As mentioned earlier in the topic, the problem with the GSR’s height is less that it’s realistic, but more that it breaks any sense of scale. Ignoring the consequences of two planet sized robots duking it out on Bara Magna, that’s a whole other headache, let’s focus on the fact that none of it makes any in-universe sense.
The Great Beings built Mata Nui in secret. Sure they were capable of great things, but they built a planet sized robot in a couple of months. Said robot must have taken off from spherus magna, and nobody noticed. There was also a prototype that walked around before collapsing. Nobody noticed that, either, or questioned why there were giant hunks of metal in the desert.
Oh, and the tribes of Bara Magna lived in said pieces. And when Mata Nui united the tribes, they pulled the pieces together. With rope. Pieces that, even if you say the GSR was to the scale of Europe, must have been the size of countries. It’s literally that scene from Spongebob where they push Bikini Bottom somewhere else, except done 100% seriously.
A similar problem happens with Unicron in the Transformers franchise. There’s a scene in the movie where Unicron picks up Galvatron and swallows him. Fans have pointed out that even if Unicron was the size of Earth’s moon, Galvatron – a regular cybertronian – must have been the size of Great Britain.
To be fair, there were a LOT of Glatorian and Agori doing the work. And they didn’t just do it overnight-it took weeks for them to create the megavillage.
Minor correction, but the Great Spirit Robot took anywhere from about two centuries to three thousand years before the GSR was completed and took off. The Core War itself was roughly a three thousand year long conflict. The Matoran Universe itself was also active somewhere between that two hundred to three thousand year period before Mata Nui was placed in and active.
The Prototype Robot was built and shortly active roughly forty-seven thousand years before the Core War and the creation of the GSR. But that does just bring in the other issue of Bionicle’s scale of time, which really only helps your argument due to the absurdity of it all.
Fair enough, but that just makes me even more confused about the timeline. I thought Mata Nui’s primary purpose was the fix the planet. Why build a prototype before the core war began?
I thought it was a secret. In my defense, it’s been a while since I read up on the Bara Magna era, but I don’t recall any characters recognizing it. At least Kiina and Ackar didn’t when they found the GSR’s blueprints in TLR.
The prototype was for laughs and giggles. They just did it because they could. Though oddly enough, Mata Nui’s main purpose was not to fix the planet.
I’m not sure if it was a retconned later, or because the purpose of the robot was often changing behind scenes, but that is no longer the purpose of Mata Nui. Mata Nui’s purpose was to explore other societies to learn how to create a Utopian society and lasting peace. Because evidently the Great Beings already knew how to put the planet back together.
Not sure where the utopian society part comes from, but yeah, I know his other role was to explore other planets. He just had to come back and repair spherus magna at the end, which is his primary mission.
A lot about Mata Nui doesn’t make sense if you think about it. Probably because while the robot reveal was planned from the very beginning, his backstory wasn’t developed until after he woke. It took 100, 000 thousand years to complete his goal.
Also why have a camouflage system that only covers your face. I think the inhabitants of an alien planet would notice if an island appeared out of nowhere. Also ignoring the fact that Mata Nui landing would cause the sea levels to rise and flood said planet.
The camouflage system isn’t just for the face-it’s just that’s the only bit above water-when the GSR rose the animation showed large plates of rust etc falling off-that could have been camouflage for all we know, maybe a reaction with the water to create earth like rust etc. Good point about the sea level though, the resulting tidal wave probably would have killed off the majority of glatorian survivors on Aqua Magna.
Random question but anyone else think that Aqua Magna would be gravity/tidal locked because it’s a moon?
The Great Beings probably came up with the idea of a planet-sized robot before Spherus Magna broke apart, and they wanted to test their idea to see if it would work. When that proved to be the case, they decided to use that method to fix Spherus Magna, a la Mata Nui.
…and gave Mata Nui the powers to do so, because it was his destiny.
Then it’s a good thing Aqua Magna didn’t have any inhabitants…did it?
Keep in mind that until 2010 (which was rushed forward) happened, the size of the Prototype Robot was not at all established. Some of Faber’s concept art suggests that it was intended to be vastly smaller than the GSR, rather than just a bit smaller like it ended up being.
You also have to remember that the original robot was also meant to be much smaller. While the original height has never been officially revealed, early material would suggest that it was meant to be ‘only’ 6 million-ish feet.
As far as I know, the final number of 40 million was a random number not based off of anything else.
Again: I’ve been told that, in 2001, the island of Mata Nui was the size of Denmark-16,577 square miles. But apparently this was retconned when the GSR was said to be forty million feet tall.