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On the Bionicle Story Ending with Makuta's Victory


Lyichir

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How can ANYONE say in good conscience that the Bionicle story should have ended with the villain victorious and all hope extinguished? It would be the ultimate disrespect to the rest of the story, undermining every single lesson the Bionicle story ever tried to teach.

 

Yes, not all stories have happy endings. But endings, happy or unhappy, should MEAN something. Ending Bionicle with despair would have zero meaning, being "edgy" and "dark" but also "terrible" and "idiotic".

 

Sometimes I think people proclaiming their love of G1 have mixed up the meanings of "love" and "hate".

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What the entire G1 BIONICLE story really boiled down to, regardless of all of the subplots, was the forces of Mata Nui against Makuta (Teridax, whatever): that was the main conflict. It really couldn't have ended any other way other than with Makuta's death.

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What the entire G1 BIONICLE story really boiled down to, regardless of all of the subplots, was the forces of Mata Nui against Makuta (Teridax, whatever): that was the main conflict. It really couldn't have ended any other way other than with Makuta's death.

Oh, believe me, I understand that. But for so long the argument has been whether the story should have ended there or continued onward. I never honestly thought anyone would be moronic enough to advocate that the ending we SHOULD have had would be one that spat in the face of every single message Bionicle ever tried to convey. It brings into sharp relief how many disputes in this fandom are caused by a small but vocal group of fans with a Bizarro-esque perception of the story that considers Bionicle's most egregious cases of terrible writing and marketing to be the only parts of the theme with any value.

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Eh, if Makuta won, I agree there would be no satisfying conclusion to the story.

 

The only way that would work is if Terry actually had more up his sleeve of motivation other than "I want power for the sake of glory" or... whatever his motivation was.

 

Honestly, he would've been a more interesting villain if there was more to it than that. Or maybe I just missed something?

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Eh, if Makuta won, I agree there would be no satisfying conclusion to the story.

 

The only way that would work is if Terry actually had more up his sleeve of motivation other than "I want power for the sake of glory" or... whatever his motivation was.

 

Honestly, he would've been a more interesting villain if there was more to it than that. Or maybe I just missed something?

No, that was pretty much his primary character trait. Although that did make it interesting when, after his takeover, he began to recognize that he had the power he sought and STILL was not getting the worship he had craved.

 

Frankly, I don't mind the classic Makuta's shallow desires. It was pretty much his primary character flaw, after all—his hypercompetence was balanced by a fundamental misunderstanding of the motivations of characters who DIDN'T put their own safety or security above their principles. Although I do also like what we've seen of G2 Makuta, who seems like he might be slightly less competent and slightly more desperate.

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To be honest, I'm just as baffled as you are. But that's because I heart happy endings. In fact, that was one of the things I loved about Gen1 Bionicle - despite how dark the series often got, every arc had a happy ending. With a cool lesson and/or epicness attached to it. 

 

But in my people imagination, the only thing I can come up with is an analogy. And my thought is James Patterson's Maximum Ride. After the third book of the orginal trilogy, Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, the series largely took a turn for the worst, with stuggling storytelling, jokes that grew staler and staler, until we finally got the bad end cynically advertised in the first book. 

 

A lot of fans prefer to believe Saving the World is the end, even though that series was never meant to end on a high note. That's because the rest of the series is so poorly told compared to the first three books that ignoring it feels like a viable option.

 

So basically, going back to Bionicle, it really depends on what you prefer, "quality" of story versus ending and thematic consistency. If you hate 2009-2010 with a burning passion, no amount of statements about thematic consistency will save you.  

 

A better response is thinking of ways 2009 could be improved to be quality rather than axing it altogether, as this is a better attitude about life - improving things instead of saying "there is no way to have a happy ending that is thematically consistant." and quitting.  

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Ending with Teridax's takeover just wouldn't have been satisfying nor proper. If you're gonna end with a surprise twist where the villain wins, it has to at least have a point, a message. Nothing really justified that in the Bionicle mythos or themes. 

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To me it seemed people were saying "I would prefer something that supports an imaginative conclusion rather than a shoehorned one".

 

And don't get me wrong, I loved 2010's end (even if 2009 was a necessarily overlong detour). But if given the binary choice of a completely open world with no clear plot in hand - which is more or less what we ended up with - versus a definitive cliffhanger, I can see why people would go with the latter. Ending on a "high" note, as it were, instead of languishing.

 

Or maybe people use it as shorthand for the giant robot twist and not the Makuta takeover twist, although that would have been an incredibly lame ending, not giving the villain any sort of due other than to be a massive nuisance.

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Huh. I could of sworn I posted in this entry. Maybe it glitched out. Anyway, I think my point was, was that I agreed with you Lychir.

 

It would have undermined the teaching of Bionicle, which is work as a team to counter your weaknesses and defeat the evil. It's a nice simple message that I think anyone can relate to.

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I would have actually preferred it end as a tragedy instead of a Battle of Rock em' Sock em' Robots.

You and the other people who share that opinion seem to fundamentally misunderstand what makes a good tragedy.

 

Macbeth is a good tragedy because the "hero" isn't that much of a hero at all. He makes a large number of bad decisions and villainous actions that ultimately lead to his demise at the hand of Macduff.

 

Citizen Kane is a good tragedy because it shows the story of a man who builds himself up from nothing, but allows his wealth and power to get to his head and drives off all the people he cared about before eventually dying alone and unloved in his mansion.

 

The common plot thread that makes a tragedy meaningful is that the protagonist has a "tragic flaw" that eventually drives their story to a bad end. Bionicle had nothing like that. Whose actions are responsible for Makuta's victory? Essentially, Makuta's alone. The Toa essentially did everything right, and the fact that their actions brought about Makuta's return results solely from Makuta's hypercompetent planning skills that covered every detail and ensured that the only choices the Toa could make would further his own plans. If given the chance to do it all over again, the Toa could not have acted differently and prevented Makuta's victory, because Makuta was just that good. And the only "message" such an ending would send is that the victory of evil over good is inevitable and unpreventable, which contradicts every single message the story had ever conveyed previously.

 

The ending we did get was rushed, but it was fitting for the series, because it was consistent with the series' overall themes of good triumphing over evil and teamwork allowing heroes to overcome insurmountable odds. And more importantly, even if you dispute its quality, it doesn't ruin the entire storyline by undermining every lesson it taught and rendering every previous victory meaningless. The fact that whiny fans like yourself would rather have a terribly written twist ending that ruins Bionicle over a slightly rushed but appropriate conclusion is an insult to every fan who ever actually cared about and understood the story and its characters.

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I don't get why the people who hated 2009/2010 aren't saying they'd like the 2008 ending WITHOUT the 'Makuta takes over' twist.

 

That's what I would have preferred personally - and I thought the whole Bara Magna stuff was pretty cool. Obviously Makuta would have needed a satisfying defeat somehow too, though.

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