Editorial: The LEGO Movie is “Anti-Business”?

The views expressed below are those of Tommy North, not BubbleBlabber.

So, it seems Will Ferrell’s latest role in the “The LEGO Movie” has struck a chord with the ever popular, FOX news, more specifically, Fox Business. Charles Payne of Fox feels that Hollywood is pushing the left-wing agenda onto children with themes of anti-business. President Business, the antagonist of the movie is an old, cranky character who doesn’t like fun. With a generalized headline stating that “Hollywood Hates Business”, Payne went onto explain that he just couldn’t understand why a hard working CEO would be viewed as a villain. It’s a pretty entertaining conversation to say the least. When you boil down the situation at hand, you’re left with Fox just being Fox. But, I enjoyed the movie so very much, I think it deserves a little defending.

The first thing I’d like to say is that it isn’t Hollywood’s responsibility to push anybody’s agenda. The movies that come to silver screens are a reflection of the general public’s values. Hollywood itself is a business, and it is all about making money. They get that money by pleasing the majority. If corporate CEOs were the majority of the movie-going audience, you would probably see somebody much like myself (poor and sarcastic) as the villain. Also, Payne claims that President Business looks like Mitt Romney. I personally think that Mr. Payne just wants Mitt Romney to be a president in some reality.

The message of the movie was not one of anti-business. What I took away from it was that everybody is special, and there are many different ways to be creative. If people think creatively and put their heads together, they can do wonders. There isn’t one way of doing business, but sometimes the best option is to follow the rules. President Business was a bad guy, doing bad things. He was in many ways a dictator, not a company CEO.

Ultimately, I don’t believe that the children are going to ever walk away from one of these movies and think “I’m sick of corporate greed!”  If anything, I think kids will walk away from these movies and be a little less ignorant. Just like everybody else, they’ll talk about their favourite jokes and sing the “Everything is awesome” song a million times. It’s also kind of disappointing that something that was intended for fun and laughter would be twisted into a debate, but I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised.

If you identify yourself as “right-wing” or “capitalist”, I mean no offence. If this is a matter that legitimately concerns you, go check out the movie without the kids first. Judge for yourself what the moral of the story is. I hope you have as good of a time as I had, and hopefully you’ll want to share the experience with the little ones.