Editorial: During the marketing campaign for THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE its trailers, teasers and television spots gave me a feeling that the movie had a legit chance to be the greatest Batman movie ever. Heck, I even said it in multiple posts here on DailySuperHero.com over the past few months and I made it my boldest 2017 box office prediction stating it would bring in $1.1 billion worldwide. (Laugh at me for that prediction, I can handle it, but even the MINIONS hit that mark.)
Well, sometimes you make big claims you regret and I am man enough to say I was wrong about this being the greatest Batman movie ever and taking in that much money. (Laugh again at my $1 billion prediction... nobody is perfect. I am only human and make mistakes.)
But even before you begin to think this is a bad movie, it really isn't. It's a very fun movie with fun call-backs to all the Batman movie versions of the past as well as DC Comics references. It's an entertaining romp in Batman's LEGO world. However, I was letdown with its ending. And while I won't spoil anything for those who haven't seen the movie yet, it was, in my opinion, a very weak conclusion.
The standouts are exactly the characters you would expect — Batman, Robin, Barbara Gordon, Alfred and the Joker — but all the other characters were literally background and its amazing secondary voice cast did not have any time to shine. After seeing the likes of Conan O'Brien, Jenny Slate, Adam Devine and many others on its cast list, I was hoping for at least a couple funny one-liners from each, but that was pretty much non-existent. And yeah, I know, I'm nitpicking on this but it was somewhat of a downer for me.
Overall, THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE is in fact for kids, whereas THE LEGO MOVIE was for kids and parents. Kids will ask their parents for many of the movie LEGO sets which are on store shelves right now; and parents will enjoy putting those together too. Well played by LEGO, because this was their goal all along, but when a Batman superfan like director Chris McKay is at the helm, I kind of expected more fun, humor, action and heart. The heart part was nowhere close to matching the heart seen in THE LEGO MOVIE.
THE LEGO MOVIE was very special and leading up to the release of THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE it felt like it too could be special. Yet in the end, it was a missed opportunity to make the greatest Batman movie ever seen. And that's a damn shame, regardless of the fact the movie will still make a ton of money in the worldwide box office. (Although I'll eat some crow for my claims of it potentially being the greatest as well as that it would be a $1 billion movie. I'm a little pessimistic about my bold box office prediction actually happening right now even though there's plenty of time for it to make lots of cash.)
Written by Daniel Wolf, DailySuperHero.com Founder & Publisher
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