If you’re looking for in-depth character analysis of Bionicles worthy of English class, there’s this.
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You’ve reminded me of this Tumblr post that basically explains how the animosity between the Toa Metru is the result of tensions left over from the Matoran Civil War.
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As a relatively new fan who has been reading through the novels for the first time (I just finished Voyage of Fear) I have to say that I am really liking them! I am not much of a book reader, so if the writing style is too “young” I wouldn’t notice.
I love the chapter of Tales of the Masks about Onua and Whenua. Onua is the kind of person that only speaks when he has something important to say, which causes some to think he is dim. But when he speaks, he is very wise. This time though, we see Onua sad about how he didn’t say something. He tries to convince himself that the team made a good decision in splitting up, but he doesn’t really believe it. He is sad because Gali, someone who was always kind to him, got after him for not saying anything about the team choosing to split up. It was a really interesting moment because up until that point Onua had not shown emotion as openly as the others, but under his kind silence was someone actually hurt by the things people said about him. Maybe I’m looking too far into this, though.
Another moment I really liked was in the climax of Voyage of Fear where Onewa falls into the lake, and Whenua, someone who’s most scarring memory was almost drowning and the aftermath of said drowning, jumps in the water and just barely saves both himself and Onewa. Meanwhile, Mavrah is just watching with slight awe. Whenua is too weak to get up, but Onwea has enough strength to talk to Mavrah. In this moment, Onewa’s sarcastic and bitter personality just work perfectly as he confronts Mavrah on all of his nonsense. Among other things, Onewa points out how the rahi aren’t defending Mavrah, they are wildly attacking each other and Mavrah has no real control. The sheer chaos of the fight between the rahi, toa, krahli, and vahki is written so viscerally, and it drives Mavrah into panic, which leads him to attempt to stop the fighting, only to be finally undone by what he tried so hard to control.
I got into the Bionicle because of the lore, marketing, etc. I wanted to learn more, so I started reading the books. But I kept reading because on top of such a rich world were stories, individual and collective, that were incredibly well crafted.
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Short answer: no.
Long answer: nnnnnnoooooo
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As a whole, I think it’s a good story. But taking things apart weakens aspects. If you just look at the main book line and movies, it’s a pretty small world without anything really groundbreaking to tell the story. I think the biggest redemptive quality are the few books which detail a history, or tell of lesser characters not usually highlighted. The biggest things that come to mind are Legacy of Evil and Swamp of Secrets, which give us good insight on known characters. Aside from this, the main books and movies are just okay.
Luckily, we had many other forms to digest the lore in. We had games, online serials, guidebooks, and even comics. These were a big help in widening the universe we had, and were one of the only ways Greg could’ve expanded the world given the lines he had to follow. Like others have said, it seemed the serials gave Greg a lot more flexibility, and that’s we needed more of.
Conclusion, on their own, the main books and movies are nothing to write home about, and I don’t think that we would be here today if that’s all there was. The bad news is that’s most of what an outsider would see, just okay media. For all the trouble there is to read every book, and play every game, that’s what makes the story good.
Personally, I would’ve loved to see more stuff like MNOG one and two. Through these games, we got to see the world moving face to face, learning the lore directly from those who were living it. I want more of this, learning the story as a historian would in real life. Visiting locations, talking to locals, and seeing it for yourself. The best comparison for me, is Hollow Knight. A Metroidvania which rarely tells you the story straight up, instead letting you figure it out by putting fragmented pieces together. It makes everything very mysterious, but extremely satisfying to learn about. All this to say, wish I could be there myself.
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Reading over the topic, it seems like there’s a fine line between telling a good story and doing good worldbuilding. For instance, a series like The Lord Of The Rings is all about the world-building. J. R. R. Tolkien had a story to tell, but most of his books were about crafting a world for his characters to play around in. On the flip side, Star Wars (the original trilogy, at least) had its focus be the story first and foremost. Sure, there were all these random background characters that would later go on to have thousand-word Wookiepedia articles, but Luke Skywalker was the front and center of Episode IV, V, and VI. The comments about Star Wars being about world-building are somewhat misguided. We have the main Skywalker Saga, and all nine of its movies (with the possible exception of the prequels) being largely based in storytelling. All the additional “world-building” is done by the add-on TV series, such as The Clone Wars and The Mandalorian, and supplementary novels and comics.
However, there are other series that do both. Look at Harry Potter. The first few books in the series told the story of a boy who learned he was a wizard and started going to a special school. That story lasted all throughout the series, but Goblet Of Fire was around the time when it doubled down on the world-building. We started to learn a lot more about Voldemort, and Dumbledore, and Snape, and the Black family, and all of their backstories.
I think it’s safe to say Bionicle falls into this category. Its first three years (the Mata Nui saga) were simply telling the story of an evil force trying to take over an island, and a group of heroes arriving to try and save its inhabitants. 2004 and 2005 had a somewhat similar story, but here, it started to flesh out a bigger universe. 2006-2008 continued the story, but oh boy, was there worldbuilding! Literally the entire premise of the Legacy Of Evil book was the Piraka having a flashback to their earlier days, and this was where Greg started writing the serials. The Toa Iniki/Mahri and Toa Nuva fighting to reawaken Mata Nui was still the main focus, but there was a lot of lore being built up on the side.
Which he would’ve…if Bionicle didn’t get cancelled.
To quote myself…
Well here’s the thing:
The reason Lego did that was to make Bionicle more accessible. They made Bionicle content for a variety of mediums. There were the toys themselves, the comics, the video games, the books, and the movies. If you’re a book fan, then there’s something to appeal to you. If you’re a gamer, then there’s something for you though most of the games were noncanon
That said, from a storytelling perspective, it doesn’t make sense to tell different parts of the stories on different mediums. Going back to one of my earlier examples, one of the biggest criticisms about the Star Wars prequel and sequel trilogies is that there were significant gaps in the characters’ development. Like, we’re told that Anakin and Obi-Wan have a deep relationship, but for the majority of Episode II and III, both of them are off doing their own thing. And Episode VII didn’t do much to explain how the Imperial remnants were organized into the First Order. Sure, there was The Clone Wars that built up Anakin’s character development, and it’s been said that The Mandalorian will show the rise of the First Order, but a movie series should make sense on its own without depending on outside sources.
TLDR: If Bionicle had told its story on just one medium-preferably the books-then maybe it would’ve gone down better.
But there were some minor story elements that took precedence over the sets; like, for instance, Nuparu Mahri having an Aqua Blaster Blade, or how many swords Jaller Inika had.
That’s what it was like at first, but then later years (particularly 2008) had the bad guy coming out on top. That’s a definite sign of the story maturing.
…which, unfortunately, hasn’t aged as well as it could’ve.
Fun fact: I’m an aspiring writer myself, and in some ways, Bionicle has had an influence on my writing.
Can you imagine if there was an actual, mainstream RPG like the MNOG? I think, if it were successful, then Bionicle wouldn’t be quite so obscure in the modern day.
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Yeah, TTV should make one
I would love to be able to play a MNOG esque game with at least 30 hours of content.
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Having the story be fragmented in so many books, comics and web serials was a horrible idea, and I still have no idea how most people who actually grew up with it even managed to keep track of it.
As someone who grew up with the first four years of bionicle and had friends who also did, we followed the story primarily through the free comics. If you were really into it and wanted more story, you read the chapter books or played mnog. Most of my friends only read the comics, a couple had read the chapter books, and no one had played mnog except myself. I don’t think anyone actually read the web serials, those didn’t become a thing until much later and by then my friends had all grown out of bionicle. You also have to remember that widespread social media use wasn’t a thing from 2001-2005 so there were fewer kids glued to the internet. When we were kids, my friends and I would only really go on the internet to play flash games or club penguin or something and that was it. Or you watched cartoons on cable, and that’s where lego really dropped the ball. Had bionicle had a good animated series in the 2000s, I feel as though it would’ve exposed more kids to the story, but it would’ve had to compete with high quality shows like justice league or samurai jack which may not have been a good idea.
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I’m sure Genndy Tartakovsky does this well, but you should probably know this principal has been around for a long time:
LOTR has Bionicle beat when it comes to depth, but honestly the “scope” is comparable - it’s just that Bionicle bites while LOTR follows through and chews. Regardless, I think it’s pretty fair to argue Bionicle has extremely strong worldbuilding potential, and it didn’t go entirely unrealised.
I guess it depends on what you consider worldbuilding. The MU’s history might not be as intricately fleshed out as Middle-Earth’s, but having the specific limitations and powers of all six stages of forty-two kraata breeds as early as the third year of it’s run definitely counts for something in the department of sheer scope.
The relevance of the worldbuilding to the actual stories it was telling, I feel, is where the real weakness lies - you only appreciated the world these characters were living in if you hunted down the details and encyclopaedias yourself. In that sense it’s approach to worldbuilding is much more comparable to SW, although SW certainly has a wider gamut of information than Bionicle did.
That said, Bionicle’s size did also allow it to have a much greater internal consistency than Star Wars has ever had - which brings us back around to LOTR. 
I’m going to take this a step further and say without any consistent medium period. There are plenty of popular and successful series based on novels and written forms. Bionicle’s issue isn’t the lack of a visual medium, it’s the lack of any medium that covers the whole story. Visual would certainly help, but I don’t think it’s a complete deal-breaker.
The fact that it’s novels were large-print chapter books published every few months by scholastic, rather than being the kind of thing you’d see on the shelf five or more years later, probably has something to do with it too. If all the books of a given year were condensed into a big thick novel, and given a cover/font size treatment to look more mature, I think many casual readers would struggle to tell they were children’s books. It almost never spoke down to the audience.
There’s also this, which is excellent.
You can absolutely argue these sorts of things are reading too much into the story or overthinking it, but at the same time, people say the same about Shakespeare analysis.
The link I gave provides reasonably strong case that, even if Greg probably didn’t set out to say “I’m writing about an arc about Takanuva and Moral Ambiguity!” his character-consistent writing and very intentional sequencing of the events shows that some level of legitimate character growth, whether deliberate or organic, is baked into the story, rather than being purely something the fans stick onto it to deepen things.
What do you consider the basic premise, exactly? That could be referring to a few things, and at least some of them certainly have an argument for being more than straightforward. It could be a simple as “Good vs Evil” or “Find the Masks” or “Robots with powers”, yet as complex as “Universe inside big robot” or “Bio-mechanical society”.
Even the decision to make Bionicle, well, Bionicle rather than just, y’know, cool robots is kind of an outlier among toy lines, especially given that it’s a clarification that’s not immediately (or at all) apparent from the sets - it’s something they deliberately wanted to emphasize, directly from the story.
I mean, in many places, I’d have to agree, but I always felt like the novels/serials hit a relatively high bar with the dialogue (and internal monologue, for that matter). I’m not saying it’s outstanding, but compare it to the kind of conversations you hear in other toy-branded franchises (say, Ninjago) and it definitely feels a step ahead.
Even the movies occasionally managed a bit of this, though not nearly as consistently - we also get stuff like “Takuaaaaaaa!”
Who’s the second example here? Or are you just referring to the fact that Matoro technically did die twice?
I mean, there’s the point about actual content, but I feel this also holds true for structure. It’s very non-formulaic (at least, it doesn’t fit a lot of conventional “story” formulas, and it even breaks the formulas it sets for itself sometimes).
I don’t really have statistics or anything, but you seem to hear this a bit from Bionicle fans. Obviously not everyone who says that is going to seriously pursue it, but it’s still interesting to me that it’s a story which makes people want to explore story generally a bit more. You probably don’t hear the same thing quite as frequently from people who grew up loving, say, Transformers - despite it doing a much better job of telling its story in a consistent medium, to begin with.
Again, though, that’s nothing more than a personal observation so it could be horribly skewed by the fact that I’m talking on a forum about the literary merit of a twenty-year-old toyline to other people who are also interested in that discussion.
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I know it has been, but Genndy’s shows was how I was introduced to it and the only examples that came to my mind. Anyway, ever since, I’ve started consciously noticing in movies, shows, etc, where certain dialogue is superfluous and already made obvious by the character’s mannerisms and expressions. Not a major point in the question of “is Bionicle a good story,” just an example of what I would want and what I think some, like BionicleChicken (although not perfectly) do. Small things like that can really bolster the quality of a story IMO, and the fact that I see that in Bionicle fan fiction and comics is really enjoyable.
I don’t see how it’s a weakness to want to learn more about the world the story takes place in, even if it’s not entirely relevant to the story itself. The online games (MNOG, MNOGII, VNOG) are great example of this, where there is a story being told through these games, but a large portion of what makes it fun is going around and freely exploring your environment. You of course follow the story, but you also want to learn more about a world you find fascinating.
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It’s not a weakness of the reader, but I think that the best worldbuilding is relevant to the story it’s in. If you’re creating a fictional world, it should serve a point - I think we all get frustrated when we discover that obscure and awesome setting/character/idea that never gets explored!
You’re right to say that MNOG gets this right, though, so I think what we’re actually disagreeing over is terminology. I’m not saying everything is better if it is part of the large, overarching, singular plot, but in MNOG, we still discover stories as we explore that connect us to this world - we don’t just learn that Ga-Matoran exist, we have to save them from drowning. We don’t just learn that infected masks can affect Rahi, we have to fight them and prevent the infection spreading to Matoran. We don’t just explore the drifts, we meet Matoro the Tracker.
Even the minor and optional parts of the game are still all little stories. The difference here is like the difference between, say, the Mask of Life (which serves an integral story role) and the Mask of Creation (which is mentioned, but we never even see get used for anything).
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I do not doubt the possibility of Bionicle being more successful had the story been told exclusively through books, but I would still question that decision when your main target audience are 7-10 year old kids. We all know the sad reality that reading is no longer as popular as it used to be, especially among kids, and when your story is being told by a toy company’s who main interest is to sell toys to kids, having books be the main medium would kind of go against their interests. If did really want Bionicle to be only told exclusively through books though, I’d say the target audience should skew more towards teens and young adults instead.
I guess that is a fair point, but keep in mind who the main target audience is. If you’re skewing towards kids, your story should told through the most accessible medium to them, in this case, a TV Show (which has worked perfectly fine for Ninjago)., or if that wasn’t possible, at least by consistently having a Direct-to-video movie for each year’s story.
I don’t personally know that many kids would would have a preference towards books rather than something visual like a Movie or TV Show, so that is something we should consider.
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That’s exactly what they tried from 2003 onward. But apparently the Miramax trilogy as a whole wasn’t a huge money spinner, so the producers were reluctant to try again.
I mean, when I was a kid, I liked reading. Granted, it wasn’t always easy for my parents to get me reading new books, but I did get into Bionicle, and Harry Potter, and Spiderwick Chronicles, and the Bone graphic novels, and Percy Jackson, and Diary Of A Wimpy Kid, among others. Then again, I’m a kid of the 2000s.
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Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t Mask of Light actually one of the best selling Direct-to-Video movies of 2003? I can’t speak for the other movies in the trilogy, but as far as I know, MoL at least was a pretty decent success.
I am not saying kids aren’t reading at all nowdays, (thought the decline in book sales has been a pretty relevant issue for the past few years) but I don’t believe books are the best medium for a company to sell toys. If the books don’t even have illusions or something visual about them, how are you even supposed to get kids to care about buying toys?
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While there are some significant examples out there which more than manage to defy this trend, speaking much more broadly I’d have to agree with LegoDavid - if you’re marketing to kids, your odds will be better with TV or movies than with books. That said, my original point wasn’t about what would have been viable for Bionicle during its lifespan, but what would make it more accessible to pop culture fans now. Having all the story content in novel form, and having those novels be more accessible to older fans, would have impacted that significantly, I feel.
As far as Direct-to-Video goes MoL did very well - well enough that LoMN nearly went cinematic, I believe I’ve read before (either Faber or Greg said something about that). And the directors and producer have said that the plan was never to make a trilogy - each film began production only after Lego saw how the previous one performed - so that suggests the movies did well for what they were, financially speaking.
When you take a step back and remember they were made in under a year each, it’s easy to be a bit more forgiving on some of the flaws they had and I think they did a respectable job. That still doesn’t make them good examples of Bionicle’s finer moments, though.
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Fair enough: I’m just saying that the three movies as a whole weren’t successful enough to warrant a fourth (at least, until 2009).
Yeah no I totally agree with you there.
IIRC, TTV made a video compiling the biggest Bionicle letdowns, and one of those letdowns was LOMN not getting a theatrical release. But if it it, I’m afraid it wouldn’t have gone over very well. The critics would’ve torn it apart, and the box-office numbers wouldn’t be pretty.
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I say BIONICLE isn’t just a good story, it’s a great story. I’ve thought long and hard about various aspects of it in recent years, and it continually remains one of the most comprehensive and exciting stories I’ve experienced.
One of the greatest attributes of the story was its tendency not to shy away from serious problems and serious stakes. It wasn’t just fluff or a shallow action flick. 2004 and 2006 are both great example years for this. The Toa Metru had some serious teamwork issues, and Vakama’s crippling self-doubt humanized him beyond your ordinary “save the world” hero (not that saving the world is bad, but if that’s the sum total of the character’s personality… that’s not a character). In 2006, the Piraka were legitimately savage villains that drove the story relentlessly. They weren’t even dark for the sake of being dark (as with many of the villains–another general aspect I love about BIONICLE), and their “team” dynamics are among the most unique antagonist interactions I’ve ever seen.
BIONICLE villains are actually consistently amazing to me due to their varied motives, dynamics, and methods, but that’s such a massive topic for me that I won’t bother opening it further.
Another interesting aspect that I haven’t thought much on is BIONICLE’s near-seamless multi-faceted approach to the story. We got 2001 through Takua’s eyes and the Toa’s eyes; we got many later years from the perspectives of the main characters, but also from those of side characters through serials. It’s an approach I haven’t really seen in taken to any other story, and is uniquely suited and enhanced by BIONICLE because it was capable of leveraging so much media. It really built the depth of the world, even to experience a year’s story in a different way from its canonical transpiration–VNOG, for instance, puts a new and deepening spin on Voya Nui.
Now, short answer questions:
Yes. I think 2008, 2006, and 2001 were the strongest years storywise (in that order, strongest to less strong), and 2009 and 2005 were the weakest (2009 being weaker). 2009 in particular had a boatload of potential that was never really capitalized on, in addition to throwing the story into a different location that didn’t exactly fit tonally with the preceding eight years. 2008, meanwhile, followed very well on the previous two years and presented a dramatic “conclusion” to the large-scope Ignika arc.
I tend to prefer the books over the movies, but the writing is objectively pretty generic. Again, though, I think the use of different formats enhanced the overall story.
Most of the villains were fantastic. The handling of a proliferation of characters without most of them becoming stale or same-y was fantastic. The heroes were sometimes less interesting, though, and various digressions (2005, Empire of the Skrall, etc.) distracted from the overall story.
I mean, yeah, it was effective marketing. But I think the merits of the story stand for themselves, too. The balance of multitudinous viewpoints and characters, the structure of the world, and the buildup to the ultimate victory of Teridax at the end of 2008 are all well-executed and exhibit interesting storytelling methods that can be studied and learned from, I’d say.
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You know, I will always question the decision of putting out another Bionicle DVD movie so late into the series run, at a time when the people working on it probably already knew about the inevitable incoming cancellation. Wouldn’t Hero Factory have already been in development during that time as well? Giving another movie to 2009 instead of something like 2007 or 2008 is really mind boggling to me. I am pretty sure the reason TLR got made wasn’t because sales were good enough to warrant another movie (quite contrary) but thinking the soft reboot approach with another movie will get a new group of fans interested in the series. Well… That didn’t work out, and the theme got cancelled the following year.
Well, keep in mind that first and foremost, LEGO made those movies in order to sell toys. They took the same approach with the LEGO Ninjago Movie, and while the box office numbers were low and critics were unimpressed, Ninjago still become the best selling LEGO theme of 2017. So as far as I am concerned, the theatrical movie approach works well as a commercial at least.
So LoMN getting a theatrical release wouldn’t have been successful on its own, but it would have certainly given Bionicle a pretty good popularity boost.
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Given that the HF TV show was animated by Threshold as well, I’ve often thought that maybe this was exactly the reason TLR still got made. It was the constraction-figure-animation proof-of-concept, maybe?
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Well, Greg is a low quality writer, and if you ask about how well the story is written, obviously it’s pretty bad. Asking to not rate creativity is pretty pointless, though, because it’s part of writer’s work, only rating plot is like an English exam that only rates your calligraphy, not what you wrote.
The good things in Bionicle are its originality (not like they’re novel, but pretty creative), and the amount of sheer work they put into world building. There may be plot holes everywhere, but the amount of detailed lore we got also is very cool.
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