To celebrate the home disc release of The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, we were lucky enough to sit down with Director Mike Mitchell to talk about all things awesome including how he got involved in the project, what it was like to work with LEGO and his favourite song! Everything is Awesome!
STARBURST: How was the experience of sitting in the director’s chair after Phil Lord and Chris Miller? How did you become involved in the project?
MIKE MITCHELL: First off, the way I got involved is I’ve known Chris and Phil for years and we’ve always crossed paths in live action and animation. When I was at Disney one time they inherited my office when I left, and they always make fun of what a mess I left it in! So, we’ve always been friends. Whilst I was directing Trolls, Chris and Phil came in to help me come up with some jokes to include in the film and that’s when they mentioned that they were working on a sequel to the Lego Movie. I said “No, you can’t! The first one was the perfect movie, it was such a surprise especially with the ending – but then they started to explain what they wanted to do and we wanted to incorporate an image of a little sister with her older brother and the more they told me about the story I said “Well now you have to make this film and I really want to be involved with it” – so that’s how it started. I had no idea how crazy and fun it was going to be! I’ve worked on a lot of animated films, but I’ve never worked on one that was so limitless because of all the characters you can use – you can grab characters from the past, present and future. You can use characters from other movies and franchises – I always call it the “Where’s Waldo” filmmaking experience – so it was super creative but also very daunting when anything is possible.
Did your experience of adapting a licensed brand that you gained on the likes of Trolls help you out with The Lego Movie 2?
Absolutely, in fact when making Trolls I used the Lego Movie as a template because when I inherited the film it was just the dolls – there was no story and we had to come up with everything so I wanted to make sure that it can’t just be a toy commercial for the doll. I remember when I first watched The Lego Movie that everyone thought that that was just going to be a big toy commercial, but it was so much more, and it made fun of itself and I had a really great time. So using the Lego Movie as my template is really what drew me in to want to work on the sequel and not only that, with Trolls (that was Hasbro) we worked closely with them but never have I worked so closely with a company until I worked with LEGO. We were hand-in-hand designing stuff – we would design something and send it to them, then they would build it and make tweaks and send it back to us and then we would make tweaks before all getting together to come up with a final design – it was such an interesting process. And then never before have I worked on a film where all the animators are working and working on layers of characters and props and everything else and towards the end of production LEGO sent out all of the toys to our animators to see in brick form and hold in their hands and play with! Its something I can’t describe and I’ve never seen it on any other film where it was like “wow, this is real!” – it was such a rewarding feeling for everyone who had worked so hard to see their work come to life. And I think as well that the finished product of the film was as much as a reward for LEGO themselves. It was a cool combo – symbiotic creativity was going on between all parties involved.
How was the challenge of trying to capture the “lightning in a bottle” effect for a second time after the first film was such a surprise smash hit?
It was very difficult because the first film was such a surprise and I know Chris and Phil tend to this when they make such interesting films that its very hard to make a sequel from them – like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, I’m sure they’re going to make a sequel to that but we already know that there are so many verses out there that we are prepared for anything. They always make it so its always hard for them to top themselves but in this case we just embraced the fact that everyone knows its animated and live action but one of the things that I thought was really interesting was the little boy was the same actor from the first movie that just happens to be the perfect age as a teenager that it makes it seem like the Richard Linklater film Boyhood because you get to see the same kid that was playing with his dad in the first film all grown up. He was the perfect age for the story we wanted to tell, and it was so interesting. And the dad (Will Ferrell) has now gone golfing as soon as the kids start fighting so it’s up to our new mum character to sort it out. That’s what a good sequel should do – you must take what was there to begin with, expand on it but also remind everyone how great the first film was. It was a challenge but a creative one at that.
If given the opportunity of working on a further sequel in this expansive and never-ending universe, would you be up for it?
Absolutely, yes! I think I must be a part of it because now I know where all the bodies are buried [laughs], I know so much about LEGO that I’m an expert. Once you’ve spent three years on these films, suddenly you know everything there is to know so whatever they do next, I’m happy to help in any way.
Could you share with us some of your favourite moments in the creative process be it on set or in the film itself?
Well unlike any other film I’ve worked on, as I mentioned previously it was fun to work with the LEGO company to come up with designs. I also really liked figuring out what Chris and Phil’s process is, they were the writers and producers on this sequel and it is a very improv style of storytelling which means you just make the film 10-15 times in total and we’re just trying to be as weird and funny and crack ourselves up as much as we can until we find the story within it. We also gave a lot of freedom to the actors, we had such a great cast in the film from Chris Pratt, to Will Arnett, to Elizabeth Banks – she’s a fantastic director herself so they were invited into the storytelling process too to come up with jokes and gags. Nick Offerman plays Metalbeard the Pirate and Tiffany Hadish had a big say in creating her character – it was more of an improv way of making a film than I’ve ever done before and that was creative. It was also so cool to play with the toys that we created too! My goal is to work with anyone who had anything to do with Dark Place or anyone and everyone who worked on The Mighty Boosh which is another favourite show of mine – our vampire was played by Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh so I’m almost there! [laughs]
With the success of other animated musical films and the insane popularity of the song “Everything is Awesome”, it’s no surprise that you had more songs in the sequel. The big question: Which one is your favourite?
That’s a hard question! For whatever reason I have to go with “Not Evil” because its just such a strange thing that early on we had a lot of story discussion about the fact that to the brother, his sister is evil – she wants to play her way but the boy doesn’t want to play with her or be forced to play with her – he certainly doesn’t want his favourite characters to be involved in a wedding! He’s into that Mad Max dystopian world – but at the same time we kept saying that the girl isn’t evil – she just wants to play! So there was this constant discussion that we had back and forth about “well she can’t be evil” so when we came up with the song we thought that she would sing about not being evil which seems like the evilest thing in the world [laughs]. It hit all the right notes – the same with all of the songs really – when we wanted to come up with a song that was going to get stuck inside your head, we did literally that and wrote a song about a catchy song! It was a whimsical way to go about something. But yeah, “Not Evil” is my favourite and works as an amazing introduction to this character.
If there was a spin-off movie for just one side character, who would you like it to be based on and why?
It must be the Ice Cream cone character voiced by Richard Ayoade! What I want to know is what does he do when he goes home at night? What goes on in his head? So many questions! I’d love to explore that really dry sensibility that that character has.
THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART is out now on DVD, Blu-Ray and 4K Ultra HD
