Most well-known as the creator of Archer – a show that busied itself by repeatedly sending its characters from one genre to the next, ditching espionage for Indiana Jones-style adventure and sci-fi – he’s adept at orchestrating the bickering between a fractious squad of teammates. But the Lord-Miller sensibility is filtered here through the mediating influence of director Matt Thompson, bringing his experience with adult-geared small-screen animation to bear on features for the first time.
(And not just because Will Forte voices Abraham Lincoln for the third time in his decades-spanning partnership with the two of them.) A 101-level United States social studies textbook supplies the playground this time around, filling out a super-squad roster with names and faces from the national mythos. Netflix’s irreverent new release America: the Motion Picture, on which Lord and Miller are only listed as producers albeit touted in the trailer, resumes their distinct anything-goes approach to fun-time with an added grownup bent. The Lego Movie epitomized their attitude toward intellectual property as another toy to be zoomed around while using the mouth to make airplane noises Batman, Gandalf and Han Solo all pop up in a purer, more knowing expression of the hyperactive crossing-over that’s since given us Ready Player One, Avengers: Endgame and soon the Space Jam sequel. As one of the two credited writers on Into the Spider-Verse, Lord cherrypicked alternate-dimension Spider-Men (or is it Spiders-Man?) hailing from anime and film noir, and the duo’s revival of the 21 Jump Street property included faux plans for a string of sequels sticking the main characters in fantasy scenarios from “Ninja Academy” to “Scuba Class”.