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Sunday Morning Debate: What’s the Best Lego Video Ever?
I give up, Ricochet. I understand that many of you are parents. Many of you are parents not only to one, but to several, or even many children. Some of you run businesses while home-schooling six kids. I get that you all manage, nonetheless, to pay enough attention to the adult world to sound as if you have a clue what’s happening in it.
I can’t do it. I don’t know how any of you do it. I know there are important things happening beyond the confines of this apartment. I know some of them are happening very close to me, and that I feel very strongly about them. But I couldn’t write a coherent paragraph for adults right now if my life depended on it. How does anyone? You’d have to be pretty cold to tune out an excited five-year-old for the amount of time it would take to write something cordial and intelligible about current events.
So I hereby open the thread to the only serious debate we’ll be able to have in this household today: What’s the best Lego video ever made?
Here’s my entry:
Leo’s in favor of this one:
His opinion about this is very strong. So is mine, frankly. I argue that the one I like best tells a riveting true story of immense historic significance, which makes it inherently more important and interesting.
Leo’s a bit dismissive of it. When asked why he prefers his, he says, “It comes with a lot of stuff, and it’s more realistic, and it has exploration underwater with a broken ship, and vessels, and undersea vehicles. I really like this set. And the boats can float, and there’s a wrench that can bring things up, which I really appreciate. And a diving cage that protects you from sharks.”
It struck me as a good argument, actually. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
So what does Ricochet think? What’s the best Lego video in the world, and why? I have to admit that his favorite clip is more awesome than I realized at first. Highly recommended, if you’ve never watched it.
Published in General
Wow! Can’t say I remember any Lego video.
The Lego movie is one of our favorite kids movies. Not only because my wife works for a very, large multinational health care company that was going through a painful restructuring not entirely the result of Obamacare but that made it worse. The phrase from that movie “everything is awesome” took on new ironic meaning as they joked about the bureaucrats and their newspeak. Luckily many of the worst and most senior bureaucrats were eventually removed so there was a happy ending sorts also similar to the movie.
“I liked Emmett. I liked that character who died. I liked the tall skyscraper of President Business. I didn’t like the Octan Corporation. I want them to be free.”
(I haven’t seen this, so my ability to provide a more sophisticated comment is constrained. I’ll take everyone’s word. Now we’re singing “Everything is Awesome.” Which is about to get old.)
Okay, discuss this among yourself for a few hours while I fly back to Paris. When I get home, we can have an adult conversation about the respective artistic merits of these videos. (The first one’s better.)
Your post sent me here. I can’t say it is my favorite, since I’ve always perceived legos to be a non-video activity.
but personally, I prefer this one, which integrates music during a break from the lego building.
Leo said everything I would have more eloquently than I ever could. Frankly, he had me at “a lot of stuff.” But I was still willing to give your appeal to truth and history a chance. Once he mentioned the shark cage, though, you were dead in the water (sorry couldn’t resist). Clearly you lose, Claire.
Ok, said I, I’ll click in, being a legs man and all. And then I realize “Oh, Leg-OH.” More coffee.
The fact that the ship actually floats is, admittedly, very impressive. I have to go with the second video.
I’m in the departure lounge waiting for my flight, so I can actually concentrate. (I don’t usually think of airport departure lounges as “The place you go so you can think straight,” but there you go. And I may be here a while, since they just announced the flight’s delayed.) So we can speak adult to adult now. I found the difference in his reaction to these videos fascinating. I would have thought, based on his interest in guns and battles and blowing things up (which I fully share) that he would have found Lego Battle of Guadalcanal inherently gripping. And he did like it, well enough, but he got a bit bored and wanted to go back to the other one, which he wants to watch over and over and over.
I suppose Video I is just less practical. It tells a story that he can’t really participate in, at his age. Video II shows in some detail how you would master all the parts of an object that might be in his possession soon–and particularly, it shows very clearly what the parts are for, and how he could put them together. Definitely far better, from his point of view.
(We never finished getting the T-Rex out of that block of clay, by the way. That’s a multi-day project, for anyone thinking of getting that as a gift for a kid his age.)
Clearly, we’re in need of categories here. For Best Historical Drama, Auntie Claire’s video. For Best Documentary — Deep Sea Exploration subcategory, Leo’s video. When it comes to Legos, everybody wins.
/I like how “Leo” is only one letter away from “Lego.” I’m sure he’s noticed. ;-)
Perhaps not the best, but…
What a smart little guy to give such a thoughtful answer at 5 years old! You aren’t suppose to be thinking too much on vacation either – sounds like everyone needed time together and put the world’s cares on hold for a moment with family and Legos!
P
Maybe it’s time to teach him about Democrats:
There can be no disputing that this, The Magic Portal, is the best. Entirely stop motion, done by a film student in Perth, Australia, and released in 1985, it is believed to be the third Lego movie ever made. It even has some live action in it.
My kids were entertained by it many times.
very cool. I was actually looking for a kid created movie!
My sons, who are out in the yard with their Dad, doing something yard work-like, will have strong opinions on this, so before I let them see, I get to give my opinion!
Here is a frequently watched lego video in our house. Important points include:
1. We have a bazillion lego pieces in our house.
2. We have a million Lego books, the latest addition being Lego Greek Myths.
3. The Lego video that my kids now I will let them watch whenever they ask, no matter how sedentary they’ve been, no matter how much screen time they’ve had is the following one. Why, because I am desperately trying to make positive associations between musicals and anything they love, so now I present to you…my favorite Lego video…One Day More from Les Miserables. (I continue my long tradition of unsuccessfully embedding videos, so here is the link)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4qgp_c32B4
Wish I had something to contribute to Aunt Claire’s post, but alas my two nephews were pushed out of their little “man caves” and onto the hockey rinks shortly after they learned to walk. (My sister-in-law was on a U.S. Olympic swim team and insisted her sons and daughter participate seriously in an athletic activity.)
We all 3 like the first one better, my 9 and 11 year old sons have seen it before but they still like it. We did not finish watching the second one, 9 year old’s attention span for it was longest but we only made it about 7 min in. They build these things all the time and 11 year old’s comment was “why watch this when you could find it out for yourself when you build it.”
These are terrific but no idea:
The best LEGO video is from 2002, the video that brought “Brickfilming” into the mainstream:
I miss that band.
It’s mid-morning in Paris now, and I’m looking through this thread and having a sentimental meltdown. (I didn’t see all the replies before I fell asleep last night–after traveling all day I was too tired even to check Ricochet). It’s so sweet that so many adult members of Ricochet–who last I checked were paying to be part of a cordial, conservative, adult conversation–ran with me on this one. I’m so sad he didn’t see these entries yesterday. I’ll explain it to him on Skype later today, but that’s just not the same.
He’s just too young instinctively to understand how Ricochet works unless we’re sitting together and I’m explaining it, in real time. He’s on the verge of being able to read well enough that he could read this for himself, but he doesn’t know who each of you are, and he won’t understand that these responses are personal for him unless I explain it. The time-lapse will be too tricky for him. He absolutely understood that I was asking everyone I knew on his behalf–and absolutely grasped that it was a conversation and a debate. But he didn’t understand why the answers weren’t immediate, and was mildly disappointed by the lack of immediate response.
The only effective way to explain that lots of of Aunt Claire’s friends, from all over the world, spent a day thinking about the best Lego videos in the world and discussing it with him would have been for me to do it in person, in real time. Impossible to do from here. So I saw these replies and went all post-family-vacation weepy.
But I have to confess–just among us–that I’m not truly all that into Lego videos. At least, not so much that I can put my whole heart into this conversation right now. (I liked the Lego War in the Pacific, but I don’t feel passionately about it, artistically speaking–does anyone, here?)
Absolutely. The sophistication of his reasoning on this question and others like it really floored me–his ability to offer cogent reasons for things (reasons that make sense to an adult) and to make a good argument for his preferences is a huge developmental leap from even just a few months ago. This wasn’t “I like it better.” It wasn’t a random answer or a statement of prejudice. He entirely held his own in explaining his preferences, finding the weaknesses in my argument, and politely defending his point of view. The speed with which a child acquires skills like that is breathtaking. It’s all happened within the past six months. Six months ago his answer would have been “I don’t know” or “I like it.” Obviously a complicated thought process was happening underneath those sentences, but he couldn’t articulate it, and now he can.
Why no, the lego conversation isn’t so much fun without Leo. It is the sharing with him that makes it so valuable and enriching.
There is something about the thinking of children, their creativity and point of view, that engages us in exploring all kinds of interests and conversation that, as adults, we might ordinarily overlook. We are richer for our interactions with the kinder.
When in the presence of my four nephews, I could spend a day building, and be quite enjoyably engaged. But without the boys, those legos would sit, lonely, and unused on the floor.
Since they choose legos, I’ll chose legos. A park with a swing, a slide, and a jungle gym works well too. Or hunting crazy animal videos on the internet. Or books.
The interests and curiosities of kids are our conduit into their world.
Absolutely. And it’s fascinating to watch his cognitive development. That sounds very clinical, but I can’t think of a more tender way to put it, and besides, that’s exactly what I mean, so I’ll just put it that way.
Remember, I don’t see him every day. I see him every few months. So I see these leaps in cognitive development very clearly, whereas his parents see them happening step-by-step, so it’s not as obvious to them how fast he’s changing. But he is. Example: Since he learned to talk, he’s been asking questions non-stop. Until recently, these questions had a very high annoyingness potential, because they were seemingly senseless–he seemed to be asking “Why” as an all-purpose response to any incoming stimulus. But within recent months–also possibly because I was seeing him in his apartment, where he feels more secure–the nature of the questions completely changed, and I mean completely. It’s not a random stream of, “Why, why, why,” now, not at all. Now he asks really good questions. He’s asking why objects work the way they do, why people say certain things, why you’re allowed to do one thing but not another, and so forth. They’re not the kinds of questions adults ask, but they’re the kinds of questions adults can answer. They’re mapped to a view of the world to which an adult can relate.
What this suggests to me is that a lot more was going on underneath those “Why, why, why” questions than I’d realized. I thought it was just childish babbling, basically–that he was practicing speaking, which is of course great in principle and just what you’d expect a kid to do, but which doesn’t allow much room for conversation, beyond babbling back in an equally meaningless way. Now I realize he must have been working his butt off all that time–he was trying to come up with useful theories about how his environment worked. He just didn’t have the verbal ability to express the question on his mind in a way an adult could understand. He wasn’t just hooked on to the word “Why” as a conversational gambit, he wanted to know why that thing came equipped with a wrench, and what exactly you’d use a wrench for. I’m fairly sure (now) that the curiosity about these things must have been driving him nuts, along with his inability to get a satisfying answer to his questions.
Another really interesting thing: He speaks native perfect, unaccented American English. He’s spent maybe three weeks total in the US. He’s grown up so far in Haiti, the Ivory Coast, and Italy. So he’s acquired his English entirely from his Daddy and from visits with his Daddy’s side of the family–and television. But it’s native. He makes exactly the same mistakes in English that all native-English speaking kids his age do–mistakes in irregular past tenses–but he makes none of the mistakes in grammar an adult non-native speaker would, and not a single phonetic mistake.
He’s had about a tenth of the exposure to American English as a kid who grew up in New York, but it doesn’t matter. He’s got the grammar and the phonetics pat, and he applies them perfectly to any new situation he comes across. No adult could do that.
My 7-year old grandson has begun making his own stop action Lego movies with an iPad. He edits them and selects his own background music. It’s clear that he is already discovering what “camera perspective” is. He’s learning the basics of storytelling and the importance of finishing what you start. And that’s a pretty good thing.
Cool! He’s ahead of me–my efforts to make Berlinski Family Vacation Movies were a complete failure. Maybe you can send him to the next one to help with the cinematography.
It’s a generational thing, I think. The technology is part of the air these kids breathe from birth. I keep wondering where the owner’s manual is and they just figure out how to make the thing do what they want it to do.
My son was a huge lego maniac. This was a production of his that took a huge amount of work (and he had to shoot it twice) but holds up pretty well.
“Now, if my measurements are correct. Great Scott!”