Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

The LEGO Batman Movie Blu-ray Movie Review

Once More Unto the Brick, Dear Friends

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 14, 2017

For its third feature film, the Warner Animation Group abandoned the avian creepiness of Storks and returned to familiar snap-together territory with The LEGO Batman Movie, a spin-off (of sorts) from its surprise 2014 hit, The LEGO Movie. Co-produced by LEGO Movie creators Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and directed by Robot Chicken alumnus Chris McKay, LEGO Batman cedes the spotlight to Will Arnett's growly Caped Crusader, who, in the LEGO Movie, was a supporting player to everyman Emmett Brickowski. McKay and his creative team have freely plundered over a half century of Batman films and TV shows (not to mention sources as diverse as Se7en and Passenger 57) to create an orgy of pop culture riffs and satirical sketches loosely strung together by yet another story about a super-villain's plot for world domination.

Taking its cue from the Joker's mock testimonial to Batman in The Dark Knight —"You . . . complete me!"—LEGO Batman portrays Joker (Zach Galifianakis) as a spurned suitor desperate for affirmation that he is, in fact, Batman's greatest enemy. It's not as if Batman (Will Arnett) doesn't understand what Joker wants, because this LEGO version of the Caped Crusader spends his spare hours in Bruce Wayne's lavish screening room watching the Jerry Maguire scene from which Joker borrowed the line. (It turns out this version of the Dark Knight has a weakness for relationship comedies in general.)

But Batman won't give his arch-nemesis the satisfaction of being acknowledged as number one, which leads to ever more extravagant efforts by the Clown Prince of Crime to establish his supremacy. After Batman exiles the cackling criminal to the Phantom Zone with the help of a device stolen from Superman's Fortress of Solitude, the Joker returns with an army of Big Bads assembled from multiple franchises, including Harry Potter's Voldemort (Eddie Izzard), Lord of the Rings' Sauron (Jemaine Clement), King Kong (Seth Green), Doctor Who's Daleks, the gremlins from Gremlins and the Wicked Witch of the West with her flying monkeys. To save Gotham from this unholy confederation, Batman will eventually find it necessary to ally himself with a bevy of traditional enemies, forming an impromptu Suicide Squad from the likes of Bane (Doug Benson), Poison Ivy (Riki Lindhome), the Riddler (Conan O'Brien), Two-Face (Billy Dee Williams) and a host of others.

Big changes are afoot in Gotham, even as the Joker pursues his latest scheme. Jim Gordon (Hector Elizondo) is retiring as police commissioner, replaced by his daughter Barbara (Rosario Dawson), who graduated from "Harvard for Police" and wants to move the city's law enforcement into a new age of statistical analysis and cooperative effort. To Batman's consternation, the new Commissioner Gordon's vision for Gotham has no room for a freewheeling masked vigilante. At stately Wayne Manor, faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth (Ralph Fiennes) is pressing Master Bruce to renounce his self-imposed emotional isolation and finally, after more than fifty years, allow himself to form family attachments. The Englishman's efforts receive a boost when Bruce inadvertently adopts a precocious and eager orphan, Dick Grayson (Michael Cera), whom Alfred lets into the Batcave much as he did Vicki Vale in Tim Burton's 1989 movie. Before long, Dick has been transformed into Robin, although he has to work hard at persuading Batman to let him tag along.

Around this bare outline of a plot cobbled together from numerous prior Batman stories, McKay and his creative team (which includes five credited writers) have woven a thicket of gags, allusions and winking references, both visual and aural, to decades of Dark Knight lore. The detail is so dense that you may find yourself reaching for the remote to freeze a scene and study the numerous "easter eggs" stuck throughout the frame. Alternatively, you can just let the waves of Batmania cascade over you while enjoying Arnett's petulant and egotistical Caped Crusader or Cera's "gee whillikers!" Boy-Wonder-in-training or Dawson's prissy and officious Commissioner Gordon (who eventually becomes Batgirl). Galifianakis's Joker is also a hoot, as long as you don't try to compare him with previous portrayals. In the world of LEGO Batman, Joker isn't remotely creepy or scary. The Clown Prince of Crime is mostly a clown.

The one inherent limitation that McKay and his team can't overcome is the familiarity of the material. The LEGO Movie benefitted from the novelty of its artfully imagined universe (or, more accurately, multiple universes) and its goofy but lovable hero (voiced by Chris Pratt, who specializes in goofy and lovable). The world of Batman, by contrast, has been mined by Warner and DC Comics to the point of exhaustion, and even with the prodigious talent invested in the effort, LEGO Batman often feels thin and insubstantial, wavering uncertainly between stabs at genuine emotion and mockery of any such sentimentality. The film starts strongly, with an aerial sequence clearly inspired by the opening of The Dark Knight Rises, but it eventually loses momentum, settling into a jerkily episodic rhythm that will be familiar to any fan of Robot Chicken. At an hour and forty-five minutes, it's at least ten minutes too long. By the time the citizens of Gotham unite to save their city from (literally) cracking apart, the film's blend of silliness and CG fireworks has overstayed its welcome.

The LEGO Batman Movie Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The extras for The LEGO Batman Movie provide an informative overview of the painstaking animation process, of which the final step is "lighting" scenes in the digital domain to create the illusion of photography. The process even includes the addition of artificial "lens flares" (see screenshot 13 for an example of one that bisects Commissioner Gordon), and McKay confirms in the disc commentary that the number and placement of these manufactured artifacts were carefully considered, as was the style of the "lighting" applied to every scene.

Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is a wonderfully colorful affair, filled with bright, saturated and varying shades of red, yellow, blue and, of course, green. Blacks are deep and solid, including both Batman's costume and the dark opening screen that, as Batman informs us in voiceover, is a requirement of all "important" movies. The digital lighting in numerous scenes has a deliberately harsh, and fluorescent quality, which the Blu-ray faithfully reproduces. Detail is good enough that you can make out both the individual LEGO constructions and the portions of the set design where the creators have departed from the "all-LEGO, all the time" approach of The LEGO Movie and substituted semi-realistic elements such as water or flame. A brief sequence is desaturated of almost all color to convey Batman's depressed and purposeless state of mind when it appears that Gotham's seemingly perpetual crime wave has finally been ended (see screenshot 23).

With so many detailed frames and so many action sequences, you would expect LEGO Batman to be mastered at the highest possible bitrate, but this is the Warner theatrical group we're talking about. With about ten gigabytes of space left vacant on the BD-50, LEGO Batman is presented with an average bitrate of 22.00, which isn't bad for digitally generated material and is certainly an improvement over the meager bitrates used by Warner's TV division. There may be compression artifacts hiding in some of the churning block patterns of the action sequences, but if so, I didn't see them. The compressionist has done a capable job.

The LEGO Batman Movie Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

In what is becoming a trend with A-list titles from Warner Brothers, The LEGO Batman Movie arrives on Blu-ray with a choice between Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtracks. The standard Blu-ray defaults to DTS-HD MA, by which I mean that, if you insert the disc and select "play" from the menu, you'll get the lossless DTS track. If you then access the audio menu, it assumes you want to select "Dolby Atmos" and offers that option already highlighted, which may give the illusion that the Atmos track is currently playing—but it isn't. You have to select it manually. In what is also becoming an unfortunate trend, Warner has omitted the Atmos track from LEGO Batman's 3D release, leaving DTS-HD MA as the only option for 3D fans. The lossless DTS mix will be discussed in the 3D review. (Spoiler alert: It's inferior.)

The Atmos track has all the refinement, fidelity and dynamic range that one would expect from a major studio production, and, assuming one has an appropriate speaker array (my viewing room is configured for 7.1.2), it's an immersive mix, particularly in its use of musical cues. The original score is by Lorne Balfe, who contributed to the soundtracks of all three entries in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, and who capably evokes the themes composed for those films by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, as well as cues from such diverse sources as the 1978 Superman and TV's Batman from the Sixties. But despite having the flexibility of Atmos' object-based processing at their command, the sound team has opted to keep most of the non-musical sonic activity in front, with limited use of discrete rear channel or overhead effects. This may reflect the "hand-made" approach that has many of the film's characters mouthing their own sound effects (e.g., for laser blasts), or it may result from director Chris McKay's background in TV. Whatever the reason, LEGO Batman's soundtrack provides an effective accompaniment to the film, but it's unlikely to become anyone's "demo disc" for the glories of Dolby Atmos.

Within this front-fracing orientation, LEGO Batman's mix is a satisfyingly elaborate concatenation of clattering, crashing, vehicle roars (both aerial and earthbound) and explosive encounters. The dialogue is clearly rendered, even when Will Arnett's Batman growl teeters on the brink of unintelligibility. The extensive selection of songs, both original and catalog, are both tuneful and often very funny. (You may never be able to hear Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" the same way again.)

The LEGO Batman Movie Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Animated Shorts (1080p; 1.78:1): A "play all" function is included.


• Dark Hoser (2:08): Is Batman Canadian?
• Batman Is Just Not That Into You (2:10): Harley Quinn's interview show on Arkham CCTV.
• Cooking with Alfred (2:02): The secret history of the Batmonkey. Alfred isn't voiced by Ralph Fiennes but by an unidentified actor who is clearly trying to channel Michael Caine.
• Movie Sound Effects: How Do They Do That? (1:24): Bane, Riddler, Poison Ivy and Catwoman take turns at making laser sounds but are upstaged by a surprise arrival.



• The Master: A LEGO Ninjago Short (1080p; 2.40:1; 5:23): Master Wu, high priest of Ninjago, struggles to get his opening credits right.



• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 2.40:1; 7:00): These scenes were never completed and, in some instances, never progressed beyond animated drawings.. A "play all" function is included.


• Batcave Studio
• Lollipop
• Batman & Mayor Swap
• Clayface



• Featurettes


• One Brick at a Time: Making The LEGO Batman Movie (1080p; 1.78:1; 16:10): A short but comprehensive overview of the animation process, with interviews sampled from at least as many crew members as the commentary listed below.


• Rebrick Contest Winners (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:47): Three short LEGO Batman stop-motion mini-movies created by fans and introduced by Will Arnett.


• Inside Wayne Manor (1080p; 2.40:1; 2:36): Batman/Bruce Wayne leads the tour, which includes a visit to the kitchen and a lobster thermidor snack.


• Brick by Brick: Making of The LEGO Batman Movie (1080p; 2.40:1; 3:50): This "making of" focuses on the voice cast.


• Behind the Brick (1080p; 2.40:1; 4:13): The characters introduce themselves and describe the film, which, if you believe each speaker, is centered on the character played by whoever happens to be describing it.


• Me and My Minifig (1080p; 1.78:1; 0:56): The cast react to their action figures.



• Promotional Material


• Trailer 1—with Will Arnett Intro (1080p; 2.40:1; 1:59)
• Trailer 2 (1080p; 2.40:1; 2:39)
• Trailer 3 (1080p; 2.40:1; 2:34)
• LEGO Life Trailer (1080p; 2.40:1; 0:40)
• Follow Me Online (1080p; 2.40:1; 0:31)
• Don't Skip (1080p; 2.40:1; 0:21)
• Happy Holidays Jingle (1080p; 1.78:1; 0:25)
• Batsby New Year's (1080p; 2.40:1; 0:24)
• Team Cutdown (1080p; 2.40:1; 1:53)
• Comic-Con Panel (1080p; 2.40:1; 2:55)



• Director and Crew Commentary: At the outset, director Chris McKay explains that he's in a room with at least 23 people, and as this group commentary proceeds, he proves to be an effective moderator as different speakers take turns elaborating on various elements of LEGO Batman's complex development. Speakers do not always identify themselves, and some are introduced only by first names (or nicknames), which makes it impossible to compile a definitive list. As best as I can determined, the group includes: editor David Burrows; assistant editor Nicole Thorn; production designer Grant Freckelton; lighting director Craig Welsh; layout artist Gareth Young; stereoscopic supervisor Fabian Mueller; associate producer Samantha Nisenboim; co-producer Amber Naismith; and animation supervisor Magali Rigaudias. One gets the sense that this same group could have easily recorded multiple commentaries without ever running out of material. What the commentary most forcefully conveys is the immensity of the collaborative effort required to plan, execute and, when necessary, backtrack and revise a project as painstakingly technical as LEGO Batman.



• Additional Trailers: At startup, the disc plays a trailer for The LEGO Ninjago Movie, as well as promotional spots for the WB Movies "All Access" app and for 4K discs.

The LEGO Batman Movie Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It is a bittersweet coincidence that The LEGO Batman Movie is being released on home video just days after the passing of TV's original Batman, Adam West, who always maintained that his show was a comedy and whose tongue-in-cheek delivery epitomized a style of humor to which even the darkest iterations of the Dark Knight have paid homage. LEGO Batman is a film very much in the spirit of West's original creation, and it's loaded with invocations of his Sixties TV series, from visual references to music cues. Though unintentionally, the film's release is a fitting tribute to a true original, whose jocular incarnation of Batman rocketed the character to the lofty popularity we take for granted today. The Blu-ray is technically superior with a worthy complement of extras and is highly recommended.