Watching clips of ‘The LEGO Batman Movie’ could be enough

The very first Lego Batman movie came out in 2013, a year before The Lego Movie, and was a direct-to-DVD spin-off of the popular video game franchise that launched all the way back in 2008. That’s more or less the position The Lego Movie found itself in: building a movie from a toy that not only has already existed and delighted children for decades, but building a franchise from a game that offers limitless possibilities. To paraphrase the title of that movie’s signature song, “everything was awesome”. But his presence is just enough of a reminder of what’s going on in the real world to temporarily take politically astute adults out of what is otherwise a delightfully distracting romp.

“The Lego Batman Movie” releases this weekend and it’s a massive hit with critics. (A highlight for us old folks is when Alfred reviews the many iterations of Batman over the years, including a precious black-and-white clip of Adam West in the ’60s.) And young orphan Dick Grayson (the future Robin, voiced by Michael Cera) manages to get Batman to adopt him – inadvertently. All of this makes for a geek-gasm for the Comic-Con set, and one has to bow to a movie that assembles this much sheer stuff (and so many impressive voice actors).

But times are changing in Gotham.

Will Arnett has somehow become the greatest Batman of all time by simply using his voice.

Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: It’s good to be the Batman (Will Arnett): fighting crime, saving Gotham City, and ripping sweet guitar solos. As he tells a teary-eyed Joker, “I don’t do ‘ships”. “There is no us”.

Batman is essentially a rock star deity whom everyone in Gotham assumes is happy. There’s an overwhelming amount of references to Batman’s history, oddball c-list villains, weird character decisions over the decades, and for those not as well versed in Batman lore, lots of jokes that stand on their own as well.

What normally happens in a superhero movie-a supervillain executes a sinister plot, it looks like all hope is lost, and Batman swoops in at the last minute to save the day-all occurs within the first 10 minutes.

While he’s never far from his loyal butler Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), Batman – he’s rarely ever Bruce Wayne – is desperately lonely in private, thanks to his crippling fear of forming another relationship.

We are then given a unique glimpse of Batman who sits at home all alone with nothing to do except for when trouble arrives. “That’s my motto. Copyright, Batman”. Excalibur Lego Batman launches early via Target before going nationwide on March 28th, while Knight Rider starts at GameSpot early before following suit. The LEGO Batman Movie operates under the notion that, as a superhero with no actual superpowers, Batman is beholden to never actually catch his enemies – that without enemies, Batman is just a insane billionaire with too much time on his hands. Even worse: “Batman and Joker are not a thing”.

With all his nemeses behind bars, Batman starts having a bit of an identity crisis, and it doesn’t help when he finds out that Superman (Channing Tatum) is holding regular Justice League get-togethers without him. “I like to fight around”. Playing Batman in “Batman and Robin”, however, is probably the lowlight of his career.