In the sprawling multiverse of Lego media—from the Oscar-nominated heights of The Lego Movie to the epic fantasy of Ninjago —there is a singular, often overlooked cornerstone. Before Emmet’s “Everything is Awesome” and long before Batman met Bad Cop, there was a man with spiky blonde hair, a laser-welding tool, and a spaceship fueled by pure swagger. That man was Clutch Powers.
The Lego Adventures of Clutch Powers is not the best Lego movie ever made. But it is the most important one you’ve never heard of. It proved that a plastic brick could carry a feature-length narrative, that a minifigure could have an ego, and that a ghost king can, in fact, be defeated by a well-aimed catapult loaded with a toilet brick. the lego adventures of clutch powers
After securing his prize, Clutch is summoned by the tyrannical-but-silly "Boss" (voiced by NewsRadio ’s Joe Gnoffo) to a new crisis. The evil ghost king, Mallock the Malign (Roger Rose), has escaped his prison in the Space Police sector and fled to the medieval world of Ashlar. Clutch is tasked with assembling a team. In the sprawling multiverse of Lego media—from the
This is where the film introduces its second act: Clutch is paired with a bumbling Space Police cadet and a squad of raw recruits, including a wise-cracking construction worker and a geeky history buff. They crash-land in Ashlar, a world governed by classic Castle-era rules. Their weapons are useless against magic, so they must learn to build catapults, siege towers, and a dragon-mech to defeat Mallock. The Lego Adventures of Clutch Powers is not
Released on March 23, 2010, The Lego Adventures of Clutch Powers was a landmark moment for the brick. It was the first-ever computer-animated feature film produced directly by Lego, serving as a pilot of sorts for the company’s modern cinematic identity. But does this 13-year-old (now nearly 16-year-old) artifact hold up, or is it merely a pile of loose bricks in the history of animation? The film opens exactly as its title promises: with an adventure. We meet Clutch Powers (voiced by Ryan McPartlin), the best builder and explorer in the Lego universe. Alongside his robotic partner, the deadpan HP (a nod to Lego’s internal "Hip-Piece" figure), Clutch races through a collapsing space station to retrieve a priceless artifact. He is arrogant, reckless, and impossibly cool—think Indiana Jones if Indy carried a brick separator instead of a whip.
It is a fascinating time capsule. The animation is clunky, the run time is short (45 minutes), and the plot is predictable. But the jokes land, the pacing is breakneck, and the nostalgia hit is massive. It is the Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) movie of the Lego world—rough around the edges but full of heart.
8 out of 10 Brick Separators.