Up until very recently I’ve been following the Ninjago story, and in the more recent years I’ve been noticing a trend that isn’t the best for the theme. What I’ve been noticing is that a lot of the villains’ entire character -at lest up until the very end when they’re not actually the villain anymore- is very bland and in some cases non-existent. Let’s take the main baddie from skybound, Nadhakkan. He has a well defined trickster personally that is driven by rage and sorrow at the loss of his home. Now let’s look at a more recent villain, Unagami. Try and describe Unagami’s personality. He’s, uh… evil? See what I mean? He does get some character at the end, but at that point he’s not a villain anymore, and that’s at the very end of the season. Another example is the Skull Sorcerer. Now I may have forgot a little bit, but from what I remember, it’s just another case of the villain’s entire character being: “They’re evil.” What are your thoughts on the matter? Discuss.
I haven’t paid much attention to Ninjago’s story in a decade, but from what I gather here and here I feel like I have to agree, and even when the villains do have motivation it feels incredibly weak. The character design tends to reflect that; Morro was incredibly poorly designed for the significance he had in the Ninjago universe, and the most memorable villains are still the ones that had the least impact on the worldbuilding.
Can we go back to 2011? I liked it then.
yeah uh he was just greedy I guess
Not much other than that
Me too, the skeletons were cool.
pity none of the skeletons were as good as Skelly and Bones
well they did have Nuckal and Kruncha so that’s something
I really hated how the ninjas were nerfed to force a conflict. Oh Kalmar (worst villain ever) destroyed the controls? Jay you’re right there, shoot him with lightning. Hell they don’t even need Nya’s whales, use your elemental dragons already.
yeah but didn’t they kinda phase those out after season 7?
Yes but I’m not referring to season 15 as a starting point, but more as a recent example. There are plenty of times they could’ve used their abilities but the one I chose was more recent.
that is true
big problem with Ninjago is the fact it’s now going on for so long that it’s running out of things for the plot.
Please Lego, just. Just put it out of its misery.
So, just for the fun of it, I go through villains motivations/traits:
-Garmadon: being cursed by the Oni and the Devourer (maybe also the Overlord?), being envious and impatient by nature, difficult father-son relation
-Samukai: hates humans
-Pythor: revenge for being trapped
-Overlord: evil by nature
-Chen: being envious of elemental masters and power hungry, difficult father-daughter relation
-Clouse: being envious of Garmadon and corrupted by Chens influence
-Morro: being envious of the green ninja and hates Wu for being rejected by him from his pov
-Nadhakan: hates the ninja because they destroyed his home and killed thereby his family
-Master Yen: put a curse on himself when he wanted a blessing and tries to free himself out of his misery
-time twins: wanting revenge for being punished for being evil because…
-Harumi: parents dead because ninja incompetence
-iron baron: I actually don’t know
-oni: being evil by nature
-Aspheera: revenge for being trapped (like Pythor)
-General Vex: being envious
-Unagami: not knowing his purpose of existence
-Skull Sorcerer: being a corrupted politician for the glory of his city while also being manipulated by dark magic, also difficult father-daughter relation (some resemblance to Chen)
-Ronin: being greedy, at first because of a deal with soul archer, then because money
-Prince Kalmaar: hating humans (like Samukai)
The true problem may be that they don’t express these motivations as much (or in case of Aspheera too on-the-nose) anymore. But the motivations didn’t become that less complex for the most part honestly. There were just some villains here and there that stuck out more than others.
Don’t forget: idolized Garmadon for defeating Devourer.
Yeah, there used to be a time when the I’m evil cus I’m evil characters worked. I guess people just have higher expectations for their villains now since we have had so many amazingly doop villains in recent years.
Lego got sloppy. Real fast. After garmadon was revitalized back into his original form,it all went downhill. The snake obsession, the mostly flat villains(there were a few gems there,but now enough to balance the scale), the amount of characters who “sacrifice” themselves, and the rest of the absurdly large plot holes already stated. Even when Garmandon was resurrected, it was like he didn’t have any memories.
And the ghost/demon characters would have made a dangerous army had they teamed up. That alone would make a great storyline, but of course LEGO didn’t do that.
Ninjago, actually kill off a main character challenge. Difficulty 100 [Failed Immediately]
yeah Ninjago now consists of a random things happening
The death fakeouts make my heart cry out in pain. Just kill one of the ninja already.
There was no need to bring back Nya in season 15 if she’s just going to become Samurai X all over again, and just negates the impact her “death” in Seabound had on the people closest to her. Crystallized would have been better had it focused on Kai and Jay and their efforts to move on from her departure and at the same time trying to beat whatever villain comes their way.
Zane’s death is arguably the best moment of Ninjago thus far, but I didn’t like how he was brought back the very next episode. It more or less impacted his sacrifice, and honestly besides seasons 3 and 4, he didn’t really play a major role until the Ice Chapter of season 11 rolled around, so I would have been fine if the invitation to Chen’s island saying Zane was still alive was just a ploy to trap the ninja for their powers to complete his plan of turning into (impostor) Anacondrai.
Imagine how bad Bionicle would be if Matoro was brought back in the Phantoka arc, thus completely destroying the significance of his sacrifice, singlehandedly saving the universe (albeit only for a short time).
Also snakes? Really?? Sure, the Serpentine and Pythor made good one time villains, but then you had the Great Devourer, Vermillion Warriors, Aspheera, Pyro Vipers, and then the snake-like people in Seabound, not to mention Wojira (aka sea snake with wings) who was unnecessarily hyped up and defeated in an anticlimactic manner.
Good to know they just brought Toa Ignika in to treat him like a shadow of Matoro just to die again and killed another Matoro in an Alternate Universe. Matoro literally died three times in the story.
When did they do that? I never got the feeling that Toa Ignika was somehow meant to represent Matoro, and was always a unique character.