They would be outsiders, feared by the small weaklings as some add, and theres is nothing stopping a Toa from abusing his power like that and enslaving them all.
This is why Matoran should not be weaklings and can actually fight for their home cause how else would they even survive to even have a civilization if they cant even go outside and not get eatten by a biomechanical animal.
Its because people wanted to see them do stuff and be actually useful in the story, and Bionicle was great in those moments when they shown that Matoran can fight just as same as the Toa (specially when united). Its what makes us care about them, makes them more believable and relatable.
Then why repeat that dumb idea if it was just as problematic as then. Plus these matorans sure aint the matoran of G1, or are they still made by machines, dont love, dont have true indipendence, blood cells of a giant robot…
Which contradicts Eljays statement of them being weak and useless, which is just not true.
Not necessarily. Physically yes, they were weakened, but while on Mata Nui the Matoran could really handle themselves pretty well. On Metru Nui, it’s a different story, since the Matoran did need the Toa, and eventually the Vahki to keep them safe.
And you dont put anything stake to them. If they are the everyman then they should be the everyman, not drones that need everything done for them cause the everyman is capable of doing great things when he puts his mind to it…such examples being R2D2 and C3PO which were with out any question the viewers window into the world of star wars from the point of view of someone that are ordinary in that setting (nothing specially about them), but became heroes through their actions.
Thats super limiting to the potential that each group can portray. Why not a story of a cowardly or weak Toa that doesnt use his powers for anything, or a Very strong Matoran capable standing against a Toa due to being very skilled… it just adds more when you dont limit yourself to such archaic nostalgic ideas.
you are aware that you make it sound like the mantle of a Toa have more draw backs than positives right?
Pros:
immense elemental powers, Being taller than everyone else.
Cons:
Being feared by your former friends and family, having to live outside your village like an outcast out of fear that you will destroy it, have to fend off any and all threats to your village at the risk of your own life.
Not only that but a Toa would be a magnet for trouble, not able to be controlled cause apparently Matoran are always weaker than the Toa no matter what. Nothing stops a Toa from killing everyone if he wishes so.
Oh wait morality…for some, but that wont stop a Toa if he is better than you in every way possible…specially since that same freaking problem accured in previous generations because a Toa abused its power and the Matoran somehow were unable to fight back no matter what, and apparently they are only able to get stuff done if they have another Toa to help them but thats unreliable since they can be also killed by a Toa and what then, Matoran genocided. Even super heroes can be killed by regular people despite them being weaker then the super heroes.
The Matoran portrayed got stronger. Of course the Matoran in the universe didn’t get stronger.
I didn’t mean to imply that Matoran were anywhere near the strength of Toa, I meant their usefulness varied.
2001-2002: Weakened. (Useless outside of supper-specific situations)
2003: Standard. (Mildly useful)
2004: Standard. (Useless outside of supper-specific situations)
2006-2007: Technically weakened, but with more powerful gear and a higher level of competency than previous years. (Very useful)
2008: Super-powered, by Matoran standards. (Must have)
2009: Agori. (Not Matoran, strong but not helpful most of the time)
Of course Matoran should never be as tough as Toa, I’m just saying that making them weak isn’t really necessary to help build up the Toa.
(I hope I’m not coming off as confrontational, I just really enjoy getting into the nitty-gritty of these conversations, you know?)
hey that actually makes me thing, what if the Matorans don’t want a Toa. What if Matorans have grown a fear and dislike for the Toa mantle because they ither failed them a long time ago or because they ended up abusing their powers. And our current generation of Toa only desited to become Toa ither because the elemental gods demanded them to pick up the mantle, or because of the Rahkshi attacking the villages and thus the matoran version of our Toa team desited that the only way to save their people was to become a Toa.
I put very little stake in them. Way less than our main characters, that’s for sure. Also, being the everyman is meant to juxtapose against the Toa, a clear comparison as to why they’re so special.
If these are stories to tell, I couldn’t tell you. Right now, that doesn’t sound like anything these Toa would do. Maybe that will play into things, but right now, there are only six, and none of them at this point are cowards or weak.
Yes, you are right. This is a point where you are correct. There is nothing here I disagree with.
I think that situationally the Matoran were helpful, sometimes. I suppose that some of my wording is/was a bit hyperbolic, however I still stand by it. I’ll certainly contest some of your points, especially since the 2007 Matoran weren’t really useful and only had gear that was helpful for that situation, but even still they needed the Toa Mahri. Additionally, quite certain that the Av-Matoran were only slightly stronger than an average Matoran due to being in Karda Nui.
Well, maybe not everyone, but certainly anyone. I think the Matoran should be able to bring down a rogue Toa of “average” strength and experience, but it would involve a lot of organization, and sacrificing basically all the fighting aged inhabitants of an entire region. (I would actually consider this the upper-limit of “average” Toa abilities)
But, it would need to reach the point of genocide to motivate the Matoran to do something like that. So some random elder gets on a Toa’s nerves? Sure, absolutely nothing stopping him from lopping off the elder’s head whenever the he feels like it. Well, nothing stopping him but other Toa.
Agreed. I just feel that following the standard mini-fig template would help reinforce the “everyman” theme, given system’s established tropes.
Of course. The Av-Matoran thing is a matter of perspective, IMO. Matoran being about as strong as humans, the ability to change color and throw rays of light seem like super-powers to me, but I supposed compared to the rest of the Bionicle universe.
My point was just that there is no clear universal president concerning the “usefulness” of Matoran, other than that they need Toa.
(Ok, thanks. I remember reading some of my old stuff on the LMB, and seeing how much of a snob I came off as )
To me, it seems that the danger is making the Matoran undesirable, without nessasarilly making the Toa more desirable.
I remember a problem I always had with G1 (especially in the early years) is that I always wanted some everyman characters, but I never really wanted the Matoran because they were so small and weak (too child-like).
This was less of a problem in G2 because of the effort they put into the Protectors, but I think giving the Matoran of “G3” something (mini-legs) which Lego uses as short-hand for children would make this problem even worse.
Everyman is lazy and doesn’t aspire to greatness. He just wants to live a normal life, have a family, work a job. Heroes aren’t everyman
Put it this way: the Matoran are like the Indians of America. They can handle threats like animals and stuff, but when people from Europe came over: Europeans have guns and technology, things the Indians can’t handle. The Toa can. in a fight against a lone Rahi, A Matoran can handle himself, but against a Rahkshi, they are worthless. But not entirely. White man had advantages, but a lone white man was no match for a tribe of Indians. A team is stronger than an individual, and how have MAtoran always handled more powerful threats? Teamwork. The Ta-Koro Guard, the Voya Nui Resistance, the Chronicler’s company, the March of Dimes.
Matoran are not weak. It is the Toa who are strong.
the matoran can be reliable when it comes to an issue, all I’m saying is that the toa should be more reliable to prove that the toa are needed. Also I’m not saying elemental powers aren’t a big deal. If you actually thought about what I had said, then you would realize what I meant was the toa should walk out of it with more than the powers. I think the toa should become stronger than the average matoran to show that the matoran are not physically capable of many things the toa are capable of. The elements aren’t the whole package is what I’m trying to say, not that the powers are useless.
Exactly. The problem with deviating from the standard Mini-Fig template is that it makes the Matoran seem weak, not the Toa seem strong.
In G1, the Toa didn’t seem strong, they basically seemed just above base-line in a world of Rahksi, Vahki, and Skahkdi, while the Matoran appeared so diminutive that they were far below “base-line.”
They corrected this somewhat in G2, by making the Protectors, Ekimu, and Makuta tough and similar enough to form their baseline. However, if we make the Matoran deviate too much from system’s everyman tropes (which we are already pushing a bit with the masks and biomechanical nature), they could fail to form this “baseline” of power, and leave the Toa without a proper reference-point for their abilities.
Ok ok wait a second. Why would the Gods choose someone to protect a village who would eventually enslave it? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, especially since the Gods can just take away their toa attributes and take heir power away. And also this argument that the cons of the size difference would include exclusion from the village makes no sense either. Wouldn’t the matoran look up to the toa who are protecting them instead of fearing the toa?
Well at first it would seem like it would have more drawbacks, wouldn’t it? Say you’re walking down the street tomorrow and you get struck by lightning and black out. When you wake up, you’re three feet taller than everyone else, muscular, and can shoot lightning from your hands, but you have zero idea on how to control your powers, and end up wrecking a bunch of stuff by accident.
For the first few days/weeks the Toa are Toa, they would really need to get used to their new size, and powers. Showing Tahu or Onua struggle to get through a door way is a visual example of how they’re different now and showing them go through this process of figuring themselves out.
I thought of a concept later which was, what if the matorans did not want a Toa. That the Toa mantle had become hated and feared by the matorans because of the actions of the former Toa team that protected their island had lead to their ancestors suffering an age of darkness which thus forced the Matorans to protect themselves from danger. Thus by the time the Rahkshi attacks, the matorans have no wish to have a new generation of Toa to save them even though the Rahkshi are causing major harm and destruction to their villages, saying such things like “a Toa is worse than a hundred Rahkshi.” Thus when the Matorans who will become our main heroes are transformed into Toa, the Matorans are both fearful and angry with them. Thus having our heroes not only having to save the island from the Rahkshi, getting used to their new powers and form but also having to gain the trust of their people and to prove that they are heroes.
I get what you mean, and its a good suggestion, but ultimately I find it to be less effective then simply reducing the length of the legs. The components of our minifigure designs will change depending on the route we go.
If you make matoran characters the same size as the toa, give them a cloth-ey villager aesthetic, and give them distinct varied printing between characters (for instance, Jaller and Takua) then you still run the risk of losing the prominence and importance of the Toa characters regardless of what the character is wearing on his printing.
I’ll bring up the chima example we used on the podcast
There are lesser characters that are dressed less ornament-ally in this poster, but having never seen chima myself I still find it difficult to pin-point exactly who are the main characters here (other then Larval who is the only one I know). I can look at each character in this lineup and start to pick apart who is more prominent, but that’s already more work then I should need to be putting in when there’s an extremely simple solution to the problem that already has a precedent in the past.
So to re-iterate my point from the podcast, in terms of creating the same level of distinction between a Toa and Matoran character that the size difference would make, you’d have to reduce the printing of the matoran characters to be essentially templates of one another with minor color differences between regions. I dont want to do that, though. I want our matoran to have as many unique prints as our toa do, but I still want their differences to be conveyed appropriately
Yes, but it’s not so much that I want to reject the importance of the lore, because I think you can incorporate elements of the lore within the sets too and I don’t think making the legs shorter takes away from that, rather I feel it enhances it because it gives a clear understanding of the difference between these two characters without the need to dive further into the story to find out.
Tahu has powers, Jaller does not.This level of clarity is not as effective if we reduce this difference to purely the printing, in my opinion.
This statement is just pure conjecture and hyperbole. There is no logical basis for this claim at all.
You might as well say LEGO lines get canceled because there’s not enough pink.
Yes, if we were planning on making sets that feature both marines and spartans I would make the spartans taller. However, my method would be to extend the legs of the spartans via foot pieces ala Harley Quinn instead of shortening the marines. In this instance its because these characters are human and have actual hieghts parameters that should be retained. The solution to reduce their legs works better for matoran because they are essentially mechanical aliens so their heights are not tied to any form of reality.
for the record, I’m not really opposed to this method for the matoran either, but the hobbit legs are just a simpler and more effective solution to me.
…You can be physically weaker then the heroes of the story and still be able to defend yourself to a degree. Being smaller does not mean that they’re going to break every bone in their body as though they’re made of glass, it means that taking on larger foes is more dangerous for them. You seem to be ignoring the fact that most of our toa were warriors before they became toa. There are matoran armies in this world. Mangai is a military region that fights off hordes of rahi.
The point is that they are less effective than the toa. Not helpless. Kopaka can take on a muaka all by himself, but its going to take a small militia of matoran to take on the muaka without the aid of a toa.
This is why the chroniclers company is so beloved, because they were able to accomplish so much in spite of their weaknesses.
EXACTLY. These are examples of problems our Toa will have once its time to integrate back into society. Spoiler alert, its going to be difficult for them! That’s part of the plot!
I just really enjoy getting into the nitty-gritty of these conversations, you know?)
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