The LEGO NINJAGO Movie review

   

                              Ninjas assemble in The Lego Ninjago Movie. Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros.

Directors: Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan.

Cast: Dave Franco, Justin Theroux, Fred Armisen, Kumail Nanjiani, Michael Peña, Abbi Jacobson, Zach Woods, Jackie Chan (voices).

Certification: U

Run time: 101 Minutes

Back in 2014 the Warner Animation Group and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller brought us The LEGO Movie, a highly anticipated production that bought a unique and welcome refresh to the animation movie genre.

It was inevitable that the film would expand into a major franchise showcasing the LEGO brand and in 2017 it was followed up with the incredibly popular LEGO Batman Movie. Now LEGO is back for a third outing with the LEGO Ninjago Movie.

We are introduced to Ninjago City in the LEGO universe which in typical LEGO style is massively explosive and a huge amount of fun right from the very start. I can certainly see a large amount of MOC's in the future, relating to set pieces used in the movie. It was at this point I could see it looked more computer generated than its predecessors, the CG stop frame animation effect of the other movies seemed less of a priority this time round.

Ninjago City comes under constant attack from Lord Garmadon the father of Lloyd Garmadon. Lloyd is ridiculed by the residents of Ninjago City because of his fathers actions, even though unbeknown to them Lloyd together with Nya, Zane, Jay, Cole, Kai and Master Wu are actually part of the secret Ninja force which regularly thwart the attempts made by Lord Garmadon to rule over Ninjago City.

The ultimate weapon is used and destroyed during another take over attempt by Lord Garmadon, leading our heroes in their journey to search for the ultimate, ultimate weapon. The movie starts on its downward spiral from this point on, the jokes waned quickly while Lloyd's Daddy issues and bland storyline dominated a large part of the movie.

 

Quickly it was clear to see that the movie is a world away from the seven well established seasons of the television show. Lloyd and his father became the forefront of the movie with the remainder of the characters almost just extras in the background, I was left puzzled at the small roles played by what has previously been quite an equal team.

The previous two movies have always been very witty and comedic, especially Batman in which you were bombarded with non stop one liners, some of which were clearly directed at adults and would have been lost on children.

With its simple storyline and childish humour this time round the Ninjago Movie is all about the children and they'll love it for sure, but for AFOL's and parents although visually stunning the movie becomes rather dull, rather quickly.

With Ninjago being a huge staple of the LEGO Group for quite sometime now, it leaves me a little lost as to why it didn't deserve a little more respect to it's origins ? The LEGO Ninjago Movie will no doubt be loved by children but just doesn't reach the very high bar set by its predecessors, so from me it scores a 2/5.

Welcome to Mario's Bricks

Hello and welcome to Mario’s Bricks ! My name is Mario an AFOL from the West Midlands in the UK. I’ve been a fan of LEGO since I was old enough to pick up the brick as a young boy. Like most, I went through a dark age and came back to LEGO in 2013. My brick addiction has slowly crept up on me ever since.

The more sets I acquired, the more I desired, and the one thing which truly struck me was the massive calming effect LEGO has over me. LEGO for me is a form a total relaxation that I haven’t been able to achieve with any other hobby or pastime.

I would purchase and build retail sets all the time, but my LEGO addiction truly took hold when I began building my own creations. The more MOC’s I built, the more time I would spend quietly working out how I would achieve my end goal. 

I realised that in this rat race of a life taking time out to quietly think things over was something I never really allowed myself to do, and has probably been my problem for a large part of my adult life. I found not only was LEGO making me more creative but was contributing to making me a better person overall.

The more I built, the more research I did, the more I became fascinated in other people’s amazing creations and began attending LEGO shows across the UK. This quickly ended up in meeting like minded people and my enrolment in my local LUG Brick Central.

I find I am constantly amazed at the very high standard of builds by people in the UK LEGO scene, and not only that the calibre of the people themselves is also something to be admired greatly. 

To build more MOC’s, to become a better builder, to build a sizeable LEGO collection, I have found LEGO takes over your life. There isn’t a day that goes by where LEGO isn’t involved at some point, quite simply I can’t see myself ever stopping building.

The one thing that made sense to me was to start this blog to record the journey of my life in LEGO. I’m sure there’s plenty of other blogs bringing all the latest LEGO news, I wanted to make my blog more about the huge LEGO subculture in the UK and the creations of my own and other AFOL's. 

I will of course also be reviewing any LEGO sets, books and games I purchase along the way. All of which I purchase at my own cost, so it will always be as and when I am able to procure said items. 

I'd also love to hear any feedback or whatever you'd like to say so feel free to email me at any time on JasonPMarriott@Gmail.com.

I’m a slow builder and a slow writer but I’ll muddle along and hopefully bring you some reasonable work along the way.
 

Come along !

Mario.