The third movie in The Lego Movie franchise is a deeply frustrating experience. Neither of the other two instalments – 2014’s The Lego Movie, and 2017’s The Lego Batman Movie – are beacons of equality, but The Lego Ninjago Movie is especially disappointing, because it has everything it needs to get it right, but still gets it spectacularly wrong.

The film is directed by Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, and Bob Logan. For Logan and Fisher, this is their directorial debut. Bean has some experience in television and short filmmaking, but this is his feature length debut. The film is written by Logan, Fisher, William Wheeler, Tom Wheeler, Jared Stern, John Whittington, Hilary Winston, Dan Hageman, and Kevin Hageman. That’s eight male writers and one woman writer, just to...

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