city burials

Unpopular statement: I have not seen The LEGO Movie.

 

-L

it's a good movie marred by a ###### ending with an even crappier message

 

_{edit: wow BZP is that really still filtered? what year is it, 2006?}

I have an unpoplar opinion.  I think birch trees have superior bark.

it's a good movie marred by a ###### ending with an even crappier message

 

_{edit: wow BZP is that really still filtered? what year is it, 2006?}

 

Nah, it had a great message.

 

 

Explicit message: Your kids matter and you shouldn't just dismiss their creativity as childish silliness. And if they're breaking the rules and touching your stuff and viewing you as a stuffy totalitarian villain, maybe that's a sign you should be working harder to include them in your own life instead of being obsessed with keeping everything you do segregated?

 

Implicit message: the solution to creative differences, whether in society or within your own family, is not shutting out the other side's perspectives, but reaching out, finding common ground, and learning to appreciate those whose ideas are different than yours.

 

I mean, yes, Finn was breaking the rules by touching his dad's stuff. That was wrong. But on the other hand, "no touching my stuff ever" is not a very reasonable rule, and The Man Upstairs was preparing to go to downright unreasonable lengths to enforce it. There's nothing Finn could have ever done to his father's creations that would have caused more damage than Kragling every single one of them. During his play session, Finn Kragled just two of his father's figures. But kids learn by example. Who, then, did he learn that from? The answer should be obvious.

 

The misbehavior of his son was a situation The Man Upstairs brought on himself by shutting him out from the creative side of his life in the first place. Whereas if he had simply INCLUDED his son in his play once he was old enough (instead of just callously dismissing his son's creations as "a hodgepodge"), he could have done a much better job teaching him responsibility and respect for other people's creations.

 

Of all the voices in his son's head, only one — Emmet — understood this (the other Master Builders were often just as self-centered as President Business). And it was Emmet's voice that was finally able to bring Finn and his father to a state of togetherness and mutual understanding.

 

nah, his children didn't have any right to mess with his Lego collection, which he obviously was proud of and cared for, even if they were toys.

 

I think he should've stuck to his guns and continued to keep his kids from playing with his stuff instead of having that stupid "aw but they're my children and Lego is meant to be played with so I should let them play with mine" change of heart at the end. if he wanted to share his passion for Lego with them, that's entirely his choice, but he should've done it by playing with them with their own sets, not his.

 

that's the message that I don't like - the implication that his children were somehow entitled to play with somebody else's toys just because A. they're children and B. they're toys, and that he was somehow selfish or wrong to not want to share them. maybe that's not a message they intended, but I'm far from the first person to have noticed it and I know for a fact that some children have taken it that way too.

Sigh. The person you're talking about is my dad, who would have done exactly as you said. 

 

Great way to encourage kid's creativity and show them some love. A family is not a dictatorship where Dad is a totalitarian ruler and all must bow and scrape - and if it becomes that way, rebellion like what Finn did is so common out of his own pain and hurt. 

 

The end of the Lego Movie is what I wish my own parents learned. That discipline is for when a kid does something wrong, not when they do something the parent doesn't like. We all do some things that other people don't like, and doing so doesn't make the action wrong. The not-liking discipline occurred before the movie started, and Finn is now actually doing wrong things because he has been hurt. 

I never said he should have punished them for it (though they should definitely be taught not to do it again) or that he shouldn't have played with them or shared his love of Lego with them at all - just that he should've taught them not to mess with other people's stuff. simple as that. The Lego Movie inadvertently sent a message that can be interpreted as "this adult/other person has toys, toys are meant to be played with, I am a child, thus I should play with them" or that someone is automatically a selfish old tyrant if they don't let children screw around with their stuff.

 

heh, I said this would be an unpopular opinion.