I believe that is was stated by lego that they were all 24karrat gold
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I refuse to believe that Lego would pour in all that cash just for these “legit golden masks”, that are merely used as sparkly Christmas decorations.
Perhaps they resold the masks to the gold manufacturer to have them re-melted, and get their money back?
doubt it. they are probably gonna have some contest or put it in one random skull grinder set like the gold C-3PO. promotional purposes.
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you know,
it’s
anti-magical
to see how quickly you all give up hope and hive-mind.
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Not everyone replying here has given up hope. We are simply discussing our opinions.
could have fooled me…
seriously, read some of the lengthier comments here.
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I hadn’t actually seen 7 or 8 before I wrote that post. Now having seen them, I get a bit more about what you are saying. They still seem much more like stereotypes, and I think LEGO’s content with that, but I guess they have had SLIGHTLY more effort put into them than I originally anticipated 
Are we getting books and/or comics? I realize it’ll probably be too late if we ever do get more media, but that could be a chance of saving it for some people.
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“That toy line is our only hope.”
“No. There is another.”
Bionicle G3 confirmed.
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On the contrary, it makes far more sense to assume that Bionicle will be terrible.
If Bionicle’s story is good, and you had high hopes for it, then you’ll be satisfied. If it’s good, and you didn’t have high hopes, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
On the flip side, however, if Bionicle’s story is terrible, and you had high hopes for it, you’ll be thoroughly disappointed. If you came in expecting nothing, then you’ll have a sense of smug self satisfaction about the whole thing.
-MT
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Saying we’re hive-minding is to dismiss everyone’s points without considering them on their own merits. Speaking only for myself, many of MT’s points align with thoughts I’ve already had. Purely based off what we’ve seen, the characters (who were not super original or exceptionally well-developed in G1) have been reduced to clowns who have none of the chemistry the originals had. And the worldbuilding really has no depth at all. The difference between G1 and G2 in therms of worldbuilding is like the difference between the worldbuilding in Super Mario and any given Elder Scrolls game–one is superficial and exists only as an excuse to give you objectives; the other is richly detailed and has a life of its own. That being said, I haven’t completely given up hope, because we’re going to get novels later this year. If those suck, then I’ll abandon all hope. For now, I sincerely hope that they can at least rescue the characters, if not actually develop the world.
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I find myself in the unique position of simultaneously agreeing with all of your points and disagreeing with your overall conclusion. Ninjago was one example, but as you yourself have said, not the best. Let me list a few better ones for you.
Avatar, both The Last Airbender and Legend Of Korra, didn’t start out all that great. Season 1 of TLA was episodic and a lot goofier in tone and static in character than the second and third were. LOK’s first season was too cramped and rushed, and its second season was horribly bloated and scattered in too many directions. (And don’t get me started on the finale… UGH.) However, Books 3 and 4 are as close to absolute masterpieces as you can get with Nickelodeon doing their best to screw the show over. Turns out that’s still pretty amazing.
Then there’s Star Trek: TNG. I haven’t seen it myself, but the general consensus I’ve heard from everyone is that it didn’t get really good until season 2 or three.
Really, look at any show you care to name; probably only a handful had properly strong starts.
Yes, I agree that G2 has gotten off to a bad start. Worldbuilding is severely diminished, and the characters don’t seem like they’ve improved hugely from the greater attention to development. However, keep in mind that A: One must establish the characters before they can be developed; that unfortunately requires some exaggerated behavior.* In that regard, the G2 team is doing good by not assuming the audience will already know these characters from G1. What remains to be seen is if they’ll tone those traits down once they’re established and turn to looking at the underlying personalities.
What I’m trying to say is this - Yeah, the worldbuilding is probably all but completely shot by now. That does not mean LEGO can’t tell a good character-based story, even if their track record is not… inspiring. I know going in that G2 is most likely not going to be as good as G1. But it still can be good on its own merits; I won’t hold my breath, but I won’t write it off just yet.
TL;DR: I’m remaining cautiously optimistic. It may not be good yet, but it’s not terrible either, and it has the potential to improve.
(*I will say that MLP FIM is somewhat of an exception to the rule, as it started strong with well-established but not exaggerated characters, and then has steadily grown worse as the characters have been flanderized, IMO. Again, though, this is not the usual pattern most shows take.)
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The beginning has definitely been sluggish in terms of story, can’t deny that. I’m just hoping for the future at this point.
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it’s always baffled me how pissy people get about a story line
i just wanna have some cool elemental heroes to fiddle around with
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I feel like you’re overestimating how the current handling of the story will affect the theme overall.
I really think that Lego will do more for the story next year seeing how successful Bionicle seems to be right now. We’ll very likely see more than just nine, 90-second webisodes if Lego feels like it’ll help the theme to pour more money into the story-telling. And fear not,
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Personally I feel there is still (A little bit) of hope for the story.
Think about who Lego is trying to market this to. The kids who have gotten so used to being spoon-fed HeroFactory. So obviously when trying to get a baby to eat a hamburger you don’t just hand them the hamburger. They’d be confused and probably startled with the change. You start by giving it just the bun than slowly but surly you add more of the hamburger until the baby is finally able to take the whole burger. That’s what I think Lego’s trying to do. They’ve shown there competent and smart enough to understand what made Bionicle good but they can’t give that to the HeroFactory kids because they’ll just drop it.
Btw I’m neutral.
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Having not paid much attention to either Avatar or LoK, I can’t comment on either of those examples. What I will say, though, is it sounds like what those stories did in their later seasons was build up interesting characters, and then either not focusing on world building or using the characters as a way to get people interested in the world once more.
And that, I would totally agree with, is doable, provided you’ve got the ability to write good characters. I suppose, then, that’s why I believe Bionicle’s story has already doomed itself; it’s written itself into a position where nothing short of extremely good character writing can get itself out, and I simply don’t believe that Lego has the ability to write good characters. Speaking of which…
Alternatively, think about who Lego was trying to market G1 Bionicle to. Arguably the most complicated story Lego had tried to tell up to that point was the online stop action Star Wars videos. And yet, they jumped right in with tons of world building and made it work. I don’t really see Lego then deciding that they have to pander to a specific demographic that exists even less than it did before, i.e. those…not used to world building…I guess?
Perhaps more to the point, though, I don’t think that a storyline emphasizing world building is all that complicated to begin with, and probably doesn’t need any sort of readying for. You just focus make the location interesting, as opposed to honing in on the characters. I sincerely doubt that a significant portion of people would just immediately look at Bionicle and go “too adult for me,” when they were told some stuff about the island instead of a couple of utterly unnecessary and silly facts about the heroes.
-MT
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You seem to have entirely missed the point of CGL’s TLA example. The point wasn’t how it got good. The point was that it started out atrociously, and ended up being the most beloved animated show ever. And frankly, I dnt care about world building. I seriously don’t. I don’t buy the toys to reinact an epic story, or to play in a world. I buy them to make up my own things. And that’s what Lego is all about. I mean, look at say, Star Wars. It’s got an immense amount of world building. But you know what it’s hard to do with Star Wars? Add your own things while still remaining somewhat in canon. Personally, I love the new story. And I look forward to more of it.
However, I think you’re missing a great deal of world building. No, we may not have seen the villages, or gotten to know the villages. But you know what? If they had done that, it would constantly be compared to G1. But they have us a ton of info. The villagers hand down their masks from generation to generation. The villagers have descendants. It’s basic, sure. But it’s there. And I think you’re choosing to ignore that.
As for mysteries, there are plenty on Okoto. What is the Vahi doing? Where did the golden masks come from? Where did the Toa come from?
All in all, you seem to demand that G2 be as good as G1, and that was simply never going to happen.
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No, I understood the point quite clearly. The point I was making in response is how it improved is doable even with a bad start, whereas Bionicle may not be able to improve in that same way.
To borrow an analogy from the video game world, think of it like the two Smash Bros characters, Robin and Diddy Kong. Due to Robin’s much more defensive style of play, falling behind with him in a match is a much bigger issue than falling behind with Diddy Kong. You’ve got a much greater chance of recovering from a bad start if you’re playing Diddy than Robin. Why? Because Diddy’s more offensive style of play lends itself to comebacks much more easily. In much the same way, TLK’s style of story (assuming I’m reading this correctly) is much more capable of recovering from a poor start than Bionicle’s will ever be.
If you don’t care about world building, then that’s fine. That’s your prerogative. For me, however, without an interesting world, Bionicles are little more than plastic toys with Cartoon Network grade personality types, which isn’t particularly engaging.
It’s not that I’m choosing to ignore it, it’s just that this is all incredibly superficial information that is neither engaging or particularly establishes anything. We know the villagers have descendants of some sort, that masks are in some way integral to their society, and that the title of protector is passed down through generations, and that’s pretty much it.
Bam. A grand total of one sentence described the entirety of the knowledge we have about this location’s customs and practices, and none of it is engaging or relevant in the slightest. This only counts as world building if the wrapper containing a Taco Bell burrito counts as Mexican cuisine.
Perhaps, but more to the point, though, I have no vested interest in any of these mysteries. Getting the viewer to ask questions about the location they’re in only works if the viewer is interested enough to ask those questions in the first place, and as of right now, I’m not.
I mean, I was somewhat hoping that given the benefit of hindsight, an entirely new starting point, and knowing full well from the past what did and didn’t work, yes, a higher quality product would be developed.
Forgive me if that’s far too demanding, but isn’t the point of sequelization to improve upon the efforts made in the past? If all we’re doing is regressing from what’s been accomplished before, then let’s just all pack our bags and go play Scrabble or something.
-MT
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L-look…this entire thing is just hopeless…BIONICLE’s never going to be good again. We should all just give up…
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I should actually make a point here,
I got into bionicle because of the characters and story, not because of world building.
that said,
I for one actually think that lego did a fine job with G1 and that G2 is looking to be just as good a story.
there’s plenty of mystery, the characters are no worse than the toa mata in 01, they just haven’t given us a mnog of world building, they gave us a map and said use your imagination.
if you would rather lego give us the worlds instructions that’s your choice, I feel they’re being purposefully vague to promote creativity.
you can’t say the story will be bad because they don’t give us world building, the universe the story takes place in is what is affected, not the story directly.
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