Product movies have been around for a long time, at least since the "clue" movie based on the boardgames. Most of these are based on properties owned by everyone's favorite toy company, Hasbro.

In the past few years there has been an upswing though, fueled by the success of "Transformers" in 2007. after that we got such wonderful movies like "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen", "Transformers:Dark of the Moon","Transformers, Age of Extinction" "G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra", "G.I. Joe: Retaliation", "Battleship", and everyone's favorite, "My Little Pony, Equestria Girls" And by the way, prepare your shotguns,because this summer we will get "My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks" so that we can blow our heads off in the theater.

these movies have a couple of common threads. they're all based on toys, they're all based on Hasbro, but perhaps most importantly,
THEY ALL SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK

for a little while you could chalk that up to being movies based on toys. this weekend though "The Lego Movie" came out to universal acclaim (see this movie!) which begs the question. Why is this movie based on a toy good, when all these other ones suck? I've narrowed it down to three basic reasons.

1) the people making the movie.
This is obvious, but if you don't have good writers, directors, or actors, your movie will suck.The Transformers movies are directed by Michael Bay, and lets not dance around it, he can only film action. The writers for these movies, well, suck and finally our actors are kinda crap as well (Shia Lebouf and whoever looks hot for the female lead). For the G.I Joe movies I don't even know who the hell is in them or directed, but I never really want to see them anyway. With "Battleship" the only really good actor is killed off immediately, and while Peter Berg can be a good director he didn't give a shit about this movie, having been roped into it as part of the deal to get "Lone Survivor" made.

this leaves us with "Equestria Girls" and "The Lego Movie". for "Equestria Girls" things are actually pretty good as far as talent is concerned. everyone who made this the show that we love was still on board, and I would argue more talented than whoever the hell wrote the scripts for those other piles.

The Lego Movie is basically falling apart at the seams from all the talent that's been jammed in there, with a great voice cast with Morgan Freeman (the most recognizable voice in Hollywood), Charlie Day, Will Ferrel, and a bunch of other people I don't really know. Also helping "The Lego Movie" is the directors/writers of Lord and Miller, who can be pretty inventive, writing one of the best R-Comedies "21 Jump Street" .

2) knowing your audience.
another reason that "The Lego Movie" works so well is because it knows who it's trying to appeal to. everyone, but with an emphasis on children. It doesn't try to appeal to a group outside it's core, and because of this it feels like what a movie about Lego should.

One of the reasons that "Transformers", "G.I.Joe" and "Battleship" are so weird is because while the toys are generally for kids under ten, the movies are marketed toward teenagers. each has heavy action and mild gore, lots of sex appeal that kids wouldn't get, and racist robots and balls jokes. this leads to a schism, where you look at the movie, remember the toys you used to play with, and scratch your head. this is much less important than having competent people working on your movie, but it still matters.

Equestria Girls succeeds in keeping the same tone and demographic in mind, and not changing MLP into a action-thriller where twilight must fight a legion of zombies armed only with Flash sentry's car and a aluminum baseball bat. (BTW, Hasbro should hire me, because I got ideas). But it fails, and maybe even worse than the other two, by not giving us what we see on the tin. Transformers is about transforming robots punching and shooting each other. G.I.Joe is about army dudes punching and shooting each other. Battleship is about battleships shooting stuff. but then the My Little Pony movie is about High School? What? What about ponies? this is the reason Equestiria Girls fails as a MLP movie, but it commits a far greater sin than just that.

3. putting the entertainment before the product.
the final reason that the Lego movie triumphs where these other ones (Mainly Equestria Girls in this case) fail is because when you watch the movie you know that everyone who was involved in making it were making it of their own accord. I'm certain that either the writers came up with the concept first then asked for Lego's permission to make the movie, or the Lego corporation said "we want a movie" and left it at that, giving the creative team as much control as possible to make the best movie about Lego imaginable.

Equestria Girls wasn't like this at all. some suits came down from on high and said, "Put these ponies in a human high school so we can market this new line of toys", and left the poor team on damage control to try and make that suck as little as possible. with Equestria Girls, the toys came first. With The Lego Movie, the toy sets based on it are a afterthought. the Lego corporation is smarter than Hasbro in this way, because it learned the lesson that Hasbro forgot.

when Hasbro wanted to make a my little pony show, they hired a incredibly talented person to make it, and stayed out of the way as much as possible. Because of this they show was free to be better than it ever could have been if it had just shamelessly pimped out new products each week. They let the show come before the toys that they made, and because of that people were able to enjoy the show, and that alone most likely made Hasbro more money than any shameless Equestria Girls would. If you make good entertainment that people love, then the merchandise, they'll buy it. If you make a crappy product then shoehorn entertainment around it, people will hate it.

this is why the Lego Movie works. It's Made by people with genuine talent, who aren't interested in raising Legos revenue, but in cerebrating a toy that has shaped so many millions of childhoods. In doing that they do Lego the best service of all.

2815887 Damn straight.

2815986 the problem with making a good video game movie is that no-one makes movies about video games that need movies. Bioshock would make for a great movie, as would "Halo", but for some godawful reason we get "Resident Evil" and "Silent Hill".
wait a tick... never mind, there already has been a great video-game movie. "Super Mario Bros"

see? It's a great representation of playing a Mario game!

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BTW, have you guys seen "The Lego Movie"?

2815887 Equestria Girls wasn't as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. It mostly just suffered from a story that didn't really have much going for it aside from high school drama. And you're forgetting that there was a movie based on video games released in theaters over a year and a half ago titled "Wreck It-Ralph" and that was pretty good.

2816698 well, it wasn't the worst thing ever, at least according to me, but it was still pretty shit. read my review bit if you want more insight into that.

2815887 It also success because Morgan Freeman is in there. Also Batman.

2815887 That my good sir, was dead on. Earn a mustache for what you have said

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3364220 I have not seen the Lego movie yet. But I was disappointed by Wreck It Ralph that movie has so much potential but instead it was a food Fight rip off with Sarah Silverman squawking for an hour. The perfect product movie like a MLP FIM and Transformers crossover movie should be directed by Tim Burton and he should have full creative control of the movie just like he did with his masterpiece Batman Returns. The best video game movie ever made is this movie

3364962 It is coming out this year and it will be one of the best movies of 2014 alongside with The Hobbit 3 and Equestria Girls 2 Rainbow Rocks

3365427 2014 so far has not been a year for good movies

3365756 I have not seen the Lego movie or the new Godzilla movie yet but most of the movies that came out this year have been terrible especially that new Robocop movie AKA Inspector Gadget Begins. And it looks like Maleficent is going to be disappointing. Michael Bay's Transformers 4 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Goombas From Space is going to suck. So I am truly looking forward to see only three movies this year The Hobbit 3, the AVGN movie and Equestria Girls 2 Rainbow Rocks. 2014 is just like 1995 where most of the movies made in that year are bad

3365787 So far fanfiction has been a good friend to me and seriously 2014 does remind me of 1995 where so many bad movies were made in that year like Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever AKA Buttman Forever, North, The Pagemaster, The Mighty Morphin Power Ranger The Movie, Double Dragon, and others and even Disney's Pocahontas kind of depresses me for some reason. The best movie from that year was Casper and that movie was far from perfect

3365701
positivity on!
don't think that this is a very good year for movies? well lets fix that! go watch "the lego movie", "Captian America F*** yeah 2: the winter soldier" "GODZILLA","Terminator 5:X-Men of future past", and "Edge of Tommorow." I can wholeheartedly say that all of those are pretty good.

that angry video game movie looks pretty great actually, for a moment I thought it would suck based on the fact that it is a internet critic making a movie about himself. surprisingly, the budget isn't zero, there seems to be a actual story, and I laughed a good amount. ty for showing it off.

now positivity off, time for negativity!

what was so bad about wreck it ralph? apart from sarah silvermans voice it was pretty great. it wasn't no food fight ripoff either, in any-way.

Rainbow Rocks will be bad. it will just be bad.

and about that tim burton transformers mlp crossover. never going to happen. noone would want to make it, few would want to watch it, tim would have to answer to hasbro, and finally, would tim burton even be interested in making such a thing?

in order to make a enjoyable movie, the director really has to believe in it, it shows on screen. I just don't know that a mlp transformers movie would be something tim burton would have any interest in. he's always gravitated towards things that are dark, and kinda wierd.

3365814 Well Tim Burton transformed Batman from a show about a silly Watusi dancing clown to something dark. And have you watch the episodes were Discord first appeared? Discord turns Ponyville into something that Tim Burton would make infact Ponyville under Discord looks like something out of Beetlejuice

3365817 What makes 1995 a bad year for me is I did not have fanfiction to keep me happy, but the only thing good about 1995 was Disney's Gargoyles

3365865 I did read a lot of those Goosebumps books back then. For some reason a lot of video games from that year were bad too. Almost every game made in 1995 used the Mortal Combat engine and they were just awkward to look and play. But luckily I had a lot games made before 1995

3365905 Just play Batman Forever for the SNES and Sega Genesis you pretty much played almost every game made in that year. I only found out about the good games from that year much later like the Sailor Moon arcade game

3365945 They made an actual beat'em up game for Sailor Moon

3365958 Also they made Sailor Moon games for the SNES and Sega Genesis too and in these games Sailor Moon destroys cars and throws her enemies off of elevator shafts sending them to their deaths

3366008 I think she did more in the original Japanese version. And here is another Sailor Moon game for the SNES and for some reason all of the Sailor Moon games remind me of my favourite game which is based on my favourite movie

3366050 Well the video game is awesome and Batman Returns is considered by many including me to be the best Batman movie ever made

3366092 I think that Batman Superman is going to be a bad movie because I don't see Ben Affleck would make a good Batman and BTW I am currently writing a Batman Returns based fanfic called Fluttershy Batwings

3365835 ooooh. totally forgot about discord. tim burton would love that guy.

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wait, you think that "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" could be a bad film? say it ain't so!

lol, that movie is going to be so bad.

3366108 I hope you like my story and Batman Returns has been compared to Citizen Kane because Batman Returns has been partly inspired by Citizen Kane

3366155 Ben Affleck is going to be another George Clooney. And Tim Burton would also love MLP FIM because of Twilight Sparkle's mental breakdown in Lesson Zero, Pinkie Pie's mental breakdown in Party Of One, Rainbow Dash's nightmare in May The Best Pet Win, Sweetie Belle and Princess Luna in the Dream World in For Whom The Sweetie Bell Tolls, Maud Pie's gothic character who she is really kind of like a ponyfied version of Lydia Deetzes from Beetlejuice, Twilight and Cadence encountered a sandworm just kind of like ones from Beetlejuice in Three's A Crowd, everything about the episode Bats including the Danny Elfman style song Stop The Bats and Fluttershy turning into Flutterbat, the Danny Elfman style song This Day Aria from Canterlot Wedding Part 2, Fluttershy's disturbing visions in Hurricane Fluttershy and Fili Vanili, and other episodes. And also I think Tim Burton might love this video of Princess Luna too

3367063 Alright and I really hope you like it And I am currently writing Chapter 5 of my story

3367410 Alright

3367501 Ok

3367510 Did you look at my story?

3367523 It is based on both Batman Returns and Elfen Lied

3367584 Yes it is

3367862 Alright and check out this other Batman Returns games for the PC MS-DOS and Sega CD

3367885 I am just showing how awesome these games are

3367899 I actually got all of the Batman 89 and Batman Returns games in my emulator programs in my computer and I won them all. NES, SNES, Gameboy, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, Sega Game Gear, Arcade, Atari Lynx, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, PC MS-DOS, and PC-Engine TurboGrafx 16

3367926 It is a program for the computer that play games from consoles like NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis and others

3368056 Now I can play any game from any console

3368266 Ok

3368291 Go to websites like Doperoms to download both the emulator program and the game files

3368320 Thanks

3369605 Alright and did you download anything yet?

3370798 I trust Doperoms it is a good website and I have been using it for years

3370893 Ok

3371055 Are you still testing it?

3372435 Ok