Lego Movie Revelation: I Was Evil Lord Business

We went as a family to see The Lego Movie a couple weeks ago and loved it. I was particularly fond of the goth-metal Batman. But I also saw a lot of my old self in Lord Business, the film’s evil villain.

Mood music:

Editor’s Note: If you don’t like spoilers, stop reading now.

Lord Business wants to glue everything solid so no one can mess with his carefully constructed universe. To do this, he plans to use a superweapon called the “Kragle” — a tube of Krazy Glue with the label partially rubbed off. If you want to see real Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder personified, Lord Business is your man.

He hates chaos and wants to do something to stop it. By unleashing the Kragle, he hopes to make it impossible for others to come along and “mess with his stuff.”

When my OCD was at it’s worst, I craved order. I’ve also been the parent of two toddlers. And as we all know, toddlers are messy.

By the end of a typical day, Sean and Duncan would routinely transformed the living room into a sea of debris, with toys covering the carpet and blankets and couch cushions tossed about randomly (the cushions still make me crazy).

I went absolutely mad on a daily basis, trying to stay one step ahead of the chaos, picking up toys and cushions as the kids deposited them on the floor. They’d dump stuff, I’d pick it up, and they’d dump more stuff. It got so bad that my heart felt like it would explode every time.

It led to me yelling at the kids a lot. That yelling is what made me start to look in the mirror and contemplate big changes in my life.

I won’t lie: I still don’t like chaos. But I have, for the most part, learned to peacefully co-exist with it. It helps that the kids are older and, though still messy, there’s more of an order to their messiness. They’re also old enough to clean up after themselves now.

Lord Business ultimately sees the error of his ways and has a change of heart.

I doubt the people who made this movie set out to create an OCD case study. But like most films made for children, you can pull plenty of life lessons from this one.