Where Did BIONICLE Fall Flat?

It is, perhaps, no secret that I’ve been working on a project to rewrite the story of G1, and due to that I’ve found myself being more critical of the original story than I had been before. So, a question: where did G1 fall short narratively? Whether it be characters, pacing, setting, plot, or anything else, what are moments of the story you don’t like, or think should’ve been handled differently? More importantly, were those moments bad enough that they actively harmed the story, or were they excusable in the long run?

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Convoluted story threads that ended up going nowhere is a big one

The serials had a lot of cool ideas, but very low payoff for all the buildup.

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Once it got character-heavy later on, a lot of people ended up getting left with not much to do. Takanuva in particular felt very tacked-on when he did appear, especially when he was given so much importance during the events of Mask of Light. Even newer characters like Lesovikk didn’t actually do much to affect the current story going forward, which is kind of a shame. He was a cool setup, but… most of what he did in the plot was just fail to defeat Karzahni.

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A big complaint I have is the motivations of villains. I didn’t read the books, but a lot of the time it came down to power. Ex. Teridax and Mentus.

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I personally felt that a lot of the atmosphere was lost after '06/'07.

The Golden Years aren’t called the Golden Years because they had good sets, it’s mostly because it’s when Bionicle had the greatest atmosphere; every corner of the story was shrouded in mystery. Who are these robot things? Why do they have powers? Who or what is the Makuta? Why do they live on the island? Why is the island important?

You could say that the atmosphere became less potent because there were less questions to be answered as the story went on, but I think Bionicle actually maintained that important aspect of mystery and intrigue all the way up to '07. '08 got extremely sci-fi and less fantastical, but I think that’s down to the aesthetics and plot (as cool as the Codrex is, I personally think all of '08 could stand to maintain a similar atmosphere to '01-'03).

'09 was a step in the right direction. It brought back the mystery with a new planet entirely, but it never got to explore that planet. We never knew Bara Magna as well as we did Mata-Nui, which to me is a shame because the original map of Bara Magna had a lot of potentially interesting places that just never held any actual importance.

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I’ll state the obvious and say the end. I wish that all of the original toa as well as some of the marhi and other side characters. It would have been nice to have a more grandeur ending. One that was longer and more drawn out than what wee saw. I liked seeing the serials show us precursors to the final battle and I wish that was more present in the main story. Imagine a final battle where the toa nuva had to give their absolute all and maybe some sacrifices were made on the way. Something that would rip your heart out.

Also, is it just me that was quite annoyed that most of Brutaka’s redemption was just kind of glossed over? Like, we see that fight he has with Makuta where he’s on the right track, and then we skip pretty much right back to him and Axonn being buddies like nothing ever happened.

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Poor planning and convoluted story. Lego wasn’t sure how long Bionicles would actually run for so they kept pumping stuff out because people kept buyinband at one point sales went down. Lego got everyone confused with the story making the line mostly inaccessible to new fans.

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