The Cartoon Movie (2016)

The Cartoon Movie is a 2016 animated adventure comedy film co-produced by DreamWorks Animation, Village Roadshow Pictures, Playstation Productions, Lego System A/S, Vertigo Entertainment, Lord Miller Productions, and Lin Pictures, and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It was written and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller from a story they co-wrote with Dan and Kevin Hageman, based on the Lego line of construction toys. The film stars the voices of Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Keegan-Michael Key, Moon Lee, Zoe Saldana, Will Arnett, Charlie Day, Jordan Peele, Ray Romano, Rosaline Chiang, Idris Elba, Roger Craig Smith, Ava Morse, Anthony Ramos, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, With Alex Borstein, Jake Johnson, and Kevin Michael Richardson. A collaboration between production houses from the United States, Australia, and Denmark, its story focuses on the brothers Mario and Luigi, (Pratt and Day), an ordinary Italian-American plumbers who helps a resistance movement stop a tyrannical businessman (Ferrell) from gluing everything in the cartoon and gaming world into his vision of perfection.

Lin and Roy Lee, before Lin left Warner Bros. to form his own production company, Lin Pictures. By August 2010, it was announced that Dan and Kevin Hageman had begun writing the script. It was officially green-lit by Fox and DreamWorks. in November 2012 with a planned 2016 release date. Chris McKay was brought in to co-direct in 2013 with Lord and Miller, and later became the film's animation supervisor. The film was strongly inspired by the visual aesthetic and stylistics of Game-films and qualities attributed to Playstation, XBOX, Nintendo and Sega sets. and gaming sets While Lord and Miller wanted to make the film's animation replicate a stop motion film, everything was done through computer graphics, with the animation rigs following the same articulation limits actual Cartoon and Video Game figures have. While primarily an animated film, it has several live action scenes in the real world. Much of the cast signed on to voice the characters in 2012, including Pratt, Ferrell, Key, Saldana, Day, Arnett, Lee, Peele, Johnson, Chiang, Elba and Richardson, while the animation was provided by Animal Logic, which was expected to comprise 80% of the film. The film was dedicated to Kathleen Fleming, the former director of entertainment development of the Lego company, having died in Cancún, Mexico, in April 2013.

The Cartoon Movie premiered in Los Angeles on May 26th, 2016, and was released in the United States on June 24th. It became a critical and commercial success, grossing $468.1 million worldwide against its $60–65 million budget, and received acclaim for its animation, story, humor, score, and acting. The National Board of Review selected The Cartoon Movie as one of the top films of the year. It garnered numerous accolades, including the Producers Guild of America Award for Best Animated Motion Picture and the American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Animated Feature Film, as well as a nomination for Best Original Song at the 87th Academy Awards.

Plot:
In the Gaming universe, the wizard Master Splinter is blinded when he fails to protect a superweapon called the "Kragle", a misreading of Krazy Glue, from the evil Megamind, but prophesies that a person called "The Special" will find the Piece of Resistance capable of stopping the Kragle. Lord Megamind claims Splinter made up the prophecy and kicks Splinter off a cliff.

Eight and a half years later, in Toonsburg, Italian-American construction worker Mario and his brother Luigi comes across a beautiful woman searching for something at his construction site. Mario and Luigi falls into a pit and finds the Piece of Resistance. Compelled to touch it, Mario experiences visions, including one of a giant called "The Man Upstairs", and passes out. He awakens in the custody of Knuckles, Megamind's lieutenant, with the Piece of Resistance attached to his back. Mario learns of Business's plans to freeze the world with the Kragle; the Piece of Resistance is the glue tube's cap and realize that his brother is captured. The woman, nicknamed Maya, rescues Mario, believing him to be the Special. They escape Knuckles and travel to "The Old West" where they meet Master Splinter. He and Wildstyle are Master Builders, capable of building anything without instruction manuals, who oppose Megamind's attempts to suppress their creativity. Though disappointed Mario thinks he is not a Master Builder, they are convinced of his potential when he recalls visions of "the Man Upstairs".

Mario, Wildstyle, and Splinter evade Knuckles' forces with the help of Maya's boyfriend, Surly, and escape to "Cloud Cuckoo Land", where all the master builders are in hiding. The Master Builders are unimpressed with Mario's cowardice and refuse to help him fight Business. Bad Cop's forces attack and capture everyone except Mario, Delory, Wildstyle, Surly, and Splinter, and fellow Master Builders Manny, Mei Mei, Miriam, Abby, and Priya, and Mr. Piranha. Emmet devises a heist to infiltrate Business's headquarters and disarm the Kragle. During the heist, Wildstyle reveals to Emmet that her real name is Maya after they almost kissed but Surly interrupted them. The heist almost succeeds until Mario and his friends are captured and imprisoned. Lord Business decapitates Splinter and throws the Piece of Resistance into an abyss, before arming a self-destruct device that will execute all the captured Master Builders. Master Splinter reveals he made up the prophecy before he dies, but his spirit returns to tell Mario that it is his self-belief that makes him the Special. Strapped to the self-destruct mechanism's battery, Emmet flings himself off the edge of the tower, disarming the mechanism and saving his friends and the Master Builders. Inspired by Mario's sacrifice, Maya rallies the Lego people across the universe to use whatever creativity they have to build machines and weapons to fight Business's forces.

The portal transports Mario to the human world, where the events of his life are being played out in a basement by a young boy, Finn, on his father's Lego set. Finn's father — "The Man Upstairs" — chastises his son for creating hodgepodges of different playsets and begins to permanently glue his perceived "perfect" creations together. Realizing the danger, Mario wills himself to move and gains Finn's attention. Finn returns Mario and the Piece of Resistance to the set, where Mario becomes Master Builder and confronts Business. In the human world, Finn's father looks at his son's creations and realizes that he was suppressing his son's creativity. Through a speech by Mario, Finn tells his father that he is very special and has the power to change everything. Finn's father reconciles with his son, which plays out as Business reforming, capping the Kragle with the Piece of Resistance, and ungluing his victims with mineral spirits. After the world has been restored, Mario reunited with Luigi, and Mario and Maya enter a relationship, with Surly's blessing as Mario and Maya kissed. Finn's father grants permission for Finn's younger sister to play with the Lego sets as well, causing Duplo aliens to arrive in the Lego universe and threaten destruction.

Voice Cast:

 * Chris Pratt as Mario, a struggling Italian-American everyman and construction worker and a plumber from Brooklyn, New York, who is accidentally touch the Piece of the Special, and embarks on a quest to save his brother.
 * Will Ferrell as Lord Business, a blue-skinned, humanoid alien supervillain with a large cranium and an evil businessman who hates Master Builders, tyrant of Bricksburg and the Gaming and cartoon Universe who is the company president of the Octan Corporation under the name President Business.
 * Keegan-Michael Key as Delroy, a Jamaican-accented scarlet parrot macaw who is the resident protector and the leader of the Gaming Universe and aspires to go on his first real adventure. Key also voices Alpha, a greedy but caring wolf and the pack leader who is the follower of Lord Megamind's.
 * Moon Lee as Master Splinter, a nearly blind and elderly rat wizard-like Master Builder.
 * Zoe Saldaña as Princess Maya / Wildstyle, a "tough as nails" and tech-savvy Master Builder and the ruler of the Gaming Universe Kingdom, Mario's love interest.
 * Will Arnett as Surly, a an intelligent, charismatic and manipulative purple squirrel who is one of the Master Builders, as well as Maya's boyfriend and an amateur musician.
 * Charlie Day as Luigi, Mario's timid younger brother and fellow plumber, who is captured by Megamind and his army.
 * Jordan Peele as Beta, a wolf and Alpha's deputy who is the follower of Lord Megamind's.
 * Rosalie Chiang as Meilin "Mei" Lee, a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl and Master Builder who lives in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
 * Ava Morse as Miriam Mendelsohn, a singing Jewish Canadian tomboy with braces who is one of Mei's best friends.
 * Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as Priya Mangal, a mellow and deadpan Indo-Canadian girl who is one of Mei's best friends
 * Hyein Park as Abby Park, an energetic and aggressive Korean Canadian girl and the shortest of Mei's best friends
 * Ray Romano as Manny, a woolly mammoth and a pirate-like Master Builder seeking revenge on Lord Megamind for taking his body parts following an earlier encounter and causing him to remake his body from bricks.
 * Anthony Ramos as Mr. Piranha, a short-fused, loose-cannon piranha and the "muscle" of the Master Builders who is obsessed with building spaceships.
 * Idris Elba as Knuckles, a massive, furious, hot-headed, grumpy, serious, aggressive, and quick and hot-tempered bounty hunter Echidna and a police officer with a two-sided head and a split personality who serves Lord Megamind as the commander of the Super Secret Police.
 * Roger Craig Smith as Sonic, a fast blue hedgehog who is one of the Master Builders.
 * Alex Borstein as Police Chief Misty Luggins, the hot-tempered human chief of police who is determined to arrest Mario and the Master Builders at any cost.
 * James Arnold Taylor and David Kaye as Ratchet and Clank, a Lombax and an intelligent warbot defect who is one of the Master Builders.
 * Dave Franco, Jake Johnson and Keegan-Michael Key portray Mario's co-workers Wally, Barry and Foreman Jim respectively.

Production:
The development of The Cartoon Movie began in 2010, when Dan Lin and Roy Lee discussed it before Lin left Warner Bros. Pictures to form his own production company, Lin Pictures. Warner Bros. home entertainment executive Kevin Tsujihara, who had recognized the value of the Lego franchise by engineering the studio's purchase of Lego video game licensee Traveller's Tales in 2007, thought the success of the Lego-based video games indicated a Lego-based film was a good idea, and reportedly "championed" the development of the film.

By August 2009, Dan and Kevin Hageman were writing the script described as "action adventure set in a Lego world". In 2008, Lin visited The Lego Group's headquarters in Denmark to pitch his vision for the film, later remarking uncertainty among executives. "They weren't rude or anything (…) but they didn't feel they needed a movie. They were already a very successful brand. Why take the risk?" Nevertheless, Lego's vice president of licensing and entertainment Jill Wilfert responded positively to the Hagemans' treatment that Lin pitched. "Once we heard the pitch, how Dan felt he could bring the values of the brand to life, we started to think, 'This could be interesting.'"

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were in talks in June 2010 to write and direct the film. 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks Animation. green-lit the film by November 2012, with a planned 2015 release date. The Australian studio Animal Logic, the same studio that did the animation for other Fox and DreamWorks films such as The Croods, Turbo, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, How To Train Your Dragon 2, Penguins of Madagascar, Home, Prism, Goosebumps, and Kung Fu Panda 3, was contracted to provide the animation, which was expected to comprise 80% of the film. By this time Chris McKay, the director of Robot Chicken, had also joined Lord and Miller to co-direct. McKay explained that his role was to supervise the production in Australia once Lord and Miller left to work on 22 Jump Street (2014). In March 2012, Lord and Miller revealed the film's working title, Cartoon: The Piece of Resistance, and a storyline.

Casting:
By June 2012, Chris Pratt had been cast as the voice of Mario, the lead plumber character, Charlie Day voices Luigi, a timid plumber brother of Mario's, and Will Arnett voicing a gaming version of Surly; the role of Ratchet and Clank was offered to James Arnold Taylor and David Kaye. By August 2013, Zoe Saldana was hired to voice Maya (later getting the alias "Wyldstyle") and Morgan Freeman to voice Vitruvius, an old mystic. In November 2012, Keegan-Michael Key, Will Ferrell, Idris Elba, and Ray Ramano signed on for roles. Chiang voices Mei Mei Ling, a member of Mario's team: Ferrell voices the antagonist President/Lord Megamind; Idris Elba voices Knuckles/Theodore: and Romano voices Manny, a wooly mammoth pirate seeking revenge on Megamind.

Warner Bros. already owns the film rights to intellectual properties from which key characters appear in the film (i.e. DC Comics; Wizarding World), but the filmmakers still ran their depictions by other creatives; this included Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder, who were directing The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and Man of Steel (2013) at the time of the film's production, as well as Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling. Fox, DreamWorks, and Lord recalled that Superman was omitted for an extended period of time due to a lawsuit against Warner Bros. by the heirs of co-creator Jerry Siegel, before being reinserted at the last minute. The film also features Keith Ferguson, Billy Dee Williams and Anthony Daniels reprising their roles as Lego iterations of Star Wars characters Han Solo, Lando Calrissian and C-3PO respectively. Lin recalled the closure of their deal to feature the characters as hectic, as The Walt Disney Company announced their purchase of Lucasfilm a few weeks after the filmmakers had traveled there and received permission to include them.

Animation Process:
The Cartoon Movie was strongly inspired by the visual aesthetic and stylistics of Game-films and qualities attributed to Playstation, Nintendo, Sega and XBOX sets. The film received a great deal of praise in the respective online communities from filmmakers and fans, who saw the film as appraising nod to their work. In the film's live-action segment, Finn returns Emmet to the Lego world via an arts-and-crafts-covered tube labeled "Magic Portal", which production designer Grant Freckleton confirmed was a direct reference to Australian filmmaker Lindsay Fleay's 1989 animated short film The Magic Portal, which similarly incorporated live-action segments. Fleay went on to work at Animal Logic, though he left before production on The Cartoon Movie began.

Animal Logic tried to make the film's animation replicate a stop motion film although everything was done through computer graphics, with the animation rigs following the same articulation limits actual Lego figures have. The camera systems also tried to replicate live action cinematography, including different lenses and a Steadicam simulator. The scenery was projected through The Gaming Group's own Sony Interactive Entertainment, (created as part of Lego Design byME, which people could design their own Lego models using LDD, then upload them to the Lego website, design their own box design, and order them for actual delivery), which as CG supervisor Aidan Sarsfield detailed, "uses the official LEGO Brick Library and effectively simulates the connectivity of each of the bricks."

The saved files were then converted to design and animate in Maya and XSI. At times the minifigures were even placed under microscopes to capture the seam lines, dirt and grime into the digital textures. Benny the spaceman was based on the line of Lego space sets sold in the 1980s, and his design includes the broken helmet chin strap, a common defect of the space sets at that time. Miller's childhood Space Village playset was used in the film.