricks in Chris McKay's The LEGO Batman Movie can be made if you acquire the appropriate pieces, there are still are still a few visual elements of the film that the production crew decided to make far more naturalistic. Specifically, effects like smoke and water (which were made of LEGO bricks in The LEGO Movie) were changed into real smoke and actual water for this Batman adventure. It's a seemingly minor change (one that I didn't even notice the first time around), but it certainly helps sell the superhero action more than the previous LEGO film. Like a kid playing with his own version of LEGO Batman, they thought of everything.
With such an insane attention to detail, we will just have to wait and see what the folks behind the LEGO franchise will think of next.The LEGO Batman Movie is now available on Digital HD, Blu-ray, and DVD. For more information related to the rest of the major blockbuster releases slated for 2017, make sure to check out our movie premiere guide!
