The Lego Movie did a great job establishing a classic hero’s journey while at the same time ruthlessly making fun of it. Even though it was a kids movie, it understood its narrative structure, stuck to it like glue, but also played around a bit and let the story breathe. You never once thought, “Oh, now we’re in the relationship-building scene.” It knew its boundaries but also knew when to cross the boundaries. And despite its ADHD pacing, it worked.
The LEGO Ninjago Movie, on the other hand, really has no idea what it's doing. It's sloppy and rushed story tries a little too hard to hit all the right beats but fails spectacularly. The storytelling...
When Matthew Vaughn left the X-Men franchise after the roaring success of
X-men: First Class, you could say I was puzzled. He single-handedly brought back a dying franchise to life. Why would he abandon a good thing? It didn’t make sense. Things got even more strange when it was announced later he’d adapt, write and direct an obscure comic book into a movie called
Kingsman: The Secret Service.
At the time, I figured no one would care and the movie would end up a flop. Of course, I was incredibly wrong. Vaughn figured out how to pull a rabbit out of his hat again and turn an obscure comic into a breakaway movie hit. The beauty of the first movie was its reckless...
With large bricks of gold on display at the First National Bank of Duluth and the St. Louis Hotel, there was no denying it. This was a genuine Minnesota Gold Rush! The noted geologist Dr. Matthew Stephenson would have been proud to confirm: “There’s gold in them thar hills” and “there’s millions in it.”
The prospector George W. Davis unleashed gold fever with his discovery of gold on the wooded, desolate Little American Island on Rainy Lake in July 1893. In his crew were prospectors who had found the enormous Homestake Mine twenty years before in the Black Hills. That mine was producing 25 percent of the world’s gold supply now and would generate a stunning 40 million troy ounces of gold until...
The Lego Movie did a great job establishing a classic hero’s journey while at the same time ruthlessly making fun of it. Even though it was a kids movie, it understood its narrative structure, stuck to it like glue, but also played around a bit and let the story breathe. You never once thought, “Oh, now we’re in the relationship-building scene.” It knew its boundaries but also knew when to cross the boundaries. And despite its ADHD pacing, it worked.
The LEGO Ninjago Movie, on the other hand, really has no idea what it's doing. It's sloppy and rushed story tries a little too hard to hit all the right beats but fails spectacularly. The storytelling...
