If there’s one decent thing you can say about living in the future, it’s that the quality, quantity, and diversity of TV and film clips that enterprising animators have rendered in the style of popular Danish rectangular prism firm LEGO has really exploded. For instance: Have you ever asked yourself what one of the single funniest scenes of HBO’s Succession would look like with a little plastic Matthew Macfadyen and a little plastic Zack Robidas facing off?
We speak, of course, of the frequently passed-around sequence from the show’s second-season episode “Panic Room,” in which Macfadyen’s typically feckless Tom Wambsgans is forced to try to vet news network anchor Mark Ravenhead for possible Nazi ties, and finds that his quarry fails to bat away even the softest of softballs. That scene, like many before it, has now become the subject of animator Trevor Carlee, who has very successfully rendered the sequence into a more blocky form, as he has with shows ranging from Abbott Elementary to It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia‘s famous “The Implication.”
Carlee isn’t using actual LEGO pieces here, obviously, instead animating the scene in Blender. (If you’re curious, Carlee lays out the full process he uses, starting from building sets and pieces in a couple of different apps, in an interview here.) But the effect is pretty impressive—especially as it applies to facial expressions. (It also highlights one of the weirder facts of the original Succession scene, i.e., the presence of present-day Secretary Of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on the TV in the background. Carlee has taken some, ahem, liberties with how Noem, who was a House Rep. for South Dakota when the episode was filmed, is depicted.) Above all, it’s a strong reminder of just how good Macfadyen—placed in a rare straight man role—is here, his expertly timed delivery coming through in either flesh or plastic. (God, the way he hits “It seems you’re short a few million,” when Ravenhead is listing off the casualties of World War II, is just golden. Wait, are we going to fall back into a Succession re-watch because of an online LEGO video?!)
