The Danish word "leg godt" is the origin of lego, meaning "play well". But in recent years, in a way, "play bad" has also made sense, because in addition to the positive, brave heroes, a large group of evil villains have also come out of the LEGO factory and entered the children's bedrooms, engaged in many protracted battles with the heroes.
No fairy tale, movie or story can be without a villain/villain. In the LEGO world, some characters also have a strong urge to rule the world. Today, we want to introduce you to some of the villains that give heroes a headache, look at their means and dreams, and answer: Why even the childlike brick world is inseparable from the question of evil villains.
Since LEGO's founding in the 1930s, LEGO has vowed not to sell any models on the market that involve combat, let alone military themes – we all know that in Billund today, they have chosen to turn a blind eye to this issue (except for military-related issues). But in the beginning, the LEGO suit is really a pure paradise scene, and there are no "bad guys" or enemies to fight.
With an ever-changing smile, these minifigures live their peaceful and ordinary lives. Even in outer space — the backdrop of many toys and battles in popular culture today — the colorful "classic space" astronauts had no other ideas than to happily explore the universe. There are no aliens fighting with them, and there are no super lasers and weapon systems on the ship, because there is no need to load them at all.
That's why when the first knights in the late seventies and early eighties were equipped with swords, spears and shields, it might have embarrassed lego officials at the time. When classic pirates get their muskets, the Western theme includes realistic weapons for the first time, and war and conflict finally truly come to the world of LEGO bricks.
Of course, there were no personalized evil characters in the form of eccentric villains back then. In the early part of the last century, you were more likely to deal with an elaborate evil gang. Dominating the world or fighting for power is not important here, but more importantly, it stimulates conflict in the game. Knights against bandits, pirates against royal fleets, and in space, m:tron and blacktron make pk. People aimlessly search for a real villain, delusionally giving him all the attributes of being a ruthless bully.
It can be said that the children's room should be about the game confrontation, but these are all downplayed under the "goodwill" of Lego. At first it felt like these things didn't matter, in fact, the "bad guy" was laid off very early in the LEGO set, even if it wasn't about an evil genius or some opponent. Most conflicts are historical (cowboys, pirates, knights) or represent the distant future (space), which slightly defuses the nature of war, because children simply show distant scenes that have nothing to do with our current real world.
Then, in the nineties, an era began that could be called "story-based thematic series." Characters are no longer purely ordinary nameless people, they have names, and these sets are embedded in a larger narrative universe, exploring abundance through comics, books, radio dramas, and movies. It also marks the birth of the classic LEGO villains, the first of whom can be seen as the "brickster" in the lego island video game series.
Brickster was a thug whose common attire was the striped shirt and hat of the criminal. He first appeared in the 1997 video game LEGO Brick Island, in which he harassed the inhabitants of a calm town. The task of stopping him and sending him back to prison was given to Pepper Roni, the boy who delivered pizza. However, he did not disappear from the game, because he came back to wreak havoc in the sequels LEGO Brick Island 2 and Lego Brick Island Extreme Stunts. He is also the main villain in LEGO Crazy Soccer.
As far as the villains are concerned, "brickster" represents a very simple form of evil. Bad guys are bad guys, and Lego wants to use this character to tell us that. The fact that he has always worn the clothes of a prisoner proves that for Lego, evil is the absolute, immutable, always to be defeated. The bad guy's job is only one: to be a villain. Locking them up is seen as a social imperative for peace.
Intimidation and harassment are Brickster's only tasks. Unless he destroys the peace on Lego Brick Island, he can't be happy. Evil is a destructive force, the opposite, and that's leg of Lego's principle. So it's not surprising that bricksters are in a place called "ogel" (lego spelled backwards).
What drives such an endless desire for destruction? Brickster, like everything else on LEGO Brick Island a million years ago, was created by Infomaniac, an omnipotent figure who advises and assists Pepper in the game and can be simply considered the ruler of Brick Island. Although the two were initially best friends, Brickster was disgusted when Infomaniac decided to create other characters. The disappointment was gradually swallowed up by jealousy, and he lived a life of thugs ever since. Thus, it was the motivation for disappointment, the feeling of being betrayed, that aroused brickster's hatred. This is also one of the common motivations in villains.
Despite his nasty and cunning looks, the game's developers are careful not to portray him as a horrible, disturbing criminal. In fact, Brickster is a quirky character: he's obsessed with jalapeña pizza, and its pungency helps to break the iron fence of his dungeon, which also makes us feel that he's pathetic. After all, in lego's world, things should ultimately be peaceful, and evil is not too exaggerated, it is packaged in a stupid, exaggerated form.
That's why Brickster might remind you of an angry kid who was robbed of a lollipop, not the ultimate boss. So brickster is more of an educational negative example: being friendly, playing with friends, respecting each other — or you might be kicked out of Legoland.
The story-based concept made Lego all the rage, bringing out villains even classic themes like "castles." In 2000, it revolved around King Leo and Queen Leonora on the one hand, and Cedric the robber on the other. Due to the short duration of the series titled "Knight Kingdom", Bull Cedric also had less influence on the history of lego villains.
The Black Knight has two different backstories: According to LEGO Magazine, Cedric was once one of the best knights in Leo's court, but later turned against the king. However, in the game "Lego Creative Knight Kingdom", it is said that Cedric was stripped of his land as one of the 13 princes, which caused him to take revenge, and then he began a never-ending campaign against King Leo.
But whichever story is true: Many of the concepts that applied to Brickster now also continue to apply to Cedric: hatred of the existing peaceful order, driven by emotions of revenge and disappointment. Cedric is one such character whose life goal is to never-endingly try to attack the Leo Kingdom.
The long black hair, mustache and thick eyebrows sticking out of his face have made it seem like he is a shady character. It's no surprise that Lego portrays evil characters like this, because villains, especially in fairy tales like the Middle Ages, are always uglier, and their appearance has already made people doubt their intentions.
In the Knight Kingdom series, Cedric is portrayed as a poor guy whose conquests are always thwarted by Leo's brave knights. From Lego's point of view, villains like him have no place in society, and Cedric barely survives on the fringes of society, living alone in the forest outside the kingdom and from there reactionary limited attacks.
In fact, jealousy isn't always the driving force behind evil characters, as evidenced by the character Lord Sam sinister in adventurer Johnny Thunder's adventure series. Or should we call him dear baron von barron? Or Mr. Hate (mr. hates）？ Evil eye? Or samuel von barron? After all, Sam Hinster had many names over the years, and to this day it's not entirely clear what the name of this guy with the hooked hand and monocle glasses really was. But we stick with the most common name, Sam Hinster — also because the word "sinister" itself means "sinister" and "dark" and can provide some clues about the character's characterization.
Sam Hinster is Johnny Thunder's rival, who is also on the hunt for the world's largest treasure. However, the hero in the cowboy hat acts out of a pure spirit of exploration, while Sam Hinster acts out of greed for profit. For example, in the "Dinosaur Island" series, he wants to capture dinosaurs in order to build a huge amusement park and thus accumulate wealth. And he also wanted to find Marco Polo's treasure, also out of pure greed.
Always focused on material values rather than historical/cultural values, Sam Hinster was an eccentric, the exact opposite of Johnny Thunder, who always saw the benefits of treasure and artifacts for society as a whole. He only wants to accumulate wealth, and selfishness and greed are qualities that are always punishable and atonement in literary and cultural history, and I don't think we need to elaborate on that.
From 2001 to 2004, Lego first released sets around agents and espionage under the theme of "alpha team." The main villain of the themed series is the pesky genius Ogel. Although his name has nothing to do with Brickster, it's clear that here his name is spelled backwards with the word "lego", also to represent everything that goes against the values of the Brick Universe: destruction, hatred, and villainy.
Evil this time takes on a new dimension in Ogle: his demand for power is not just for a small area, but for the whole world. Unlike Lego Brick Island and Knight Kingdom, he is not a gangster who moves from the periphery, not from an ambush, but in the center of a growing empire, and he is the one who has all the means of power. It's time for the heroes to fight the Evil Empire like partisans.
In order to make him look like the embodiment of evil, Ogle appeared dressed in black. His breastplate and helmet make him look like a futuristic superscord, an emperor bent on conquering the world. At his side is an army of skeleton soldiers who were once good citizens, and with the help of the "Sphere of Evil", Ogle turns them into his loyal subordinates. His goal was to turn everyone into his men with a giant missile filled with Obu. What Ogle pursued was pure nihilism, pure demise. When his plan was foiled by Alpha's squad, Ogle hatched a new plan: freeze the entire world, including time.
Ogle is an arrogant berserker, a destructive evil that we can only experience from characters like the Emperor in Star Wars and Thanos in The Avengers. Cunning, cleverness and delusion are characteristic of Ogle, who hopes to achieve his goals with the latest technology: a rocket and a frozen laser. Villains always have a certain preference for research, and Ogle is no exception: using science to achieve his unrealistic dreams.
Villains often rely on the help of higher-level forces, as reflected in Vladek, the villain of the Knight Kingdom II series, which is known to LEGO fans for its brightly colored knights. As a former advisor to king mathias, Vladic gained dominion over the kingdom of Mosia with magical items such as the Book of Mosia or the so-called "Vladi Mask". The role of these magic tools is not much different from the technology used by Ogle: they are tools of power and conquest, the bad guys use them to consolidate their rule, and without them they are nothing. Therefore, destroying these items to break Vladic's power was also the goal of the Colorful Knights.
Interestingly, Vladic was Ogle's great-great-great-grandfather, and Lego disclosed this in an interview with the Alpha Squad villain on their old official website. Look at the villain is also a family business.
Ogle's arrogance is clearly on par with makuta teridax in the BioShock legend. In some ways, Tidees is even more ferocious than the villains of Alpha Squad. Treides is a member of the Makuta species who mastered the shadow element and was originally used as a guardian of numerous islands in the universe. All locations in the bionicle biochemical warrior world are contained in the body of a giant robot called "mata nui", which the inhabitants worship as a deity. In his thirst for power, Tides is so obsessed that his goal is: to banish Mattanui and implant himself in the body of a robot in his place. Tridders didn't want to destroy the world, he wanted to be the world.
Therefore, the heroes must deal with an enemy who is somehow no longer equal to them. Because Treides actually succeeded in carrying out his plan, only the exiled Matanui alone could shoulder his responsibilities alone after a long heroic journey. The struggle between good and evil is raised to a new level, a war of giants, a twilight of the gods. The effects of Tredez's actions were so far-reaching that it had branded itself into the collective memory of the inhabitants of the universe. In the legends and myths of the elders of the village, he is known only as "The Dark Shadow", "The Evil Brother of Matanui".
In the ranking of the most hated villains in the LEGO universe, Tidees will definitely occupy the top spot. After all, his crimes included not only seizing the robot's bodies, but also murder and enslavement. Yes, you read that right, Lego has actually touched on something like this in the BioShock story.
With the character of "meca one", we have evil robots in a sense. The 2006 exo-force series focused on the conflict between humans and machines. That is, in Mount Sendai, robots were once used as drones for work, but soon these machines began a rebellion under the leadership of their leader, the mega one. Due to a fierce conflict with humans, Mount Sendai was split in two, half of which was controlled by robots. Since then, humans, with the help of giant alien machines, have been desperately fending off the attacks of the meca one.
This was our first encounter with a villain who wasn't exactly human. Meca One is a machine, an artificial intelligence originally created by humans. He was not a social outsider who wanted to allow himself to be recognized, but a symbol of the unknown, a technology whose workings was beyond human comprehension, which began to rebel against its creator in the manner of Prometheus.
So, in a sense, meca one is a Frankenstein. It also sets him apart from all the villains before him. As a robot, he can replicate himself infinitely, which makes him a real threat to humanity. Like Ögel, he relied on the power of technology to enforce his rule. More and more bizarre and dangerous alien machines are being designed to bring down the last human fortress on Mount Sendai. Thus, the exo-force story is a battle for technology: whoever has the best fighter jets wins the battle for the mountains.
The NINJAGO® series marks a turning point in the history of LEGO minifigures. After all, so far, all the villains have in common: they are absolutely evil characters, concerned only with power and domination, and need to be defeated by heroes. This changed with the advent of the character of Ninjago Golem.
Lego now relies on more sophisticated villains with a lot of deeper motives. As the older brother of Master Wu, Kamandu became the dark villain we know after being bitten by a mysterious snake as a child. Thus, evil is portrayed here as something spreadable and viral. However, as the father of Lloyd the Green Ninja, Kamandu is a more layered character, and his entanglement between evil and love for his son puts him in a moral dilemma. Anyone who has been following the ninja story knows that Kamandu was eventually purified, but then fell back into evil again.
As a result, Lego's evil is now no longer a fixed, immutable thing, but something that can be cured. This can also be seen in cragger in the Legends of the Mythical Beast series – the Crocodile Warrior originally appeared as the main villain, but he was soon awakened and integrated into the community of the animal tribe. Something similar happened to Jestro in "Nexo Knights": the Joker admitted his mistake and converted.
In fact, in the latest LEGO theme, there's always a more sinister force on top of the real villains: whether it's the Great Devourer in NINJAGO® or the monstrox in the world of nexo knights. The villain becomes the mastermind behind the scenes, a dangerous character who is always everywhere.
Even the hit movie The Lego Movie allows the villain's evil business king to return to the good side. Although he is initially presented as a totalitarian ruler with a whole set of oppressive machines around him, it is discovered at the end of the film that he can be moved by a brave speech and dissuaded from abandoning his plot. What's interesting about the King of Business, though, is that he's actually a product of a little boy's imagination and is based on his father, who loves order. A world of family conflict and hostility towards adults is used as inspiration for villains: you can use it as a declaration of LEGO's love for childhood.
After this glimpse of the Lego villain world, one might ask: Why can't we get along without villains and evil? Villains seem to be omnipresent in the building block universe, and this is not limited to a single individual at all. Criminals in urban themes, cave monsters in rock raiders and power miners, and alien organizations in space cops, it can be said that evil is everywhere. So why do we have to repeat wars, conflicts, and why do we find villains in all children's bedrooms?
Little boys should feel like powerful warriors, indulging in the game the natural manly impulse to destroy enemies and thus feel "cool" in a special way, you can explain it this way.
But perhaps it is more appropriate to see evil as the most primal danger of humanity. Since the beginning of human existence, the greatest danger has always come from the environment. How do you fend off wildlife, how do you protect yourself from storms, how do you protect yourself from hostile tribes? Evil is innate and has always been a threat to humanity. Perhaps this is more indicative of why rock raiders fight monsters, why astronauts from the 2008 Mars Mission fought aliens, and why urban fire brigades are constantly battling fires.
Therefore, it is not surprising that "evil" is an integral part of the theme of the game, especially in Lego. Solving dangers, fighting villains, just making this primal threat the meaning and goal of the game. Whether it's brickster, Ockel, meca one, Kamandu, nameless aliens, and villains, it's all true.
* Originally from promobricks, Coldplay Tide Compilation
In addition, the following platform content is also referenced:
- Wikipedia
-fandom.com