Alright, time to start working on some overdue posts. As someone who saw this as the exclusive world premier at Brickworld Chicago last year…well…
Before I give my thoughts on Legends, let me preface a few things. I like to, somewhat jokingly, title myself as “Ninjago’s biggest hater” among my friends (one of my cousins almost disowned me after learning that). This is due to me being against Ninjago since day one.
My brother and I were big fans of the OG Lego ninja theme… uncreatively called Ninja. Of course, it was before our time so we couldn’t get anything except for what we thought were very expensive eBay prices. So hearing a new ninja theme was coming, and with how much I especially liked 2007 Castle, we were hyped…And then it was just a lesser version of Power Rangers, had lamer elemental powers than Bionicle and Power Rangers, big goofy vehicles, little of the Japanese historic building style sets, and also the enemies from Castle a few years prior but in a very silly fashion. I was not happy.
Except for the spinners. Loved the spinners. The only good part. The pilots were fine, I liked Clutch Power’s antics more. I love snakes, so I loved the Serpentine and they really should have been the main villains from the start rather than knock off Makuta and his skeletons (can’t imagine why G2 did the same thing cough cough).
Then in Rebooted, Wu gets captured, cyborgified…and then he just poofs back to the normal. No consequences, no lasting damage or change, nothing. I fully expected things to return back to status quo and that Wu would somehow return to normal. I would have taken any justification, I’m used to superhero nonsense. But no, just poofed to normal like it was nothing and the cybernetics were just a sticker. After that, Ninjago was never able to recover for me. I could not take it seriously and the series never seemed to be able to figure out what it wanted to be either.
…I say all that, because this Legends short in its entirety is Wu poofing backing to normal for me. That feeling that Ninjago has no idea what its priorities should be and what kind of story it’s telling. So I have a hard time figuring out how I’m supposed to take it.
The dialogue I found to be childish. Too childish for the tone they were attempting and the visuals. I have no qualms with the voice acting, though it honestly would have been better silent. It’s structured more like a silent piece. And I have no issues with the message or morals it’s telling either. I think they are good lessons. I just don’t think the dialogue works, because it sounds too much like normal Ninjago and not aged up to a teen audience. It’s very short, so I understand the challenge of trying to have good dialogue that matched the visuals and tone, but this wasn’t it.
It also really shouldn’t have been Kai. Should have been someone else. I don’t know who, maybe a previous master of fire or an alternate universe. Because the scale and power of some of those monsters is going to be a pain to deal with later…Except this is Ninjago, the theme without a world, so I’m thinking too hard about that.
Oh and the ending doesn’t work for me either. I know it’s them finding/accepting hope and so color is returning to the world. It doesn’t earn that visual IMO.
