A pptx exploring Postmodern elements within The Lego Movie. Created from a variety of online sources.

2. Pastiche
The film is in the ‘style’ of the Matrix but as though written by a nine
year old.
• Emmet = Neo
• the boy and Vitruvius = Morpheus, Wildstyle as Trinity
• Lord Business = Agent Smith/The AI.
There are layers of reality, and only the main hero is able to see both
completely.
It is knowingly ‘bad’, implausible and exaggerated.
The characters play pastiche versions of ‘themselves’

3. Bricolage
The Lego Movie collages different film genres of
action, live-action, adventure, comedy and
fantasy into one.

4. Intertextuality
Aside from the links to the Matrix the characters
link to existing media texts

5. Meta – self referential
It contains a text within a text. A plot twist that
isn’t revealed till the very end.

6. The ‘flattening’ effect
A depthless vacuous world in which reality is
superseded by marking and advertising.
We live in corporate worlds where criticism and
negative emotions are marginalised. Success and
homogeneous lives are encouraged.

7. Everything Is Awesome
The theme song “Everything is Awesome” is an
ironic reminder of how
films/marketing/advertising/modern life
brainwashes us into believing that life has
always been “great”.

8. The Film is a metaphor
Postmodernism was a reaction to Modernism, a
movement in the early 20th Century that sought
to create new conventions of representation,
stripping away the frills, and making form follow
function. Like the Modernists, the
Postmodernists rejected the rigid conventions of
the Classicists. Unlike the Modernists, the
Postmodernists didn’t mind if things got a little
bit messy and frivolous.

9. Two narratives
Story A of the Lego movie is set in an animated
world and is the heroic journey of regular-guy
Emmett and his quest to stop Lord Business from
destroying the world with his super weapon: The
Kragle.
Story B is set in ‘reality’ with a boy attempting to
play with his dad’s Legos, while his dad wants to
maintain complete and absolute order, not giving in
to the creativity that Legos can unleash.

10. Theory
Postmodernism questions what is real and
absolute (Palmer, 2014)

11. Applied theory
The father is a Classicist, following the rules to put
together harmonious, safe creations. The son is a
Postmodernist, mixing properties, repurposing used
half-eaten lollipops, and disregarding the ‘rules’.
The Kragle represents the father’s strict adherence
to classical conventions. The son’s unbalanced
spaceships and mech-pirates are the intertextual,
time-bending, hyperreality, fragmented works of art