Super Long Blog Post (Don't even bother clicking. It will take too long to load because there are so many words. It will probably crash your computer).

I was working on a different post, but I didn’t like it, and I don’t have enough time to come up with a good idea, so I will be writing about the call to adventure in The Lego Movie. 

In the hero’s journey, the hero begins from a “state of normality.” We see this to an extreme extent in The Lego Movie. Following his guide to “fit in, have everyone like you, and always be happy” Emmet’s life is the pinnacle of normalcy. Each day he follows the same routine; he watches the news, gets coffee, listens to “Everything is Awesome,” and goes to work, where his entire job is to follow instructions. Unlike Siddhartha or Helga Crane who are always aware that other lifestyles exist, Emmett doesn’t know there is a world beyond Bricksburg, or a way of life that doesn’t involve following instructions. 

The hero’s journey Wikipedia page describes the call to adventure as “some information that the hero receives that acts as a call to head off into the unknown.” In The Lego Movie, this occurs when Emmet falls into a hole that contains the piece of resistance, hears a voice saying “touch the piece,” and touches the piece. The piece and accompanying prophecy thrust Emmet into new “worlds” (wild west, cloud cuckoo land) and give him a clearer view of reality (first learning about master builders and lord business, later seeing the “man upstairs”). 

I don’t think looking at this moment in the film as a call to adventure changes our understanding of the film, because there’s no other reasonable way to interpret these events. The Lego Movie is such an archetypal hero’s journey (at least in the beginning) that acknowledging it as such provides little meaning. Perhaps looking at this step as a call to adventure primes us to think of the ultimate boon as stopping lord business, whereas without the hero’s journey, the story may be more one of Emmet’s personal journey to become a master builder and think for himself, but I don’t think this is really true. 

Further evidence of touching the piece as the call to adventure comes in the subsequent scene where Emmet is being interrogated by Bad Cop/Good Cop. Emmet and his friends' insistence that he is a normal guy, with zero distinct qualities, emphasize that, before touching the piece, he was a completely normal nobody. As the prophecy states, touching the piece means that Emmet is now destined to become the most special, most interesting, most extraordinary person in the world, and take down lord business – a stark contrast from his previous life.