The Lego movie was amazing, and easily one of my favourite films of last year. I don’t know what it is about Lord and Miller, but they have this incredible talent for pulling interesting and compelling (and hilarious) stories out of premises you’d think would be utterly barren. Also, it has some of the best action I’ve seen in years, while simultaneously feeling like it was dreamt up in the mind of a six-year-old. It is a film that truly earns the right to leave you with a song called ‘Everything Is Awesome’.

I liked Boxtrolls overall, but it was merely good for me rather than great (especially compared to the masterful storytelling of ParaNorman). While it had some great parts (the dialogue-less first ten minutes, those two henchmen etc), they didn’t coalesce into a greater whole, and the crossdressing-villain subplot felt alarmingly retrograde (and had no purpose in the story) to the point of almost coming off as mild homophobia (which is especially disappointing after ParaNorman).

I found Big Hero 6 to be a fun, entertaining ride with the best villain design I’ve seen in years (I want my own tiny robot army to ride down the street!). It didn’t really stick with me afterwards though, which I think is down to it taking far too many emotional shortcuts in the storytelling. Both the hero and villain’s character arcs end very abruptly. Hiro’s is just far too easy a solution and doesn’t make sense on an emotional level, and the villain’s is a flat-out cop out (and we don’t get any closure on his character). If you want your movie to connect and stick with people the emotional beats have to feel true, as that’s what people remember. It’s why Frozen was an insane smash-hit while Tangled and Big Hero 6 will fade from the collective consciousness. Actually if you think about it, Big Hero 6 is kind of like ParaNorman if that film hadn’t been willing to get as dark as it did.

I think the problem How To Train Your Dragon 2 has, causing it to fall apart towards the end, is that it doesn’t really know what its story is about. It sets up some theme about people being capable of changing for the better, with the scene with Hiccup’s parents reuniting and such, but it disappears towards the end. The villain is set up for a redemption arc with his backstory about being injured by a dragon (limb loss seems to be a motif in this series), so I expected him to come around and learn to love dragons or some such, but he just drops out of the story at the climax.