The Lego Movie revealed it was was a boy playing with his Lego toys. Finn (Jadon Sand) was playing with Emmet (Chris Pratt), Wildstyle (Elizabeth Banks), Batman (Will Arnett and President Business (Will Arnett). The Lego Movie 2 lets his sister Bianca (Brooklynn Prince) play too.
“What we really wanted to do is take this sequel and up the ante for everybody,” animation director Trisha Gum said. “It was like how can we keep the charm of the original Lego movie but really wow the audience with new animation and different techniques?”
When Bianca steals Finn’s toys, they end up in the
“Since it’s from a new character’s perspective, we really leaned into who is her character?” Gum continued. “What are her interests? So we started with Bianca as a character and decided she likes space and musicals and glitter. She loves singing and dancing, so that really helped us craft her world.”
Bianca also mixes Legos together.
“Mixing your toys together and mixing how they play together was a big part of how we then created the world is that it should feel like a cohesive world from one imagination but it is very eclectic,” Gum said. “So we really wanted it to have crafting styles and fabric as you see in animation and fuzzy blankets and things that felt very tactile.”
It’s not so much about boys vs. girls. Bianca is the younger sister.
“She seems less rigid to me,” co-writer and co-producer Phil Lord said. “I think that’s a hallmark of being younger. I have these younger cousins who don’t see a distinction between different brands of toys and they don’t see a distinction between a drawing and a puppet show. They’re all sort of one thing.”
When the Legos go back and forth between Finn and Bianca, the animators had to keep track of who was telling the story.
“It was a constant negotiation,” Gum said. “On the crew when we were in the editing suite, we’re like, ‘Would this character actually do that under this imagination?’ We’re constantly negotiating with each other what made sense to this story and to the character.”
The crossed storytelling by Finn and Bianca is both carefully plotted, and up to the viewer.
“We have a whole storyline that made sense to us as to who’s playing with who at which point,” co-writer and co-producer Chris Miller said. “But we like that people can interpret it their own way. Even people on the crew interpreted differently.”
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part is in theaters Friday, February 8. Read our review here.