Ghid already sort of addressed this bit, but I wanted to come back and touch on it again. You seem to be conflating a “shock” and a “plot twist”.
A shock is anything surprising or unexpected in the story - say, a character dies that you didn’t expect to. A plot twist, however, is more than that: a plot twist is something unexpected that happens, yes, but it’s also something that changes the course of the story. Not just an unexpected character death, but hypothetically the unexpected death of your central character, forcing other characters in new directions as they try and adapt and overcome the story’s conflict without the previous protagonist. (Both of these were made up on the spot, couldn’t think of any specific examples).
Now, the destruction of the island of Mata Nui falls under the first category - it’s a shock. It’s something that happens unexpectedly, though given that Gali already had to release the Bohrok onto Mata Nui at this point perhaps some people saw it coming. However, the destruction of Mata Nui has no impact on the continuation of the story. It had long since been abandoned as a primary setting, basically only being revisited for this purpose. While the island may have remained in the hearts of the fans, at this point it served no purpose in the mechanics of the plot or story, and thus whether or not its destroyed makes no difference.
Makuta taking over the GSR, on the other hand, is a plot twist. To put it in broader terms, that chapter of the story ended with the reveal that not only had the protagonists not defeated him, but they played right into his plans and enabled his final victory. This is not only a shock to the audience, but recontextualizes several things that had happened already, as well as redefining how events would play out from that point. Without the twist our heroes would have experienced a well-deserved happily ever after; with the twist they experience their greatest defeat, and are forced to ally with old enemies in a desperate attempt to turn the tide.
Now, I’m not trying to debate your opinion that the twist of Makuta taking over the GSR was in some way bad or unnecessary. I’m trying to explain that the two events you pointed out do not serve the same role in the story, so you can’t really say that one is sufficient to replace the other.
Now, while I’m here, I might as well stop digging through the minutia of things and respond to the discussion as a whole. To me, the biggest takeaway is this: don’t judge a story without understanding it in its entirety.
It very quickly became clear that you were speaking with a limited understanding of Bionicle as a whole. Of course, you’re entitled to your opinion, but I would hope that there’s also an understanding that your opinion isn’t formed from a complete understanding of the subject at hand. My recommendation would be that you make an attempt to take a deeper look into the Bionicle story; personally I’ve been using this as a resource to read all of the Bionicle novels again in my free time. I’d be curious to see how your understanding and opinions change with a better look at the whole picture. Of course, it’s up to you, I’m just throwing my two cents in.
Yeah, the dialogue of the novels and serials is awesome. Possibly my favourite part of the story.
What do you mean by this?
Not quite. Greg has given himself the power to retcon something if it is something that he truly believes should be changed. The “first quote is canon” rule is moreso for unintentional contradictions, like if he forgets he already answered a question, and gives a different answer.
Every time Greg has done a true retcon, he has made it very clear, by addressing both answers, and clarifying which one is canon. Unfortunately, love is one of those cases.
(Also, for what it’s worth, Greg would never just come up with new Bionicle canon out of nowhere. Any fact he provided was in response to a prompt.)
I absolutely agree with this. That was always the weak spot of Bionicle for me. However, (and mileage may vary on this) I think that the set-driven design decisions were always worked into the story in a fairly natural way. The only ones that stick out for me are the connection feature in 2008 and the Golden Armour. (At least with the mask collecting, it was previously established that masks were important, and were out there to be collected. The Golden Armour, on the other hand, was a completely new concept, introduced specifically to defeat The Bad Guys.)
It seems within reason that Mata Nui may have been able to halt his fall somewhat, even if it was all automatic systems. He still hit hard enough to cause the Great Cataclysm though.
I don’t know about that. The surface of Aqua Magna is entirely water. Wouldn’t it be mostly water that got thrown up?
It was on the timescale of weeks. This is one of those things that Greg has given multiple answers for, but he has been consistent with the fact that the Toa Metru were only Toa for an amount of time that can be measured in a reasonable amount of weeks.
This actually isn’t that hard to believe. Most of the action was crammed into a small portion of that year; Greg has confirmed that the entire Inika/Mahri saga took place in a matter of weeks. Give it maybe a few weeks in Karda Nui, and that still leaves you with around 10 months to fill with the Mata Nui story and Teridax’s Reign (which was confirmed to be at least a few months).
Makuta send the Bohrok to stop the Toa. Yes it is in the books in a similar fashion. (Revenge of Makuta opening). The later books explain, that he just used the Bohrok as his pawns, because he was not aware of their functionality.
@Strato_Incendus a quote from the German Makuta guide (sorry I don’t have the english original): “Ein einfaches Signal erweckte den Bohrok, geschaffen von den hohen Mächten, deren Mission es war die Insel von Mata Nui zu reinigen (aus Gründen, die nicht einmal ich zu dem Zeitpunkt verstand.)”
The translation team did a really bad job.
I translate 1:1: “A simple accustic signal awakened the (one) Bohrok, created by the high forces, whos mission it was to clean the Island of Mata Nui (for reasons not even I understood at that time.)”
The second one hearkens even closer to canon than the first - there’s only a few extra sight gags and an occasional tweaked line here or there, but it’s essentially the '07 story. Island of Doom skipped over a few minor scenes (like Irnakk’s character, for example).
It’s longer because it also accounts for the online serials, so there will be a portion where the “plot” slows rapidly and goes on a bunch of tangents because those are parts of the online side-stories.
I am also deeply saddened by this.
Yes he was. Makuta understood how the Mata-Nui robot works at this point - he’s trying to take it over. My understanding was that he sees this mechanism (the Bohrok) that takes no effort on his part to cause a lot of damage to the Toa, so he just flips the switch early and lets them go to work. Makuta is merely setting the ball in motion - using the mechanisms already in place around him for his own purposes.
I’m not sure to what extent he understood their function, but he knew something.
@Makutros: Yes, that’s precisely the Makuta scene I meant, thank you for linking it! And it also appears at the end of the very last comic about the Bohrok-Kal, when the Rahkshi are immediately introduced as the next upcoming foe (basically to announce the Mask of Light movie back then).
Also, thanks for finding that quote from the Makuta Guide!
Thanks for confirming this! With that in mind, I think I can judge the story I saw “fairly” now, even without having read the books.
And regarding the Mahri Nui arc, let’s say my expectations regarding the “Jump the Takea” moment were partly confirmed. Don’t think I went into this wanting to hate it - on the contrary, I was so positively surprised by the Voya Nui part that I hoped it would continue this way. And while it did in terms of dialogue and voice acting (especially for the bad guys - the speakers for Lewa Nuva and Matoro could have done better here and there), there were indeed a lot more plot contrivances.
In particular, the constant roaming around of the Toa Nuva from “island” to “island” (technically they were travelling inside the giant robot) felt really rushed. I guess they didn’t want the movie to become even longer, since it was already 3 hours long the way it is. I didn’t actually mind the length, though; it was still an enjoyable watch from start to finish. It’s just that all this fast-travelling, including some flat-out teleporting, reminded me a lot of the fast-travel in Game of Thrones Season 7, where formerly established distances between places suddenly seemed to have become irrelevant.
Add to that several “Botar-ex-Machina” appearances to get characters out of the way whenever it was needed, the immediate transformation of the Toa Inika into the Toa Mahri as soon as they came into contact with water, when they just randomly broke out of that cord somewhere during the escape from the Zyglak, and then the convenient partial backward-transformation - still retaining the Toa Mahri form, but suddenly being able to breathe air again - all that was a little too much plot convenience to still be believable to me.
The mystery was also somewhat given away when the camera zoomed out of the map of the “inside islands”, because then you could see the entire overview of their relative positions to each other and recognize them forming the shape of a humanoid body, i.e. that of the robot. Don’t know whether it was already that clear in the books of that time period.
Most importantly though, even though they did have an important “side quest” instead of just being relegated to the roles of bench-sitters once again, the Toa Nuva still got a bad rep in this storyline, too:
In the Inika arc, they just get beaten over and over again and lose their masks and equipment twice in a row. In the Mahri arc, they’re back to their old powers, but they allow themselves to get shoved around from place to place based on what the Turaga and the Scroll of Preparations tell them to do - without ever questioning why. Or when they do question it, they don’t insist on getting an answer.
They’re basically just being good soldiers who never question orders, to put it politely. To put it more cynically, our former self-sufficient heroes have turned into mindless drones that just do as they are told without using their own critical thinking that helped them overcome so many of their former foes. Now it was just “guess the prophecy / that ancient scroll says so, so let’s just do it!”
I think at least when you decide to re-awaken the Bohrok swarms, without knowing what they’re good for yet (apparently in contrast to Makuta Teridax, who seemed to have at least been partially aware of it, judging by your comments), you’d better get a darn good reason from whoever tells you to do that.
Even if some here have echoed the statement “it doesn’t matter since nobody was living on Mata Nui anymore, it was just a clump of rock” - well, even a clump of rock (that still has vegetation) can be a valuable place of refuge if everything else goes wrong (as the island of Mata Nui indeed was after the Great Cataclysm).
For example, as I understood this alternate-universe story of “The Kingdom”, when Mata Nui dies (which is a real threat during the Inika/Mahri arc), everything inside him dies with him (kind of like the life-support systems on a spaceship failing), but whoever is outside the universe in his body can still continue living, at least for a while? Otherwise, the survivors in that “Kingdom” story wouldn’t have been able to at least temporarily keep the island intact even after Mata Nui’s death.
Voya Nui and Mahri Nui had to be destroyed, as far as I understood it, to re-seal the “open wound” in Mata Nui’s body before he could be “healed”. But the island of Mata Nui was just sitting on his face. Couldn’t they at least have waited until Mata Nui’s survival had been ensured before destroying their last possible refuge?
After all, Matoro donning the Mask of Life inside Mata Nui’s body only prevented him from dying (or brought him back shortly after his death?). It wasn’t enough to wake him up in the same process, because that’s what the Karda Nui arc was about. He was basically “on life support, but still comatose”. And if Mata Nui wasn’t going to stand up yet, why did the island have to be cleansed away this early already?
Also, how convenient (you see I keep using that word) that the telescope at the beach was indeed the only thing that still remained intact, even after the cleansing. That way Gali didn’t even have to remember to “sequence” her actions in the proper order. Too bad that “determine the location of the red star” was at the end of the list, and “release the Bohrok swarms” at the very top…
The transformation from Inika to Mahri is indeed very convenient. But the second transformation I consider differently, since it is Matoro’s final wish to the Ignika for his friends.
The first full map of the MU was released with the Makuta Guide, therefor after the reveal of the Robot.
The Toa were never really thinking on their own. From the beginning on they did, what the Turaga asked, no details required. Greg Farshtey even was quite aware of that. Makuta’s takeover can be explained with that (everybody disregards Krika’s warnings), but also in the short story “Dark Mirror” we were introduced to a world, where the Toa were told by the bad guys what to do… most of them did so.
I mean, you’re kinda judging the canon story by the looks of a fanmade stop-motion films. I haven’t seen any of these two (they were too long for my taste), but I can assure you they don’t do as much justice to the story as the books (since the books are, well, canon, duh).
Again, it’s a fan movie made years after the mystery was revealed, and most people watching it would have already been familiar with the twist. Kinda pointless to complain about that.
It’s hardly a new thing. In fact, Toa Nuva were pretty useless in anything they did and got their ■■■■■ kicked all the time (first by the Bohrok-Kal, then the Rahkshi, and then the Piraka). So I’d say the Inika arc stayed true to their character
Not true. In Toa Nuva Blog, for example, Gali has clear doubts about releasing the Bohrok and feels bad about it.
Also, yeah, the Toa kinda have no choice but to do as they’re told. That’s what they were created for - especially the Nuva.
And who would’ve awoken the Bohrok then? By the time of Matoro’s sacrifice Toa Nuva were already on their way to Karda Nui, and Mahri were too busy leading the Visorak horde to Artidax and helping to defend Metru Nui against Brotherhood after they came back from Mahri Nui. It was more logical to make all of these preparations beforehand.
That’s because the Great Telescope (along with Kini-Nui) was part of GSR’s navigation system. It wasn’t part of the island camouflage or a structure built by the Matoran during their time on Mata Nui, so the Bohrok didn’t destroy it.
This is literally Botar’s job. His entire purpose within the Order of Mata Nui is to teleport members where they need to go.
It’s not quite random. These events are connected. The Toa only left the Cord because it was being crushed by the 300 Foot Venom Eel, which had recently been transformed by the Ignika. So it makes sense that the Ignika was there when the Toa entered the water. Also, even if the Ignika wasn’t there, the Pit Mutagen would have gotten them anyways.
Does it really matter though? It’s entirely within reason that the Ignika could allow them to breathe air, since that’s what Matoro asked it to do. And they only stayed in their Mahri forms for set reasons. It’s not like them being in their Mahri forms had any impact on the story, so I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.
It was not. There had been hints since the very beginning, but the “official” reveal didn’t come until the end of 2008.
I don’t see why this is a big deal.
When the entire purpose of your existence is to save Mata Nui, you tend to listen when an organization representing the will of Mata Nui himself tells you what to do. And you listen even more when the literal creators of the Mata Nui and the universe leave you instructions.
Plus, the Bohrok didn’t destroy the island; they merely removed all traces of civilization.
By golly, you’re right. It sure is convenient that the Bohrok (who were designed and programmed by the Great Beings) didn’t destroy the Telescope (designed by the Great Beings) whose purpose was to spot the Red Star (that was designed by the Great Beings) to help Mata Nui (who was designed by the Great Beings) get off-planet.
It’s almost as if someone planned it. But who could have had that much influence in the Matoran Universe?
The discussion is about the many “plot conveniences” that came with the later years of the story leading up to the reveal of the Great Spirit Robot, whether or not they’re bad writing, and whether or not they ruin the early years of the story.
A tentative yes? Keep in mind that a fan stop-motion isn’t going to be able to portray things as visually poetically as the comics or novels. Also, any character introspection will be weaker in the stop motion, because it will either be read aloud or skipped entirely. Voice acting also has an effect.
I get way more emotional reading Matoro’s final moments in “Downfall” than I doing just hearing him narrate them aloud in Ignition 2, for example.
Won’t argue, but for context - this was originally released in a “Gali Nuva Blog” (a pretty short read which you can find here on BioSector01) over the course of the year gradually. It was serialized and meant to depict only snapshots of the Toa Nuva’s quest, because it’s a blog - so it definitely suffers when you watch it as a continuous visual story (I usually skip those scenes when I rewatch Ignition 2).
No argument here - Botar is a walking talking plot device. It’s not quite “Deus-ex-Machina” (he’s not really “saving the day” so much as mopping up lose ends) but he was always an awkward part of the story.
Most people agree that the Mahri should have been just armour rather than a transformation - but the backward transformation was Matoro’s final wish when he was literally granted full control over the Mask of Life’s enormous power. That part never felt like plot convenience to me - and even the Mahri’s transformation didn’t feel “convenient” so much as “unnecessarily convoluted way of letting them go underwater”. I don’t get why Axonn couldn’t have just given them new aquatic armour and masks - the only thing you’d need an explanation for is their lightning powers (perhaps those were only temporary, and dwindled with time, for example).
(Emphasis mine)
No, it wasn’t. There were one or two people putting together the GSR theory before the reveal, but it was usually met with responses of “clever, but there’s no way the story would be brave enough to do that.”
Because within the next few days, '08 happens, and for that the Nuva have to go to Karda Nui and actually awaken the robot. So the Bohrok need to have done their job by then.
That kind of builds on the same mystery/mythology, though, right? It makes sense that the Bohrok would be built to not destroy things that were vital to their mission, and it also adds a sense of curiosity when you read it the first time - because you are yet to understand why that’s the case, but there’s a very good reason for it.
Also, wouldn’t seeing that the Bohrok indeed left the telescope alone help confirm to Gali that the list they were following was legitimate and worth pursuing? It’s like a reassurance that yes, things are playing out like the list said they would even though I don’t know why - let’s keep doing that.
My personal preference would be to completely remove all the one-off things about the Inika and Mahri; I’ve said many times before how I dislike the gimmicks.
For the Inika, I would just make them normal Toa with normal masks, and the Lightning powers instead come from the tools.
Then, when they enter the Pit, they become water-breathers after being mutated by the waters. Obviously, the Pit wouldn’t change their masks or weapons, so they simply swap those out with masks and weapons they find with the Cordak Blasters.
With these changes, we would avoid the “standard mask” shenanigans we face now. Plus, you could work in a scene where Matoro feels the invisible hand from the tunnel guiding him to the Tryna, making this plot point more obvious to the reader.
(And it would mean that their Mahri mutations get completely undone after Journey’s End, for those who don’t like that they kept their Mahri forms.)
I like all the aspects of Bionicle except for the brittle joints introduced in 2008. For example I never had any problem with the Hordika or 2009 storyline either.
I like that Bionicle is more of a sci-fy instead of having Mata Nui being a mythological/religious spirit. I like to view it as a way of telling a message to the audience: that the world is more complex than a simple religious tale.
Yes, that was what I initially described in the opening post as well (I removed some of those things since I was told I should not start off any actual religious discussions). I stated liked that message per se, I was just wondering whether it needed to go into the same franchise.
For example, Star Wars has always had more mythological elements to it, and when the sequel trilogy went out of its way to disenchant a lot of that (it already started with the aforementioned midichlorians in the preqeusl), a lot of fans did not like that “unraveling of the mystery”.
In contrast, Star Trek has always been more “science-based”, so whenever some Klingon or whatever brought up a myth, while it was usually somehow relevant to the story, you knew the myth would probably have to be taken with a grain of salt. Star Trek could still be disenchanted later, by dystopian series such as Star Trek: Picard. But this was not about dispelling a mythology, only about breaking the optimistic attitude that 90s Star Trek had depicted (even during a period of straight-up war, as in the late seasons of Deep Space Nine). And also, the writers evolved in Star Trek: Picard and Discovery are a very different team than those people responsible for 90s star trek.
Bionicle however, with its Great-Spirit Robot plan from the beginning, deliberately set up a myth first to disenchant it later, with one and the same person (Greg) being responsible for the vast majority of this. Thus, the kids were experiencing the message “don’t just believe in myths” first-hand, because they themselves were fooled into believing the myth. That’s “show don’t tell” applied, of course - but it’s also “cruel” in the sense of “he who will not hear must feel”. Well, many kids are perfectly willing to hear, so the “necessity” of making them feel this message in a way that is so disillusioning isn’t apparent to me.
After all, every kid already goes through this process once, when their parents eventually reveal to him or her that Santa Claus (or whoever is set up as a fictional character in his place first) is not actually a real thing. And then, a lot of people come to Fantasy, because it is a genre where the myths actually are real. Bionicle just eventually hit them with the reveal that it was never planning to be a Fantasy story to begin with, but a SciFi one. And thus never had any intention of upholding the myth, as most Fantasy stories indeed do.
So in the end, it was this planned transition from Fantasy into Sci-Fi that set up the disenchantment.
Also, the “don’t just believe in myths” message is weakened quite a bit by the fact that this is precisely what the Toa Nuva keep doing, as previous posters pointed out, and they still end up in the right spot at the end. The danger of the myth becomes more apparent, again, in hindsight - if you consider that the Toa Mata awakaned the Bohrok too early, for example, and had they actually been able to awaken Mata Nui at that point yet, they would have destroyed the island before it could have been evacuated. But fortunately for the Toa Nuva, the Turaga and all the other “wise elder” characters constantly keep updating the myth, so if the Toa Nuva do blindly follow, but only the latest update instead of the “original programming” of the myth, all still goes well in the end. No critical thinking required on the Toa Nuva’s part.
This “constant updating” of the myth however is more difficult for the audience, especially those audiences who were there from the very beginning in 2001, and could still recite the “original” mythology by heart, making “updates” harder to accept if they conflicted with previously established rules (like Makuta no longer being the name of just one person, and that person no longer being Mata Nui’s brother but a member of a species created by him).
Thus, the series had already demanded a lot of patience and benefits of the doubt from its fans long before the big reveal, while only the authors knew they were actually working towards that reveal instead of just releasing “random add-ons” to the previous story. One example:
Again, just like the Bohrok’s cleaning mission and the Botar-ex-Machina stuff, all these things make sense in hindsight. But hindsight is 20/20.
I was judging the Mahri story I just watched in fan-movie form as it appeared to me when that story was new in 2007, i.e. before anyone knew about the Big Space Robot (as the people in this thread have indeed confirmed to me, with regards to that map that was used to illustrate the Toa Nuva’s travels in the fan film, but wasn’t actually released until after the reveal).
When you “test” your audience’s suspension of disbelief repeatedly, deliberately introducing a lot of things that don’t seem to make sense (even though they are planned to make sense eventually after the big reveal), you can break the disbelief and throw the audience out of the story before that big reveal can actually be executed.
Just try to put yourself back into the shoes of someone getting into contact with Bionicle for the very first time, and following the story from the beginning. In other words, someone who already started in 2001.
2001: The “natural” initial disbelief for anyone coming into contact with Bionicle
Audience: “Well, that doesn’t make sense: How come all these characters look like robots, even though the world is clearly a primordial one and there was nobody around to build them?”
Authors: “Don’t worry, it will all make sense in the end!”
Audience: “Well, I guess it’s just part of the mythology then. If Mata Nui is Bionicle’s deity, he can shape his creations whatever way he likes. That’s how Fantasy works, so fair enough! It’s a new twist on Fantasy, to be honest, instead of the same-old Elf-Dwarf-Orc in medieval European environments that we’ve seen countless times. Gosh, I think I actually love this, this is pretty unique!” 2002
Audience: “Well, that doesn’t make sense, though - why do the Toa get randomly transformed into these new shapes when coming into contact with that silver goo? Since these are the same characters, but they look completely different - do I have to ditch my old ones now, leaving them to collect dust in the closet? After I’ve spent all this money on them and fell in love with these characters? You’re just trying to sell us new toys for the same characters we already own toys of, aren’t you?”
Authors: “Don’t worry, it will all make sense in the end!”
Audience: “Well, I still like Tahu & Co., and I want their most up-to-date depictions, so I guess I’ll have to go with it.” 2003
Audience: “Well, that doesn’t make sense, I thought the Bohrok swarms had been defeated. Now there are new Bohrok to free the old ones?”
Authors: “Don’t worry, it will all make sense in the end!”
Audience: “Ok, this time you’re clearly just desperately trying to sell us new twists of the same toys… including new mask packs for the Toa Nuva.”
Authors: “Hey, just give us a little more time, ok, we’re working on a movie.”
Audience: “What? AWESOME!” 2004
Audience: “Well, that doesn’t make sense - how can there be an entire city under Mata Nui, yet we still see open sky? And now there are two moons?”
Authors: “Don’t worry, it will all make sense in the end…”
Audience: “And yet another Toa team, huh? Well, I guess it’s interesting to see where Vakama et al. came from, even though we already know now how it ends.” 2005
Audience: “Well, that doesn’t make sense - why this insert into the storyline of the second movie? And yet another transformation of the characters? I know you need to sell the toys, but why should I even bother with these particular ones if I already know from the second movie how this part of the story ends? Let me guess - it will all make sense in the end…” 2006
Audience: “What, so Mata Nui wasn’t actually revived at the end of Mask of Light? Well, at least we’re back in the present at last! Sadly that doesn’t mean a meaningful return of the original six heroes. Yet another transformation of beloved characters, yeah, sure. I guess the “Matoran-to-inexperienced-Toa” transformation is what made the Toa Metru more interesting than the Toa Nuva. It’s just that we’ve just had that story two years ago.” 2007
Audience: “Wait, so once again, just like with Takanuva’s victory over Makuta in 2003, we have a victory for nothing? The mask just “runs away” and jumps into the water? And thus, we need yet another transformation of the characters, just automatically when coming into contact with water? Well, who needs protodermis if you have just regular old H2O.”
Authors: “Don’t worry, this will also all make sense in the end…” (still 2007)
Audience: “Well, that doesn’t make sense - since when does an island float on top of water so that you can make it sink? Instead of being a “hill” rising from the ground of the sea floor all the way up above the surface? Why do the Bohrok suddenly have to destroy our beloved island of Mata Nui? And why do they not touch the telescope in the process?”
(Characters in the story say the usual prophecy stuff that we’re used to from countless other Fantasy stories.)
Authors: “Don’t worry, it will all make…”
Audience: “Yeah, yeah, you keep saying that, but I’m really starting to think you’re making all of this up as you go, just so that you can keep selling whatever the newest lines of toys looks like.” 2008
Audience: “Now you’re finally bringing back my beloved Toa that it all started with, you even keep calling them Toa Nuva - yet you still thought you’d have to transform them again? And now they all can fly, instead of just Lewa? Putting them all into the same elemental environment was already tough with the Toa Inika becoming Toa Mahri. But now I don’t even recognise my old heroes anymore, the ones that it all started with. Alright, that’s it, I’m out…”
Authors: “No, wait, I promise, it will all make…”
Audience: “Yeah, yeah, you’ve been saying / implying that for 5 to 7 years now. By this point I assume this series will never end, so that this point when “it all is going to make sense” will never arrive, as long as it keeps selling toys. But it certainly ends for me now.”
Authors: do Big-Robot reveal
Audience: has left the chat shortly afterwards (2009/2010): Bionicle actually does end
Given that Bionicle was at its peak popularity in 2003, by the time it got to the big reveal that retroactively explained a lot of the things, a lot of people will already have dropped out of the story - for varying reasons of course, some probably just grew out of it, or didn’t want to spend any more money on it because they had to save it for other purposes. But for many who dropped out because of the contrived-(seeming) story, they will have left the story thinking it got too contrived, without ever having heard about the big reveal at the end, that was planned from the beginning, that retro-actively justified this stuff. (To the extent that you consider the existence of such a giant space robot plausible to begin with, even in a SciFi setting.)
Now, there is a part to this that is not the fault of Bionicle itself, but of the majority of other franchises surrounding it: Appending new stories to the old ones, going beyond what was originally planned and just making stuff up as you go, that seems to be the default with most other franchises. And because the authors had to keep the central twist a secret for so long, we had no way of knowing prior to that reveal that Bionicle was different in this regard - that more things than it seemed had actually already been planned. We could only observe how every new set that came out obviously needed some lore justification to get sold.
For anyone collecting the toys between 2003 and 2008, the question of how much sense this entire setting made was kind of left pending: The ending of Mask of Light, which could have been a conclusive one by itself, had clearly been “sacrificed” in the sense that it was no longer actually an ending, and now, a bunch of seemingly random stuff was happening afterwards.
So unless you had enough patience - and money that you were willing to spend on toys, comics, and possibly the novels - to stick with all the weird and seemingly “random” ideas the authors came up with in all those five years, there were lots of moments that, without knowing the context of the Giant Space Robot, could easily throw somebody out of the immersion of the story. As illustrated above. And kids in the age bracket Bionicle was primarily marketed towards aren’t exactly known for their patience, nor for having excess amounts of money.
I have to be honest, I don’t see how this is true.
The early years set up the myth that Mata Nui was a legendary being that watched over the Matoran.
The later years confirmed that Mata Nui did in fact exist, and was in control of their universe.
So do you just expect every story to give you everything up front? If something truly didn’t make sense, they wouldn’t be able to explain it later in a way that makes sense.
This has nothing to do with the big reveal. “Magical substance that makes characters better” isn’t exactly a plot hole. I appreciate that they were eventually able to give a backstory for the Energized Protodermis, but it wasn’t necessary for it to make sense.
This is just you trying to stretch the paragraph. Every franchise ever has released figures or toys of characters multiple times.
Again, this has nothing to do with the big reveal. If you want to be cynical about Lego trying to sell new toys, then fine. You’re not the first.
But it’s not like the Bohrok-Kal are some plot hole that can only be explained by the universe being a giant robot.
Yes. That was a very good question at the time. What’s your point? Not everything has to be explained as soon as it’s introduced.
When did the Toa “win” in 2006? They beat the Piraka, but that was never the point.
Plus, Takanuva’s victory wasn’t for nothing. They got back to Metru Nui, didn’t they? (Even though it was according to Teridax’s Plan)
It was made very clear that this was the result of the Ignika. Nothing to do with the big reveal.
After all the stuff that happened in the last 6 years of story, I highly doubt that anyone said “What!? The island doesn’t follow conventional rules of Earth geography? I’m out!”
Additionally, the backstory of Voya Nui was made quite clear: it was once part of the land in a dome connected to Metru Nui, but eventually shot up out of the dome during the Great Cataclysm and started floating on the Endless Ocean.
It’s true that the Great Cataclysm wasn’t fully explained until the big reveal, but its cause was never a plot hole: it was assumed that it was caused by Teridax’s takeover of Metru Nui in 2004.
Again, this is a very good question. But at the same time, it was clear that something big was going to happen soon.
You are the first person I’ve even seen who had a problem with this. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I am saying that this wasn’t a widespread point of contention among fans.
“…, surely nothing important will come directly after the Toa Nuva completed the final steps before awakening Mata Nui!”
I’ll grant that the set designs for 2008 weren’t exactly well received, but that has nothing to do with your claim that the story had too many “unexplained” contrivances.
I have never seen anyone complain about the story being too contrived before you. Complaints about the sets, yes. But not about the story itself.
I do, however, remember seeing a bunch of people making theories about how it all fit together.
That is a false dichotomy. There is a middle ground between “explaining everything upfront / as soon as it’s introduced” and “delaying the explanation for something that doesn’t make sense for 4-7 years while adding in even more several other things that don’t make sense by themselves either”. And then expecting people to still assume that there is a reasonable explanation for all of this, instead of the much more likely conclusion, based on the much more common observation, that authors make up new stuff as they go.
Given that upfront, it looked like the Toa were going to awaken Mata Nui as early as in 2001, then again in 2003, then supposedly with the Mask of Life in 2006/2007, I had no reason to assume in 2008 that this year in particular would finally be the year they actually get it done. I expected them to complete another MacGuffin quest, which would then get followed-up by yet another delaying tactic, so that Mata Nui still wouldn’t re-awaken. The Toa Nuva had “failed” to awaken him twice before, so I just saw their return as “ah well, now they’re going back to the old guard again - without using that as an opportunity to actually make them look like they’re former selves whatsoever, so as to bring them back with at least some remote visual similarity”.
Self-selection. People who hold these view probably won’t join a Bionicle forum in large numbers, especially not after all these years. But I’ve seen such statements uttered on other platforms.
Yes, and several of these behaviours are not to be expected in any way by how something remotely resembling an “island” normally reacts. In contrast, if Voya Nui had been established as a floe or a clod, then yes, floating on top of water would be exactly the default assumption.
Too bad that “determine the location of the red star” was at the end of the list, and “release the Bohrok swarms” at the very top…