In all honesty, I actually rather like this idea. It’s rather like a “what-if” scenario, where the villain, having once won, finds that he needs more excitement after destroying all the Toa, etc. So what better way to get some entertainment than to make yourself the hero? Let the world forget the Makuta as villains, and instead become Akiyama Makuro, a tech wizard who can bring world peace and prevent the uprisings of rogue AIs that become more frequent in a technology-dependent society. Then, once the galaxy has become dependent on your troops for their safety, you can reap the benefits without disclosing that you manufactured the reason for you to have armed machines all over the place, ostensibly protecting the populace, when really they are holding the known universe captive to your will. If people complain, you can just make another worldwide threat to convince them of the necessity of keeping you in charge. Will they ever find out who’s really responsible for the ongoing war against terror? Not while they’re mainly civilians, and machines at that.
And this I still have a problem with.
At such a point, Hero Factory would be essentially pushing the Bionicle universe - a universe which stays remarkably unchanged for unfathomable lengths of time - to such a limit that it is no longer recognizable as the universe people know and love. I can’t find a single consistent element between the two aside from the Bionicle characters largely consisting of mostly-robotic lifeforms of varying types and sizes.
And honestly, a Bionicle with nothing remaining that made it Bionicle in the first place would be very disappointing. It would be the same universe, but with nothing that drew us to it in the first place aside from the bad guy.
But they didn’t.
That’s the problem; Faber didn’t propose this idea pre-2011 and have it shot down because Bionicle was done, this was something he had cooking all the way until Breakout - three years after Greg and the story team made it abundantly clear the big bad was gone for good.
And I kind of wish they had, honestly - after the second year Mr. Makuro became something of a non-entity; all the story beats conveniently avoided bringing him up, and the plots for each wave really boiled down to Power Rangers but robots in terms of stakes and progression.
This is most likely the answer here - just a funny little idea he kept to himself. Were it the inspiration for something larger later on, I think most fans would be okay with the reference material, but I suppose this goes to show even the most talented ideas people (Faber being high on that list) need a wall to bounce things off of now and again.
Axe the Makuta bit, and this concept would’ve been killer.
To be clear, I have no issue with the concept Faber proposed - it sounds like it would have made the theme a lot of fun - I only take issue with Faber trying to directly and fully connect it to Bionicle, not through little easter eggs but by directly tying the two together with duct tape and hot glue.
As Bionicle’s successor, Hero Factory would’ve had a much harder time standing on its own if it had to drag Bionicle’s weight along with it - being its own unique thing ultimately made it more special than if it had to carry the burden of Bionicle behind it.
As I said before, Makuro’s BIONICLE connection would’ve likely been cut in the final product. It’s an interesting idea on paper, but it raises more questions than answers. How did Makuta survive? Where are the other BIONICLE characters and what happened to them? How long has it been since G1? How did this interstellar robot civilization come about? If there are no humans in the BIONICLE universe, why do the heroes have human first names?
If you ignore these questions, you’ll just confuse BIONICLE fans. But if you try to answer them, you risk alienating Hero Factory’s core audience who has no familiarity with BIONICLE.
The best way I can see this playing out is to:
A) Merely imply but never explicitly confirm a connection to Makuta Teridax, leaving it for fans to speculate about; or
B) After the reveal, gradually introduce BIONICLE elements into Hero Factory, until you reach a synthesis between the two
But really, I can’t see anyone else on the HF team going through with this. This reminds me of back in the 2010’s, Hasbro tried pushing an Aligned Continuity for Transformers. All the new comics, shows, video games would belong to the same universe. The problem is that nobody working on these media actually followed it. They wanted to do their own stories and not be chained to what other groups were doing.
True. While I don’t mind the idea, I can definitely see that some of us would not like such a twist.
With the exception of the small appearances of the “Brain Master”, of course.
If the “evil Makuro” plot point went forward, I highly doubt it would just be another single-year line; the entirety of the Hero Factory story that we got would basically just end up being a very extended character development epilogue to the “real story”. This would be extremely impactful if the characters that we’ve followed for 5+ years end up remaining loyal to the villain, as suggested by Faber:
Surge in particular has a lot of potential if the heroes side with Makuro; his heavily-foreshadowed villain arc would end up being him “going bad” and betraying his fellow heroes to fight against Makuro.
I can’t imagine Stormer willingly siding with Makuta Makuro. Or the 2010 rookie trio for that matter. But the rest of Alpha 1? The angst, the drama! And Rocka is possibly already in on it. If any of the heroes know what’s really going on it’ll be Thresher (the canonical first hero) and the Recon Team.
Though it would probably be more of an inhibitor chip situation where the heroes personalities are partially overridden and Surge’s situation is more akin to the bad batch.
If the Villain factory already exists underground then that would have some interesting implications for the factory blueprints being stolen in breakout.
Oh! And Von Nebula. His story never quite made sense to me. How did he go from rookie who didn’t want to fight (and abandoned his team) to proactive criminal mastermind ?
Off-topic, that has to be one of the biggest modern story-telling tragedies… a continuity whose main aim is to make things super-consistent, only to end up with the most inconsistent product on the market, even to the point of infamy.
Back on topic…
Absolutely agreed. I think the reason many fans, including myself felt like Breakout was the peak of HF is that it was a spectacle drawing on the previous years which acted like a set up in retrospect and now was to time to pay it off. All of that only to make an even bigger, but more hidden set up in the background with Villain Factory and conspiciously missing Mr. Makuro.
Looking back at it, it really seems like Makuro orchestrated the whole breakout - sending Rocka to catch Voltix, giving him a new upgrade which made it “almost too easy” to catch the villain, only for that villain to gain access to the black hole staff and breaking all the captives out. This is all but confirmed at the end of Breakout, when Makuro conveniently shows up - he shifts the blame to somebody else (Von Nebula apparently).
The set up of Voltix’s capture is further confirmed in the Recon Team reports:
“I’m bored!” I said. I shouldn’t have said it, it was asking for trouble! After we mopped up that business on Quatros, things had been quiet, I mean REALLY quiet. Not even a feline-bot up a tree. Zib even took a day off – I have NEVER seen the Professor take a holiday.
Even when Rocka and Furno were sent out after VOLTIX, that was over before the Recon Teams got equipped. We should have known something was wrong right there, it was too easy. Of course, he was letting himself get captured!
You know the rest – the vortex in the Villain Storage Unit, all the bad guys breaking out – now we’ve got more on than we can handle. It’s Catch 'em and Cuff 'em time!
The Manufacturing Units are working overtime on new robots and these awesome Hero Cuffs…if there’s a silver lining to all this, it’s the sweet upgrades they’re handing out! You should see Furno’s aqua gear! Surge’s Duo Plating Armour! Breez’s Hex Energy Shield! I can’t wait to get my hands on them!
Anyway, we’re on our way to Scylla after JAWBLADE and some friends of his. Furno says he’s going to fry some fish! I’ll let you know how that goes down.
Recon Team Alpha Out.
As for Surge, he was always foreshadowed as the second comming of Von Ness, but the most we ever got was a mind-controlled Surge in Brain Attack. A far cry from a genuine turning point for the character. Had the schism of the Hero Factory happened before the line ended, Surge would become a very interesting character indeed.
The books make it a little more believable I would say. In fact, they somewhat foreshadow the would-be story elements we are discussing here.
It would really depend on how Makuro executed his plan. If Makuro were to order the Heroes to take over planets and execute anyone who resists, then yeah; I’m sure Stormer would speak up. However, if he were to be more underhanded about it, such as by manufacturing conflicts and using it as an excuse for the Heroes to crack down, Stormer and the others might stay on Makuro’s side.
There’s actually a bit of more obscure content that touches on this. This is taken from Dangerous Dimensions, an “Inside Scoop” about alternate dimensions:
Reality 45098.3
While fighting the brains, this universe’s Alpha Team uncovered a galactic conspiracy against Hero Factory. Convinced they had to act for their own survival, the Heroes crushed the conspiracy and then took steps to make sure no one could threaten them again. In doing so, Stormer and his team became galactic dictators.
Keep in mind that the “galactic conspiracy” isn’t just some alternate universe shenanigans; the same conspiracy also exists in the prime universe.
I disagree; I feel like Makuro would have run Hero Factory as a legitimate organization at first, in order to properly establish their presence in the galaxy.
I definitely agree with this, though. At best, the Recon Team is unknowingly contributing to the sketchier side of Makuro’s plan.
I don’t know how this would go; the logical answer isn’t necessarily the most interesting answer.
From Makuro’s perspective, it would be far easier and less risky to simply reprogram all the Heroes, and we know from the alternate dimensions mentioned above that this is possible; there’s an alternate universe where Zib eliminated crime by remotely reprogramming all the Villains.
From a reader’s perspective, though, it would be far more interesting to see the protagonists make their own decisions to become (and/or get manipulated into becoming) bad guys. If the twist is done right, we would even sympathize with them, though hopefully not to the point of rooting for them.
The books address it a bit more directly, albeit still not in a super in-depth manner; in Secret Mission 1: Doom Box, Core Hunter becomes extremely powerful and, as a former Hero himself, directly offers Surge a position in his new galactic “ownership”. Surge considers it, but quickly realizes that he couldn’t live with himself if he betrayed his friends and takes down Core Hunter.
In his own words, Surge chooses to be a Hero, but that phrasing could be twisted in an interesting way. If the “Evil Makuro” plot happened, Surge would then have to choose between being a Hero and being a hero.
On the topic of the books:
In Secret Mission 5: Mirror World, Karter tries to get the leaders of the Conspiracy to get him out of Hero Factory before it (supposedly) gets destroyed, and he seems pretty certain that they could do it. Could Makuro be involved, and Karter knew it?
Taking Dangerous Dimensions into account, it seems plausible that Makuro orchestrated the entire Conspiracy as an excuse for Hero Factory to expand their territory and/or crack down a bit harder on everyone. We already saw similar things happen on a smaller scale; in Secret Mission 3: Collision Course, Makuro himself makes the decision to station Heroes in a previously-unpatrolled section of the galaxy after a Brain attack. This is presented in the book as Hero Factory’s response to a new threat, but the “Evil Makuro” twist really puts it into a new context, especially if we assume that Makuro was also behind the Brains in the first place.
This could actually be the reason in-universe that some characters change personalities between animations, as they are either upgraded or even replaced. Surge, for instance, gains a British accent in Invasion from Below, and others, like Rocka and Evo, have noticeable character changes between animations. Evo begins as a suave, expert Hero, but he becomes a virtually characterless character by the time of the 2014 animations.
By default, I hate any official connections between Bionicle and Hero Factory. I much prefer them as their own separate, unconnectable realities. Yeah, there was always parallels (Quaza sure does act like a mix between Toa Stones and Energized Protodermis depending on the year), but I chalked it up to idea recycling. But having Mr. Makuro be another Turaga-like Makuta disguise is really lazy.
Not that he wasn’t already a recycled Bionicle archetype. Mr. Makuro, not even taking appearance into account, acts much like the Turaga already. A supposedly wise figure that guides our heroes who is often telling lies, holding secrets, and appears secretly villainous despite none of them ever being such. Add in Yoda silliness and we’ve got Sensei Wu…who is also portrayed as more villainous than Garmadon for some reason. I guess elders just have the Old Ben curse of mentorsThey gave little reason for us to trust Mr. Makuro and with Bionicle fans already at its throat and calling out the “we build heroes” tagline as villainous in opposition to Kopaka’s Mask of Light quote, I think it would have justified that hatred all the more. Cement Hero Factory as this evil villain than a “oh look, plot twist we already did with nearly the same setup!”
Though I’m also super biased towards my version of the character. In which Mr. Makuro, a facade name he would take on when he starts this new venture, was a villain at the start. A descendant of an old stockbroker AI program that went on to conquer and monopolize the entire known galaxy. Exploiting it for all value he could in the name of profit, to bring in and control numbers no thing had before. . .And then the game got tired. He won, there was only maintenance left. No challenge, no change, no excitement - only time for reflection left. To look beyond an inherited programming goal (achieve infinite wealth), and to see what legacy that he really wanted to leave behind. Time eats everything, even code rots, so what would his legacy be?
Think Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller, whom after getting their ill-gotten gains decided to, near the dying days, to start giving away tons of their wealth. Akiyama plunged this galaxy into darkness to achieve his goals and now it would be Mr. Makuro to clean up the mess and restore the light. Only, how would someone that knows no morals or ethics beyond doing business and making money fix such a galaxy? How can he even understand or figure out what a hero really is? Well, might as well try. Heroes at least do that, right? And the Hero Factory is exactly what a made by committee, an amorphous money-making corporation might think is the correct goal to achieve it. Mr. Makuro is no hero and a lot of his bad habits come into play, I’m sure you can guess how he was able to force the galaxy to allow the Hero Factory to operate in their space, but he’s trying.
…Now Lego would never do anything close to that sort of thing. But I at least think he would be a more fun character if he was a bot who could never be redeemed or a hero, realizes that, and is hoping he is able to create a scenario where real heroes can arise and stop threats like himself.
Ah, so now we know. It was just one of many possibilities and all of them are more metaphorical/inspirational in nature. Not neccessarilly a literal connection. But Makuro was still a villain in disguise regardless - a Troglomorph. Looks like Faber really was thinking of HF when he named Good Guy.
Has there been some kind of new information released in the last few days?
Yes, the entire Duckbricks video and much more is to come!
UPDATE:
and another one is out 
