The Magic Portal

The Magic Portal is a 1988 brickfilm by Lindsay Fleay about the adventures of a spaceman who escapes through a portal into the "real world." It is a well-known and highly-regarded early brickfilm, and due to its stature it has also been known to be misattributed as the first ever brickfilm. It is possibly the first brickfilm that received funding for its production that was not created for The LEGO Group.

Plot
On board a space ship, crewman El is being yelled at by Capt. Paranoia. Pee, another crewman, tries to comfort El, but El brushes past. As El walks down a corridor, he discovers a strange flashing portal. Confused, El walls through the portal and looks behind him. He's shocked to discover a great black hallway from where he just walked. El enters the portal and finds himself in a strange maze-like landscape.

Strange red creatures slither past El and materialize a car. El gets in the car and drives away, and the creatures enter the portal. El drives around but eventually hits a dead end. A roaring in the distance alerts him to a mechanical two-headed beast. As the beast approaches, the dead end in front of El opens up and El escapes, but the beast is right behind him. A chase ensues, and El barely escapes by narrowly passing in front of a train. Spotting the portal before him, El makes his way toward it, but his car disintegrates, sending a tire rolling into the portal. The beast passes over El to follow the tire into the portal. On the other side of the portal, a human man (the Animator) is building a set. The beast appears through the portal and bites the Animator on the hand.

El returns through the portal, runs to Capt. Paranoia, and frantically acts out his adventures. Capt. Paranoia throws El out. El takes Pee to where the portal was, but discovers it missing. Meanwhile, Capt. Paranoia hears an alarm, and discovers the strange red creatures wandering the corridors of the ship. Capt. Paranoia runs to grab his gun and then is startled by the appearance of the portal. Capt. Paranoia goes through the portal and finds himself in a white expanse. A shark fin appears and swims past Capt. Paranoia, who shoots at it. The fin turns into a round smiling face, and then a creature with two large legs, then a firing cannon, and finally a toilet that flushes Capt. Paranoia away. The toilet turns into a Plasticene character and goes through the portal.

Capt. Paranoia finds himself on the underside of a massive sheet of paper, in the "real world". When he makes his way out, he discovers a studio set that looks like his ship. Exploring it, Capt. Paranoia finds El and Pee. He leads them to the portal, and all three of them walk through, followed by the Plasticene. They are in the "real world," dwarfed by a human-sized typewriter. Capt. Paranoia spots the Plasticene and tries to shoot it, but El and Pee persuade him against it. Instead he shoots at new creatures made from glue containers and screws. The screw-creatures chase the four into an emergency exit, which lands them in a shoe. El begins to drive the shoe to outrun the screw-creatures, and narrowly avoids the reappearing two-headed beast, which begins to chase them.

El drives the shoe down a hall, through a kitchen, and outside. The two-headed beast is in hot pursuit. El frantically drives the shoe through an overgrown area and into a garage. The shoe hits a ramp and flies up onto a table and into a set, where the Animator is working. The shoe destroys the set and the Animator screams as the two-headed beast appears and knocks over the camera. The Animator sighs and begins to rebuild, placing El, Pee and Capt. Paranoia back into their rapidly-reassembling ship. Everything is back to normal, and the camera zooms into the magic portal as the film ends.

Cast

 * Ingle Knight - El
 * Bernie Davis - Pee
 * Ross Bryant - Capt. Paranoia
 * Tina Williamson - The Plasticene
 * Lindsay Fleay - The Animator

Crew

 * Lindsay Fleay - Director, Writer, Editor, Producer
 * Thomas Kayser - Composer

Legal problems
Fleay was planning on entering The Magic Portal into multiple film festivals and competitions. Before he did though, he wanted to make sure The LEGO Group was okay with it. After months of legal uncertainty, The LEGO Group sent a letter telling him to "surrender all copies of the film and everything with it to us in seven days.". Fleay disregarded the deadline, sent them a copy of the film instead, and waited. A month of complete silence passed before he received a complete legal backdown.

References in other media
In The LEGO Movie (2014), The Magic Portal is the name given to a decorated cardboard tube that the main character Emmet uses to get back to Bricksburg. Co-director Philip Lord confirmed via Twitter that this is an intentional reference to the brickfilm The Magic Portal.