Komm Susser Kragle (Untangling The Lego Movie)

I am going to try to keep my ramblings brief and understandable for anyone who doesn't watch cartoons for children.

Relevant previous discussions:
forum #108798
forum #346148

The Lego Movie is a copyright tag that, on the outside, appears to work fine. Implied to it are the tag for the sequel and the spinoff, The Lego Batman Movie. (For context, Batman is a pretty major player in the first film's plot, and the spinoff movie follows his other adventures). There's also a tag for the 2D animated spin-off show Unikitty! (Series), and the third film in the franchise The Lego Ninjago Movie. Both of which are unimplicated.

This all seems fine on the surface minus the wiki-less tags that, following this pattern, should have implications to the main TLM tag. I raise the question: Should The Lego Batman Movie really be implicated to TLM? From my understanding that tag is meant to cover the events of the first movie alone.
So the obvious answer would be "let's make a The Lego Movie (series) tag." But what is "The Lego Movie series"?

Officially there are four films in the franchise. The Lego Movie, The Lego Batman Movie, The Lego Ninjago Movie, and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part. I am going to admit that I haven't seen TLBM or TLM2, so I can not speak on their relevance. But unfortunately I am a big fan of the Ninjago series, which is where this all gets stupid, stupid complicated.
The Lego Ninjago Movie is set in its own canon away from both Ninjago and The Lego Movie. While Lloyd Garmadon from Ninjago makes a brief cameo in TLM, this is considered a separate character.

The only connection TLNM and TLM actually share are Warner Bros saying it does, similar brandings, some really unnecessary live action segments with Jackie Chan, and Lloyd being mentioned to be a Master Builder (concept from The Lego Movie) in some promotional material.

TL;DR:
The Lego Movie → The Lego Movie 2 → Unikitty!
↓
The Lego Batman Movie

≠ The Lego Ninjago Movie

Now that I have (hopefully) explained everything, it's time to get into what this thread is actually about.
I wanted to imply The Lego Ninjago Movie to Ninjago but then I realized The Lego Batman Movie sets a very annoying precedent I now need to deal with.

Solution 1: We create a The Lego Movie (series) tag, unimply everything from The Lego Movie, and imply it back to our new series tag. The Lego Ninjago Movie and The Lego Batman Movie are also implied to their respective copyrights.

Solution 2: Go "fuck it". Don't imply The Lego Ninjago Movie to The Lego Movie at all and keep it implied only to Ninjago. It's barely related in the first place.

Solution 3: Ban all non-Japanese copyrights so we never have to think this hard about children's plastic building toys ever again (🚬)

(Also, semi-unrelated: I didn't want to bring this up to avoid derailing things too far, but The Lego Batman Movie needs to be implied to Batman (series))

Solution 1 may face pushback because of this;

evazion said in forum #417117:

I don't like doing crossover implications like this because it makes the tag list look ugly. The tag gets shown twice because it belongs under two different parent tags.

But given the circumstance, I don't think we really have an option for The Lego Batman Movie, at least.

I have seen all of these movies and can chirp in. i gotta get back to watching ninjago instead of watching youtube all the time man. i gotta catch up Despite the shared character & voice actor of Batman, aside from that there is... not a whole lot connecting TLBM to TLM. I think removing the implication from TLM makes a lot of sense in that regard.

My two cents is:

• The Lego Movie
• The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

• Ninjago
• The Lego Ninjago Movie

• Batman
• The Lego Batman Movie

The branding basically comes down to just "hey we used the same animation software and similar comedic tones. we are going to piggyback off the success of this one to promote these two others we made, one that's cinema and one that is not-so-much". I don't see any reason to both implicating TLNM and TLBM to TLM.

thank you for the very helpful reply! i need to get around to watching TLBM but my experience watching TLNM is about the same. no real connection to the original film, just branding.

Did you know all of Ninjago is currently free on YouTube in the United States? I just thought that was interesting.

I have not seen Ninjago or the series it's based on, so I am not going to comment on that aspect but personally I am against removing the Lego Batman -> Lego Movie implication because it is the same Batman and the worlds are connected by lines in both the Lego Batman Movie and the Lego Movie 2. The fact that it is set in the preexisting Lego Movie universe is relevent for the third act finale featuring non-Batman IP characters as well.

Dual implication would be my preference but I know that is contentious.

zetsubousensei said in forum #418042:

I have not seen Ninjago or the series it's based on, so I am not going to comment on that aspect but personally I am against removing the Lego Batman -> Lego Movie implication because it is the same Batman and the worlds are connected by lines in both the Lego Batman Movie and the Lego Movie 2. The fact that it is set in the preexisting Lego Movie universe is relevent for the third act finale featuring non-Batman IP characters as well.

Dual implication would be my preference but I know that is contentious.

I don't think that's enough personally—you can watch TLBM without TLM and still enjoy it without the context of TLM. Finale is funtimes but to me that's like arguing Fate/Grand Order should imply Fate/Stay Night because John Lancer is in both.

sabisabi said in forum #418034:

Did you know all of Ninjago is currently free on YouTube in the United States? I just thought that was interesting.

Oh shit, for real? Here I've just been using netflix like a chump. Happy 15 years!

Ylimegirl said in forum #418058:

I don't think that's enough personally—you can watch TLBM without TLM and still enjoy it without the context of TLM. Finale is funtimes but to me that's like arguing Fate/Grand Order should imply Fate/Stay Night because John Lancer is in both.

No but both imply the parent Fate (Series) which links them. The Batman featured itself should be enough to link the Lego movies as it is a distinct version of Bruce who has a unique personality that is not found in the comics or other live action iterations. The fact that you can watch one without another doesn't mean something isn't in the same series. I doubt you'd say F/SN is prerequisite knowledge for Prisma Ilya for instance. Or to use a more comparable example most Batman media including the ones directly linked like 89 to Returns or Begins to Dark Knight.

I am strongly against removing the preexisting implication but I do think there should be a parent tag of some kind "lego_movie_(series)" maybe? Instead of implying straight to the first movie which should have it's own tag separate from the sequel anyway.