Opinion: Why do so many people insist on remaking films out of LEGO?

Date
12 February 2014

This week editor Liv Siddall discusses why the huge amount of films remade using only LEGO are getting very boring, very quickly. As usual, all comments welcome in the box below.

This Friday I will be avoiding central London for two reasons. The first is that it’s Valentine’s Day and Soho will be like the set of one of the more poorly-acted scenes in He’s Just Not That Into You, and the second is that it is the day the new LEGO movie is released.

I don’t have anything against LEGO, I have a nostalgic corner in my heart set aside for it as much as the next person, but something really bugs me about the sheer volume of things “recreated” using its iconic bricks. Last week someone made the house from The Simpsons out of LEGO and it had thousands of views on HUH Magazine, far better than most of the art and design on the site. On It’s Nice That we’ve had LEGO Adam Buxton, LEGO ad breaks, behind-the-scenes at LEGO HQ, LEGO burgers and LEGO Breaking Bad.

WHY? What is the big deal about seeing another film remade using only LEGO? What next? LEGO Antiques Roadshow? LEGO Twitter? It seems to me that if you’re at a loss with what to do with your life, a safe bet may be just to take something that hasn’t yet been made out of LEGO and build it before hastily putting it on the internet.

Maybe it’s something about the shareable nature of LEGO. We all played with it, therefore we can all stare at the screen with eyes like a dead seagull and click Re-Tweet. But does Tweeting about things made of LEGO make you look kooky, or just a bit sad? We all played with it when we were younger, I get that. I get that it’s an utterly unique toy that meshes creativity with logic and is appealing to both sexes, and yeah I’ll buy loads for my kids, but now I’m at the ripe old age of 25, I just don’t find this barrage of LEGO remakes very interesting. Surely if you decide to spend a month of your life making something, why don’t you make it out of raw materials? Or don’t remake something at all, make something no one’s made before, how’s that for a good idea?

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About the Author

Liv Siddall

Liv joined It’s Nice That as an intern in 2011 and worked across online, print and events, and was latterly Features Editor before leaving in May 2015.

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