Why the hate towards the Glatorian era?

[bonesiii]

2009 was an attempt to counter already gradually declining sales, which failed, not a sudden drop. The hope was that having a new story that didn't take much understanding of old story (and what you did need to know was introduced later with Mata Nui; it was called a reboot for these reasons), would draw in enough new fans, but it didn't work, in part because LEGO couldn't get as much advertising for an old line (such as prominent toy magazine features) as they could with a new one like HF or Bionicle after taking a break (and a full reboot).

 

Storywise, I think a lot of what you see online in dislikes for it was that the direction it went didn't feel as enticing as 2001 did. 2001 set up a striking apparent paradox -- robots on a tropical island -- and so little was clear, it felt highly mysterious. 2009 felt mysterious for a little from some of the promo images, but when it was established, it felt more like tying up loose ends (which did make sense for an end-of-arc story, so it did serve fairly well in many ways when the end came) about how the MU came to be rather than setting up new mysteries. Had they marketed it as being for this purpose I think it might have been met more favorably, but they marketed it as "a new world with new mysteries to explore."

 

It did have some new mysteries but most of them were pretty mundane. It also didn't really feel like exploring the unknown; that might have worked better if it was all from Mata Nui's POV and the locals actually tried to hide a lot from him. The unknown being explored was pretty much just fans wondering and it being cleared up pretty quickly.

 

I actually like, in a sense, the more mundane focus of it. It did a lot to raise up Bionicle's realism and give the previous years a firm background that was in many ways easier to see as plausible (although some of it still takes some thought, and a few things like the Golden Armor didn't really help). But at the same time, it's not as fun as the other settings. I think a big part of it is that it's not an island anymore... which could have actually worked in a fascinating way if they had taken advantage of emphasizing in story the huge travel times you'd actually expect. But instead it seems that they put all the relevant villages very close to one another with tiny travel times, so it tried to feel like an island even though it was a huge landmass. That left a lot of missed potential for some sense of mystery based on a vast largely unexplored wilderness.

 

And its being a desert made the appeal of it harder than if it had been a vast jungle. Although that part did make a lot of sense in-story, so it's something I was able to bear with.

[Wazdakka]

TBH: I didn't read through the sea of text above me, so if I'm just reiterating stuff, I'm sorry.

 

I believe that Bionicle sales had been slowly but surely dropping every since 2004-05 and 2009 was not a sudden crash. I was not a BZPower member back then, but I remember my thoughts on the Glatorian to be as such: They look cool, but where are my old Toa-heroes? And what's up with these new not-mask helmets? Sure, I'll buy a couple, but not a lot, especially when they are $12.99 a pop. If you look at BZP's reviews of the Glatorian, they generally said stuff like this, as far as I can recall: "It's cool, Lego IS trying to put some new twists on the classic canister design, but they either do not pull it off all the way or make it worth the new price tag." I think that's what gives the Glatorian lines a bit of a negative cloud. I want 'em though. 

[Adventurer]

Ultimately I'd say the new story and setting/characters didn't gain traction fast enough for people to develop a connection to them and so on that side of things it kind of fizzled out rather than building to the climax as was originally planned. Can't really say for the sets, I thought they were pretty good for the most part - maybe I didn't like them as much as the previous years, but I wouldn't say they were bad and there were a few really good ones amongst them I thought.

[fishers64]

I've complained and complained and complained and complained...about 2009. Thank you for giving me an excuse to complain some more. I'll take it. 

 

It was the worst. The main antagonist had won, took over the universe, and we dived off to this other place, with no hint that the huge looming plot thread of it would be resolved. When I compiled the media timeline for 2009, it's actually the most inaccessible story year in terms of media - there are plot points that could only be known about if you read either the book Raid on Vulcanus or the comics - you had to know about both. And I knew about neither - previous titles were of the Bionicle Legends series, and there was no source to tell me about Raid on Vulcanus and that it was part of the main story, or the Crossing, or anything of that nature. 

 

So the only thing I knew of the story was the web serials and TLR. It felt like I was going an entire half a year with no story. Where was the story? I couldn't find it. By the time TLR came out, I was glad to have an actual story that connected back to the main one in some sort of reasonable way. At that point, what they did in trying to introduce the world started to make sense.  

 

Even if I had known, I'm not sure I would have cared; there didn't seem to be any real connection to that huge twist hanging out there that they just left. In essence, I was just waiting for someone to say - "Here's the connection." Once they gave it to me, I was back in the game. They so badly needed to do that first. 

 

* * *

It's actually not entirely uncommon to do what Lego did with 2009 - it's a valid storytelling technique. You write one story up to a certain pivotal event, focusing on one character's knowledge of that event when it happens. Then you tell a different characters' story that feels completely unrelated to the first, but they intersect at that one point, and by reading both stories, you get a better understanding of the event. (In this case, the event being the MN bots' crash landing on Aqua Magna and MN going to Bara afterword.) FTR, this technique is also really common in Bionicle, especially when the story serials came into play. 

 

The first problem with that technique is that both stories have to stand on their own. Bara Magna didn't stand on it's own - it needed the 2001-2008 story to support itself, since that story was closely linked to that as a mystery. But the story purposefully stayed away from solving its own mystery, instead talking about mundane and pointless world-building details that weren't given any meaning. The question Bara Magna eventually answered is "What is the purpose of Mata Nui?" but it never made us wonder about that question or told us that it was going to answer it.

 

The second problem with that technique is that the the stories have to have synchronicity; they have to be of the same length and about the same amount of emotional investment. I write one book that's one half, I write one book that's the other half. We didn't expect this technique to be used suddenly at the end of a plot twist to explain the whole thing. Previous uses were inside story years.

 

The third problem, and the one that people never seemed to get in Bionicle, is that mystery (and the feel of it) belongs at the beginning of a story. The end of a story is where things are revealed, where mysteries are solved. That time needs action, suspense, lots of big cliffhangers and epic fight scenes and deep sacrifices and tight and risky decisions. You do not need the 2001 feel of passive, peaceful mystery then. At the end of the story, you do not descend into a passive state of puzzle-solving. You know most of the answers and the really big stakes you're playing for now. What needs to happen then is what you do with it. Sometimes it's naming the last things you have to find out. Sometimes it's fighting the evil bad guy and using all that you know against him.

 

2009 had to be that way - there was no other way. But Lego tried desperately to force the story away from what needed it be because it wasn't fitting their sales model. What they really needed was to place us in Mata Nui's proverbial shoes, solving mysteries in a dangerous new world to find what he needed to defeat Makuta. And eventually, that is what they did. But they didn't want to do it, and it shows so badly. In the end, they ended up infodumping the solutions to the mysteries on Mata Nui and us at the beginning of 2010 because they didn't want to focus on it in-story.

 

They also forgot the suspense quotient - there is all of the ingredients for suspense and danger that they just didn't use. Like the planet that was going down if it wasn't restored, the dangerous forces of the Skrall and Bone Hunters, the traitor/mole hunt - TLR could have been a whole lot darker movie. Not to mention the Great Maze and all of the traps in there. 2009 could have been beyond beyond epic.

 

I almost want to rewrite it as fanfiction now, but it wouldn't have the same impact because people would already know all the answers. 

* * *

As for sets, I can't say I was disappointed - I actually thought all of them looked cool, especially the Glatorian Legends. Vastus in particular struck me fondly, but Kiina, Ackar, Mata Nui...heck, even Malum and Gelu.  But that could have been the 3-D models in Glatorian Arenas 2 and 3. I also enjoyed the MLN campaign for 2009. The online stuff for 2009 was excellent - the web team outdid themselves. It's a shame that the story didn't follow suit. 

[Xan]

I loved the Glatorian era. There were more technic vehicles and vibrant colours! There were although, more Av Matoran builds. That was pretty bad.

 

As for the story, I liked the idea of Mata Nui being reduced from a huge leader to a weaker being. Although it was a bit rushed. 

[Nescent]

I loved the Glatorian era. There were more technic vehicles and vibrant colours! There were although, more Av Matoran builds. That was pretty bad.

 

I also loved the Glatorian era, I think it had some of the best sets. There were very few Inika builds without some sort of twist, all of the helmets were beautiful, and the vehicles were great - better than the previous year's, in my opinion.

 

The Av-Matoran designs of the Agori were unfortunate, but I think they were much nicer looking than the Av-Matoran and came with so many great recolors and helmets, which I think make up for the locked limbs.

[Xabla]

I knew a little kid who liked Stars and Av-Matoran. Of course, this wasn't enough to sustain the line. Simple Builds, simple play.

[hiddenderek]

I dropped out of Bionicle at that point because the builds were so uninteresting and repetitive, the same thing every year with new armor and masks attached. I like the new 2015 sets mainly because I never got into Hero Factory and CCBS is new to me, not to mention the gear system making things interesting. Hopefully next year they try something new too.

[bioniclepluslotr]

I dropped out of Bionicle at that point because the builds were so uninteresting and repetitive, the same thing every year with new armor and masks attached. I like the new 2015 sets mainly because I never got into Hero Factory and CCBS is new to me, not to mention the gear system making things interesting. Hopefully next year they try something new too.

Trust me, CCBS gets old very fast.

[Latrodectus]

I actually really loved the bright colors. Huge improvement after the bley and silver of 2008. And I love Skopio. Skopio's awesome.

 

Unfortunately, that's basically all that was attractive. Too many Inika builds, too many horrible Av-Matoran builds, not enough new. It wasn't as awful as 2008, but it certainly didn't make me excited in Bionicle again. 

 

The story was also very unappealing. It's good on paper, the problem is that it was not executed very well because of the necessity of tying it to the previously set-up Bionicle story.

[Vraiment]

 

If story is meant to sell sets, then they should've made giant robot sets or whatnot. And how did they advertise the story? As a 2001 Bionicle fan I had no idea until this year that Bionicle had a story outside the sets. I highly doubt that many people outside Bionicle fan sites pay that much attention to the story.

Unless you got the comics in the mail, but yeah. Not many people who bought sets really cared for the story as a lot of us do.

 

 

I'm also fan of Bionicle 2001 and I know the story. As a matter of fact I didn't know English back then and despite of that I could wrap my mind around it, that's why MNOG is such a fine piece, you can grasp a generality of all the events in 2001 without a single written word. At the end that was what got me vs some other series like Robo Riders and Life on Mars, I still remember when they released the first info about the Bohrok in the official site, it was so awesome!!!!! Like, there was actual progress and changes in the story and with that came new sets!!!! It was great.

 

I liked the end of 2008 story, Teridax actually winning is a great plot twist!!!! Then comes 2009 which I actually liked a lot, it happens I read the books recently after finishing "A Clash of Kings" from the "A song of ice and fire" (or "Game of Thrones" if you watch the TV program) and I liked a lot that the stories are kind of alike. Both are based on lands that use to be "magical" but now all that is gone and people have a kind of hard time to survive in middle of conflicts and stuff. Yet in a far part of the space where the "main" events are happening, you see that "magic" in action as the story unfolds in that place. I really liked that.

 

Yet I'm 23 now and I can understand how that doesn't help to sell toys to children of ages 7 and up.

[Hasreadit]

2009 was my favorite year for sets since 04. I also thought the characters were a lot more fleshed out than Bionicle had done in previous years, but overall the story wasn't the best.

[Xabla]

I modified the Av-Matoran design. You take eight of these http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=90611 and put them into arms and legs.

[UnderscoreChronix]

Many people say the sets of 2009 were bad, yet they were actually pretty good.

Compare Gelu with 2008 Kopaka for example. 

[rednas3636]

Many people say the sets of 2009 were bad, yet they were actually pretty good.

Compare Gelu with 2008 Kopaka for example. 

 

True 08Paka was so boring.. Still, the first wave of Glatorians were too stereotypical imo..  We got Zelda, Hitech Water guy, Evil Fire bruiser and Evil frozen brawler.

Gelu for pwesident

[fishers64]

Metus for secretary of commerce. 

 

Exactly. 

[Xabla]

I think at some early point the Glatorian were designed to be the toa. Like Tahu=Ackar?

[Hewkii8730]

I don't know it's not that bad......sort of