What Happened to Batman’s Character Development from TLBM?
The Blind Eternities forum
Posted on Feb. 26, 2020, 10:59 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
In The Lego Movie, Batman was narcissistic and egotistical, a trait that continued into his own film, The Lego Batman Movie, but, during the course of that movie, he learned to be less arrogant and actually cooperate with other people, which was great character development.
However, in The Lego Movie 2, Batman reverted to being the same arrogant narcissist whom he was in the first film, completely ignoring his character development from TLBM, which was very jarring and annoying. One could explain that by saying that TLBM is not set in the same continuity as TLM, since TLBM did not reference TLM in any way, but a throwaway line by Wonder Woman in TLM2 confirmed that TLBM was, indeed, set in the same continuity as the other two films (The Lego Ninjago Movie, however, has no apparent connections at all to any of the other films, so is, indeed, set in its own continuity), which means that there is no explanation for his reversion.
What does everyone else say about this? What happened to Batman’s character development from The Lego Batman Movie? Was that an instance of “Aesop amnesia,” a trope where a character in a story completely forgets a lesson that they learned?
DemonDragonJ says... #3
Caerwyn, that does make sense; I wonder, if there ever is a second Lego Batman Movie or a third Lego Movie, if Batman shall regain his development from his own film.
Caerwyn says... #2
Real answer: Both movies were probably being developed at the same time, and it’s just a case of the left hand knew not what the right was doing.
More satisfying hypothetical in-movie answer: Children are terrible about internal consistency, and the entire films are framed as “these are a child’s adventures playing with Legos.”
February 27, 2020 10:48 a.m.