| “ | Nothing personal, it's just business. Lord Business, Ciao! | „ |
| ~ Lord Business |
| “ | Hey. Not so special anymore are you? 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. But, no matter how unspecial I am, you are a thousand, billion times more special than me! | „ |
| ~ Lord Business justifying his evil. |
| “ | Hahahahaha! See, your friends, oh they're finished! My world is almost finshed, the last thing I need to do is finish you! | „ |
| ~ Lord Business to Emmet before attempting to kill him. |
Lord Business (also known as President Business or just simply Business) is the (former) main antagonist of the 2014 LEGO crossover film, The LEGO Movie. He is the 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 and The Man Upstairs - his human counterpart.
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 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.
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 greedy, selfish, strict, arrogant, scandalous, short-tempered, thoughtless, uncaring, brutal, ruthless, unfair, 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 while 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.
Role in The LEGO Movie
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. And now he reforms to be a president again.
Abilities and arsenal
Lord Business is a mastermind villain 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.
Gallery
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Trivia
- It can be possible that he becomes the supporting protagonist in The LEGO Movie Sequel.