From Legends 3: Power Play:
“It was no exaggeration to say that the life or death of the universe was tied to that mask.”
While this doesn’t explicitly tell the reader that the Ignika can kill the universe, it sure seems like the authour knew it.
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If I had created a giant Terminator that could destroy my home planet if an alien tampered with the programming I could definitely see a reason to create an off button for it, especially if my last invention didn’t have an off button and is currently terrorizing the people who live in the mountains.
The Great Beings had often messed up, but nobody else seemed to have a better idea.
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You’re both misunderstanding MoL. The Matoran were trapped in Makuta’s lair, cut off from Mata Nui and Metru Nui. Takutanuva opened the door to Metru Nui, and then they took the tunnels back to Mata Nui, as the rahi did.
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Ah, okay. That’s cool, I guess. Sucks for anyone living somewhere in the middle then, though. 
That could also be a foreshadowing of him planning to take over the universe itself, since that should give him the power to end anything inside of it. The Mask of Life wasn’t created by Teridax, after all, but by the Great Beings, so I don’t see why he should phrase it this way if he were referring to the mask.
That can just mean that if the Toa Inika / Mahri (passively) fail their mission, Mata Nui will die because of that already, and with him all life inside his body. It doesn’t necessarily imply the mask itself can become the active cause of his death.
Thanks for the clarification, I guess - but that just makes it even worse, imho. That implies that Takutanuva was just fixing Takanuva’s mistakes of a) allowing Makuta to shatter the entrance to the lair behind the Matoran, and b) coming up with the amazing idea of having all the Matoran gather in what was probably the most dangerous place on all of Mata Nui back then in the first place. 
And since Takutanuva is implied by the movie to happen “by accident”, because Takanuva and Makuta just happen to plunge into the protodermis pool together, that would technically make it another Deus ex Machina. (Or, in this case: Deus est machina ex aqua 
)
But well, in hindsight the entire existence of the island of Mata Nui is framed as an “accident”. Which contributes further to nullifying why the Matoran should have been thankful enough to Mata Nui to name this island after him… 
At the time of the reveal, the universe-sized robot had already had a story purpose before that, though - during the prequels, when everyone was living inside of him. 
The Great Cataclysm could have been the irrevocable destruction of his mortal shell, so all that would have been left to rescue afterwards was his soul.
And after a long convoluted path through canon, that is precisely where we still did end up: Mata Nui’s body is destroyed, and only his spirit remains in the Kanohi Ignika. We could have gotten to that point much more easily, without wrecking any of the previously established locations (Mata Nui, Metru Nui, Voya Nui, Mahri Nui, Karda Nui) in the process.
Not necessarily - they story decisions just should have remained more in line with that original theme, then. They still could have waited with the revelation, but the hints they dropped on the way there would have needed to be more consistent with the disease metaphor.
Metaphorical consistency can go a long way to excuse pragmatic realism. The most famous example of this is the movie Titanic: Fans have calculated that there absolutely would have been enough space on the door for Jack to survive, too. But it would have ruined the sacrificial moment, as James Cameron himself explicitly described.
It’s just like if Matoro had been a little bit faster, saving Mata Nui before he briefly died in the first place.
However, I for one saw Titanic as a kid, and I immediately asked my father why Jack couldn’t simply climb on top of the door. So the emotional impact didn’t work on me, because my suspension of disbelief had already been disrupted. My father then gave the “not-enough-space” explanation… too bad the math-gifted fans later proved me right. 
That’s neat, I guess, but given the specific medical condition Faber was suffering from - IMDB says it was a benign brain tumor - that is almost insensitive, since it kind of puts the blame on patients suffering from this condition.
Now, if it had been a different type of cancer, like lung cancer, and the “neglect” could have been framed as a metaphor for smoking, then yes, this would hold up quite well, actually! 
I definitely appreciate the attempt to go “deep” with the story, but I do think you’re doing a bait-and-switch with what the Matoran represent in the metaphor: One time the cells, and one time the entire body itself. The Matoran are not part of the medicine - those are the Toa - but they could be the immune system doing maintenance work. Or indeed every Matoran could represent a single healthy cell.
Either way, while the body is technically just the sum of all the cells within it, the Great Spirit Robot is not: His shell and all the mechanical parts are obviously not sentient Matoran. He just provides an environment for the cells to live in, but the purpose of a human body is not to preserve its cells. The ending doesn’t fit with that either, because it would imply all the cells get “thrown out” of the body and can continue to live by themselves, even after the body has broken down.
Instead, if you want to go really deep with the body metaphor, and use all these contrived SciFi explanations to teach the kids something about actual reality: Make the Matoran the stand-ins for genes.
Then the body (human or robotic) becomes just a vessel that allows the genes inside it to survive. And the genes drive the body to act in such a way that, even if the body itself dies, the genes can still survive. This would fit Mata Nui’s sacrifice at the end, while he’s literally “fertilizing” Spherus Magna. Not just with vegetation - he’s passing on the “genes” he had inside him, the Matoran.
There is only one huge problem with this metaphor: It would require the Matoran to actually be able to steer Mata Nui, like a spaceship. Because it’s the genes that control our behaviour, via our instincts and our desires - not us who control our genes.
So the Toa are the medicine that heal the body and allow the person to get up, so that they can then continue living and have a family.
I just still don’t see how the island on the face fits into this. Is it supposed to represent the blanket that covers you while you’re lying in bed? That could have been accomplished with some uninhabited islands, or even just the sand of the sea floor, covering Mata Nui’s body from the chest downwards to his feet. Or why would you pull the blanket over your face for the entire time while you’re sick? I’ve spent my fair share of weeks in hospital, and I never thought of doing that…
Indeed, which is why I personally wouldn’t have advocated for running that far with the body metaphor that it would have required more audience sympathy for Mata Nui than for his inhabitants.
Then why did they make the island sitting on top of the robot’s face such a significant aspect of the worldbuilding (Mount Ihu and Volcano Mangai), if in turn the worldbuilding is so significant for the body metaphor?
I think this is one of the points with which the early story, if the medicine metaphor was indeed the plot goal, at least at the start, lead the audience to become “so misguided”, as Turaga Lhikan would say:
The plot began on the island of Mata Nui, not with the Toa entering Mangai (the mouth) and freeing Metru Nui (=the inside of the head) from Makuta’s cancerous influence (=brain tumor).
So you were made to think they “got there” when they arrived on the island, and that this was where they were supposed to be, after the long journey the cannisters had made.
Well, technically all Bionicle characters are toys, and selling those toys was the prime motivation of the lore, as we established earlier. So another way to go super-meta on the plot is by examining what parts in the story actually refer to real-world things as they relate to the characters being toys. Most famously, the cannisters in which the Toa Mata were sold, of course.
But also, does that make the children the Great Beings? Can the Bionicle characters never have something remotely resembling free will, because it is us as kids playing with them that guided their actions? Forcing them to do what we wanted them to do?
Then Toy Story should indeed be mandatory viewing for any kid playing with Bionicles, so that they at least learn to treat their toys with respect .
Although I would argue that any dedicated Bionicle fan will care for these specific toys of theirs much more than the Great Beings ever cared for the Toa, Turaga, Matoran, or anyone else in the Great-Spirit universe…
I just watched a video of the Rise of Mata Nui again, and there were several people in the comments asking why the island had to be destroyed. One person even gave a time stamp of the beginning of the sequence in which Mata Nui’s face bursts through the island, and wrote “No!!! My whole childhood was just destroyed because he decided to stand up”.
So yeah - the island definitely mattered to people. It’s just that, if they decided to turn their back on Bionicle after such a “hit in the face”, you will most likely not see them in loyal fan communities such as here.
Additionally, there were a bunch of other people who said that their headcanon ends with precisely this sequence - i.e. with Makuta winning. So those are the people who specifically didn’t like Bara Magna. And somehow got thrilled by the idea of their story supposedly being one of the few in which the bad guy actually wins.
Note: No, it’s not that uncommon - it’s just typically a mark of “second-class fantasy” . Magic: The Gathering for example has a history of frequently destroying or at least drastically messing up the different worlds they visit with their sets. So when Bionicle decided to go into the same direction in 2008, I wasn’t particularly thrilled by the supposed “novelty” of that.
And of course, Bionicle doesn’t actually fall in the category of “bad guy wins in the end” - if you arbitrarily decide to stop the story at a given point you like, just like I like to stop my headcanon after Mask of Light, you can just as easily turn any story into one in which the bad guy wins. For example, many Star Wars fans think “The Empire Strikes Back” is the best Star Wars movie overall. If you stop the story after that, it will seem like the bad guys have won. Duh.
But these differences in when people would have liked the story to stop (among those who wanted it to stop some time earlier than it actually did, in contrast to those who would have liked it to continue even further), they actually once again remind me of my experiences with Terry Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth” series:
- The majority of the book fans seem to think the story was good up to the initial conclusion with the novel “Confessor”, the end of the Chainfire Trilogy. So they will generally defend the quality of the novels up to that point, and say it deteriorated with the beginning of “The Legend of Richard and Kahlan”.
- I for one saw the flaws that I recognised in “The Legend of Richard and Kahlan” as mere re-appearances of flaws that I had already noticed during the earlier “Sword of Truth” novels. Goodkind just kept hitting the same notes over and over again, especially when it came to his villains, and his proclivity to separate the main characters through some external events, only to have them come back to each other at the end of a given book, only to repeat the same process in the next one. Therefore, I attributed this repetition and “lack of creativity” to the fact that everything beyond the first book as essentially a post-hoc addendum to what was initially planned. Usually, that’s when things go south, and more and more plot contrivances start appearing, so that the new events can be reconciled with the old ones. Which is why I for one think this series should indeed have ended after the very first book.
As said before, the comics never delivered this “striking visual”, because the issue “Mata Nui Rising” does not actually contain any image of Mata Nui’s face bursting through the island.
Thus, they didn’t just fail to drop the “clean it all” line in the Bohrok comics - one of the few early hints at the robot - they only included the Bahrag’s lines about all obstacles being removed, and returning Mata Nui to the before-time, which are much more vague.
No, the comics, which the guy in the BZPower thread described as what many still consider “one of the most canon sources of all”, even actually completely failed in pulling off the central twist that was planned from the beginning.
Unless maybe they thought that Mata Nui being a robot was the bigger twist than his face being under the island. But as I said, no, by itself - just imagining his physical appearance - I always expected Mata Nui to look like any other Bionicle: Robotic. And of course I expected him to be much larger than anyone else.
But the comic gives you no reason to assume that all the events in Karda Nui, or the Toa and Matoran gathering in Metru Nui again at the end, were taking place inside Mata Nui. So even the whole idea of him containing the Matoran Universe, and which areas are part of that universe and which aren’t (like the island), is not communicated through the comic in any way.
So they just put all of the focus in the comic on Makuta’s surprise victory instead - which you can’t understand however if the story doesn’t successfully convey to you that the Toa and Matoran are now living inside Makuta.
And apart from that, with the single shot of showing Mata Nui already standing upright, they just depict something as a “big reveal” that I considered obvious already when I read it for the first time: That Mata Nui looks like a robot - well, obviously he does, what else should he look like?
Granted, I did expect Mata Nui to wear a mask, too, like everyone else. But the Makuta virus is of course one that wearing a mask actually makes you more susceptible to…
Kind of makes you wonder whether the face wearing the infected Kanohi Hau - the one we saw during the early years of Bionicle - split halfway with the island of Mata Nui, was actually supposed to represent the “cursed Mata Nui” instead. I always thought it was supposed to be Makuta himself, just like he looks in his Matoran form at the end of MNOG. (And well, at the very beginning I thought it was Tahu after having been attacked by Makuta’s forces somehow.)
Ending anything inside of it would make absolutely no sense. Makuta needed the Matoran alive so they could work and keep him alive after he took over the robot.
Granted, I agree that this quote has nothing to do with the Mask of Life, but Teridax wasn’t talking about what you mentioned either. The whole dialogue was a lot more… philosophical.
Not everything that happened in the story has to be a metaphor for Faber’s struggle with the disease. The tropical island setting, for instance, was a left-over from the initial Boneheads of the Voodoo Island concept pitch that later became Bionicle.
Because again as I said, not everything needs to be a body metaphor.
The comics weren’t the only source of canon, nor the “most canon” source of canon. That was the books (or books and comics both, but not just comics). There was never meant to be a single “story source” for Bionicle, that was one of the things decided were early on - the series was meant to be experienced via a variety of media (books, movies, comics, video games, webpages and so on). If you wanted to know the full story, you had to keep up with a lot of things. You may question this marketing decision, but that’s just how it was.
So you can’t just really use the fact that the comics didn’t properly show Mata Nui’s awakening as an argument - because a lot of other media did (and besides, wasn’t Mata Nui’s awakening like quickly skimmed over in the comics anyway? IIRC it was only like 2-3 pages long).
Same applies to the Bohrok and the “clean it all” quote. Sure, it might’ve not been directly mentioned in the comics (although Bahrag’s dialogue serves the same purpose, pretty much), but it was still a big part of Bohrok’s promotion, otherwise it wouldn’t be associated with Bohrok the way it is now by most fans.
And before you say that you didn’t have any other source of lore other than the comics - I live in a country in which we had exactly zero (0) comics released throughout the entire run of Bionicle (not counting some that appeared as bonus gifts in some TV magazines, but that was only like 3 I believe?), yet the 10-year old me back in 2008 had no problem learning that the Great Spirit’s awakening destroyed the island of Mata Nui and that the whole Matoran Universe was stored inside of him. You could just go on Bionicle.com and watch the video, y’know?
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The Makuta’s role in the metaphor was just to represent disease - I don’t think he was ever supposed to represent any specific condition.
Inspiration behind a story is not always going to be a 1:1 version of the story’s themes. It’s just the idea that’s been drawn on to create the story.
I think at this stage it’s worth clarifying that while the metaphor is an integral part of the story’s foundation, there’s nothing to be gained out of reading an allegory into literally every facet of the story. Every metaphor has a point where it will break down - otherwise, it’s no longer a metaphor at all, but just a literal story about the thing you’re representing.
The metaphor relates to the broad strokes of the story, and it’s the basis upon which the story is built - but it’s not where the story ends. It’s just where it begins, so to speak. It’s a vital, almost inextricable part of what made Bionicle what it is, but it’s not the whole story, either.
What I was trying to get at is the notion that the technicality and the line-up to real biology isn’t important, because the story is about a deeper level of theme. When you have the concept of “my medicine has warriors inside!” it would be a terrible waste to spend your story detailing how those warriors got there, how they got inside, how they descended the esophagus, etc.
The metaphor is what the story is built upon. But it is not the story in and of itself. If that sound like a contradiction or a bait-and-switch, keep in mind that the same is true for just about any story out there. There’s no point stopping at “I’ve got a poetic metaphor” when there’s more material you can explore within the world of that metaphor.
Because there was nothing to be gained by not doing it? It’s harmless foreshadowing, they had no reason not to.
Also, keep in mind that the story was almost going to end after the first few years, which would have meant that we might not have even gotten to see inside the robot in any detail. They would have wanted to ensure there was still enough of a tease there where the audience didn’t feel like the twist came out of nowhere, should they have had to reveal it early for whatever reason.
Again, we’re going into issues with localisation/depiction/multiple mediums - all of which are areas where Bionicle had it’s share of missteps, and none of which intrinsically say that the reveal itself ruined the mythology.
Sure, it did. But it didn’t matter to the story.
Any fiction - especially in a series - will face the point where it can either tell the story that the fans like, or tell the story that is true to itself. It can either tell the story that wants to be told, or needs to be told.
So in the end, everyone will have their own headcanon. And people (like us!) will debate what worked and what didn’t until the Mukau’s come home. But there’s also a point where the debate becomes exhausted and you have to make your mind up for yourself. No story is loved universally - if literally nobody had a problem with what you said, then you probably didn’t say much.
At the end of the day, what people get out of a story is different for everyone. It’s a hugely subjective medium. I’m of the mindset that Bionicle went an awful lot deeper than most stories-that-sell-toys-to-seven-year-olds ever do. Some people just want a cool visual to go along with their action figures, though. Or a story where all their favourite things play out just how they want. And that’s ok.
But this is the territory where things become subjective at best, and ultimately it’s kind of the territory we’ve all been wallowing in throughout this topic for a little while now. I think whether or not the GSR reveal ruined Bionicle for you ultimately comes down to what Bionicle meant for you. And, at least for me, I feel like it was a brilliant and very strong moment in the story, and that handling it too differently would have been much worse.
But if the story you want ultimately comes down to something different - if you would prefer your favourite settings to survive - there’s no shame in that. In many ways, fans are more free than the writers are. The writers have to open themselves to criticism and vulnerability, in an effort to tell the story that they see - but a fan? They can interpret the story however they like most, and nobody can tell them they’re wrong.
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Fair enough - I guess I just keep getting hung up on the medicine metaphor now, because I for one am someone who likes to take a particular metaphor and then see how far I can possibly stretch it without it “snapping” and breaking apart 
.
I find this an excellent method for writing songs, for example. A lot of poetry will employ many different metaphors in the same piece; instead, I like to take on analogy and see how long it holds up the more I expand on it.
That basically makes the story a test of the validity of this analogy at the same time: The longer the analogy remains plausible despite being “stretched”, the more solid of a metaphor it probably is for the thing I actually want to describe.
I just brainstormed an outline for a possible fan fiction story about the alternative reality featuring the Doomsday scenario. I think this is the one that would remain closest to canon, with a lot of the same events still taking place, including the destruction of the island via the Great Spirit Robot - only in a different context.
I guess the main difference would / is going to be more critical thinking and self-reflection on the Toa Nuva’s part (as well as by some Matoran; I like the Mask-of-Light idea of Matoran having to earn becoming a Toa by demonstrating their character through their actions first). And less blind adherence to “duty” and “destiny”, without dropping them as virtues per se, of course.
I’m not sure yet whether I actually need the plot point that Mata Nui is dying for this. I could just say the Mask of Life were required to wake him up. And the urgency then arises from the impending asteroid impact alone.
On the other hand, the idea of Mata Nui dying could up the stakes, from “we have to activate our spaceship in time to get off the planet” to “our spaceship is actually about to break down for good, and once that happens, we won’t have any chance of activating it ever again, so we will definitely not make it out of orbit in time”.
Finally, the main retcon would be Makuta’s motivation, building more on the hints he dropped in Mask of Light instead.
Somebody asked me elsewhere whether I really preferred the “cartoon villain” Makuta from the movies over the “genius” that came up with the “master plan” to take over the universe in the Ignition storyline.
The thing is that both types of Makuta have something “cartoonish” about them, but they are kind of opposites in what that is:
- Mask-of-Light Makuta had cartoon-villain manners, but his motivation was implied to be much deeper, possibly even with some redeeming aspects to them (such as preventing his brother from suffering)
- Ignition Makuta had more serene manners, but his motivation was that of a cartoon villain: The old trope of aspiring world domination (or in this case even more: Universe domination). That’s a whole lot of responsibility, and as you said, it actually even made him dependent on the Matoran’s services for keeping his Spirit-Robot body alive. While control-freak psychopaths do exist, I find it much harder to believe a villain who just seems to want power for power’s sake: It’s much more interesting what he actually wants to do with that power once he obtains it.
For example, the interesting part about Thanos is not that he’s chasing after the Infinity Stones. They’re just MacGuffins; you can already predict from the start that he will end up getting them all, because obviously you want your villain at the peak of his power for the final confrontation. It’s what he wants to do with the Infinity Gauntlet once it’s completed, and therefore what sacrifices he is willing to make along the way to get there.
So I guess the optimal Makuta in my view would have been someone with the serene demeanour of Ignition Makuta (for example while he inhabits the Maxilos robot), but with the motivation of 2003 Mask-of-Light Makuta. 
I’ve heard the change in Makuta’s motivation may have had something to do with the Maori controversy leading to the removal of some of the spiritual themes in his original conception… leading to “I am nothing” becoming “I am giant space pewpew robot.” It definitely seems like a downgrade.
Despite being a bit of a noob, I’d like to give my two-cents.I personally I like where the story went over time; I think the world building got better. As someone who grew up with the Ignition Trilogy, I have grown to appreciate the absence of… some small oddities that don’t reoccur (think Nuva masks, symbols). I grew up with the larger world you mentioned previously, and, while I understand your grievances… I love the bigger world. I just wish it had been more planned from the beginning.
I think, from 2001, the Great Spirit robot was planned, but not much else; at most Takanuva, MAYBE Metru Nui. There was a lot of expansion… healthy expansion I would argue. But it lead to oddities and some retconning; the same thing happened with Star Wars, and even Tolkien’s work.
Furthermore… I don’t think it makes sense for Teridax to personally handle the island of Mata Nui… he’s the leader of this big organization… and he personally decides to watch the Matoran. Coming in when the Toa show up is fine… but personally handling the island on his own the whole time?
What I would like to see in a potential rebootis the Makuta race, including Teridax, but with strong motivations for taking control of the Great Spirit robot. Perhaps anger at how the Mata Nui regards those who maintain him, perhaps anger at the Great Beings, perhaps pride and a sense narcistic superiority to where they believe the universe needs them to rule, along with beleiveable justification. Develop him into a believable megalomaniac rather than a “cartoon villain.”
It would interesting to see both interpretations of Makuta implemented as separate characters… the brotherhood, seeking power, and a mysterious, spiritual being with unclear motives who names itself after the species. However, both would need to be more fleshed out.
Also, while I’m at it, maybe they should show the grief of the Toa, Matoran, and Turaga at the destruction of the island. Do something with that emotion, and the odd choose to destine a beloved place for destruction. Perhaps use these emotions of despair going into the rule of Makuta. Then, after the reuniting of Bara Magna, perhaps the island and Metru Nui could be rebuilt on the planet’s new oceans. Perhaps Mata Nui could use the last of his power to start it, and we could see the civilizations be rebuilt over time.
(Just realized: the Mata Nui robot twist is mirrored by the prototype robot’s shell being used as housing on Bara Magna.)
I’ve been in and out of this thread, lurking since I got an account. I find this the civil discussion and willingness to critique the franchise inspiring. Even if it… kinda hurts a little to find out some people don’t like the twist.
@Strato_Incendus, just out of curiosity, how annoyed or disappointed would you be if it was only '04 forward Makuta? If you had to, how would you implement a more compelling motivation for megalomaniac Makuta? And, assuming the island of Mata Nui HAD to be destroyed, how would you give yourself and other fans with strong attachment to the island more closure?
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I agree-the swirling mass we saw in MNOG with his vague hints at being some anti creation really is fascinating and deserves to be its own thing.
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I think the most interesting part of that is the idea that Destruction is not an evil thing, and is necessary for Creation (and vice versa).
Even though Makuta eventually moved away from his enigmatic portrayal, I think the idea of Destruction as a neutral concept could still be worked into the story.
Perhaps there is a counterpart to the Mask of Creation that allows its wearer to deconstruct and purify materials for reuse.
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All hail the Legendary Mask of Spores!
What are we talking about at this point?
Probably in a similar way as you described here:
I think it’s easy to make the case that the Great Beings enslaved the Matorans to serve their interests - as I’ve already repeatedly made that case myself in this thread - so this is the motivation I would give the Makuta:
They could reasonably view themselves as the rebels, starting a revolution for “bionic autonomy” so that the Matoran can make their own decisions. The Turaga in turn would probably see this as a call to abandon duty and destiny (not necessarily unity, though abandoning that too would make the Matoran tribes easier for the Makuta to conquer).
The moment of “triumph” for the Makuta rebels would be the Great Cataclysm, as the leader of their movement (Teridax) overthrows the former ruler Mata Nui, together with the system he represents (servitude to the Great Beings).
Then however, the reign of the Makuta could turn into a reign of terror in a classic “the-revolution-devours-its-children” scenario, like after the French revolution.
The Toa and Matoran would then have legitimate reasons to in turn overthrow the Makuta as their new ruler. However, I don’t think they could justify simply returning to the olden days either (meaning, if the Toa were just the catalyser for a counter-revolution).
An antagonist is also a challenge to the heroes’ ideals and values, so they should at least learn something from him. He can’t just be the misguided guy who does all the wrong things for the right reasons, while the heroes were in fact right all along.
I do indeed think a believable motivation is the most important part about an antagonist, because only a believable end can justify the extreme means most antagonists tend to resort to.
If there are no legitimate grievances the antagonist is pointing towards, then his motivation falls flat. In turn, if there are such legitimate grievances, then the antagonist is making the heroes aware of a problem.
And while you can eliminate the antagonist, that doesn’t eliminate the problem.
So the Toa could defeat Makuta, but they could not justify returning to blind service to the Great Spirit afterwards as if nothing had happened. Otherwise, the next Makuta might come out of the shadows in the not-too-remote future. And this is indeed a unique narrative power of the “You cannot destroy me, for I am nothing” theme.
Of all the stories that Jordan, the Toa of Lobsters from Kanada Nui, ever analyzed through the lens of his Kanohi Jung, the Great Mask of Archetypes, Bionicle was sadly not among them. But I guess he would have a field day with it:
Already Mask of Light on its own is not only based on his favourite theme - responsibility or, as the Matoran call it, “duty” - but it also appeals to concept such as integrating your shadow (Takanuva and Makuta becoming one). That is the idea that you need to have the ability for violence so as to not be a victim to those who are; in this case, Takanuva needs Makuta’s strength to lift the gate to Metru Nui. Otherwise, the Matoran would have remained trapped in his lair, which is indeed something Makuta deliberately caused by smacking the Kolhii ball against the entrance to make it collapse.
And Makuta indeed casually drops the idea that life or at least consciousness is suffering. Now that is a thought that can lead to much darker conclusions than any of the intentionally “edgy” subversion and deconstruction the Ignition trilogy set out to achieve… probably a little too dark for kids . And probably not something a lot of the parents of those kids would want them to contemplate either, at least not at such early of an age.
I’ve never quite understood what Makuta wanted to do with the Mask of Time in the second movie, since he never actually got to use it. But if I had to in turn integrate the Makuta from the second movie into his implied motivations from the first one… maybe he would come up with such an extreme idea as going back in time and preventing the Great Spirit Robot (the spaceship that enabled Matoran enslavement) from ever being built in the first place.
Except I’m pretty sure the Mask of Time can’t actually make the wearer travel through time, only slow down or accelerate the currently-passing time in relation to others. Still, it is implied that, if you use the mask incorrectly or can’t handle it, you could unravel all of reality with it. Maybe 2003 Makuta would have been enough of a madman to try just that.
Which would of course be a massive clash with the retconned Teridax aspiring world domination. As the Kingpin in the Spider-Man animated series from the 90s once said: “There’s no profit to be made with the destruction of the planet. That’s very bad for business!”
The official canon reason is that he was going to use in to accelerate the Matoran’s shrinking process so he didn’t have to wait as long before ruling them.
But this doesn’t quite make sense in the grand scheme of things, given that the Matoran only took a handful of years to shrink down on Mata Nui. Makuta’s plan was tens of thousands of years in the making, so risking discovery of the Plan to shave a few years isn’t the best choice.
Personally, I think it makes more sense that he was going to use it to accelerate Mata Nui’s death; according to the Great Being’s plan, the Toa Mata were supposed to go directly to Metru Nui after the Great Cataclysm (or any threatening event) to awaken Mata Nui. If this had happened, Teridax would have had to hold them off from their goal for a thousand years while Mata Nui died.
But with the Vahi, he could bring Mata Nui close to death as soon as the Toa arrived, and let them complete their goal without obstruction. Plus, he could also use it to precisely time Mata Nui’s death even better.
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Says Bionicle isn’t spiritual enough anymore
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Skakdi Dream Cult
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