Amid the rapid-fire jokes and lively animated action in “The Lego Batman Movie,” there’s a family story at the heart of the film that snaps right into place.
“Batman has been this self-involved, narcissistic guy who has a lot of things going for him, but he doesn’t have people in his life,” explains the film’s director, Chris McKay, who describes himself as a supernerd about everything related to the Caped Crusader. He even has a tattoo of Catwoman on his forearm.
“He is a guy who is completely out of touch with his own emotional life,” adds Michael Cera, who voices Robin, an orphan who Bruce Wayne accidentally adopts in the film — and then wants to get rid of.
McKay says that despite the many Batman stories over the years, none have been about him trying to get over the loss of his parents. In the comic-book canon, they were shot down when he was a kid and that drives him for revenge.
“So he’s been afraid if he develops relationships with people that something bad may happen,” McKay says. “His emotional growth was stunted at the point his parents were killed.”
Speaking of “Arrested Development,” Will Arnett, an alum of that acclaimed show, once again provides the voice of Batman. In 2014’s highly successful “The Lego Movie,” the Dark Knight was a scene-stealing co-star, not the focus. In this new film, it’s his world.
When the producers were looking for someone for Robin, they asked Arnett to contact Cera, who was also on the series. McKay says they loved the “innocence in his voice and the indefatigable positivity he can bring to the table.”
At the time, the actor had done very little voice work. So they weren’t sure he would even be interested.
As it turned out, Cera had gone to the first “Lego Movie” on a lark and “liked it so much more than I anticipated. It had this really fast, great joke rate to it. That’s why I was excited to get to do this one.”
In “The Lego Batman Movie,” which opens Friday, Batman faces his biggest challenge — every villain that you can think of — and some you can’t. If that seems like an overstatement, it isn’t.
First, the producers of the new film raided the DC Comics closet and pulled out anybody that Batman has battled in 70 years, including such obscure baddies as Gentleman Ghost and Crazy Quilt.
But as usual, the head of the villains is Batman’s longtime archnemesis, The Joker, voiced in the film by Zach Galifianakis.
After that, they started looking elsewhere for villains, some that the kids would know, some they wouldn’t and some from outside the DC realm that they included just for the adults and nerds they knew would be watching.
Among the many more are Sauron from “The Lord of the Rings,” King Kong, the Wicked Witch from “Wizard of Oz” and “He Who Must Not Be Named” — Lord Voldemort from the “Harry Potter” books and movies.
“We wanted The Joker’s plan to be bigger, bolder, and we liked the idea of the Phantom Zone being the place where all the history of cinema and comic books bad guys are kept,” McKay says. (The Phantom Zone is sort of a supermax prison from another DC property — “Superman.”)
What kids might not get is that Voldemort was portrayed in the movies by British actor Ralph Fiennes, who in “Lego Batman” is the voice of the Dark Knight’s tough-love-dispensing butler, Alfred. He keeps trying to push his boss out in the world, especially after he becomes love-struck upon seeing the red-headed Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson).
But Bruce/Batman is completely clueless about what to do, even though he spends his off-hours watching romantic comedies and syrupy stuff. He doesn’t really get it.
McKay saw Batman as kind of the archetype of the guy in such romantic comedies as “Jerry Maguire” or “About a Boy” or “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.”
“It was fun to play with an emotional story,” he says. “The one enemy Batman truly hasn’t wrestled with is his fears.”
By the way, the filmmakers don’t make it easy for their guy. A career woman, Barbara isn’t falling for Bruce’s or Batman’s charm — or lack of it.
If anybody completes the Dark Knight, it’s The Joker. “It’s something that he recognizes but Batman repudiates,” says McKay, which was why they wanted Galifianakis.
“Zach’s comedy is unpredictable, even dangerous, and at the same time really vulnerable,” McKay says. “We wanted our Joker to be a little of both. Zach is a great combination of scary and wonderful.”
The director isn’t getting a break anytime soon from the Lego movie world. He just finished “Batman” a couple of weeks ago while at work producing “The Lego Ninjago Movie,” a kung-fu spinoff film slated for later this year. And a 2019 follow-up to the “Batman” movie is already in the works.
While the family story gives some heft and depth to “Lego Batman,” the film has the same madcap humor that brought in audiences of all ages to the first one.
McKay sees their approach as something of a combination of Warner Bros., Looney Tunes and “Airplane!”
“We’re fans of putting out a lot of jokes really fast,” he says. “It’s like punk rock where the inmates have taken over the asylum and where we suddenly can cut to live-action footage or where we can do an absurd joke right up against some grounded storytelling and flip-flop the tone quickly.”
Growing up, McKay says that he always was trying to “age up.” Whenever he went to the movies or listened to music, he always wanted to understand what the older kids were listening to and watching.
“I loved movies like ‘Raiders,’ ‘E.T.,’ ‘Superman’ and Alfred Hitchcock films, things that were meant for mass audiences to go to and have a great time.”
He’s hoping kids will hear some references in “Lego Batman” and will be interested enough to look them up or find out.
“That’s what Lucas and Spielberg movies did for me,” he says. “They led me to (Martin) Scorsese who led me to (Japanese film director Akira) Kurosawa or John Ford. For me, it’s about making a movie for everybody.”
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
