What's Next For Lego Games?: My Top 5 Choices.

Lego as a franchise of small toy blocks that fit together has erupted in popularity and earned millions of every currency. Lego then turned its sight onto its next money making frontier, video games. With some of the biggest cultural icons acquired for use, such as Star Wars, Marvel, DC and Lord of the Rings, Lego was practically printing money. The Lego games themselves are children’s games, hosting a childish romp through a simplistic story of the given property. The game-play is basic but fun, collecting studs and solving environmental puzzles to reach the end of the level. This formulaic approach has changed a number of times, but this list will focus mostly on the story based puzzle game. What I am attempting to chart is properties that I feel would produce a fitting lego game. But what kind of aptitudes would these games have? I’m glad you asked, mystery voice! They must be at least a duality of films minimum, not intrinsically violent or unsettling subject matter, have a fairly vast cast of characters, and enough set pieces or interesting scenes. Now without further ado, I give you my list of what franchises I believe would benefit from legoification (patent pending).

Back to the Future:

Back To The Future tells the time travelling adventures of young Marty McFly, travelling backwards and forwards in time to solve his problems, alongside his mentor Emmett Doc Brown. This would be an excellent choice to add to the Lego roster. For starters, as a trilogy this leaves an abundance of material to draw inspiration from in order to create levels. Back to the Future is helpfully known for its action sequences and interesting set pieces. From the first film, I would suggest the levels as rebuilding the clock-tower, the under the sea dance, and besting Biff. From the second film I could suggest the hovercraft chase, Biff’s new empire and chasing down the Almanac. Finally, the third and final film could have levels such as saving Clara, the duel with Biff and riding the train. If you need any more evidence, Back to the Future has actually already featured in a lego game. It had a standalone level in Lego Dimensions, involving inter-dimensional travel to the wild west of the third film. Even better still, Lego Dimensions also included an additional DLC pack that focused exclusively on the highlights of the first film. So, to conclude, Lego owns the licence to the franchise, and already has assets in order to create its own game. I’ll touch on the character roster briefly, I would not consider it to be vast, but the main characters would have three different outfits at least, with many other side characters. Lego as well has been known to embellish certain elements in order to provide the best game-play. Back to the Future holds a special place in my heart as one of my favourite film trilogies of all time, and I would buy a game like this in a heartbeat.

Ghostbusters:

Ghostbusters tells the sci-fi story of a group of scientists taking it upon themselves to exorcise ghosts from the city of New York. A cult classic and an even better choice for legofication. Albeit, whilst all the films exist in the same canon, they do not have the same characters present in each one. On this basis, I would suggest the first two original films from the 1980s be divided into their own specific levels. Some of these would certainly be the Library Ghost interaction, Slimer in the Ballroom and the Marshmallow Man Boss Fight to name a few. The other half of the game levels would consider the remake and the continuation of the original movies in the future. The only other possibility for these movies would be to include them in the game as a full length DLC, which would circumvent having to pad out the levels to keep them interesting. Much like Back to the Future, Lego Dimensions has graced us with both a level and a feature length DLC from the Ghostbusters canon. Two feature length DLC’s in fact, both the original movies and the 2016 remake. Unfortunately the only pitfall of this idea is the character roster which I do not think has much bones if any outside of the main cast of each selected film. What can be said however is the specialisation in terms of game-play that each separate ghostbuster can have. Each incarnation of the Ghostbusters has featured all 4 ghost-busters as wholly different personalities. This lends itself to the puzzle game play aspect in how these can be used to personify each character with a unique ability. For instance, the PKE metre and Proton pack are notable additions. Ghostbusters is a cultural classic that is still current in pop culture, largely thanks to the success of Afterlife in 2021.

Percy Jackson:

Percy Jackson is the epic legend of mythical proportions, focusing on the story of a young teenager discovering his godly heritage on a journey to clear his name and prevent a war of the Gods. This franchise has a substantially smaller screen presence than the other entries I have/are due to discuss, but this is about to change. With Percy having his own Disney plus series focusing on the original series of books, not only will this revitalise the franchise, but also provide new on screen material for adaptation. Now, I should probably mention that I am speaking mostly from the experience of the mediocre films, rather than the books. Perhaps mediocre is too harsh however, as I thoroughly enjoyed Percy’s first outing, The Lightning Thief. As a very action heavy film, we have a lot of substance to work from. I’m immediately drawn to the concept of a Boss fight with Medusa or the Hydra. As well as the Lotus Casino being a very interesting locale to have a level take part in. The character roster on its own isn’t anything to write home about, but this again can be creatively circumvented. For instance, in the Lego Incredibles, many of the characters you unlock in the game are other Pixar characters that make no sense inside the Incredibles Universe. When considering this, Percy Jackson could bring in any number of Greek Gods, and mythical creatures like Cyclops or a Minotaur. This I feel would offer something distinctly unique to any other Lego game to date that I’ve played. The popularity of the Percy Jackson brand now rests in the hands of Disney, so we must wait.

Series of Unfortunate Events:

The Series of Unfortunate events is exactly as it sounds, a tragic fire made them orphans of Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire, jumping from distant family members as they are tailed by the villainous Count Olaf. This franchise is perhaps the most niche on the entire list, popularised by best selling novels by Lemony Snicket, and transitioning into a film and series on Netflix. Despite these additions, the franchise is in desperate need of breathing new life into it. Ergo, a Lego game! This series lends itself greatly to incorporating its work into Lego levels. There are thirteen books, each with their own standalone story that links to the narrative as a whole. This could mean each level could consist of a story from one given book, with each having different locale’s and set pieces. For instance, the second book could consider navigating Monty’s Greenhouse to find the ‘Incredibly Deadly Viper’, or the third book, surviving the collapse of Aunt Josephine’s house, or the Lachrymose Leeches. I think as well that there is a lot to work with in terms of characters and how they could have abilities to solve puzzles. The original orphans would have different outfits across the entire game, including Count Olaf who has numerous disguises, that could fully be controllable as distinct characters. Each Orphan too is cleverly characterised, Violet is most creative and critical thinker (in prior Lego games intelligence has been the ability), Klaus is inventive and builds creative tools (perhaps it is only he who can access certain builds) and Sunny can bite, but her size could also mean she can access areas taller characters can’t. I love this series and it is oozing with brilliant characters and would make an amazing Lego game if given the chance.

Planet of the Apes:

Planet of the Apes is a story of a subsect of intelligent apes leading the charge against the human race for world domination. I do understand that this franchise doesn't fully fit the brief that I laid out at the start for the more mature nature of the game. But I feel like the Lego sense of humour would be able to dull some of these more violent moments to render it more kid-friendly. But much like the others it is vast and full of bombastic action that would be perfect to be pictured in Lego. Some of the more iconic scenes would be the Final battle against Koba, The San Francisco Bridge Fight or the Battle Against the Humans in the most recent film to name a few. There are numerous ape and human characters to fill up the roster, but I’m not sure the apes have enough distinguishing characteristics in order to separate them completely. You could in theory incorporate the films of the originals and the new remake content, but I would contend that you should either choose the originals or the remake, and have the other films be additional add-on content. I will admit, I haven’t actually seen all of the Planet of the Apes films, but from what I have seen they are classics.

I’m not expecting any of these to actually be picked up by Lego, as unfortunately apart from Back to the Future, a lot of the properties I’ve spoken on are either just not as popular as they once were or obscure. It’s not to say they wouldn’t intrinsically make a good film, it just wouldn’t be a commercial success than the more recent titles with the juggernauts of pop culture. In the research/surfing the internet I even managed to find Lego concepts for a number of these titles, so clearly it’s not just me! I wonder what anyone else would love to bring to life, the sky is literally the limit!