Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Chris McKay Talk THE LEGO MOVIE : Comic-Con 2013

Hey there LEGO fans! We have something fun for you…

While at Comic-Con 2013, WAMG got the chance to talk with Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Chris McKay about their new film THE LEGO MOVIE. During the intimate press conference, these fun-filled directors talked about their animation choices, their incredible voice cast, and even some of the superheroes that we will see! Check it out below.

THE LEGO MOVIE will incorporate some of the LEGO world’s most popular figures while introducing several new characters, inviting fans who have enjoyed the brand’s innovative toys and hugely popular video games for generations to experience their visually unique LEGO world as never seen before. The original 3D computer animated story follows Emmet, an ordinary, rules-following, perfectly average LEGO mini figure who is mistakenly identified as the most extraordinary person and the key to saving the world. He is drafted into a fellowship of strangers on an epic quest to stop an evil tyrant, a journey for which Emmet is hopelessly and hilariously underprepared. Chris Pratt as the voice of Emmet. Will Ferrell stars as the voice of his primary adversary, President Business, an erudite, anal-retentive CEO who has a hard time balancing world domination with micro-managing his own life; while Oscar nominee Liam Neeson voices the president’s powerful henchmen, known as Bad Cop, who will stop at nothing to catch Emmet. Starring as Emmet’s fellow travelers are Oscar winner Morgan Freeman as Vitruvius, an old mystic; Elizabeth Banks as tough-as-nails Wyldstyle, who mistakes Emmet for the savior of the world and guides him on his quest; Will Arnett as the mysterious Batman, a Lego minifigure with whom Wyldstyle shares a history; Nick Offerman as a craggy, swaggering pirate obsessed with revenge on President Business; Alison Brie as a sweet, loveable, member of the team, with a powerful secret and Charlie Day, as the spaceman Benny.

Legos are a pure toy of creativity. How did you adapt the idea of their creativity into a narrative that explores that side?

Phil Lord: It’s funny. We started out with this idea that they are a machine of creativity. Let’s make a movie – can a regular construction worker learn those skills? We found out that there’s a really high bar. The more you hear the word “creativity”, the less you want to hear it. (Laughs) It started to get really preachy, really fast. There were versions of this movie that felt like a college paper. (Laughs)

Chris Miller: So the word “creativity” is not in the movie at all. This movie is, obviously, all about creativity. The idea is that there are two different ways that people play with Legos. There are those that buy the kit, follow the instructions, and build the piece how it is, which is awesome. Then there are the people who dump all the bricks together and build whatever they want to, and that’s awesome as well. We wanted to have dialectic on the different ways there are to make things.

Phil Lord: That sounds super… not fun at all!

Chris McKay: … a dialectic…

Phil Lord: … a wonderful dialectic…

Chris McKay: I think the most fun thing about it is – these guys especially – really opened up everybody on the crew to, kind of, access their inner child. It was a lot like play, in the way we set up all of the departments, and the storyboards, and then going into the animation and layout, and then everything else. It was just “Play like you’re a kid. Have fun! What if the story was this?’. You just start running with ideas, and that kind of thing. It was very organic, and almost improvisational. The whole process was just “How crazy can we make this?” The way these guys had talked about it earlier was like “If Michael Bay kidnapped Henry Selick and forced him to make the Lego movie stuck in Michael Bay’s brain…”. You know, that’s what this movie is. (Laughs) It’s literally those two guys coming together on this one. It’s an explosion of creativity! (Laughs) It’s almost, kind of like a joyride through a ten-year-old’s imagination.

Phil Lord: Yeah. I know this is a long answer to a short question, but McKay built a creativity machine, that was the production, and he did it in a way that was really flat, and allowed for a lot of dialog in between departments without a lot of layers. The editors could talk to the storyboard artists and request some drawings, and try things out without showing us first so that really got everyone energized. Everyone’s office was right next door to one another, so it really became a very fluid creative process.

You have some amazing voice talent for this film. Did you have anyone in particular in mind when you first started, and can you tell us a little bit about casting this film?

Phil Lord: I’m trying to think who the first ideas were.

Chris Miller: We thought of Pratt early on because he’s hilarious. He’s a, sort of, regular guy. He actually grew up two blocks from me, and he’s just a hilarious guys-guy sort of guy. He seemed perfect for that.

Phil Lord: I knew him from Anna Farris on CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS. We had met him, and he was sort of her boyfriend. We just met him as a guy, and then watched him become the funniest person on television. He has a real sincerity to him that we thought was really important to the character. Also, we got a lot of people that we went after. We got this idea to make Morgan Freeman into a wizard (laughs)…

Chris Miller: We were like “Oh, yeah. He’ll never do it!” and he did it!

Phil Lord: We had no other casting ideas for that part. (Laughs) We didn’t talk about what we were gonna do.

Chris Miller: We saw that ‘Life’s Too Short’ that Liam Neeson was on, and it was hilarious, so we were like “We’ve gotta put this guy in the movie!”. We asked him to do it, and we thought he’s never do it, and he did it too! We couldn’t believe it! We’ve always wanted to work with Will Ferrell because he’s an amazing guy, and hilarious, and just a wonderful person, and this was a wonderful opportunity to do that. We’ve been friends with Elizabeth Banks for years. We worked with Charlie Day many years ago, so we tried to assemble some buddies, and some people we really like.

Warner Bros. has had tremendous success with the Lego video game, and they’ve done some really funny cut scenes. Did you talk with them, or work with them?

Chris Miller: Yeah. We went to Manchester and met with Jon [Burton], and saw his whole operation, and what they were doing. They stuff they are doing is really clever, and they really use the “Lego-ness” off the Lego characters. Their arms pop off, and… it really helped us think about… When you are writing it, you tend to think about them as people, and you forget that they are these little plastic dudes. You want to remember to continually use that as part of the charm of them. That really helped us.

Phil Lord: There’s been a lot of dialog back and forth. A lot of sharing of digital assets, and every time we cut the movie it goes over to Manchester.

Chris Miller: … because they’re making the video game. And, they’re doing it in sort of a limited animation style, where as our movie… Their characters show a lot of emotion…

Phil Lord: They were psyched to have us over there. We were like “We’re going to try to break every rule that you guys have had opposed on you.”. (Laughs)

What was the recording process like? Did you get a chance to get any of the actors together, or was it just you one-on-one with the voice talent? 

Chris Miller: We did Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, and Will Arnett together a couple of times because they kind off of each other. Also, we did Liam Neeson and Will Ferrell together over the phone, which was kind of funny. Liam was in New York, and Will was in L.A., so they did their scene over the phone, which was kind of awkward at first, but then it became amazing Those were the only ones that we could get in the same room. It was our goal to get – it’s more fun to get people together to play off of each other, because there’s a lot of improvisation. These people are all super funny people that can riff, so we ended up getting a lot of good stuff out of them.

Phil Lord: The sad reality of casting really famous movie stars in your movie is that they are incredibly busy.

Chris Miller: It’s like “Oh, you’re doing THE HUNGER GAMES, and you’re doing ANCHORMAN [2]… “. There were a million different things, but we kind of worked around their schedules, and we tried to make it work as much as we could.

The look of the movie is “so Lego”. Can you talk about your decisions to create this look, in the old-style animation too?

Chris Miller: It was inspired by brick films that people make online. There are a ton of these on YouTube, where people, very creatively, make funny, funny Lego movies. The animation of the characters is kind of funny. Also, there are some photographers who photograph the little Lego people. They try to make them look really, really epic just from the lighting, and we thought that was really cool. We tried to marry a cinematic lighting style with a brick film aesthetic.

Phil Lord: I think it was a choice that we made us – that helped to finish the project.

Chris Miller: We wanted it to feel like a real Lego set come to life.

Chris McKay: You would be surprised how many people were resistant to that idea. On every level, people didn’t get it, and didn’t think that the charm would come through. Until we proved that you could.

Phil Lord: We had to prove it on every level. On the conceptual level with the folks at Warner, and then again on the technical side, then again with the animators, and with all kinds of people. I’m sure there will be some reviews that are like “Meh. I don’t like what they did!”, but we discovered that we could get a lot of expressiveness and emotion… You know, what they have done as a team to get so much [animation] out of the dumbest drawings! That was our dream. What a great trick it would be to make you care about the dorkiest looking things in the whole universe.

Chris Miller: In THE MUPPET MOVIE Kermit’s eyes don’t move, and he’s just doing this [moves head around] and you get so much expressiveness out of the limitations.

How do you walk the line, in a movie like this, between having it be a creative film with the story, and having it be an ad?

Phil Lord: Ah, yes. Well, it’s all an ad. (Laughs) The ad was inescapable.

Chris Miller: That’s something we were really, really nervous about… You know, making a 90 minute commercial for toys.

Phil Lord: So we settled on an 85 minute… (laughs)

Chris Miller: So, we decided that obviously Legos are a medium that people use to tell a story. It’s like clay for a claymation movie, in a way. Luckily, the people at Lego were very trusting of us… Maybe too foolishly trusting. (Laughs) They allowed us to make a story that we thought was fun, and were really there to just help us make our ideas a reality.

Phil Lord: Yeah. The short answer to your question is zero ad. 100% creative movie. That’s what we’re going for. I think the partners at Lego realize that the entire movie was made out of Lego, and it’s called THE LEGO MOVIE (laughs), so I think that’s a good enough ad.

How long has the movie taken to make? 

Chris Miller: Well, it’s not done yet!

Phil Lord: Hopefully only six more months.

Chris Miller: We started writing it before we did 21 Jump Street, so…

Phil Lord: Summer before we left for 21 Jump Street, right?

Chris Miller: Yeah, we started writing it. So it’s been… I don’t even know how long ago.

Phil Lord: 2010?

Chris Miller: It comes out in February, so…

Are you allowed to reveal any other superhero characters that may be in it?

Chris Miller: Yes. We just said in Hall H that there are other DC superheroes in it. Superman is being played by Channing Tatum, Green Lantern is being played by Jonah Hill, and Wonder Woman is being played by Colbie Smulders. There are a lot of other characters that we’re not allowed to talk about right now from other movies… from other Lego sets. They all, sort of, interact in a way – like a kid was playing with a bucket full of Legos. They would play together. That’s a really fun part, but we can’t really tell you about that stuff.

FOR MORE INFO:

WEBSITE: thelegomovie.com

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/TheLEGOMovie

Follow THE LEGO MOVIE on Twitter : @TheLEGOMovie

THE LEGO MOVIE hits theaters in 3D and 2D on February 7, 2014