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AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
Emmet’s “specialness,” the mundane minifigure has greatness thrust upon
him along with the missing cap to the Kragle. He is henceforth known as
“the most talented, most interesting, and most extraordinary person in the
universe,” by all of the characters in the film – albeit with some reservations.
Thick as a Brick: Building Storyworlds
There are perhaps few films that self-consciously celebrate the mechanics
of transmedial storytelling with as much gusto as The LEGO Movie. Quite
obviously, the film incorporates characters from other possible worlds and
story franchises such as Batman who helps Emmet on his quest, along with a
galaxy of other characters including Superman, Wonder Woman, Michelangelo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and Millhouse of The Simpsons fame.
The film also features “real-world” characters like Michelangelo, the Italian
renaissance artist, and Shakespeare, the 16th-century English playwright,
as well as stock characters such as cops, cowboys, banditos, LEGO’s 1980s
“retro space guy” minifigure, and so on. By incorporating a colorful cast of
real-world and storyworld characters rendered as minifigures, The LEGO
Movie comes together through the kind of freewheeling, trans-storyworld
cherry picking for which Emmet and the other freedom fighters in the film
strive to clear the way. Therefore, the implication is that by thwarting Lord
Business’ plan to glue all of the LEGO minifigures permanently into playsets
“the way they’re supposed to be,” the bricks are set free by the close of the
movie to be reconfigured according to the imagination of anyone who plays
with them, ensuring maximum creativity.
Having been blithely following the rules and believing that everything is
totally awesome with no inkling that Taco (T.A.K.O.S.) Tuesday really spells
disaster, Emmet rapidly finds himself in serious need of being brought up
to speed on the film’s central conflict, and asks Wyldstyle to catch him up.
Her reply is understood by Emmet as, “Bla, bla, bla proper name, place name,
backstory stuff, I’m so pretty, I like you but I’m angry with you for some reason,”
indicating that Emmet has stopped listening because he is, predictably enough,
attracted to the messenger. At the same time however, this voice-over assumes
viewers’ familiarity with various mechanisms of storytelling while suggesting
that characters (“proper name”) are simply interchangeable linguistic markers
for what Greimas would have called “actants.” 3 This speech also suggests that
3 Algirdas Julien Greimas, Sémantique structurale: recherche de methode (Paris: Larousse,
1966). Structural semanticist and semiotician Algirdas Julien Greimas famously synthesized
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
Emmet’s “specialness,” the mundane minifigure has greatness thrust upon
him along with the missing cap to the Kragle. He is henceforth known as
“the most talented, most interesting, and most extraordinary person in the
universe,” by all of the characters in the film – albeit with some reservations.
Thick as a Brick: Building Storyworlds
There are perhaps few films that self-consciously celebrate the mechanics
of transmedial storytelling with as much gusto as The LEGO Movie. Quite
obviously, the film incorporates characters from other possible worlds and
story franchises such as Batman who helps Emmet on his quest, along with a
galaxy of other characters including Superman, Wonder Woman, Michelangelo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and Millhouse of The Simpsons fame.
The film also features “real-world” characters like Michelangelo, the Italian
renaissance artist, and Shakespeare, the 16th-century English playwright,
as well as stock characters such as cops, cowboys, banditos, LEGO’s 1980s
“retro space guy” minifigure, and so on. By incorporating a colorful cast of
real-world and storyworld characters rendered as minifigures, The LEGO
Movie comes together through the kind of freewheeling, trans-storyworld
cherry picking for which Emmet and the other freedom fighters in the film
strive to clear the way. Therefore, the implication is that by thwarting Lord
Business’ plan to glue all of the LEGO minifigures permanently into playsets
“the way they’re supposed to be,” the bricks are set free by the close of the
movie to be reconfigured according to the imagination of anyone who plays
with them, ensuring maximum creativity.
Having been blithely following the rules and believing that everything is
totally awesome with no inkling that Taco (T.A.K.O.S.) Tuesday really spells
disaster, Emmet rapidly finds himself in serious need of being brought up
to speed on the film’s central conflict, and asks Wyldstyle to catch him up.
Her reply is understood by Emmet as, “Bla, bla, bla proper name, place name,
backstory stuff, I’m so pretty, I like you but I’m angry with you for some reason,”
indicating that Emmet has stopped listening because he is, predictably enough,
attracted to the messenger. At the same time however, this voice-over assumes
viewers’ familiarity with various mechanisms of storytelling while suggesting
that characters (“proper name”) are simply interchangeable linguistic markers
for what Greimas would have called “actants.” 3 This speech also suggests that
3 Algirdas Julien Greimas, Sémantique structurale: recherche de methode (Paris: Larousse,
1966). Structural semanticist and semiotician Algirdas Julien Greimas famously synthesized