Lord Business

"Hey. Not so special anymore, huh? Well, guess what? Nobody ever told me I was special. I never got a trophy just for showing up. I'm not some special little snowflake. No. But, as unspecial as I am, you are a thousand, billion times more unspecial than me."

- Lord Business justifying his evil. "It's nothing personal. It's just business. Lord Business. Ciao!"

- Lord Business betraying Bad Cop.

Lord Business (also known as President Business or just simply Business) is the main antagonist of the 2014 hit animated film The LEGO Movie. He is the villainous and cruel president/overlord who wanted to destroy the LEGO world by gluing it together with the "Kragle".

He was voiced by Will Ferrell, who also played Megamind in DreamWorks' Megamind, and The Man Upstairs (his human counterpart and the overall secondary antagonist of The LEGO Movie).

Role in the film
Lord Business was a stereotypically manipulative, tyrannical, uncaring, violent, cruel, and evil overlord who has no qualms about viciously destroying his enemies and even his own allies if they fail him or cease to be useful to him. He is also a control freak, who detests seeing anything out of place. He cannot stand anything that even slightly deviates from his idea of perfection. Hence, he created walls between each section of the LEGO world, keeping all the pieces in what he believed to be their rightful places, preventing them from mingling with each other in any way not condoned by his "instructions". When eventually he found this not satisfactory, he elaborated a plan to use the "Kragle" (actually Krazy Glue) to forever seal every piece in place, creating a "perfect", but immobile world. His villainy seems to stem from a certain insecurity. According to him, nobody ever told him he was special. Because of this, he did not believe he had it within himself to create something deviating from the "instructions".

Since he publicly poses as President Business, most inhabitants of the land of LEGO have no idea he is evil. He is able to run the world competently and efficiently, though underneath the bright and cheery surface lies a dystopia wherein those who refuse to follow President Business' "instructions" are at risk of being captured by his Super Secret Police and executed.

It is later revealed that a boy named Finn based Lord Business off of his strict father, who had a hobby of collecting LEGO, but refused to allow his son to play with them. He, too, had the idea of gluing every piece together in their optimal positions. However, Finn's father (and consequently, Lord Business) both had a change of heart by the end of the movie. The father realized that his obsession was alienating him from his son, who told him that anybody can be special in their own different way and that the fun of LEGO is not just to assemble it as instructed, but to use it to create something new - which is also what Emmet tells Lord Business, making him renounce his villainous ways and cure everyone of the Kragle using water. After that, he reformed and became a president again. However, at the end of the movie, an unknown species of alien visits the LEGO world, announcing their intentions to destroy it and all of their inhabitants.

Personality
Lord Business is a downright tyrant and perfectionist. He is portrayed as a stereotypical and evil ruler, a cruel man who needs everything his way. Business is completely strict, arrogant, treacherous, ruthless and above all evil. Like many tyrants, Business cares about no one but himself; he divided worlds so there would be no confusion and then ruthlessly hunted down the Master Builders. So far the only person that he shows any respect to is his lieutenant Bad Cop; however, he was still equally pitiless and unemotional to him as well as his enemies, having removed his Good Cop persona and then forced him to freeze his parents with the Kragle.

It is interesting how Business shares similarities with Emperor Sheev Palpatine; his public figure was a friendly public official, but he was (in reality) an extremely manipulative and villainous mastermind. In many ways, Business acts as a shepherd to his mindless sheep, he actually admitted live on air that he planned to put everyone to sleep if they didn't follow his rules only to cover it up with Taco Tuesday and then made them forget it by airing everyone's favorite show "Where Are My Pants?".

Prior his transformation to good, Business was a quarrelsome sadist; he made Bad Cop Kragle his own parents, laughed in a maniacal, incoherent, and unreasonable fashion just after decapitating Virtruvius, mocked a captured Emmet by saying he wasn't special and then forced the captured Master Builders to watch as he Kragle'd his hometown. However, despite this the source of all his villainy was due to never being called special making him a somewhat compassionate and sympathetic character.

It is revealed that Business was modeled after his creator, Finn's father, who was very strict, obstinate, and contumacious, as he would glue all of his Lego creations together, so they would always stay the same. However, after hearing the same speech that Wyldstyle gave Emmet he had a change of heart, destroyed the Kragle and unfroze all of his victims. Finn's father allowed him to play freely with his Lego sets as well his sister.

Appearance
As President Business, he wears a business suit. As Lord Business, he wears a set of sinister-looking armor over it. The breastplate of the armor is black and engraved with a necktie-like ornament. He wears a massive horned headgear, of which the horns spit fire, and has extendable mechanical stilts on his legs, which he uses to appear taller. His face resembles that of his voice actor, Will Ferrell.

Abilities and Arsenal
Lord Business is a villainous mastermind who uses an arsenal of high technology to rule the world. He leads an army of robots armed with laser weaponry. His most advanced minions are the powerful mechanical Micromanagers, built specifically to arrange every piece into its "perfect" position in order to prime them for the Kragle. He also has a henchman named Bad Cop that does whatever he commands. He can also make flames come out of his helmet, which is only seen twice in the film.

He also has access to several "artifacts" from the human realm, most notable of which is the "Kragle" (a bottle of Krazy Glue) which fuels his ultimate super-weapon and is the linchpin of his entire plan. Other "artifacts" he uses include the "Cloak of Band-Ai'ed" (a dirty Band-Aid), "Sword of Exact Zero" (an X-Acto razor blade), "The Fleece Crested Scepter of Q-Teep" (a Q-tip) used to apply "The Po'lish Remover of Nai'eel" (nail polish remover), "The Orb of Ti'etleist" (a Titleist 1 golf ball), and a penny (unnamed) which he uses as a thrown weapon to decapitate Vitruvius.

Lord Business makes his home/headquarters in an impossibly high tower, protected (among other things) by "lasers, sharks, and laser sharks". This is also where he has his "Think Tank", an assembly of subjugated Master Builders forced to come up with ideas for him.

Trivia

 * When seen from behind, both his helmet and cape form the appearance of a business tie.
 * He is compared with Plankton from the SpongeBob SquarePants series what they reveled in inflcting others suffering.
 * His human counterpart, the Man Upstairs, could be seen as the secondary antagonist (or a possible Bigger Bad) of The LEGO Movie, since, ultimately, the Man Upstairs wasn't intending to do anything evil, but ended up influencing Finn (his son) to create the character of Lord Business due to his similar motives and goals.

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