The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part was created as a sequel to the widely successful first movie, The Lego Movie, but it lent itself to many unforeseen problems.

Unfortunately, The Lego Movie 2 failed at the box office compared to much smaller titles with much lower budgets. The movie was not even able to make its budget back at the box office. Was it truly as terrible as it seems from the numbers, though?

“It’s been five years since everything was ‘awesome’ [as the theme song of the first movie states] and the citizens are [now] facing a huge new threat: Lego Duplo invaders from outer space, wrecking everything faster than they can rebuild,” IMDb said in a summary of the movie.

However, this overlooks many plot points and intricacies in the story that were not shown well in any trailers or synopses. The Lego Movie 2 covers many topics and goes far beyond the Lego Duplo idea it shares with the end of the original.

In fact, the most powerful parts of the movie focus around the same characters as well as a few new ones. This includes many of the emotional scenes involving Lucy and Emmet. It feels similar to the last one but is still fresh without focusing on the Duplo idea that seemed to be heavily criticized.

Chris Miller, one of the two writers for The Lego Movie 2, wanted to focus on making meaning within the music.  One way he did this was with the connection between the brother and sister that we got a glimpse of at the end of the previous movie.

“Well, if we’re gonna do another movie, we should build on that idea [of the sibling relationship],” Miller said in an interview with Screen Rant. “What if the sister is really into pop music that a kid who’s 13 who wants to be cool would find super gross?”

The combination of the pop soundtrack tying into the story and the depth of the characters involved really help to make this movie seem like a hit, maybe even more so than the first one. So where does the movie tend to be lacking?

Unfortunately, the first part of the movie feels forced, almost as if it has to get through what happened after The Lego Movie to get to the true movie. It feels more like an annoying summary rather than a continuation.

Even critics have pointed this out.

“[W]hile it takes a few beats to rediscover the manic rhythm of the original… about half an hour in, every piece more or less clicks,” Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail said.

Alongside this, there was definitely the problem that The Lego Movie 2 was a sequel to a successful movie.

“Ill-received 2016 sequels illuminate a core point behind the comparative failure of The LEGO Movie 2,” said Scott Mendelson of Forbes. “Just because a movie is a hit does not mean that audiences crave a straight-up sequel.”

Overall, The Lego Movie 2 is not a bad movie, and could possibly even be considered in the same league as the first. However, the problems that it presents have lead it to be a crumbling failure. Even so, I’d give this movie a seven out of ten for being a solid movie that I would definitely watch again.