MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

The Lego Movie (2014), a colorful blockbuster family film, is structured around three tropes derived piecemeal from ancient Greece. From classical myth come the cleverly interlocking parts of the hero’s career, ingredients that underlie the story of the “Special” who is at first not so special.

From Greek myth narratives there are virtual cameo appearances by the Four Ages of Man, the Titans, Prometheus, the seer Tiresias, the hero’s guardian Athena, his bane Aphrodite, Kronos’ fatal stone, Janus’ two faces, plus reenactments of the roles of Phaethon, Lycaon, and, of course, Medusa, the original purveyor of ‘Kra…gle’ — without which the plot would have far less coherence.

From Plato the ordering of parallel worlds undergoes some re-engineering on a decidedly plastic foundation: only in the last third of the film does the viewer realize that the story emerges in tandem with the creative play of Finn, a very real nine year old boy. The overarching plot is consistent with the Demiurge principle from Timaeus, it plays well with the concepts of muthos and logos, and achieves its major surprises in echoes of the idea/eikon spectrum, with a nod to the myth of the cave from Republic. Socrates – a piece of resistance himself — finds a kindred spirit in Emmett.

From the Aristotelian tradition, the classic four causes constitute a quartet of surprising plot elements: the material cause may be plastic throughout; the final cause could be to unleash a sentimental surge of inter-generational creative activity; but the formal cause is delightfully melded with the efficient cause, chaos-cosmos transitions assert themselves, until the film’s final few seconds threaten a major re-gendering of the premise…

Brief mention of the (2019) sequel suggests a fifth cause – that’s awesome!