I mean that’s more consistent than it could be otherwise, since the elemental prefixes (Ta, Ga, Le, Po, Onu, Ko) haven’t changed, and it is the same population.
That is a compelling argument. Then again, we were barely exposed to the Spherus Magnans, now Bara and Bota Magnans. BIONICLE fans are much more exposed to the Toa and Matoran than the Glatorian and Agori, so we have more understanding and sympathy for the Matoran’s motivations.
These were jokes
I ain’t disagreeing with you there, but it isn’t as cut and dried as your description - or even the general summary of the Bionicle timeline - makes it seem.
The main answer was “Don’t fight all of them at once and especially not when Brutaka is standing right there” but a lot of it had to do with the extremely atypical abilities of the Piraka being toppled by the extremely atypical abilities of the Inika. The Nuva really weren’t used to opponents whose abilities ranged from animating inanimate objects to fight for them to getting knocked the height of a building into the air and consequentially becoming immune to physical strikes from below.
The glorious masks of the heroes weren’t about defending each other, adapting to their environment, or increasing their own capabilities, but about performing acrobatic stunts, perceiving the unseen, literally dying, and hearing the thoughts of everyone around you. The flawless Toa were now freaks of nature, despised being Toa, second-guessed themselves at every turn, and more often than not got wiped by the very villains they were supposed to beat.
Except they didn’t.
The Toa Nuva also lost to a group of deformed malnourished Matoran who drove Gali insane and nearly forced Kopaka into breaking the Toa code. This wasn’t their setting or their typical threats; the mold formed around the preconceived rules of the world was once again broken, and the only way to master the threats laid against them was to conform and break it from the inside. If you haven’t read any of the books of that particular portion of Bionicle’s lore I highly recommend you do; they’re some of the best in the whole series and honestly do a far better job of defending the decision making on Greg’s part than I can.
It ruined the world for a few other fans as well, including a rather notable one I had the opportunity to speak to. He semi-bowed out of the series at that point.
It wouldn’t matter which one got that name as there’d be a lawsuit about it nonetheless.
Uh… They did.
Darth.
It became the title for every sith lord in spite of originating with that character and even being referred to as such by Obi-Wan.
That… Cool. Nobody’s arguing that. Nobody needs to know Darth Vader is Luke’s father to enjoy A New Hope, but decisions were made based on that fact which kind of, y’know, determined Vader’s relationship with Luke and what kind of character he was.
You don’t need to know the GSR is sleeping under the island in order to appreciate the story, but with that bit of info decisions in the worldbuilding set up since the very literal beginning of it all suddenly make sense, because it was hinted at very slightly for the greater amount of eight years and major plot points - the Bahrag, Metru Nui, the physics of Voya Nui’s ascent and descent, why Mata Nui could die, you take out the GSR’s existence and suddenly a lot of things are inexplicable, mysterious, and unanswered, because Faber and later Farshtey built everything on its reveal.
No, you don’t need to know about it. If 2009 and 2010 sucked that’s not because the concept of the GSR was invented in 2001. I personally think that if Bionicle ended in 2008, with Makuta taking over the universe and winning - or, as was originally intended, with Mata Nui reawakening and the universe being saved - it would’ve been a better ending than what we got. But I blame that on story direction for 09-10, not on the biggest plot twist in all of Bionicle.
Well uh, that’s a bummer. Because the books were absolutely the best way to learn about the lore. I’d definitely read them now if you have the opportunity.
It also means Tahu’s name is literally ‘fire something’
please stop writing essay long responses i’ve been reading this for at least forty-five minutes i haven’t eaten in three days
I hate how this is one of my favorite posts on the boards
i have transcended g h i d d o m and have ascended to l e h v a k - k a l l e v e l s o f f u n n y
I don’t know, if anything, the mythology laid out in the early years of Bionicle turning out to be true, in a sense, is to me part of the wonder and awe of the reveal of the GSR.
Like others have said, it was always planned, and hints were dropped from year one that there was more beneath the surface (literally). I find things like the Three Finger Islands (that ultimately didn’t make it, but were planned for), the Onu-Matoran reaching an unbreakable layer beneath Mata-Nui, and even just the island looking like a face are all super interesting and mysterious.
Of course, this is all subjective, and I do agree that the laters years of Bionicle, in exploring the science fiction side more closely, did sort of lose a lot of the intrigue that made the early years so enthralling. It was a natural consequence of exploring that mystery over time, though.
But I don’t agree that it actively ruins the mythology. Nothing that was stated is inherently false or even ultimately untrue. I actually made a post of my own a little while ago pointing out the payoff between the original legends and the final battle proper:
The belief system didn’t fail, it was just a little more simplified than it is was in reality.
And in terms of the points you made about why it ruins the mythology:
True, but isn’t “awakening” basically the same thing as booting up a computer? Does a biological brain not, in a sense, “boot up” when it awakes? We put our computers on “sleep” mode on occasion. Fundamentally, they’re just two different ways of describing the same thing.
Again, the same issue of semantics. You could view the Toa as “just an anti-virus,” but that’s not what they literally are. It’s an allegory, and just because they are inspired by/based on/serve a similar function as that allegory doesn’t mean their in-story importance or mystery is ruined.
Well, maybe. Spherus Magna is actively experiencing a catastrophe as it’s been shattered and the beings on the shards are suffering because of it. Mata-Nui’s return would be the end of a terrible period in time for the inhabitants.
And in the more immediate Matoran Universe, Mata-Nui’s sleeping would ultimately result in his death. The Toa are on a time limit for the death of the universe.
Those are just my thoughts, though. I echo the sentiments of wanting more of the tribal aesthetic in the later years of Bionicle, but I find the GSR reveal actually quite interesting.
OK, so as ample warning anyone feeling like this:
I’m about to contribute aggressively. 
But this topic is far too interesting to not warrant an extended discussion, in my opinion.
OK, so I’ll begin with ample context.
I’ll address most of this topic in order of the arguments made, but first off, I think it’s necessary to establish something:
[quote=“Strato_Incendus, post:8, topic:58040”]
You might be interested in this (it’s less than 20 seconds long, don’t worry):
There’s also stuff like the twin suns in Metru Nui, the rock layer, the very fact Toa are basically in pill-shaped canisters. There’s very little doubt that this was planned from the very beginning. It’s the very foundation upon which the rest of the story was built. That much, at the very least, is all but definitive.
So when Greg says that:
…he’s referring to the idea that the overall purpose of the story was to present this idea, and that without it you kind of end up in a situation where you have to reconcile or ignore many of the things that made Bionicle… Bionicle. Kids can enjoy any part of the story, yes. But it’s like saying “I just liked “A New Hope” until the part where they blew up the Death Star” - it undermines the whole “point” of the story. You can enjoy it for other reasons (perhaps you only liked the bit where they escaped the Death Star), but it doesn’t mean that the story was ruined by that reveal or that it makes much sense as an overall entity without that context.
You don’t need to know the time signature to listen to a piece of music - but you need to know it to write that music. Same situation here - just because you can enjoy Bionicle without knowing this, doesn’t mean you could have created Bionicle without it. In fact, many fan “Bionicle-alike” or even fan reboot concepts I’ve read seem overly contextless and vague for what I suspect is this very reason.
That’s not really the main goal of the story. And they only wanted to save the island before they knew there were alternative islands to visit. The physical island’s destruction is not something that really matters when nothing was living on it. It’s just a big rock, at the end of the day. It’s value is only superficial and material compared to the things the Toa were truly trying to save - the Matoran, and (unkowingly) the inhabitants of Spherus Magna.
It would be as if that had happened after a full-scale evacuation of Tatooine. What’s left there of importance?
What’s wrong with that…? The Toa still successfully:
I think the destruction of an uninhabited island or two is kind of insignificant by comparison, in all fairness.
Is that actually an issue though? I’d argue that’s what a great deal of people liked about having bio-mechanical life forms wielding elemental powers on ancient islands.
No, it’s an example of a successful one - one that was grounded in the truth.
There’s absolutely no reason a story can’t have added depth to it. I think some people thoroughly enjoyed that Bionicle was able to follow through on it’s promise of mystery, rather than just pull a J.J.Abrams-esque “Mystery Box” and write things as it went along.
Not true.
Nitpicking here - but Deus ex Machina is used to swoop in and resolve a conflict in an unsatisfying way. The Toa Nuva resolved their conflict - of awakening the great spirit - the next part of the story was logically Mata Nui’s quest to undertake, not theirs. He didn’t swoop in and save them.
[Lord of the Rings spoilers in this paragraph]
Tolkein (who kind of knew what he was doing when it came to writing fantasy/escapist stories ) provides a really great example. It would be “Deus Ex Machina” if the eagles are responsible for dropping the ring into the volcano and finishing what Frodo couldn’t, but they’re not - they just save our characters once their quest was finished. Even Gollum’s involvement is a direct consequence to Frodo’s decision to spare his life earlier in their journey - so that isn’t just a “get out of jail free” either.
While I agree the jealous brother aspect to his character could have been more front-and-center, it wasn’t retconned. As long as there was no biological reproduction, he was never going to be a literal brother. And I’d argue that jealousy just looks an awful lot like lust for power when the person you’re jealous of happens to be an entire universe.
I’m sure that the same energies that manipulated the orbits of two planets and restored life, rivers, vegetation and landscaping to an entire planet can also prevent the atmospheric fallout.
The story intentionally and deliberately toys with the idea of Vakama’s repeated attempts and secrecy and lying to be a damaging thing - there’s no pretense that the Turaga were right to be keeping secrets or misleading the Matoran about the matters which they knew more about. This is a deliberate character flaw the story plays with - you’re supposed to feel like the Toa when they’re going “We want answers, how’d you know what a Bohrok was!”
If you explain “The Matrix” as just a dream Neo has, it makes more logical sense. It also strips the story of any purpose and meaning beyond “cool, he can dodge bullets!”
Keep in mind Mata-Nui’s story got considerably abridged when the line ended - we were going to get a lot more time to explore and flesh out that story, originally.
Bionicle Heroes is a non-canon game that often gets criticised for steering very far away from the actual story. It’s a relatively fun game, but don’t use it as a story source for anything (other than the trivia information in the trophy room, which was fact-checked by both Greg and a community of Bionicle fans, if I remember the credits correctly). 
The Inika never actually beat the Piraka, either. They just beat the guy who beats them.
100% agree with you here - this is headcanon for me, actually. Kind of tangential to the main point, though. (And I don’t have issue with the species itself - just the naming of it.)
Keep in mind that the original Toa’s names - being arguably the first team of six Toa created - could have been named after these prefixes, rather than the other way around.
That’s kind of what the robot was actually built to do, though… it’s definitely not Deus ex Machina to have the protagonist use a powerful artifact (that he’s had for the whole story) to help him complete his main plot goal.
Then this should be an opinion/rant about Lego’s poor catering to international audiences (something I’d totally agree with). But just because the marketing team failed to deliver the whole story, doesn’t mean that the story itself is to blame. You’ve gotten a fractured version of the story, and that’s not fair - but it’s also not fair to then say that a story reveal (which was almost exclusively in the books, anyway) was a mistake when there were considerable portions of the story that you didn’t get to experience.
People were talking about the Great Beings as early as 2003 - they were a very common topic in Greg discussions on BZPower.
(Emphasis mine)
That’s a… bold claim.
I won’t say you’re wrong, but the presence of background lava in an artificial volcano on an artificial island in a fantasy/sci-fi series is hardly what I’d consider a “major plot hole”. It’s about as insignificant as a plot hole could possibly be.
And finally:
Where did you hear this? I’m not questioning you - I’m genuinely curious. It’s news to me.
One nitpick here: They beat Vezok, and by extension they beat the super-powered Hakann and Thok alongside the rest of the Piraka, but it’s hardly a solo victory.
Also Onua technically beat Reidak if that helps
Thanks for your many comments, once again! 
You gave me quite a few things to think about, especially @Toa-of-Snow . In the interest of keeping my post a little shorter this time (hopefully), I’ll respond to some things in “summarising” statements instead of to individual quotes.
Still, this is not going to be a short post, so perhaps keep your Kanohi Vahi nearby .
I guess the main reason why I was unsatisfied with everything happening around the Big Robot’s ascension and the destruction of the island is that I didn’t have any loose plot threads in my head that I felt required resolution. Thus, the “fix” to these plot threads to me seemed like an unnecessary change of a perfectly running system.
In contrast, if you did have memories of those loose plot threads in your head, like “Man, I’ve always been wondering what the Bohrok’s actual purpose was, and what all this talk about ‘cleaning’ was actually about”, then sure: The robot revelation feeds that “need”. It’s just that I don’t think the comics, the movies, or the resources on the official Bionicle homepage did a particularly good job at making these threads seem “loose” to a 9-year-old kid back in the day.
I think this statement by Toa of Snow sums it up perfectly:
This technically even applies to the story from 2001 to 2003, since a lot of it was conveyed via the mini CDs. However, to my knowledge, those only came with the first run of the toys. At least that’s what Lego told me when I was trying to get the mini CD for my Kuurahk. Eventually, my brother got one that still included the CD, so I could just make a private copy of that one for myself. 
I don’t know if this “first-run” restriction for the mini CDs also applied to the Toa Mata already. But it would explain why so many other kids who had Bionicle toys weren’t aware of the story at all.
Indeed I don’t claim the plot points regarding the Bohrok, e.g. what you can see in the comics, didn’t make sense in hindsight - they absolutely do. There are no active inconsistencies, as far as I can tell, that would clash with the eventual Big-Robot reveal in the comics.
It’s just that there aren’t a lot of hints at it in the comics either (as I said, only the Bahrag mention the word “cleansing” in the comics). Nor are these hints present in any of the movies prior to The Legend Reborn - with the most important bits leading up the awakening of the Great Spirit robot, i.e. the years 2006-2008, not even having a movie to begin with - and the movie, with its extended scenes, of which a crucial one appeared in the comics as well, even actively plants the red herring in the reader’s head that it was simply Makuta who sent who Bohrok after the Matoran and the Toa.
Nor do I remember any such hints in these “newspaper stories” (Bohrok Online Animations) on the official Bionicle website back then.
It’s as if the big revelation that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father (since somebody brought up that comparison), was hidden away in the Expanded-Universe novels - which are canon (at least until Disney threw them out willy-nilly) - instead of being front and center in the movies.
As I acknowledged, of course Mata Nui rising and destroying the island with his face is shown at the beginning of The Legend Reborn, but that “payoff”, in contrast to the Darth-Vader reveal in Star Wars, fails without the required buildup from 2006 to 2008, which wasn’t represented in the movies in any form whatsoever.
That’s also why I never had the impression that the Bohrok weren’t dangerous to the Matoran. One of the most “traumatising” stories about the Bohrok I remember from my childhood was indeed that “The Tahnok Surround Po-Koro; Matoran lost in fray” story. Until they showed the follow-up with Pohatu swopping in with his gold mask to safe Hafu, I genuinely thought he was done for. And I had a special attachment to Hafu, because I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the “Power Pack” that contained him back in the day. (Before he was re-released as one of the Po-Koro Kohlii players in context of the movie, i.e. in a non-Throwbow version.)
Sure, in hindsight I understand the Tahnok were trying to erase Po-Koro, and in doing so, also all of Hafu’s stone carvings on the road to the village (the ones that Hafu didn’t want to destroy but Onewa convinced him it was necessary to protect the village). But it didn’t seem like the Tahnok would take any prisoners. In the comics, they also have no problem with announcing they will wipe out the Toa for interfering with ther mission. Instead of, you know, just telling them about their mission. If there were really measures to prevent Mata Nui from being awakened before everyone had been evacuated to Metru Nui, then you’d think the Bohrok would be more concerned about both the Matoran’s and the Toa’s well-being.
I even recently thought in hindsight: Maybe the purpose of attaching a Krana to a Matoran’s or Toa’s face was to be able to force them to go back to Metru Nui and thus into the robot, so that no defiant “patriots defending the Mata Nui island” would be allowed to stay behind to meet their doom.
In the comics, I only saw the Bohrok-Kal explicitly stating they didn’t want to harm anyone - but that wasn’t surprising to me, given that their main mission was to free the Bahrag. I don’t know if they would have stuck around to help the other Bohrok cleanse the island, had they succeeded to set the Bahrag free again.
The catchphrase of the Bohrok I remember above all is “wake one, wake them all”. If the idea of the Bohrok being cleaning personal is so vital to their identity, indeed that should have been a much bigger part of the marketing.
One reason why I could imagine this cleaning, or even cleansing, as the Bahrag say once in the comics (but not the Bohrok themselves, they are being much more vague in the comics), is that this term, without the proper context, could indeed imply they were trying to cleanse the Matoran off of the surface of the island, instead of removing the surface of the island itself. And since they had to disguise that proper context in order to save it for the big reveal at the end, the Bohrok could easily have come off as pretty… biocidal. 
That’s how I understood the Bahrag, which would kind of make them as evil as a 2002/2003 kid would expect them to be by default. But such language kind of does trigger unpleasant real-world associations, and I guess a lot of parents wouldn’t have been fine with a kids’ story putting such ideas into their children’s heads.
I’m sorry, where in the story do they state that? Is it only in the books, as well, or also somewhere in the comics? As I said, I did read the latter all the way up to Makuta rising in Mata Nui’s body, but that was many years ago, so I might just misremember.
I guess it’s somewhere around the time of the Phantoka/Mistika arc? That would make sense, obviously, but it would be long after Bionicle’s “hay day” (I think there was a reason this period didn’t make it into any movie whatsoever).
I don’t think any character up to the end of Mask of Light was aware of the fact that awakening Mata Nui would destroy the island. As I said, it would kind of nullify Hahli’s speech if anyone did. And that was the only point I’m making here. Of course it makes sense for the Toa Nuva to find out somewhere along the Phantoka/Mistika arc that Mata Nui’s face is right under the island.
Having just re-listened to Hahli’s speech in its entirety, though, again, in hindsight I could see a possibility of her knowing that the island would get destroyed by awakening the spirit, since there seems to be somewhat of a contrast in her words, between “I love my home, Jaller loved it too, but his duty was even more important to him”. That could be taken as having to sacrifice the island for that duty.
However, if Hahli, a regular Matoran, knows about this, then I’d consequently expect everyone in the audience to know about this as well. Otherwise, I doubt everyone would be cheering. Because then everyone would be fully aware that she is calling for the destruction of the island.
That’s good to know, but again, I find it weird that none of that seems to have made it to the official Bionicle Homepage. Or into the comics.
Granted, this might be where Tatooine starts to become a suboptimal analogy - I used it as being “the home of the first main character” - because it’s just a giant desert planet, and thus more comparable to Bara Magna. I’d dare to say Tatooine didn’t have as many memorable landmarks as the island of Mata Nui that one could miss. Still, if someone “fell in love” with specific locations on Tatooine (the cantina, Mos Espa, Mos Eisley etc.), losing that, especially at the end, probably would have been just as disheartening.
Keep in mind that destroying the hero’s home often occurs and is indeed necessary at the beginning of a story, to throw him into the adventure and prevent him from going back. This certainly happens to Luke, as well, but it doesn’t necessitate the destruction of the entire environment - only that of his home farm.
For the Toa Mata, this wasn’t necessary, since they had no memory of where they came from anyway. And the story actually requires them to return to where they came from. Otherwise, the equivalent would have been destroying Metru Nui and other places inside the robot to force the heroes to stay on Mata Nui and complete their quest there, instead of “yearning to go back home”.
That’s the thing for a 2001er like me: The idea of the island of Mata Nui being uninhabited so that it “doesn’t matter any longer” as a consequence is already pretty rough. And you kind of stated it yourself in your next sentence:
The ancient fantasy island of Mata Nui was part of the setting that created the initial visual appeal that drew me into the story. Compared to e.g. the much more futuristic setting of the Slizer planet (with the City Slizer and the Judge living inside the planet’s core).
I could just as well argue: If you remove the island of Mata Nui, the Matoran and Toa become just another set of robots inside a random space ship. Instead of a seemingly “independent” civilisation of robots (=without any “masters” that built them) living in a primordial environment.
On the island of Mata Nui (Fantasy), Bionicle is Lord of the Rings with robots.
Inside the much more technologically advanced city of Metru Nui (Sci Fi), Bionicle is Star Wars (specifically: the Star Wars prequels) with robot characters only.
Not everyone who enjoys Lord of the Rings automatically also enjoys Star Wars, and vice versa.
But only because it was adapted along the way . If you compare the eventual outcome to how the myth was told in 2001, there isn’t that much left in common. Most importantly, the chronological order of events (2001: island first, Mata Nui arrives, Matoran name the island after him, Makuta arrives, puts Mata Nui to sleep; eventual canon: Matoran worship Mata Nui first, Makuta arrives, puts Mata Nui to sleep, Mata Nui crashes into the planet, and only then the island forms).
But also the brother relationship. I always found that vital to suggest Mata Nui and Makuta were equal opponents.
Now that it says Mata Nui created the species of Makuta in the first place, it’s no longer Cain and Abel, but Mata Nui being the Matoran’s deity and Teridax being the first one of the “fallen angels” (Lucifer - and well, he kind of did become the “lightbringer” as Takutanuva ). Yes, Makuta has been framed as the Bionicle devil before. But now that he can basically be better described as Mata Nui’s son than his brother, it’s a little harder to see how he could ever rise to become a legitimate threat to Mata Nui. Maybe it’s now more of a Caesar vs. Brutus kind of thing.
(Again, I’m just drawing parallels to real-world history and real-world myths as possible inspirations for the story, like Bionicle is confirmed to have drawn inspiration from Maori culture. Not intended to start off any discussion about the “prohibited topics” themselves .)
Yes, I completely agree that this long pre-planning is infinitely superior to the spontaneous twists made up by the authors of the Star Wars sequels.
My general stance is that stories usually turn bad once the authors start appending stuff at the end after what was originally intended to be the ending of the story. That might apply to the Bionicle years 2009 and 2010 - with Makuta taking over the giant robot being an unnecessary twist for the twist’s sake. As I said, I think Mata Nui destroying the island was the main shock and already more than sufficient as a surprise, there was no need to add a second one on top in the very same moment.
For a lot of things that happened in the meantime, though, Bionicle is special in that some of its “filler” content, like the Bohrok-Kal and the Toa Hordika, came in the middle, rather than at the end.
I was more referring to my perception that, whenever I open an article about any larger place or individual I knew from 2001 to 2005 - say, the Wiki article about Mata Nui (the Great Spirit), Mata Nui (the island), Metru Nui, Makuta Teridax, or even some of the famous Matoran, these articles usually include detailed backgrounds about those characters and places in the 100,000 years before the main plot.
In doing so, there are countless references to the Great Beings, Spherus Magna, the Elemental Lords, Artakha etc. Beings that operated on such a much larger scale than anything the Toa ever did that all the minor characters (Matoran, Turaga, and Toa) immediately feel irrelevant in comparison - even if they may have been the ones to tip the scales in some decivise moments. 
Yes, I think I have made abundantly clear that the big robot resolved a lot of things in an unsatisfying way for me .
I completely agree with your Lord of the Rings example, though. The eagles swooping in are only dei ex machina in terms of preventing Frodo from dying, not in terms of accomplishing the main goal. In the Hero’s Journey, this section is actually part of the “template” under the term “Rescue from Without”, which is the hero being saved from ultimate danger.
Another example of this is how Harry Potter is rescued by Dumbledore out of the chamber with the philosophers stone after falling unconscious. The main goal was still achieved by Harry himself.
This is another “deconstructive” thing for me. Vakama was one of the most interesting characters for me growing up, and while I thought that Mask of Light was the movie with the best plot among the four, I considered Legends of Metru Nui the best movie of them overall, because it featured the most character development among the Toa. (Of course, as a kid I was unable to diagnose why I liked this movie the most.)
Now, hearing about all this additional trivia in hindsight, the Turaga just seem more and more like douches to me. 
From the authors’ point of view, I think this is a very good comparison : They clearly always wanted the story to be about the giant robot in the end, and were eagerly working towards finally being able to pull off that big reveal.
I’m just not sure that the big robot was what the kids playing with the Toa Mata and Toa Nuva actually cared about the most. Mata Nui was always just a motivating force in the background for me. He was essentially the Force: “May the Great Spirit guide you” or “May the Force be with you”. I wouldn’t want the Force to develop a consciousness and a body of its own and actively start interfering into the plot. The closest thing to that might be Anakin Skywalker himself, but he’s always been an active character from the start. Not the story’s “Sleeping Beauty”.
Don’t worry, I didn’t expect the game to be canon. I’m rather blaming it for its absence of any cues relating to the actual story of the plot, more so than for actively putting ideas into the players’ heads which I already knew were false at the time of playing the game (Like the Rahkshi somehow being on Voya Nui, or Axonn being one of your enemies).
Yeah, I’ve heard people referencing that. I just compared it to the German version of the scene again - if it appears at all in the dub, it’s completely unintelligible. It just seemed to be the spontaneous reaction of everyone standing there, i.e., a lot of people talking at the same time, without it being intended for the viewer to hear out anything specific. Then again, if the line in the English version is supposed to be a hint, that begs the question: If at least one Matoran or Turaga standing there knew about this, how come they never told anyone else?
From BZPower, too, actually.
Naturally, I find this version more satisfying, because the island of Mata Nui still (or rather: again) exists at the end.
This also why I support the idea that Mata Nui should stay alive, but not necessarily awake if that would mean the destruction of the island:
Can’t you keep him “on life support”? Alive, but asleep?
I guess the consequences of his death make sense in this story, but only if the island requires constant energy from the robot to maintain its vegetation etc. I can’t see how an island would collapse into the sea while it’s placed on top of the solid metal of a robot head (so solid in fact that the Onu-Matoran couldn’t get through it no matter what, and there weight had obviously been resting on the robot’s head for millennia), even when that robot is dead.
But as I just said, I never claimed Mata Nui being dead would be a good thing, since every habitable planet is eventually doomed to destruction by its host star turning red giant. Given that the Matoran have already existed for a longer time than even us homo sapiens, it is likely they would live to experience that time period. Then they will need the robot to get off Aqua Magna and find a new home.
Thus, I like the idea of this “doomsday protocol”, meaning that Mata Nui should only be awakened in case of an apocalyptic emergency. And otherwise, he should remain asleep to provide a surface with vegetation for his inhabtitants to live on.
I know, that I was trying to say: The presence of his face there prevents them from ever actually digging into the (underwater) soil of Aqua Magna. So they can never actually get to the “real” lava from within Aqua Magna itself.
And the lava in Ta-Wahi is molten protodermis? Okay, this is getting even more weird. A much more mundane explanation in my view would have been a sea volcano, as they exist off the coast of Iceland, at the coast of Ta-Wahi, i.e. right next to Mata Nui’s face. Then the lava would actually have come from within Aqua Magna. But of course, that doesn’t go along with the volcano Mangai in the centre of the island being on top of Mata Nui’s mouth.
Quote from Gadhok in the comics: “Now Mata Nui will be as it was in before time! All that does not belong will be removed… beginning with you!” that was a good hint.
At that point the Matoran don’t even know that they originate from a place called Metru Nui, Mata Nui is all they know. Already Mask of lights ending shows that they then proceed to Metru Nui at the end of the story. So the movie itself conflicts on that whole “protect the island” thing.
I think that was needed to explore Makuta’s true motives in this conflict, otherwise his whole plan would have been barely understandable.
This is, what I think, the core issue with this whole situation.
As a fellow German, I had problems to learn the Bionicle lore and since there is barely a german community for Bionicle, easy access to the full scope of the story is quite difficult. The books are the essentials to understand, how this whole world works. We never had them.(ok we had three but those are chosen rather randomly). And now, the German AFOL community is surprised that Bionicle is even a thing (really the comment section on the StoneWars-article about the current Ideas thing are mostly from people beeing surprised because of Bionicles high ranking). But I digress.
Bionicle around here were just toys, cryptic teasers, and some badly translated comics. And of course the games and the movies. The only thing that is somwhat helpful is the Makuta guide that released in 2009! Because of that “German” Bionicle seems like a extremely oversimplified and gappy version of the whole thing.
The main source for the ignition trilogy are the books, thus anything beyond 2005 is barely accessable in Germany, so exactly the point, where you made the cut in your headcanon. Just an interesting sidenote.
Thanks for the clarification, @Makutros! 
That explains a lot, indeed!
I did some more searching on BZPower, where some even stated that the books were never released outside “NA” (which I assume is short for “North America”). Apparently there was a similar issue with the McDonald’s Matoran sets (Huki, Onepu, Maku, Matoro, Jala, and Kongu, spelled those ways back then), the ones with Slizer / Throwbot arms. (Were they even called “Slizers” outside of Germany? Or were they always just called “Throwbots”?) Apparently, those first six Matoran were also only available in the US and (maybe?) the UK.
Also, in the BZPower thread on “biggest disappointment”, there were some more people sharing my sentiments about the loss of the island of Mata Nui, echoing the same statements about how the island having been what drew them into the lore.
Some further interesting clarifications could be found in that thread; for example, some people claimed that the “paradise” label, which had been used to describe the island of Mata Nui from 2001 to 2003, was slowly shifted to Metru Nui in 2004 to establish it as the new “Promised Land” for the Matoran. And that before that, Metru Nui was not supposed to have been some place to stay long-term, but a rather dark and gloomy, spooky place. (Which I guess you can imagine it still was when the Matoran returned, given what it looked like at the end of the third movie, "Web of Shadows.)
I just have some more consistency questions about the whole robot thing; at this point I assume some of them may have been answered in the books, but as Makutros outlined, those were nowhere to be found here in Germany around that time:
). But I guess that mask was just placed in some lake / swamp inside Le-Wahi?Ok, here we go
Well I can understand that, but the fact of the matter is the GSR and its reveal were planned since the very beginning. Having loose plot threads lying about is most typically a sign of bad writing, and you’ll see it with practically every other LEGO IP that attempts an overarching story, especially Ninjago.
Well, the Bionicle homepage was not meant to illustrate the entire lore to you,it was to make Bionicle look cool. The comics were a comic-version of the novels, and being significantly less filled than a DC comic weren’t going to contain quite the same amount of lore or information in general. Why LEGO couldn’t just translate the books to german, to a country literally next door to LEGO headquarters, is byeond me, but the books carried the bulk of the actual story, and any other way of attempting to learn it would leave you lacking a lot of the necessary info.
Uh… What.
No, I have one of those mini-CDs. It contains shockingly little. You honestly learn more from reading the catalogue advertisements than from the mini-CDs.
…Or it could be that they bought them because they were a LEGO action figure that looked cool and were semi-affordable. I mean, do you really need to know the story in order to want Maxilos?
The comics didn’t do a lot of the lore legwork because they were relaying larger info from the books; the comics were only a summary. For a lot of people, the first year was the biggest indicator that something was up, as there was a lot - a lot - of promotional material with Makuta’s corrupted Hau merged halfway with the island. One Bionicle fansite even revolved its entire design around said promotional material because it was so prevalent.
But again, you’re blaming the comics for not doing the job they were never required to do. In the books, you realize something is up as early as 2004 - Metru Nui is located in the middle of a silver sea, only accessible through a door in Makuta’s lair. When the Toa Metru evacuate the city and its people, they take them to Mata Nui somehow, but it’s never detailed specifically how. Also, Metru Nui’s infamous double suns whereas Mata Nui only had one. The stage was being set, but subtly.
Then in 2006 you hear the strange tale from Sarda talking to Vezok about how their island suddenly shot towards the sky, crashed through the sky, and ended up underwater, surfacing moments later. Connected by a stone cord which, after breaking it, the island swiftly sunk to where it had come from.
None of this makes sense for a little island in the middle of the ocean to physically occur unless some serious shenanigans were going on - but the comics didn’t need to say this stuff because the comics were busy illustrating the Piraka’s character and leading through the more important story points so kids could be inspired to play with their action figures.
Alright, this example just plain hurts.
For Star Wars, what’s the primary source of information? The movies. Undoubtedly the movies. The books were about excess info unable to properly fit in the films, or entirely new info mostly unnecessary to know.
For Bionicle,the books are the main source of canon information. Greg has even gone so far as to say every other source of canon, since it was not moderated to him, is second to the books in every capacity, including the movies. Yes, even the movies are less accurate to the books and should not be held as the ultimate source of information, and neither should the comics.
Why? Because Greg Farshtey, the defacto master of the Bionicle lore and worldbuilding, was entrusted by not just LEGO but the vast majority of the fanbase to have the final word on anything and everything lore-wise, and his word literally is law. That’s why he has the power to dictate the results of the canon contests, and why he labeled every source of info which he could not moderate to be factual as secondary to the books he penned.
I’m going to skip over the next few segments of your mention of the movies and books as not having the necessary info so I don’t have to repeat that much.
That’s not how marketing works.
You don’t sell a product meant to be bought en masse despite being blatant clones of each other by telling people how determined they are to clean things. The marketing sells the product, not reads the lore.
This is what happens when you put one man in charge of the story and also don’t give him the power to tell other people how to write the story. He absolutely had some influence over the comics, but he had no influence over the movie or the webpage or the marketing.
Yes, it’s an old and tired trope which I’m honestly glad Bionicle didn’t utilize. The Matoran of Mata Nui were more than happy to leave their island home behind them, as it was fraught with dangers and Metru Nui was a pristine and technological wonder; luxury in comparison to where they lived before.
As for the destruction of the island, it may sadden the reader to know iconic locations are forever gone, but you absolutely can’t beat that shot of the GSR rising up out of the most iconic location in all of Bionicle - the size and magnitude of it are immediately obvious thanks to the scale, and man, in spite of the rest of the movie being disgustingly awful, that opening scene was great.
In fact all of the movies were pretty bad. Undoubtedly one of the worst ways to experience the lore.
I laugh because you imply Slizers had anything even slightly equivalent to an actual lore outside of character blurbs.
One undeniable thing about Bionicle is that they didn’t let any setting get stale - the amount of diversity in settings is astounding. You have the tribal, religious setting of the first three years, the futuristic government-against-the-people setting of 04, the bleak, post-apocalyptic city of 05, the gritty, knuckle-to-teeth back-and-forth writing and setting of 06, the bleak underwater setting of 07, the underground cavern setting of 08(the swamp wasn’t much of a setting ngl), and in 2009 you had desert planet caught up in feudal tribes fighting in gladiatorial combat over resources.
Hate the story direction if you want - sometimes I sure do - but you couldn’t find a more wildly shifting environment if you tried.
The true brilliance of Teridax’s character in the books is his most defining character trait: overplan literally everything. I mean, he had contingency after contingency for literally everything. Get trapped in a wall by a rookie team of Toa? Already calculated to line up with the Visorak invasion of Metru Nui, my subordinate will take care of matters. The Toa defy expectation and actually revive the Toa of Light? Hardly a bump in the plan; my antidermis will last long enough for the Piraka to arrive after the Dark Hunter fortress is invaded by my forces. That’ll give me enough time to distract the Piraka with draining the volcano while I wait for the Toa to arrive, free the mask, chase it underwater, and meet up with them as the Maxilos robot to personally ensure Matoro makes it safely to his destination… While I take control from Mata Nui and wait for the Toa to restart the GSR.
Yes, in the beginning there was a brother dynamic and personally I prefer the vague and mysterious Makuta over the member-of-a-species one. But in your critique of the whole GSR bit, you overlook how - in the comics this time - Teridax not only squared off against Mata Nui on a scale where they were equals, but firmly reestablished the brother dynamic by reminding us that Teridax was always Mata Nui’s brother in terms of respective role - only this time, it’s a bit more literal.
I don’t think destroying the island of Mata Nui was going to be a major shock for anyone. A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
The fact that the GSR even existed, though - that was the shock of the ages, and only after the fact did everyone see the subtle clues sprinkled about. For me, Makuta taking over or Mata Nui being restored could very much have been the end of it as Bara Magna felt entirely pointless - some people have said LEGO wanted to do another Bionicle story under the same IP name with a new setting, but Greg anticipated everyone would hate the sudden change and asked them to continue the story instead.
Still, the decision to continue on with the story and make Mata Nui an actual character opened up some very unique writing opportunities - how do you characterize the omnipotent holier-than-thou deity of an entire universe after he has to learn how to walk when he’s only seven feet tall? How do you have that character empathize, feel pain, remorse, regret? How does he treat other people after watching heroes live and die in his name and for his purpose?
Did anyone actually follow up on that? No. Bit of a wasted chance, but I digress.
Vakama was a character burdened with hard facts and unwelcome truths, about the existence of the Bohrok, Rahkshi, and many other terrors and secrets which he had to safeguard with extreme caution lest he shatter the delicate minds of the naive Matoran. Also, the Toa Mata were kind of blabbermouths about literally everything, and if something was told to one Toa, it’d likely get passed along to one who would go shout about it.
Knowing this - and Vakama’s horrifically infamous habit of blaming himself for everything which he spent centuries attempting to overcome - means his execution of what to say and when to say it didn’t always… Work out, and the story rightly displays his methods in doing so as counterproductive and damaging, often lacking the foresight or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time to inform the Toa in advance, like how he went to the beach to see Takua and in doing so completely missed the Bohrok invasion of Ta-Koro.
It really sucks to be Vakama.
And now for the wacky questions:
You realize how big the GSR is, right? Any Toa would need to go deep - very deep - before they found anything, and even then it wouldn’t be an obvious neck, it’s just be large bands of metal miles thick and many miles wide. Plus, there’s a good chance something would happen in their absence, seeing as all the events of 2001-03 took place in a year and a half, and outside of Gali no other Toa really liked being in the water all that much.
Yep - there were many rivers and ponds inside Le-Wahi as the terrain kind of formed without any sort of particular rhyme or reason outside of key locations. And if you’re mad at the Turaga, get more mad at Artakha, who placed the different Nuva masks around the island after the Toa became Nuva just to make them go on a fetchquest yet again.
Because I guess you can do that when you’re one of the most powerful characters in the whole lore and your powerset is insanely vague.
Uh, not all her masks were underwater. We know one was because it showed up as such in the comics, and the books corroborate her being attacked by a Tarakava underwater in similar circumstance. But each Toa had masks spread out across the entire island, all within their capability of obtaining them without outside assistance.
That’s unfortunately not how the mask works. X-Ray vision doesn’t mean infinite X-Ray vision; you see as far as you are normally capable of seeing. The movie implied Kopaka’s mask served as a zoom-and-enhance scoping function primarily; this is a good example of the movies being in error.
This is why Greg made sure to label everything else as secondary. Because otherwise you get some really stupid contradictions.
I see you are a firm believer in authorial intent. Good to know.
I for one am not sure how much sense it makes to apply this strict logic in general, least of all to a line of toys created by a company whose main focus has always been creative exploration.
While I am of course aware that Greg wrote the majority of the story, I don’t see how he can be its sole arbiter - nor when he was “elected” by the fanbase to assume that role (or if they just accepted him as such after Lego had given him that responsibility).
The Wikipedia article on Bionicle somehow doesn’t even list him in the “concept” section (which is obviously extremely unfair towards Greg, but all I want to state here is that it mentions other important contributors):
Another important name would obviously be Christian Faber, as well as somebody by the name of Alastair Swinnerton, and Lego employees Bob Thompson and Martin Andersen. And the first three books were written by Catherine Hapka. The first book by Greg was the one after that, the credits say.
So while he may have been entrusted with the story by LEGO from very early on, as far as I understand it, he wasn’t actually among those who came up with it first? In that case, I don’t think he is in the same “ruling” position over the lore as e.g. J.K. Rowling over Harry Potter, Tolkien over Lord of the Rings, or George Lucas over Star Wars. (And in the latter case, since he sold his intellectual property off to Disney, they suddenly had the power to “dismiss” the Expanded Universe as no-longer canon… that demonstrates how elusive the concept of canon is in the first place. It’s just that in case of Star Wars, a good portion of the fandom rebelled against that, and obviously continues to treat the Expanded Universe as canon.)
Besides, my understanding of being a fan of something isn’t to just “swallow” whatever the grand master of the intellectual property comes up with as if it’s “literally law”. If something doesn’t make sense to me, if my disbelief is no longer being suspended, I’ll call it out. And I’ll even drop out of the story if it exceeds a certain threshold of plausibility for me.
Of course, I am aware that the consequence of that is a self-selection of the fandom: Those who are going to stick around after all those years are largely going to be those who enjoyed the story, more or less, from the beginning to the very end. Everyone else who thought “Alright, this is getting too whacky for me” dropped out somewhere along the road.
Let me get this straight: You want me to dismiss anything I actually had access to as a kid, lore-wise, including a movie (the first one) that sold 40 million copies worldwide, i.e. was watched by a lot more people than have ever read the books, as non- or “less canon” than those books?
Yeah, that’s not going to work. It doesn’t even work with movies where there is a clear single-author ruler over the worldbuilding, like J.K. Rowling with Harry Potter: Even people who have read the books have their perception of them retroactively warped by the movies.
Just ask people how many of them remember Ron Weasley as a total buffoon, because that’s what the movies often portrayed him as - by giving a lot of the character strengths he had in the books to Hermione instead.
Meaning: Even if a movie portrays something as “wrong” in terms of the source material, if that movie is more successful, that’s what people will remember.
If I talk to a random person who still remembers Bionicle from their childhood, and indeed had some grasp of the lore instead of just piecing the toys together, chances are they will remember the movie, but not the books. So what’s “canon” now: The thing that more people believe to be true about a fictional setting? Or the thing that the sworn-in loyal elite fans have agreed on?
Of course, based on that argument alone, one could also justify the Star Wars sequels as canon, given that they were still commercially succesful (albeit not as successful as they could have been) at the box office. But in contrast to Mask of Light and the following movies, they also received a massive backlash - by people who explicitly refused to accept them as canon, and not just passively so by “dropping out”, but by vocally uttering their discontent online. The Disney trilogy contained enough things that had the potential to even irritate “casual” Star Wars fans.
Mask of Light didn’t. The main criticism it seems to have gotten was the voice acting (for Jaller in particular), and the obvious similarity to Lord of the Rings. The movie certainly played it safe this way, with regard to its plot structure, but “safe” simply just worked here. The voice acting in the German version was perfectly fine; I just found Gali’s voice a little low, which made her sound much older than the other characters. But there were no “annoying voices”, as some have ascribed it to Jaller shouting “Takua” in the English version.
Okay, now we’re just at the point of trashing each other’s perception of the lore for the sake of it. A subjective judgement of a movie’s quality can never be called a “fact”.
And the premise that they’re one of the worst ways to experience the lore only holds when you enshrine the Farshtey lore as gospel. Or, if he really wasn’t involved with the movies as much as he should have been, if Lego couldn’t even be bothered to make the very first movie of their flagship franchise that literally saved them from bankruptcy the prime example of their “canon” at the time of creation (2003) - then they have really nobody to blame but themselves for not getting their “intended” (=canonical) message out there to the audience.
I deliberately went back recently to examine the movies again, in their unabridged English version, to see whether my good memories of them were just clouded by nostalgia. They were not. These movies still work, with regards to the themes they tell and the messages they convey. Of course, you notice it’s for kids here and there. It would be quite unsettling if it weren’t. (Those close-ups of the Visoraks’ jaws in Bionicle 3? Sure, but Guurahk squashing a Kohlii ball with his foot in Mask of Light was “too violent” and had to be removed… ).
And while the movies, except for that aforementioned scene they share with the comics in which Makuta explicitly claims he was the one who sent the Bohrok at the Toa, didn’t contain anything that outright contradicted the Great-Space-Robot reveal per se, they obviously did contain something important that was decanonised by Greg: The implication of romantic relationships between Bionicle characters, even if those scenes were very brief (Hahli and Jaller in Mask of Light, Matau making a move on Nokama in Legends of Metru Nui, and I guess Roodaka’s and Sidorak’s “engagement” could also count… at least Sidorak must have had some weird motivation for making Roodaka his queen, even though this was clearly one-sided). And I didn’t even list Hewkii and Macku here, who were built up as a couple in the Bohrok Online Animations (where Jaller’s and Hahli’s relationship was also being set up even prior to MoL).
You think the collective memory of Bionicle fans - “casuals” and “die-hards” - is going to forget those short romance inserts in the movies, just because Greg later claimed that love were not canon? As far as I can perceive it, that continues to be one of the biggest points of contention even within the dedicated fandom, that is, whether love should be canon or not.
According to your principle (“literally law”), we would just have to bow to Greg’s decree and accept that it is not canon. Sorry. Most stories are made better (in terms of “more emotionally relatable”) by romantic subplots. Something is just missing without them. What was the point of making Matoran and Toa male and female in the first place if not to at least include that (even if they can’t actually procreate)?
I’d even argue the romance is vital to the plot, because without emerging feelings for Jaller, Hahli would have had much less of a reason to carry his mask around with her after his death. Which would mean Takutanuva wouldn’t have had the opportunity to revive him. Which would have meant the entire Toa Inika storyline, and thereby the entire Ignition storyline, could never have taken place. Which means Mata Nui would have died. Which means… well, previous posters have already outlined that.
In short: If you remove the idea of the Giant Space Robot destroying the island with his face, maybe the whole worldbuilding does indeed fall apart. But if you remove love from canon, it most certainly does .
You only have one of them? From which line of toys? The Toa Mata CDs contained a lot more lore than those for the Rahkshi or Toa Metru, for example. The reason for that is that the Toa Mata all contained the same CD, and you could unlock the videos for the other Toa by entering their mask code. The later toy lines had different CDs for each Toa/Rahkshi etc., focusing only on that specific toy, so obviously, they contained less.
Yes, I did. My disagreement with the story at that time was indeed the reason I no longer bought the toys. The “looks cool, so I’ll get it” argument only worked with Axonn and Brutaka for me, and the main reason for that was the lack of a Mata Nui figure back then, so I wanted to combine the two to build one. See - I already envisioned Mata Nui as a giant robot back then ! Just not that his face would be under the island.
I know these images, they were one of the most common ones I saw, as well. And again, they make sense in hindsight. But at that point in time, if anything you could assume that it was Makuta’s face that was under the island, given that the infected Hau was the main way to represent him back then (including the Matoran with the infected Hau in MNOG). And well, Makuta was indeed living under the island, so him peering “through” the surface and at the viewer wasn’t that surprising.
Since the comics were what got distributed and translated (given that we’re talking about a child audience) much more widely than the books, on a global scale they indeed would have had to do that legwork. In fact, I only knew Greg Farshtey’s name from seeing it on the cover of those comics each issue. Now you’re telling me he had less control over them, and therefore the comics are “less canon” than the books? 
Why should the rest of the Bionicle fans accept things as “ultimate canon” that apparently only the American, Canadian, and maybe British fans got to read at that time? What about the fans in Lego’s home country Denmark?
Scandinavian kids probably start taking English classes earlier than German ones… but even for them, whether that equips them sufficiently to read the books in English by 1st to 3rd grade is an entirely different question.
Thanks a lot for your explanations on Vakama’s motivation and the “Kanohi questions” I had asked! Now I have a little more sympathy for him again, as I always had as a kid. Heavy is the crown, as they say. Or in this case, the mask. But maybe the crown as well, since that’s what “Makuta” apparently translates to in Maori.
No, I guess that’s what you can do when you’re a powerful person at Lego and need to find some plot contrivances to justify triggering the collector’s rush in millions of kids again to buy yet another line of Nuva mask packs .
This is a great example of where I consider blindly accepting something as canon is nonsense. This decision was clearly made first and foremost for economic reasons. And a “vague powerset” is often just an excuse to make such stuff up on a whim and pull out quick emergency fixes for giant plotholes:
Each Toa Nuva looking for a complete set of Kanohi Nuva makes absolutely no sense for the main theme of that time period, namely that the Toa Nuva should work in unity, as a team. When they do, each of them can extend their respective mask power to all the others, as Tahu Nuva indeed does with his Kanohi Hau Nuva at the end of Mask of Light.
In contrast, when they were looking for the first set of Kanohi as Toa Mata, they were doing so on their own. And because they got used to this self-reliance, the desire for the independence and freedom they had become accustomed to was something they had to overcome again as Toa Nuva - both in their struggle against the Bohrok-Kal and the Rahkshi.
I don’t care who came up with the idea of the search for the Kanohi Nuva. If it was Greg or someone else, if it’s considered canon or semi-canonical as a result: **It goes against the theme, and thereby weakens the emotional impact of the message. **
That’s what I look for in a story first and foremost: Relatable characters with plausible arcs and themes with emotional impact. Not how deep and complex the worldbuilding can possibly get.
I’m not saying those two things are mutually exclusive, but when you consider how much stuff a reader has to keep in mind to even comprehend the later parts of the story, that stuff can easily distract.
I was watching a video of somebody trying to give a complete chronological overview of the storyline on YouTube, for the purpose of helping outsiders get into Bionicle. And he had to spend over five minutes on disclaimers, mainly dancing around the issue of whether he should spoil the Big-Robot reveal or not: Spoiling it facilitates the understanding of the worldbuilding and thereby makes it seem more logical, but jumping straight into the 2001 storyline is more captivating. Tough choice. But I’m pretty sure by the time he got through the disclaimers and advanced organizers, he will already have lost anyone who wasn’t already familiar with Bionicle to begin with.
It’s the “meat and potato” parts (sympathetic main characters with relatable flaws, seemingly impossible obstacles, a consistent theme, not overly complex worldbuilding that distracts from those things) that build up a basic story to be accessible without being predictable, as Mask of Light pulls it off “safely, but competently”.
Now, I’m not saying Mask of Light is completely innocent of going against the theme of unity: In particular, Kopaka is a little too competent at handling things alone. The movie puts so much effort on showing how Tahu fruitlessly tries to handle the Rahkshi alone, while Kopaka on his own just takes out the three that destroyed Ta-Koro (that Gali and Tahu couldn’t even beat together). Granted, one could argue he beat them thanks to Jaller’s and Takua’s help - mostly Takua’s, since he showed a brief moment of bravery by paddling onto the lake of protodermis. If nobody had lured the three Rahkshi onto that lake, Kopaka would have had a much harder time freezing them over.
And then of course, Takanuva beats Makuta by himself. But that’s indeed his only purpose, so he can have that. He’s supposed to embody “destiny”, after all, not the “unity” aspect (that belongs to Hahli, and “duty” to Jaller). He still kind of needs the “emotional support” of all the Toa and Matoran in the audience, and he definitely couldn’t have “awakened the Great Spirit” all by himself (as it seems in the movie - probably just meant “opening the door to Metru Nui”): He needs his friends Hahli and Jaller on top of that.
Thus, overall, the movie hammers the unity theme home repeatedly: Each of the Toa, by themselves or as couples (Tahu + Gali or Pohatu + Onua) get “their masks handed to them” by the Rahkshi repeatedly. Jaller on his own fails and almost falls of a cliff, Takua on his own fails and causes the destruction of Onu-Koro. Only when they overcome their cowardice and their pride and stand together do they have a chance of beating the Rahkshi.
A simply theme, of course, and nothing that hasn’t been said before. But it’s a perfectly fine message for a kids’ movie, and it was a new way to convey it - namely, with little robotic heroes in a fantasy world.
Because he’s the one who was put in charge of it by Lego.
Close friendships still exist in Bionicle.
Yes. This discussion goes nowhere otherwise. You can’t ignore the official canon and then say “the canon doesn’t make sense”. In order for any discussion to happen about the Bionicle canon, we have to be talking about the same thing. And, for Bionicle fans, that “same thing” is the word of Greg.
If you want to have your own headcanon, that’s fine. Nothing’s stopping you. Just don’t expect everyone to drop the official canon to discuss your headcanon.
To go with your Star Wars analogy: The sequels are canon. There’s no debating that. If you want to ignore them, that’s fine (Just like how plenty of people on these boards still treat love as canon). You might even find people who agree with you. But you couldn’t step into a Star Wars chatroom and say “I wish they showed us what Luke did after A New Hope.” (Or step into a Bionicle chatroom and say “love is canon”)
The canon is what comes from official sources. And wouldn’t you know it, that’s what the “sworn-in loyal elite fans” have agreed on.
carpal tunnel intensifies
The Great Beings were first mentioned in Comic #2: “Deep into the Darkness” from 2001.
Essentially, the position was given to him by LEGO, and no amount of not liking it will change that he has it. If you want to challenge that, go right ahead, but I’m going to continue under the assumption that it is fact - because it is.
Christian Faber no longer works as a LEGO Employee, and while he did a fair amount of the worldbuilding, Greg and Catherine Hapka were the main two who put pen to paper and wrote the rules by which the world operates as well as any and all lore introduced - even that which the movies operate by, even if they do literally whatever they want. Also, Faber came up with the GSR concept, Greg just helped it along.
Seeing as Greg Farshtey was head of the story team after Hapka, is currently a LEGO employee, and has held the position of loremaster over Bionicle ever since he began work on the franchise, I think it’s fair to say he is still the loremaster, and that his word still carries the power it did during the Dark Hunters contest, which he ran, and the Rahi contest, which he ran, and the Time Trap contest, which he ran, and… Look, LEGO’s literally given the guy free reign over the canon in every capacity. If you don’t like it that’s your problem.
I argue that outside of LEGO literally saying he does, he does, because Greg did the vast majority of the legwork for crafting the world - far more than anyone else. It’s far more his universe than Faber’s.
We’re not talking about a something. We’re talking about Bionicle, a toy line completely supported by its extensive and complex lore, one which unlike Star Wars and other media empires has been strictly moderated by a handful of people writing and developing the series. You are welcome to hate creative decisions Greg made or question a ruling he has stated - but the fact of the matter is this is his series, and he not only can do whatever he wants with it (within LEGO’s parameters and pending their approval), but he very much has.
You’re welcome to question everything he’s ever said, but know that over half of what he’s ever said ended up in the movies and comics as storyline.
My deepest condolences to Greg that when writing a brand-new story for a company trying to benefit as much as possible off a kid’s action figure line, some things were entirely beyond your control, and certain decisions made by movie directors were ones you had to work around, and the only reconciliation for the massive plot holes that ruin the perception of the overarching story was to claim canon superiority of your own written work, so you wouldn’t be bombarded with questions about what takes precedence over and over and over.
You do realize that Greg has been involved heavily with the community for… Yeah pretty much the entire time he’s worked on Bionicle, right? and even the time he hasn’t, like the past two years on TTV answering questions for no other reason than to answer questions? How many of those questions if not for canon precedence by the literature would have been about the canonical order of events? 50%? 60%? Greg has also stated any answer he has given in the past on a specific subject overrides any answer he would give today on said subject, so he can never accidentally tie himself into a corner.
Now I’m not saying drop the movies and comics because they’re 100% incorrect and the story you learned is a lie. But I am saying the only information 100% accurate is the books, and you cannot blame the movies and comics for doing a subpar job of explaining the lore when they were never trying to. So if you want to find out about the character building, the foreshadowing of events, you will not find it on the Bionicle website because it doesn’t exist anywhere it didn’t need to.
Please stop talking down to me.
If the majority of the world thinks 2+2=5 this does not change 2+2 being 4, but 2, 5, and 4 are all still numbers. When Greg says the books are more canon than the games, he means “I don’t want to have to give a canon explanation as to why in the world the people making the flash game gave Takua a tablet and now I’m stuck finding a lore reason.” When Greg says the books are more canon than the movies, he means “I don’t want to explain why one Matoran sounds painfully american and why Makuta looks like a chicken when his set looks nothing like that.” This isn’t some absurd power fantasy the author is on, he’s just ensuring the material he was able to moderate is held above the material he outright disagrees with or had absolutely no control over.
Why not be like George Lucas or J. K. Rowling, and only descend from your seat of authoritative significance to make a dumb lore comment or add in new info that was never present? Why interact with the community at all and go such great lengths to secure how you’ve written things when it’ll get inevitably picked apart by someone desperate for a reboot? I’m not Greg and I can’t give a definitive answer, but my guess is Greg really cares that people properly understand the story he’s written.
Bionicle story in any capacity past 2003 = literally Farshtey
Yeah I hold the entire rest of the Bionicle lore as gospel, yeah.
Allow me to illustrate the message LEGO was sending:
“PLEASE BUY BIONICLE BRAND LEGO SETS. THANK YOU.”
IMO I think they got the message across. Leave the author to make it all make sense; they accomplished their goal and had it generally follow the preestablished plot. Greg can explain away all the contradictions with established work which Hapka wrote and he can’t retroactively alter.
Love Isn’t Canon is infamously the most controversial decision made by Greg, and it stems entirely from Greg wanting to avoid any baby-making in his kid friendly toy line story. Was it a smart way to go about doing it? No. Was he very specific? No. Is there still the possibility that romantic love exists in the Bionicle canon in spite of this thanks to Greg not giving a defined answer? Yes, and he’s even made statements alluding to it as well.
Because as much as Greg has made defined decisions about canon hierarchy and what does and doesn’t fly as being possible, he’s also been very vague on certain issues and given certain answers on topics previously assumed as fact, such as the almost as infamous gender-element issue, where Greg confirmed that a Ta-Matoran could in fact be created female, and a Ga-Matoran created male, but that it hadn’t happened before, “as far as he knew.”
I’d argue this is reductio ad absurdum on your part, but I’m slightly scared as to how many fallacies would turn up in my reasoning.
Well, uh… Sorry.
The books were made to sell the toys. The games were made to sell the toys, the movies were made to sell the toys, and nothing was made outside of that purpose. People like Faber, Hapka and Farshtey definitely got invested with the world they were crafting and the story they were telling, but that’s the reason LEGO greenlit everything that was published/produced. And truth be told you didn’t need to know the story to buy the product. Maybe you did, but the general consumer didn’t need to.
And the inverse applied as well - Jaller wields two swords in his appearance in the books as a Toa despite having only one sword because Greg was only given the prototype of the set to work off of. If LEGO says something is to be a certain way, then it is. If LEGO wants Vakama to turn evil in the movie and not, as Greg would have liked, Matau, then Greg has to buckle to LEGO’s wishes. And LEGO didn’t need his approval to make the movies yet still appointed him in charge of the lore: so as many times as you’ve retorted it I’ll resay it, The books are more canon than the movies, comics, video games, television ads, or weird Piraka yoyos that for some reason exist. So says Greg, so says the majority of the fandom, and by extension, so says LEGO.
Why LEGO decided not to take the time translating the books into every language in Europe is probably because Bionicle was selling the best in America, and there was no reason to pander quite as heavily to everywhere else if the market was much smaller. Plus, translating a comic takes considerably less effort than translating a book does, as the comics are very light on dialogue in comparison to even one of the Ignition novels.
Hey, I agree. But this was the Hapka years, where every combiner and every mask pack needed a story reason to exist.
Plus it’s something that was barely covered in the story at all, as the actual story had the Toa splitting up (as rewritten in Divided We Fall), leading into the attack by the Bohrok Kal and the Toa’s division being devastating to their retaliation.
I can only assume your review of the movie’s handling of the story was leading into the point you’re making, being… You like the movie. That’s fine.
But you’re presenting the overall argument - that the GSR was terrible for Bionicle - as someone who only viewed the story through a specific medium, disliked the story after a certain period, and didn’t ever read the books. Worse, you’re presenting it to people who viewed Bionicle through all forms of available media, especially the books, people who likely feel your inaccessibility to the books has made you greatly naive to the story of Bionicle - something not exactly helped by a critical analysis of the first movie’s themes.
I’m proof you don’t need the story to enjoy Bionicle or even to buy the sets. I got into Bionicle in 2003 and didn’t even learn the story until 2008. And I’m not defending the canon story as being particularly intelligent, well-written, or devoid of any flaws or plot holes - Artakha being the culprit behind the Nuva mask kerfuffle was a decision made years later, after none of those mask packs were on shelves, so that’s one point for the writers not trying to monopolize off of existing products.
But in the end, if you only watched the movies and read the comics and don’t like the GSR’s existence, that’s perfectly fine - and it’s also perfectly fine for the people who read through what has been confirmed as the ultimate source for canon information in Bionicle to disagree with you, and cite the canon itself as a source. If you don’t like Greg having the power and authority to control the canon that’s also fine - but it doesn’t change the fact that LEGO gave him that power and position in the first place.
This argument has vastly veered off-course with a critique of Greg and a defense of the movie’s quality, so until it swings back in the direction of the discussion at hand, this is where I bow out.
You have no idea
Wasn’t that a decision made by the story team as a whole?
To not have baby-making? Yeah, but Greg is the one who defined it as “Love Isn’t Canon”.
Kopaka’s mask has a telescopic lens.
