First thoughts on The LEGO Batman Movie trailer (24/07/2016 - Comic-Con)

Hello. It's been a while.

In 2010 the film Despicable Me was released. A recurring aspect of this film involved the Minions doing something silly for a minute or two. I personally didn't find them funny but could see how the humour would appeal to some. In 2015, the Minions got their own film. I avoided it because I thought that the characters could be funny in short bursts, but a whole film based on their nonsense babbling and hitting each other would be totally unbearable. Turns out it is the 11th highest grossing film of all time - but still only got 56% on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.

Anyway, The LEGO Movie came out in 2014 and I had it as my favourite film of 2014. It seemed like straight after The LEGO Batman Movie was announced. This was because the character of Batman was for many people (myself included) one of their, if not their outright favourite characer. He had a lot of brilliant one-liners and just came across as really cool. So why was I so disappointed to hear this news? Well, because I thought LEGO Batman was like the Minions. He appears on screen for a couple minutes, does something funny, then goes away reappearing about 20 minutes later when you've almost forgotten him. A whole film based on LEGO Batman would be very difficult to sustain the high level of humour and keep people interested (like the Minions film).

This trailer released by Warner Brothers at Comic-Con really surprised me and has changed my opinion about the film, in as much as a two and a half minute trailer can. It shows the film will be animated in the same way as The Lego Movie, computer generated but only containing LEGO bricks so people can try to create every scene at home.

It also shows that the film will be really funny. However, all of the bits that made me laugh in the trailer are things that Batman says. In The LEGO Movie, he does say funny things, but there are also a lot of culture references from other characters or hidden in the background, these were missing from this trailer. [edit: I have since watched two previously released teaser trailers and there is a brilliant reference to Glengarry Glen Ross as well as previous Batman films - so maybe there will be the kind of references that I loved]

This film is doomed to be compared to The LEGO Movie, even though it shows a different tone from it. Batman seems to be going through some sort of existential crisis, and it's up to Alfred (Ralph Fiennes) and Dick Grayson/Robin (Michael Cera) to help.

This trailer relieved some of my worries about this film, by showing a huge cast including a lot of the classic Rogues Gallery and the Justice League. I am still concerned that Batman's voice will eventually become more of an annoyance than something that made me laugh so much, regardless, I will be going to see this film with a much more open mind now.

There have been quite a few trailers recently *cough* Ghostbusters *cough* that put me off seeing a film, this one did very much the opposite.

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