Puppet movies, puppets used in movies, and movies about puppets.

To be clear, "puppet movies" refers to movies that are made for puppets. There is yet to be a movie made for puppets, so puppets remain an un-tapped demographic. That being said, there are plenty of them IN movies, weather people know it or not.

Some movies revel in the fact that they feature puppets, with notable examples such as the Muppet movies or Team America: World Police.

The Muppet Movie, one of many movies starring Jim Henson's creations.

But most movies that feature puppets make it a goal for the audience to not realize it's a puppet! A great number of the aliens in the original "Men in Black" were puppets, as were the larger dinosaurs in the original Jurassic Park. 

The "Star Wars" series is full of puppets as well, with one of it's title characters being one! 

Jedi master Yoda in all his glory!
(In the later movies, Yoda was CG.)

In more recent movies, the use of puppets has been replaced with CG effects. CG is often used in places where a good puppet would work just as well. In the late 1990's and early 2000's CG was over-used to the tune of laughable results. Though animation is powerful, there are times where a puppet adds an effect that can't be gotten anywhere else. 

  

 One of my personal favorite movie puppets, "Brundlefly" in the 1986 "The Fly" remains impressive, even today. 

Brick by brick

So, last week I posted about stop motion animation and the various ways it is used and created. This week, I feel it is fitting to focus on a method that's been popular on the internet for a while now, that's finally getting to the big screen.

                                                         That's right, I'm talking LEGOs!

Lego animation has been online for a while now, with plenty of Lego animators on Youtube and even Lego themselves encouraging the creation of animations.

One of the fantastic Lego Studios sets, which included a camera for capturing all the Lego animating action as well as small lights so that you could see said action.

When animating with Legos, it is fairly obvious that you're well, animating with Legos. Some movies revel in this fact:

The Deranged Lego Movie

Other movies use Lego creations and not necessarily the Lego minifigures and sets themselves:

8-Bit Trip

So, everyone loves Legos. So much so that there are even Lego video games that have little to nothing to do with building things!

People love Lego so much, they even bought games about the Star Wars prequels!

So it was only a matter of time until Lego jumped to the big screen. So what is this Lego movie called? 

Blunt but to the point, I like it.

That's right! Coming soon is a movie all about Legos! Made of Legos!  Animated entirely in Legos! 

......

Actually, scrap that last part. As it turns out, the Lego movie isn't animated using real Legos, but rather via CG animation in the style of Lego animation. Something about that doesn't quite seem right. The footage available shows that the movie does indeed capture the Lego animation style and impressively looks like Legos. See for yourself:

The teaser trailer for The Lego Movie.

So what do you think? Do you think they should have used real Legos, or do you think the CG gets the job done?