Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Lego Movie Features Think Tank

Think tankers have some new competition in town.  The new Lego movie (officially called "The Lego Movie") apparently features a think tank.

And For $69.99, you can own Lego's "Lord Business' Evil Lair" and build that think tank.  Here is a description from Lego:
Bwahahahaha! Welcome to Lord Business’ Evil Lair! Record his broadcasts in the TV studio and plot how to control the world from the office. Lever open the large door and unleash the Kragle. Trap the Master Builders in the think tank to extract their creativity.

Think tankers have already weighed in, saying that working at a think tank is not exactly as depicted in the movie.

The New Republic thinks the movie is anti-capitalist.  Here is what they say about the think tank in the Lego movie:
Furthermore, corrosive bourgeois sentiment isn’t alone among The Lego Movie’s "targets," if we can even use so serious a term for objects of ridicule in a children’s film. In its trim hundred minutes, the movie manages to assault an impressive array of cultural bull’s eyes, from academic think tanks (literally manifest as the best and the brightest with tubes plugged in their heads, threatened with electroshock if they fail to produce whatever new ideas are demanded of them)...

Are think tanks becoming mainstream?  Perhaps a film solely dedicated to think tanks is in the offing?

The new Lego think tank is not the only imaginary think tank created in recent memory.  As Think Tank Watch reported in 2012, the Washington satire "They Eat Babies, Don't They?" by Christopher Buckley featured a fictitious think tank called Institute for Continuing Conflict.

Think Tank Watch will soon be watching the movie and will report back about the Lego think tank.  Stay tuned...