His two children, both of whom play with LEGO bricks, aren’t here - the group is not for kids. Beckett, 38, has served as WisLUG’s president for four years. Between Madison and Milwaukee, WisLUG counts some 50 adult LEGO fans in its ranks. They call themselves AFOLs: Adult Fans of LEGO, and are members of the Madison chapter of the Wisconsin LEGO Users Group, embroidered on their custom polos as WisLUG. “We’ll have the dock, so there’s room for, like, one ship, or a couple small ones,” Beckett answers. “Is there going to be a waterfront?” asks a man holding a three-masted LEGO frigate. Though the event is more than five weeks away, the group has nearly finalized the details of its communal layout. Eyeing notes jotted in a journal embossed with a LEGO brick pattern, Beckett briefs the group on its upcoming display at Trainfest, the largest operating model train show in the country. Nearly everyone has come with their own LEGO creation, which they cradle in their laps or display on tables. Most are men, wearing loose jeans and supportive sneakers the median age in the room is around 40 years old. Eighteen others sit at folding tables, or cross-legged on the carpet. ![]() Says Barbara: “We don’t need an unsupervised man karate-chopping poor people in a Halloween costume.WisLUG’s creation for last year’s Trainfest in Milwaukee.Īndrew Beckett stands at the front of the birthday party room at Bricks & Minifigs, a LEGO resale store in Fitchburg. To get over it, he’ll have to agree to form a team - a family - with his tough-love butler, Alfred (Ralph Fiennes) the eager-geek son, Dick Grayson (Michael Cera), he inadvertently adopted, who soon dons a Robin costume and the new police commissioner, Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), a flame-haired enforcer who causes Batman to stare, hypnotized, as choruses of “Died in Your Arms Tonight” flood the soundtrack. ![]() The stage is set for a battle royale, but the real fight is between Batman and his own armored ego. Instead, he projects the Joker into the Phantom Zone, a metaphysical penal colony in the clouds where only the most epic villains (Sauron, King Kong, the Wicked Witch) are kept. The Joker wants Batman to acknowledge that the two need each other - that they’re the greatest of foes - but Batman won’t even concede that. It subjects him to nothing less than a playfully merciless psychoanalysis. ![]() Ever since Tim Burton’s “Batman,” the movies have acknowledged that the Caped Crusader is a dark freak, but “The Lego Batman Movie” doesn’t just freakify Batman. In his bat lair, feasting on microwaved lobster thermidor, watching “Jerry Maguire” as if it were a comedy, he’s the ultimate male who won’t commit, a cowled mask of solo cool whose only loyalty is to Gotham City - but deep down, he’s doing it for his own glory. This Batman, still scarred by the loss of his parents, roots his competitive identity in being a lone avenger, valiant and guarded, with no feelings, no vulnerability, no need for anyone else. “We’re going to punch those guys so hard,” he growls, “words describing their impact are going to spontaneously materialize.” The movie opens with Batman offering the play-by-play of his own film (“All important movies start with a black screen”), followed by a sequence as madly choreographed as anything in an “Indiana Jones” film, as he takes on a screenful of famous and obscure villains led by the rascally but secretly sensitive Joker (voiced by Zach Galifianakis). He somehow combines the voice of Clint Eastwood, the conceitedness of Derek Zoolander, and the fast-break observational avidity of Stephen Colbert. The main satirical target of “The Lego Batman Movie” is Batman himself, voiced (once again) by Will Arnett in a deep low husky rasp, and with a narcissistic personality disorder that’s fantastically out of control.
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