| “ | 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 to Emmet and taunting him. |
| “ | It's nothing personal. It's just business. Lord Business. Ciao! | „ |
| ~ Lord Business betraying Bad Cop. |
| “ | A special one? What a bunch of hippy dippy baloney. | „ |
| ~ Lord Business talking about the special one |
Lord Business, also known as President Business or just simply known as Business, is the main antagonist of the 2014 hit animated film The LEGO Movie, and a minor character in its 2019 sequel The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. He is the villainous and cruel president/overlord who wanted to destroy the LEGO world by gluing it together with the powerful superweapon known as the "Kragle".
He was voiced by Will Ferrell, who also played Jacobim Mugatu in the Zoolander franchise, Megamind in DreamWorks' Megamind, and The Man Upstairs (his human counterpart and the ultimate antagonist of The LEGO Movie).
History
The LEGO Movie
Lord Business is a control freak who detests seeing anything out of place. He cannot stand anything that even slightly deviates from his idea of perfection, so he created walls between each section of the LEGO world to keep all of the pieces in what he believed to be their rightful places and prevent them from mingling with each other in any way not allowed by his "instructions". However, he eventually found that not satisfactory and developed a plan to use the "Kragle" (actually Krazy Glue) to forever seal every piece in place, creating a "perfect" but immobile world.
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. However, Finn's father and 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. Emmet also tells this to Lord Business, making him have a change of heart and cure everyone of the Kragle using water. After that, he reformed and became a president again.
The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
After Taco Tuesday, the Duplo Aliens visit the LEGO world, announcing their intentions to destroy it and all of their inhabitants. Emmet tries to befriend the Duplo Aliens, but his attempts at friendship end with himself, Wyldstyle, and their friends fighting the Duplo Aliens. In the midst of the chaos, Business unhelpfully tells everyone to get along before he dons a golfer outfit and leaves to go golfing leaving the others in charge of the problem. Five years later, after the defeat of Rex Dangervest and the unity of Apocalypseburg and the Systar System, Business returns to the new city telling Emmet and Lucy saying that he missed a gimmie putt for birdie on seven and that they managed to restore everything to normal. He's last seen when he hair gets on fire by Benny as he flies by and ends up running into a shop which is a firework's shop that explodes ejecting him from the universe.
Personality
Lord Business was a downright tyrant and perfectionist. He was portrayed as a stereotypical and evil ruler, a cruel man who needs everything his way. Business was completely strict, arrogant, treacherous, ruthless and above all, evil. Like many tyrants, Business desired absolute order in his domain; he divided worlds so there would be no confusion, and then ruthlessly hunted down the Master Builders. So far, the only person that he showed 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.
His public figure was a friendly public official and from sitcoms to voting machines, Business kept tight control over LEGO citizens without their knowledge as the charismatic President of Octan, but he was (in reality as soon as he putted on his hilariously over-sized crown and stilted shoes) 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?".
He also tended to mistake objects from our world as mystical items, leading to some amusing re-naming of household products. Examples include a Band-Aid as "The Cloak of Band-Aid" and Krazy Glue as "The Kragle".
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 of his villainy was due to never being called special making him a somewhat compassionate and sympathetic character.
After turning good, President Business shows a possibly cowardly side. When the Duplo Aliens attack, he abandons the conflict for five years, and doesn't return until after everything has blown over.
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 gray business suit, a white shirt, and a red necktie. 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 Micro Managers, 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.
Quotes
| “ | Really? So it's like a bunk-bed couch? Is that what it's like? That's weird. If you're sitting in the top middle how are you gonna get down without climbing over someone? If you're sitting on the bottom and you're watching TV are you gonna have to watch through a bunch of dangling legs? Who's gonna want to sit on the bottom? It is literally the most useless idea I have ever heard. | „ |
| ~ Lord Business to Bad Cop. |
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Trivia
- Albeit not a villain, Lord Business' human counterpart, the Man Upstairs, is the ultimate antagonist of The LEGO Movie, since, ultimately, the Man Upstairs was not 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.
- He had a brother named Risky Business, who was the main antagonist of the Lego Movie 4D.
- It's unknown why Lord Business was never arrested for killing Vitruvius.
- He is president of the Octan corporation and the world.
- Both his square hairpiece, cape, helmet, and leg/boot piece were designed exclusively for his character.
- His legs and the top part of his boots are also all one piece. The black slanted brick is attached to his legs, explaining why he comes with 2 pairs of legs in Lord Business' evil lair. This was done to make it sturdier, so the boots wouldn't fall off the feet during play. The black pieces are, technically, removable from the legs, but doing so may damage them.
- President Business is good and Lord Business is bad. They are both greedy. Lord/President Business is the main antagonist
- His Minifigures variant has his jacket unbuttoned as opposed to his original variant. However, he is actually based on a real world variant that appears in the film.
- It is hinted in his bio that since his company Octan makes voting machines, he may have most likely used them to cheat on the political elections. This is why he was elected instead of Abraham Lincoln.
- In the Game Builder, he appears as an obstacle. He moves up and down, smashing any unlucky heroes underneath his feet. He cannot be killed, so the hero can only dodge his attacks.
- His hairpiece differs from the one in the actual film, as the tan on it only covers the bottom part.
- He owns a collection of relics whose origins are unknown to the LEGO worlds (and are actually items made by human beings), among which is the "Cloak of Ban'Daeed" (an old, worn-out Band-Aid. Business himself had also heard that it is "super-painful to take off"), the "Sword of Exact Zero" (an X-ACTO knife blade), the "Fleece-Crested Scepter of Que-Teep" (a Q-Tip cotton swab), the "Po'lish Remover of Na'il", (a container of nail polish remover), the Orb of Ti-Teleest (a Titleist golf ball) and his ultimate weapon, the Kragle (a tube of Krazy Glue with the letters 'z', 'y', and 'u' smudged out). Also seen in his relic collection is a 3.5-inch floppy disk, a binder clip, a key, a golf tee, an apple core, a pen cap, a calculator, a cassette tape, a bottle of White-Out, a staple remover, a highlighter, a rubber band, a package of stick gum, a thumb tack, a fortune cookie, some Post-Its, an Eraser, two mismatched jigsaw puzzle pieces forced together, a spring, a 9-volt battery, a permanent marker, the penny Lord Business uses to remove Vitruvius' head, the "Kragle Antidote", etc. Also seen in the video game are tangled earphones, a collection of three gummy bears, and the tin foil used by Emmet and Wyldstyle to make robot disguises.
- From behind, Business' helmet and cape form the appearance of a business tie.
- In the "Behind the Bricks" video on LEGO.com, President Business stated that he was rather displeased with the filmmakers' decision to cast Will Ferrell as him as he had hoped to be voiced by either Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, or Cuba Gooding Jr.
- In the videogame, Lord Business can use the Kragle gun. Additionally, there are red and black platforms that activate his legs. Doing so will allow him to use switches that are too high for other characters. Lord Business can use that platform again to deactivate the legs.
- In the videogame, despite having normal minifigure legs, Lord Business is unable to use Dispantsers. This was done due to his leg machines.
- He may suffer from OCD seeing as everything has to be orderly and separated in his mind.
- In The LEGO Movie 4D A New Adventure, it is revealed that he has an older brother named Risky Business.
- The "Oops, I've got the antidote for the Kragle, how did that happen?" scene was cut from the video game.
- it is unlikely that in the LEGO movie universe both Lord Garmadon and Lord Business had some kind of alliance
Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi was believed to be the main antagonist due to some similarities and gestures identical to the President Business
- they are both the rulers of their respective LEGO worlds
- When the Queen is in the shape of an evil one, her horns are almost like Lord Business's helmet
- In the climax of both films, both used the excuse of a party for their plans that ended in a disaster for their citizens (with the exception that Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi only wanted to marry Batman and unite both worlds, the armageddon was proved by Rex Dangervest , while Lord Business really wanted to glue the whole planet)
- They both had an ally (Sweet Mayhem and Bad Cop ) who helped them kidnap the protagonists for their plans (The Queen wanted them as guests for their wedding, while the President wanted them to destroy the protagonists and use the Kragle in taco Tuesday)
- Now that both worlds are united it is not known who will rule the world of LEGO, whether Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi or President Business, but it is probable that Business continues with its status as president due to being the owner of the world and the queen has not ruled as much as Business did, and also because he was the creator of all the LEGO kingdoms
