'Lego Movie' sequel hopes to build on the first

The film is once again produced and written by Christopher Miller and Ben Lord.

(Reuters) - It’s been five years since ‘The LEGO movie’ burst onto cinema screen, implanting the overly catchy song ‘Everything is Awesome’ into global cinema-goers’ heads.

Now, the sequel ‘The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part’ is about to hit cinemas on Friday (February 8) complete with a new catchy song entitled ‘This Song’s Going to Get Stuck Inside Your Head.’

The new film sees the residents of the Lego town Bricksburg, including the leads Emmet (Chris Pratt) and Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), entering into a dark apocalyptic world after the invasion of strange heart and star-shaped extra terrestrials.

WATCH LEGO 2 TRAILER: 

This parallels with reality where young boy Finn (Jadon Sand), the human architect of Bricksburg, is getting frustrated with having to share his playtime with his younger sister Bianca (Brooklynn Prince).

After Wyldstyle and several other quirky characters get captured and taken to the feminine world of Queen Whatevra Wa’Nabi (Tiffany Haddish), Emmet decides to risk everything to rescue them - whilst challenging what it means to be a man in the process.

Asked whether the film was reflective of the Time’s Up movement, Elizabeth Banks replied "There are a lot of lovely references to what’s been going on the past few years but it feels like quite a timeless movie to me. At the end of the day, there is some genderized things in the movie. It’s certainly not political in any way but it’s about a young budding man, like a boy becoming a man and what he thinks he needs to be to do that but also entering a more feminine world, the world of his sister and being open to it."

"I think it’s slightly revolutionary that there’s this incredible male character in the movie in Emmet who wins everything through love and optimism and not through fisticuffs," she added.

The film is once again produced and written by Christopher Miller and Ben Lord. Miller said "In the first one we were pushing ‘Everything is awesome’ and then as these characters age up, that’s the time they start to realize ‘Well, not everything is awesome and the world isn’t perfect’ and once you realize that, we thought you can either make a choice to either be cynical or angry or broody or dark about it or you can make a choice to be kind and positive and empathetic."

During Emmet’s journey to rescue his fellow Brickburg residents, he encounters Rex Dangervest (also voiced by Chris Pratt), who plays the archetypal Hollywood macho hero, not dissimilar to Pratt’s roles in both ‘Jurassic World’ and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’. Dangervest even has pet raptors on his spaceship.

Pratt said "I’m off trying to sell a movie for thousands of people who came together and worked really really hard to put it together and luckily we have an insanely good property to sell so if it means the piss is taken out of me or my career or my contributions as an actor, I’m completely ok with that."