by Trevor Sheffield Over the course of my time analyzing film —and mainly getting angry at films made for children— I’ve come to accept the fact that Hollywood is no stranger to curses. You’ve got things like the Superman curse, where it seems like any actor cast to play the Man of Steel has their career go up in flames after doing so. You’ve also got something like the Poltergeist curse, where the cast of the original films was marred by death and despair under mysterious circumstances to the point where some have asserted that the entire set of actors were paranormally marked for death. In recent years, however, I’ve come across what may be a new Hollywood hex that is sweeping the nation. The Lord-Miller Curse. Named after renowned writer/director duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller, this new curse (as I’ve come to define it) has a tendency to occur when the two create a surprise smash-hit (for instance, 2009’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs or 2014’s The LEGO Movie). This inevitably leads to a sequel getting greenlit. At that point, if Chris and Phil don’t return to direct (or serve some major function), then it’s all but doomed to be a major downgrade from the original. It’s how you get stuck with movies like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, Solo: A Star Wars Story (where the duo were kicked out of the production midway, leading to a microcosmic version of the curse), and The LEGO Ninjago Movie. Sequels where the gap in quality between it and the prior film are wide enough to pull a cruise ship through. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu5J8XZdg1g[/embed] This leads us to The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. Released February 8, 2019 as the FOURTH entry in the Warner Bros’ theatrical LEGO franchise, the question of the hour for this film was simple: Had the Lord-Miller Curse claimed another victim?
2 PRATTS 2 FURIOUS
INTO THE SISTER-VERSE
LEGO Batman LEGO Ninjago
CANCELING ‘ARMOMMAGEDDON’
LEGO IMDb
