Sightlines · reception
How The Lego Batman Movie was received
2017 · Chris McKay · The Lego Batman Movie on Sightlines
The arc
Written off pre-release as a cynical brand-extension of a toy commercial, it landed with rave reviews and a #1 opening — and its reputation has only climbed as fans hold it up against a rocky decade of live-action DC films.
What’s debated
The perennial, only-half-joking debate: is this secretly one of the best Batman movies ever made — better than most of the live-action ones?
Its footprint
Its opening narration ('Black. All important movies start with a black screen.') and the Batcave password 'Iron Man sucks' are endlessly quoted, and its loving roast of every era of Batman made it the fandom's favorite piece of self-aware canon.
Where it stands
A Letterboxd crowd-pleaser that regularly cracks best-Batman-movie and best-animated-comedy lists — the rare spinoff people cite unironically.
Did you know? Billy Dee Williams voices Two-Face — a payoff nearly 30 years in the making, since he played Harvey Dent in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman but never got to become Two-Face on screen.
Named by the director
- Jerry Maguire (1996) — McKay's studio pitch was literally 'Jerry Maguire as directed by Michael Mann' — a story about a self-involved man learning to connect.
- Michael Mann — The other half of that pitch: McKay wanted Mann's slick, serious crime-movie surface for the comedy to play against.
- Airplane! (1980) — McKay cited the ZAZ joke-density style as a model for the film's gag-a-second comedy.
- The Naked Gun (1988) — Named alongside Airplane! as the template for playing absurd jokes with a straight face.
- About a Boy (2002) — One of the character-study comedies McKay cited about a selfish loner forced to let people in.
- The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) — Another McKay-named reference point for the melancholy-egotist-finds-a-family arc.