The Cons of Bionicle

Oh boy. Before hand I will note that most of these will be link between each other, because thats how problems tend to be, always linked with each other in a glorious mess of things.

-Being hindered by the fact that the story revolves around selling the toys.
I know its Lego and that is their goal, but most of the time they are only trying to make stuf look cool for kids or sculpt the story so as you, the consumer, will buy their product toys. By it self is understandable why the company is doing that, its just hindering it from its full potential. There is so much you can expand with this concept of Robots, magic, nature that its a shame really.

  • Having no expanded universe besides the one given by One writer and Lego.
    Greg is a good written, but he is not the only one out there. There are a lot of good writers that can flesh out different aspects of this world that Greg cant and in a way we never saw from this franchise. Im pointing to Star Wars as the best example because they made their EU so interesting and so great (shout out to the Thrawn trilogy), that most people would still to this day consider some major events in it canon.

  • Inconsistency between media.
    I agree with this because, what we see as canon is from the books, comics, movies and trailers. With most of them not following any cohesion in terms of story telling, which basically made the story of Bionicle so convoluted in the first place. Having a stable EU is essential if we want this franchise to last longer than the next cancellation and not being “selling toys” dependent.

-(This is still up for debate as the G2 story has not come out yet).
Not doing a proper reboot of the story.
While most would say it was necessary to start from scratch I tend to disagree because of the fact that the story of the previous line could have still be considered and expanded upon…if this new story was link with it.
Time travel in fiction is always tricky to pull of, but if done properly is amazing. Same thing was done with numerous Terminator movies, and most resent, The Star Trek series. It made that, the previous story was still there, it still had meaning and significance, but it also was linked with the one we have now so that by the time you get to G2 you have this massive EU that you can keep adding too without having to tell the story of what a Toa is, or what a matoran/villager is (if they did let loose with the EU, shrug).

These are just some of them, more I will evaluate afterwards if interested.


I can not stress this enough, that we need a proper
Expanded Universe in order to make this franchise a long lasting one
solely outside of Lego marketing influence. Easier said than done with a
toyline from such a company like Lego.

Edited for Double Post -Nyran

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You say this, and then go on to list almost exclusively subjective cons and opinions., such as

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Well they’re sorta validated

like the rest of this topic

…wow Deja Vu

Anyway I guess to add more to the list of cons would be…

…Eh I got nothing to think of. Anyone else got more cons we could talk about?

I personally don’t consider this a con. For one, it means they practically have to keep the story interesting and engaging. They need to pander to fans to keep it going. Also, any mainstream story you see is made to make money. Money, money, money is the ultimate goal for anything mainstream, even books and comics. Money.

I agree so so much. The only reason the Star Wars Universe is(was) so expansive and good is because they allowed multiple writers to work on their own stories. If LEGO had hired two or three more writers we could have gotten such a huge expansion and a heck of a lot more lore. Also, we might not have as many loose ends after the end of G1 because wrapping up all those stories as one already, insanely busy author, it just can’t be done. Ideas were ultimately rushed and I don’t think we got the endings we needed.

Well you have to consider the fact that with such widespread media coverage, you really need to get your point across quick and easy, which for LEGO, is “Buy our BIONICLES.” so things like commercials and the little LEGO magazine comics aren’t going to be “good” for canon. However, even the movies weren’t made to be so in-depth. Many of the events in the BIONICLE story took much, MUCH longer than what a two-hour movie can cover. It’s a limit of the medium. However, with things such as video games and books being able to tell such large stories themselves, it makes me sad that the games weren’t even meant to reflect canon. After all, LEGO’s primary goal is to sell their action figures, not their games. (Well, now it is, but before 2010 they weren’t really focused on their games beyond L:SW) So that leaves the books and the serials as the only really acceptable canon. Those were meant to be in-depth and complex. Granted, maybe not as complex as it eventually was, but you cannot deny the fact that LEGO wanted to save their complex story for the books. Books they, once again, weren’t focusing on selling because they were only meant to boost BIONICLE.

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^^I’m going to bring this up again, since it was never really branched upon. What did/do you guys think about scale? I personally think that with the use of CCBS for BIONICLE G2, we have a much better chance of accurate scale.

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Oh, definitely! As long as the building system doesn’t change much the scale shouldn’t change.

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From looking at the sets, Gali is the only set that shows femininity out of all of them. Unless some of the protectors are female and both male and female protectors have the same build, which honestly doesn’t really bother me, its like Nokama was as a turaga, she had the same build as the others.

If they only have the protector of water and Gali as the only female characters this year, I’m going to be pretty disappointed. But right now due to lack of story right now, its hard to say.

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I just posted this in the retcon topic, but I just realized how many things in BIONICLE just existed for the sake of the plot, or even the sets, that had vague/undefined/unlimited powers. I understand having to explain the sets, but still, seriously…
-The Ignika
-The Red Star (Okay, I know it has a defined power, but it’s kinda cheap how no MU inhabitants can really die. I mean really though. LHIKAN! NO!!!
KnevermindLOL)
-The Pit Mutagen
-Energized Protodermis
-Adaptive Armor

EDIT: Also there were too many “being controlled by another person/evil/darkness” sort of things in the plot. Not that it’s a bad thing, it was just a bit overused.
-Infected Masks
-Krana
-Kraata (which are related to the infected masks I guess…)
-Zadakh/Nuurakh/Bordakh staves
-Hordika Venom, to an extent
-Zamor spheres
-squid
-shadow leeches
-the Golden Skinned Being
I probably missed a couple

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squids just drained your life force and killed you. They never controlled you.

also, the Mask of Mind Control, too. And Annona.

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I still think almost everything (especially in regards to powers/abilities) in BIONICLE is somewhat undefined, which makes it hard to play out logical scenarios/battles in my head (though it’s not nearly as bad as Harry Potter IMO).

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I dunno man, it could’ve been worse. In the ENTIRE Glatorian/Spherus Magna line, there was only one singular female that made it into a set; Kiina.

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Very true. I mean, the Inika/Mahri, and even the Metru, hardly ever used their elemental powers (at least visibly) whereas with the Mata/Nuva, elemental power was a larger focus. (eg the Nuva Symbols)

The Metru couldn’t use their powers for most of the time they were Toa because they exhausted them fighting the Morbuzahk. In the books leading up to the Hordika transformation, they used them a ton.

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The Inika had their mask powers, elemental powers, electricity powers, Toa tools and Zamor launchers. They didn’t even need their elemental powers. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I think its a shame that the story wasn’t self aware that the characters were constraction figures. Not in a breaking the fourth wall sort of way but more akin to how the toa Mata built them selves and how they literally arrived in what they were packaged in.

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Yeah, but would you want them to take the route of… uh… every other Lego anything, where the plot is focused around taking apart things in the environment and rebuilding them into completely illogical but somehow effective methods of plot resolution? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Imagine if the canisters were EXACTLY like the sets, as in the sets were already somewhat assembled :stuck_out_tongue:

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I agree the gender restrictions were stupid. Most other fans do as well.

However, I disagree that the grittier feel of the later years was inherently bad; sure it got kind of goofy in 2006, but somehow I found it more interesting than the rainbow magic happy land you seem to want it to be. I mean, I may be misinterpreting this, but you seem to be citing the first three years’ tribal mystique as a bad thing, which is frankly one of the stupider things I’ve heard in my life.

I’d rather have quality over quantity when it comes to female characters, though of course, ideally the two shouldn’t have to be mutually exclusive. And admittedly not many of the female characters we had were written the best, aside from Gali, Nokama, and Hahli. Still, just dumping loads and loads of female characters into the story won’t help one bit if the way they’re written doesn’t improve as well.

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I only got majorly into the details of the story maybe a year or so before it came back, although I have been a fan for much longer. And I’m pretty much a human Bionicle encyclopedia.

How is this relevant?