BIONICLE's frustrating state in pop culture

I respectfully disagree with both of these points. First, this has been tried already - G2 had Journey to One, and it failed. Now you can argue that JtO wasn’t a good attempt at TV, but it was still an attempt to fit Bionicle into the TV medium. Also, consider the Hero Factory TV series, which is yet another attempt to place constraction on the small screen. Insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Second, TV is a very hard medium to do in-depth storytelling in the way Bionicle does with the mystery, especially for a children’s franchise. The closest TV show comparison I would give to Bionicle isn’t Ninjago, it’s more like LOST or the Mentalist. Both of those shows have a driving mystery behind them - Ninjago had no mystery. Also, a reminder that LOST struggled past season 2 and that the Mentalist was held together by the characters charm more than the mystery.

Okoto had a little bit of mystery going on - the dark world, the mysterious planets the Toa came from, the ancient city and what happened to Ekimu, but it was all too on the surface and forced. The thing about 2001 was that we were in the unknown without knowing that we were in the unknown. The unknown was subtle instead of blatant. Bionicle’s essence, or part of it, was making the fans work for clarity, and that can’t be accomplished on TV. The camera keeps rolling, bringing you to the solution faster than your brain can process the problem.

No, Bionicle is primarily a gaming and reading medium. When you read, you control the pace of reveal, and same deal when you’re playing a game. You’re exploring the unknown - the mystery, finding the answers - at your pace.

Coincidentally, this is what Lego does well. Lego Universe - failed due to money, but awesome game. Chima Online - yes. Hero Factory Breakout game - boom. Glatorian Arena - check. And of course, the eye of the storm, the golden cheesecake, the Mata Nui Online Game.

The other thing that was really good was the novels - back in the early ‘00s, Harry Potter was a thing and novels were all the rage. Also back in that time there was a huge push to get children to read for some reason, and Bionicle took advantage of that. While I think novels would be essential hardware for a Bionicle return, getting good money off of them would require a serious push not only of Bionicle, but to get kids reading them again. Either that, or the books would have to be longer to appeal to the older fanbase.

So I think the best way to Bring Bionicle Back is not a TV show, nor a book set. The best way to do it is a game. Making it a game doesn’t mean lack of mass appeal - Fortnite exists. And I mean, check out the setup - all that TV show stuff has gotten us nowhere, but we have a cool looking game and boom! Press coverage.

This isn’t pop culture frustration at all - instead, it is a prime intersection between Bionicle and our current culture that we need to take advantage of. It is a direction. I think the frustration comes not from medium, but from the fact that we don’t have a mystery any more.

I mean, our last mystery was resolved in a huge giant robot, and the cat’s out of the bag. We can’t go back - if we want to reboot the franchise, we need another grand mystery like giant robot was. But the problem is, it can’t be a giant robot - it has to be something else, and it has to be just as cool and executed just as well. So folks, what could be that?

We can’t confirm or deny what it is here, though, because the Internet will find it and it will be a big spoiler. See the frustration? We want a mystery but you can’t design a mystery publicly because then it won’t be a mystery anymore and the story will be ruined but if you don’t design the mystery all we get are bad stories with no mystery. Argh paradox! So frustrating.

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Well, I’m pretty sure JtO would have gotten better if given more time. The main reason why that TV Show failed was G2’s premature cancellation. If it would have lasted more, I’m pretty sure it could have turned out into something great.
As much as I do agree that the TV Medium isn’t probably the best for Bionicle’s story, it’s still the medium trough which LEGO tells most of it’s stories nowdays, and I don’t see them trying anything else when promoting their toy lines.

The thing is, ‘kids’ (by which I mean people from age 5-12) aren’t interested in a story. This is why Ninjago has gone so downhill in my opinion, because lego has to appeal to the age of Fortnite and PUBG.

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Story-wise, it introduced some cool ideas, but didn’t do jack with them. The characters sucked and didn’t even feel like the Toa from G1 (Pohatu is MEAN???), the plot was contrived and didn’t make sense, and the whole thing left me feeling rather constipated.

Dunno if that’s true, given that it’s now a decade old. SOMETHING has to be making it stick around, if only its ability to radically ■■■■■ thematic direction by absorbing concepts that should go to entirely new themes (i.e. the recent “video games” arc).

If that were the case, there’d be no point to tie-in media. Stories give kids something to latch onto, they give value to the toys. Optimus Prime isn’t just a name and a faceplate, he has a backstory, wants, needs, goals, political views–all that serves to endear him to the target audience and lend value to the product. Why do you think Star Wars revolutionized the toy industry so? It’s because the movies made kids want the merch.

When that tie-in media is actually good, this serves to give the brand staying power and keep the fans hooked long after they grow up. Consider, again, Transformers–it’s had a lot of ups and downs, but those ups have been really high and given fans good media to rally behind. BW (so I’ve heard, at least), Animated, Prime–this is good ■■■■■■■ television right here, and the recent Bumblebee movie was actually really dope. This is necessary for the thing to have a BIG media presence. Ninjago is currently an “evergreen” theme, sure; but it’s not a pop-cultural powerhouse.

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The sets were great though… Even if the story wasn’t great, the sets were without a doubt one of the highlights of G2.

Not exactly. They are less critical in judging stories, but this doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t enjoy great works like “The Lion King” or “The Empire Strikes Back”. It is difficult to get their interest though, but it is another question.

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The sets were half-good, half-bad. One the one hand, the Toa were generally leagues ahead of anything out of G1, mastering that “Slizer engineering” without sacrificing looks beyond the limitations of CCBS. On the other…Skull Scorpio.

And I wasn’t really talking about sets. Merch is the least important part of an IP except for how it financially supports itself.

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i think at this point bionicle’s too dead to mainstream audiences to come back outside of meme trends, and we should move on with maybe bionicle-inspired projects or maybe wait for lego to pull off something else creatively similar. bionicle was created when lego was willing to innovate to jump back from the brink of bankruptcy though, and with how lego’s recently fallen apart creatively (although i love ninjago it doesn’t hold a torch to bionicle’s lore and especially in the swamp of licensed themes) i doubt lego would think about making another bionicle in the near future.

honestly a lego movie would’ve been the perfect way to introduce bionicle as a backdoor pilot; i can’t imagine which one, but certainly it would be a good way to get bionicle’s lore and characters to a mainstream audience and spike some sort of investment, kind of (???) like how the mandalorian is handling both mandalorians and clone wars characters i guess. hell if the ninjago movie had a part where they ended up in the bionicle realm because of some weird dimension-hopping hijinks that would’ve been a good way to use the characters as mentors to the ninja, kinda like a spiritual torch-passing or some ■■■■; with how little the movie had to do retooling it as an origin story with a lot more going on mightve helped it.

but back to bionicle: i love it but personally at this point it’s past its time; maybe we can hold one of those canonization contests for final chapters to the story serials or something, that would be neat.

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The Lego Elves line had books. Lego Dimensions exists. I just named a ton of online games that Lego used to promote their products in the post you were just responding to. Frankly, Bionicle G1 is proof that Lego can produce games and books, and do a good job of it too. We don’t have to judge the potential of Bionicle by G2 logic. In fact, we probably shouldn’t.

I mean, which would you rather want, to have a TV show or to sit down to play the G3 equivalent of the Mata Nui Online game? If you really want TV, fantastic. Get J.J. Abrams to direct it. But this is sounding like “we have to settle for TV because that’s the only way kids will like it” (I’m not accusing you of saying that, but yeah). Which sounds like “we have to compromise on quality to appeal to the kids.” No. Kids are better than that. If G3 is to exist, we have to maintain quality - we have to put it at minimum on the G1 quality level and raise the bar, not compromise or settle for lackluster quality. Faber level art and Greg level writing should be the min. That’s part of what G1 stands for - not talking down to kids, and challenging them instead.

Eh, I don’t know if JtO would have gotten better if it had continued. It suffered from cringing dialogue and off character sequences. The HF TV show was about the same output and never really got better, so I’m not sure this theory holds up. I mean, people like media at that level of quality - I even liked the HF TV show and JtO at moments. But it’s not good enough for me.

But on this subject, I’m hopelessly biased, I guess. I want games and I want books and that’s what I want for G3. I maintain that is what I should be able to expect from Bionicle, because that’s what I got from G1, and I expect G1 quality for all future reboots, at minimum. Anything less is an insult to the franchise, and I am absolutely committed to holding Lego and the Bionicle team to that standard. I am even willing to contribute to make Bionicle hit that standard in any way I can. Just because G2 failed the standard doesn’t mean that the standard has changed. Generation 1 quality is the bar.

Further, I maintain that if we do that, there is hope for the future. But if we compromise, we will get what we fear - the downward spiral of failed reboots. So if you want a TV show, make it G1 quality TV. Otherwise, I’m done.

I’m not saying this to insult you. This is just a declaration of what I am committed to as regards Bionicle. You don’t have to have the same commitment as me. But I don’t think settling for a TV show is a good idea, or lowering the standard for quality.

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Yeah, it’s attracting a new audience of kids to make it stick. It is hitting squarely in a certain age range, so as the old kids get sick of it new ones come along.
That’s not to say that nobody likes it enough to stay with it, but the number of Ninjago fans today who were Ninjago fans in 2010 is probably not huge. Bionicle has the inverse problem of this - it kept it’s audience interested, for a large part, but did little to attract new fans in later years.

This, 100%. TV is by far the hardest (bar pretty much none) medium for quality storytelling to exist within, largely thanks to it’s episodic nature that has to focus on keeping audiences “hyped” for the next episode, so-to-speak. The episode that matters least to TV producers is the final one, too (because you no longer need to please the audience anymore, financially speaking), which is why long-running series often end in awful finale episodes.

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Several years ago now, us guys over at Modularity made a video about G2’s end immediately following the cancellation announcement. In that video, @John_Smith brought up a very good point that G2 was released too early. Bionicle is a relatively recent IP in the scheme of things, and when G2 was being released, it had been a mere 15 years since it first began. If you are trying to bank on nostalgia to reboot a franchise, that’s not when you should do it.

Think of it this way. If you were 7-10 (Bionicle’s core demographic) in 2001 when Bionicle first came out, you would be between 26 and 29 now. In 2015, you would have been between 21 and 24. At least in the US, the typical 21-24 year old isn’t going to buy into a lot of nostalgia bait. At that age, you’re either just starting or just ending college. College students don’t have a huge amount of disposable income, what with y’know, education. Plus, there is a social stigma around buying toys that makes it awkward to buy toys outside of purchasing them for a child. Overall, the wrong age.

Contrast that with Transformers, and the Transformer “reboot” that was the first Bayformer film in 2007. The first line of Transformers released in 1984, and were a smash hit throughout the 80s. While their popularity never fully went away, as the graph that @Sharnak posted shows, their sales were waning. However, the mid 2000s were a ripe time to reboot. If you were 7-10 when Transformers first came out in 1984, you’d be about 30-33 in 2007. In your 30s, you’re more likely to have a family, and have kids to invest in toylines. You’re more likely to have a job that gives you disposable income. You’d be far away enough from your childhood that you’d feel longing for it. Top that off with making it “Less kiddy” and as a result “More appropriate for adults” and you’ve got a smash nostalgia bait hit.

The problem isn’t that it’s impossible for Bionicle to come back. The problem is that we as Bionicle fans are just too young. Our peers in general society remember Bionicle, but don’t possess the funds or nostalgia to successfully drive another reboot. Not yet. But the cool thing about time is that it keeps going forward. We’ll be hitting that prime age bracket within the next few years. That is when Lego should bring back Bionicle.

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I heard a rule of thumb is to wait about 30 years before something becomes profitably nostalgic. 80’s and 90’s nostalgia is currently dominant, but the 2000’s have been slowly creeping in.

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I wanna go even further and say that we need something better than G1. The Bonk lore we grew up with, while perfectly interesting at the time, is often esoteric to outsiders and, in retrospect, the narrative waffled between quality and mediocrity way too much. G3, should it happen, needs to not only tell a better story, but be more inviting to newcomers. We don’t need a continually-growing mountain of semi-incoherent lore that would make Tolkien weep; we need something with good entry points that’s easy to follow.

This is part of why I feel a TV show in the vein of TLA would be the ideal medium for Bionicle as a narrative. While these kinds of cartoons no longer thrive on cable TV, they’re making a comeback via streaming services, and that “older kids and adults” audience is just the right demographic to target because then it’s easier to run with something…well, not necessarily darker, but more grounded than Lego’s recent TV shows.

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Eh… This is LEGO we are talking about here. They are a toy compnay, and toys is the only thing they sell. And those stories they sometimes make about their toys are always more or less just extended advertising. So saying that “merch is the least important part” isn’t really true when it comes to LEGO, because that is actually their main product.
If you go into G3 expecting a great story and don’t care much about the sets, than I’m sorry to say it, but you will most likely be dissapointed. If you want a story and don’t care about the sets, then Christian Faber’s #14B2020 might be the thing for you (Faber confimred that his thing will be all about the story and isn’t interested in making sets).

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While I appreciate your commitment to storytelling quality (go! Yes!), I’m also working toward a M.F.A. in Creative Writing. I have to tell you that the type of writing that Bionicle is made of is really hard. I’ve actually tried to write it - you have to juggle the mystery thing and pace of reveal, as well as all of the other storytelling things like pacing, character personality and development, setting, tone, P.O.V, etc. The storytelling quality going up and down is a common problem with the writing type - it affected LOST, too - and the longer the franchise goes on, the worse this problem can become as everyone has to keep going at this high level.

(You’re mimicking a divine being because you’re controlling both the characters’ and audience’s perceptions at every level while at the same time engaging them with only what they know. With every new reveal, you have to adjust your characters to accommodate it, and if the reveal seems contrived to suit you, you’re done. It’s a matter of building trust with your audience and carefully serving them until the very end.)

For perspective, you’re asking Greg, Faber, and a toy company to produce a TV show that is better than LOST. LOST was made by a good director and a storytelling crack team, and they still struggled with this job. It was one of the most expensive TV shows of all time. I just hope you know what you’re asking for - the zenith of storytelling mastery. In script writing for a kids’ TV show.

As a writer, I’d be happy to rise to this challenge of tackling this zenith eventually, but I‘m not going to storm Billund if I don’t get it out of someone else. Expecting Lego to do it may be too much…we know they can pull off G1 because they did pull it off. This “greater than LOST” writing challenge…not sure on this.

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Quick question: Where did that image come from lmao I’ve had that idea for a Bionicle cosplay in my head for years

Those rumors are true. And given what happened to Chima and Nexo Knights, I don’t think Monkie Kid is gonna topple the behemoth that is Ninjago.

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I don’t think that is their intention though… They confirmed that Monkie Kid is aimed specifically at the Asian market, so I don’t think they want for it to replace Ninjago, but rather, they want to emulate Ninjago’s success in China, because it seems like Ninjago doesn’t sell well in China for whatever reason.

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The merch is the thing that supports the line financially. It is the most superficial component of any franchise because it’s just material possessions. It cannot impart ideas or knowledge as storytelling can. It is of little artistic merit and has little value beyond being a collectible. It warrants no emotional attachment by itself and doesn’t define cultural trends.

Given Lego’s recent track record, sure, they’re likely to screw up–but toy-based franchises can give us really good stuff. Transformers is a done-to-death example, but ■■■■■■, it proves my point. Lego just needs to hire good writers willing to give it their all, and it’ll work itself out from there.

I’m also going into CW myself, and I’m gearing up for a screenwriting course next semester; and I’ve also taken a whack at attempting to write my own Bonk reboot. I’ve radically changed direction since that attempt, which I never finished, but I learned an important lesson: an episodic format is best here. This way, you can develop all 2 or 3 Toa at a time from episode to episode, building on their characters in completed, semi-contained arcs rather than juggling all of them at once.

I know nothing about Lost, but I’m certainly not asking that of Greg. Greg is definitely not the guy for the job. Lego needs to hire an actual studio for this–and stuff like TLA proves that even a kid’s show can have super deep characters and worldbuilding. I’m tempted to flesh out a full pitch to illustrate one good direction I think it can take, but idk if I wanna do all that rather than writing an actual fanfic.

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Cough, comics. Yes, there are the Sandmans and the Watchmen, but I can’t count the amount of times where I’ve been driven to frustration by the completely unquenchable need for comics to return to the status quo. The frequent erasure of progress and development every few years is what keeps killing my desire to read comics anymore.

As for TV, I point to examples like Farscape and Battlestar Galactica, where you have an episodic format that serves as a part of a larger narrative. I don’t care for the current style of serialisation, where a series of television is essentially a ten-hour film. I think Bionicle could do an episodic format fairly well, but I do fear it’d fall into “monster of the week” extremely quickly. I don’t think it’d be all too suited to serialised television either; what drew so many of us into Bionicle was the rich world, where the Toa are the heroes, but far from the only story in progress.

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