SPOILERS ALERT!!!
Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
Back in February 2017, I saw ‘The LEGO Batman Movie’, one of my favourite films of the year! I even had the DVD of it when it came out in June 2017. So it’s only fair that I should watch the latest LEGO-related movie at the cinemas called ‘The LEGO Ninjago Movie’. My parents and I saw it last Tuesday.
What did I make of it? I really enjoyed it. But deep down, I don’t think it matches to the standards of ‘The LEGO Movie’ and ‘The LEGO Batman Movie’ beforehand. It’s not awful. It’s passable and above average. I felt it was quite a task to absorb the world ‘The LEGO Ninjago Movie’ was trying to tell us.
The movie is based on the LEGO Ninjago toy line. Now I don’t play with LEGO toys nowadays and this is a toy line that was created when I got out of playing with toys altogether. But it was intriguing how the LEGO Ninjago toy line was depicted in its first movie for the cinema and how the story was told.
The story is set in the LEGO universe city of Ninjago. It’s a place that gets constantly attacked by the evil Lord Garmadon and his minions. But five ninja heroes fight against Garmadon’s forces every day. They include Lloyd, Nya, Zane, Jay, Cole and Kai, who are guided by Master Wu to defeat Garmadon.
Now I don’t know about you, but I got a sense that there was an element of ‘Power Rangers’ involved in ‘The LEGO Ninjago Movie’, including the multi-coloured ninja suits and powers our heroes had as well as giant robots. There’s also the ‘Star Wars’ element with the light and dark sides.
The powers that our ninja heroes possess are as follows. Lloyd is the Green Ninja, the leader of the Secret Ninja Force; Kai is the Red Ninja of Fire; Jay is the Blue Ninja of Lightning; Nya is the Silver Ninja of Water; Zane is the robotic White Ninja of Ice and finally Cole is the Black Ninja of the Earth.
Now whilst this is the first LEGO movie with the Ninjago theme, I do feel that we don’t really get to know the main heroes as characters. The only character that seems to get major character development is Lloyd, who happens to be the son of the evil Lord Garmadon during the movie itself.
Lloyd is despised by everyone who lives in Ninjago, since his father is responsible for the constant attacks to the city. But as the Green Ninja, he’s hailed and praised. During the movie, Lloyd tries to connect to his father; stop him attacking Ninjago and shape him into the father he wants him to be.
The movie itself has a decent lighthearted feel to it, as you would expect in a LEGO movie. There were a few moments when I found myself laughing, including the “Love at first fight!” joke which I’ve used myself. I don’t think this has a lot of jokes as previous LEGO films, but it was still fun to see.
There’s also a moral centre to this movie as you would expect to find in many kids’ films. My Dad suggested that there was a Christian message featured in the movie concerning our characters following the right path. I agree there is a spiritual theme featured in this, especially with the ninjas.
‘The LEGO Ninjago Movie’ has been an enjoyable kids’ film to watch at the cinema. It’s not as great as ‘The LEGO Movie’ and ‘The LEGO Batman Movie’ in my humble opinion, but it was decent enough. I wouldn’t mind watching this again at the cinema. Jackie Chan and a giant cat are also in this movie.
Thanks for reading!
Bye for now!
Tim. 🙂
Bradley's Basement 