The all time best Lego theme is Time Cruisers, it’s a series of vehicles, presumably time machines, made with all of the weird and cool elements that Lego had to offer in 1996. Lots of transparent neon orange, glow in the dark pieces, dragon wings, a monkey armed to the teeth with various laser canons. They’re formed into peculiar constructions, a castle that’s also a train, boats with jet engines, wings and propellers. It’s a playground of a theme, consisting of sets that are just all the coolest parts, arranged in a haphazard yet, bilaterally symmetrical manner. It’s the closest Lego has ever come to making the things that children actually make, to playing like kids play. These vehicles all seem like they started off as a submarine and turned into a car and then a helicopter as the lego pile gave up its best parts, its closest held secrets. It’s free association, contraption based Lego, made from spare parts and iconic components, it’s just so fun.

This week I watched Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse and it’s bit like Time Cruisers. There’s this TikTok franticness to its style, it plays with and references nearly every other piece of Spider-Media. From Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man, to the 2018 Venom movie, all the memes and cultural touch stones are here. It feels like it is having fun.

It’s also every single anime at once, encompassing several styles simultaneously with paranoid levels of detail in every frame. You can pause the film at any moment and create a perfect desktop background or work of framable art. It feels like something people really cared about, that they tried with all their effort to make it as much as possible, as big and all encompassing as any animated film could be. Visually it most reminds me of Promare, a 2019 anime which shares its uncompromising stylisation and breathless action pace. Animated film has gotten really good at action, the way that the various spider-people of the film swing and give chase is beautiful, considered. There are just the right amount of frames to show each action, when things could be overwhelming, they could overtake your ability to focus. The film slows down how much information it’s showing you, just gives you the best bits, leaves you to construct the rest.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem was another thing I saw this week, it’s similar but less frantic. It’s also animated, with this hyper sketchy style that makes it feel very DIY and home-grown, although I’m sure that offhandedness took many animators many months. The style contributes to its feeling, its storytelling, so many elements point in the same direction. The turtles are DIY heroes, they’re teenagers, unfinished, just sketched out as of yet. I appreciate that coherency, how the form of the film follows its sort and themes. Spider-Man maybe fragments too much, shows too many different styles, has a few too many references.

They both incorporate some live action, with the Ninja Turtles watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on a screen in the park and Spider-Man having live action characters alongside clips from the Sam Rami films and maybe the Andrew Garfield ones, I’m not so familiar with those. I get the sentiment, I think I understand some of the motivation, such references only work with the original media product, not a redrawn version. The first time I remember this was in Wall-E, when the titular robot watches scenes from Hello, Dolly!, there it felt so fleeting and obvious and beautiful. Now I’m not so sure, everyone doing it has made it less special. Memes and .gifs, irreverently woven into chats and online posting culture increasingly feel like part of language. It’s no wonder that they have a place in film, that this very visual dimension of modern communication leaks into other visual mediums. Writers and filmmakers take the best components, incorporate them, remix them.

Politically, Spider-Man wins out. The anarchist Spider-Punk is key to the plot and not only behaving like an anarchist should, but having a very positive role in the movie at large. He is frequently and aggressively proven right, it’s a very refreshing portrayal. On the Ninja Turtles side, it’s not so rosy. There’s this super liberal assimilation based plot progression, with the core idea being that if you just act like everyone else and ignore the bullies, you’ll be infinitely popular, everyone will like you, all your problems will evaporate.

There is this toy ready feel to Spider-Man, where while they’re laughing at all these weird alternate universe Spider-Folx, they’re also featuring them on screen and selling funko pops. Capitalism wins out regardless, profiting from its mocking, from Spider-Punk action figures, lunchboxes, probably Lego minifigures eventually. This is very annoying and slightly overwhelming. It’s the entire Barbie movie too, which I have finally watched and did really enjoy. I just wish that so many films didn’t feel so overshadowed by intellectual property, by needing to be part of a franchise and the demand to sell sell sell.

Anyway I never got the Lego Hypno Cruiser from Time Cruisers my heart so desires. I think it was released just slightly before I started getting lego, or it didn’t catch my parents attention the way it’s captured mine. Legos marketing has hit me, 26 years delayed. At least the concept of remixing the best you have to offer, of using what you have to make something else, something more, seems to have caught on. While I wish that it could be less commercial, I more wish I knew what that looked like, what a world of post capitalism art and film was.