So in a recent podcast, someone (I forget who) mentioned on a side note that Takanuva in the first Bionicle movie was originally going to be a human child (or something along those lines). This peaked my interest. I really like Concept art and ideas because they usually look better than the stuff that gets used in my opinion.
“Wow… Can you imagine how different Bionicle would be if this is what had been used? Biggest thing to note here is that Takanuva was an AV matoran (Light matoran) who were very pivotal characters in bionicle. The light matoran would have still been there, but it would have been a whole different story if Takanuva was a human child. We may have gotten more humans appearing in the bionicle universe and maybe some of the Makuta going to invade earth.”
Pretty much. While I’m sad that it was never used, I’m glad it didn’t get used. It would look weird if a human was rendered in the graphics engine that Bionicle the Movie used.
From my perspective, since Bionicle took place in “The Time Before Time,” it would only be possible via time travel for a human to even show up. If you wanted Bionicle characters interacting with humans, I’m all for G1 Bionicle resuming it’s story on earth.
One of the best (arguably THE best) things about Bionicle was its self-conistent and non-jokey universe. I think introducing human, especially in this manner, to the Bionicle world would undermine that consistency. Bionicle has always pretty clearly existed in its own, distinct universe. Introducing human characters alongside Toa and Matoran would be ridiculous on multiple levels. Most obviously, putting humans alongside super-advanced magic robots would be silly on the face of it–introducing humans automatically makes a story seem more realistic; it’s easier to accept fantastic elements if no humans are present. That’s not to say that humans and fantastic elements can’t co-exist, but if you’re telling a fairly serious story, you have to go a bit further out of your way to justify the unbelievable elements if humans are involved. And that would be difficult with Bionicle–there’s no conservation of energy, we hadn’t seen any purely biological life at that point, so introducing human would’ve raised questions about how such life came into existence, and at the time Bionicle had a strong mystical/spiritual theme that would’ve been problematic to explain in human terms. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Beyond this, it’s unlikely a human child character would have been handled well. A human Takanuva would’ve almost certainly been intended as an audience stand-in character. After a couple of years of having no such character (at least not in such a direct manner–you could make an argument that Takua as meant as an audience stand-in), it would be strange to have one. He would likely have ended up asking lots of questions about things we already knew in order to dumb things down for casual fans. It’s also likely that having a kid save the island would change Bionicle’s tone from an epic adventure to something akin to one of those corny Karate Kid sequels.
Lastly, Takua turning into a human and saving the day would suggest that humans are superior to Toa and Matoran, thus invoking Fantastic Racism.
But we ended up with Tren Krom, who IS completely organic. And technically, he predates every other character we knew at the time. But I’m figuring that’s irrelevant.
[quote=“ChaoticTempleKnight, post:1, topic:8005”]
So in a recent podcast, someone (I forget who) mentioned on a side note that Takanuva in the first Bionicle movie was originally going to be a human child
[/quote]I’ve never actually heard anyone mention that. Ref?
An accurate representation of what they were going for, right?
But seriously, thank goodness they scrapped this idea. I wouldn’t be able to look at my collection and take my life seriously if a plot point like this was brought up.
Honestly, if they went all “The Chosen One” with a human that’s infinitely less powerful than the people who he’s basically being the messiah of, it’s just be like every other childish theme such as Transformers (eeugh) or worse.
I agree. Transformers is at its best when humans have minimal involvement. However, in context of that story humans are necessary to exist in the universe, while in Bionicle it could’ve gone either way (and luckily went the way without humans at all…).
