One of my 10 year old son’s favorite video games of all time is LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes Unite – surpassed only very recently by LEGO City Undercover. At times he would play the game just to watch the cutscenes telling the story of how Lex Luthor and The Joker team up to take on Batman and Superman. Now he doesn’t have to.
Warner Brothers has now released LEGO Batman: The Movie comprising of cutscenes from the game as well as new pieces to combine them. While there are a few changes nothing drastic was done and what we get is the same story as the video game, just without the interactive elements.
As the film opens we get strains of the Danny Elfman theme and the words “A Jon Burton Film” appear on the screen. Clearly somebody really likes their work and a good joke – Jon Burton is a co-founder of Traveler’s Tales, the development studio behind LEGO Batman 2, the game on which this movie is based. The name was too good of a coincidence to pass up.
Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor are up for “Man Of The Year” awards when Joker crashes the festivities with the help of a few allies. Naturally Batman dispatches of the gang, then Lex Luthor hatches a plan to eliminate the heroic competition.
Not only is this a funny film, but it works as a decent super hero story. Then there is the use of LEGO bricks for the set pieces. This is a very well made film that utilizes everything at its disposal very well.
It takes an hour for the other heroes to show up (other than Superman and Robin) and then they aren’t on the screen for very long. It’s a shame, really, that while there are some changes to the story (but not much) with some of the cutscenes and intersertial pieces that were based on the game levels, I was sort of hoping the other super heroes would how up a little bit earlier.
A few special features are present, starting with a 15 minute featurette on using LEGO to create stop motion animation. The first LEGO Batman stop motion short is little more than an advertisement for a website. There are 5 actual LEGO Batman shorts that were entered in a competition that are certainly worth checking out. two episodes of “Batman: The Brave And The Bold” and one episode “Teen Titans” are also on the disc.
LEGO Batman: The Movie DC Super Heroes Unite is really worth the investment. There’s the Blu-ray but also the DVD in the same package (and an exclusive mini-figure which my 10 year old really liked). My kids love the story and the humor. I enjoyed watching it as well, and maybe it’s because I happen to enjoy a decent super hero film, but I wouldn’t be upset at watching this again (just not three days in a row like my 5 year old).
I should mention something about the voice acting, how several of the actors are taking on the role for the first time, or how Clancy Brown is awesome as Lex Luthor (again) but the fact that this is an afterthought actually speaks (ha) to how well done it all is. And my 10 year old laments that not all the shorts from the game are used in this movie. Whatever. This is a different product.