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What would you think about a revival of Bionicle G1 in the form of a c


TakadoxMusic

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Personally, I'm not much of a movie watcher. I haven't seen anything like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or even the MCU movies. However, I did watch Infinity War yesterday because my friend bought seven tickets to Endgame and I'd feel bad if I didn't make use of one of them, being one of his best friends. After seeing Infinity War though, and how incredible the CGI and motion capture is in that movie, it got me thinking - what if Lego were somehow able to fund a new Bionicle movie with this Hollywood level of production? I've seen others on this forum discuss that the Hollywood Transformers style of CGI would also be fitting for a high-budget Bionicle movie. In my opinion, I'd like to see an adaptation of the G1 storyline into a "cinematic universe" kind of like the MCU if they were to revive Bionicle in the form of a new media franchise, rather than a Lego Movie-style comedic spoof (would not be fitting for the serious tone of Bionicle - they could add some humor here and there but the overall tone of the films should be serious, which is what MCU is like as far as I'm aware). I would not want any live-action humans in the movie either, but I do believe motion capture could be used for many scenes, although full CGI could be implemented in cases where the stunts are too unrealistic (but so many things are possible in today's movies using motion capture that I don't think it would be too much of a problem). Of course, the budget would need to be super high for something like that, so I wouldn't mind if the entire movie were to be made in full CGI either, but just imagine the level of detail they could create with a movie in that style. Also, in terms of the story, if people can take Marvel comics and adapt them into cinematic legends, then I believe that adapting the Bionicle comics and story serials into a film franchise would be very easy to do, especially if Greg Farshtey were to have a major role in the screenplay. The only problem is that franchises like Marvel, DC Superheroes, Star Wars, etc have been around for decades and have formed massive legacies with undying influence on pop culture, whereas Bionicle is less than 20 years old, had a failed reboot recently, and is only popular in a niche audience, which would certainly affect a revival film franchise's success. Although I do believe a successful, well-produced cinematic revival franchise would draw in a considerable number of new fans. What do you guys think? What would you like to see if Lego were to revive Bionicle through a new movie series, or even a TV show?

 

Edit: I am not referencing the structure of the MCU, as this would not be a good structure for the continuous Bionicle storyline - something like Star Wars would actually fit that structure much better. I am mainly referencing the CGI and special effects used in the high budget of the MCU movies.

Edited by TakadoxMusic
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Said it before, saying it again: the cinematic universe format doesn't work for Bionicle. To quote myself: "My vision is Lego giving Bionicle an animated series in the vein of TLA or TF:P. A cinematic universe makes no sense for Bonkle and Hollywood can keep its grubby, anti-art mitts away from my android wizards." A cinematic universe works for Marvel because the franchise is already designed for this sort of connected storytelling. Marvel and DC have their characters designed such that they can just have their own stories and crossover when needed. Bionicle was designed to deliver a continuous story with a single endpoint. This doesn't mean there's no potential for spinoffs, but a dedicated cinematic universe is overkill and doesn't have enough to back it up beyond the main series.

 

Bionicle would best be handled as a cartoon, but a film franchise can work. It just needs to stay in the spirit of Bionicle, and forcing a square peg into a round hole will only serve to either pump out worthless shlock and/or deprive Bionicle of its identity.

My vision is Lego giving Bionicle an animated series in the vein of TLA or TF:P. A cinematic universe makes no sense for Bonkle and Hollywood can keep its grubby, anti-art mitts away from my android wizards.

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Said it before, saying it again: the cinematic universe format doesn't work for Bionicle. To quote myself: "My vision is Lego giving Bionicle an animated series in the vein of TLA or TF:P. A cinematic universe makes no sense for Bonkle and Hollywood can keep its grubby, anti-art mitts away from my android wizards." A cinematic universe works for Marvel because the franchise is already designed for this sort of connected storytelling. Marvel and DC have their characters designed such that they can just have their own stories and crossover when needed. Bionicle was designed to deliver a continuous story with a single endpoint. This doesn't mean there's no potential for spinoffs, but a dedicated cinematic universe is overkill and doesn't have enough to back it up beyond the main series.

 

Bionicle would best be handled as a cartoon, but a film franchise can work. It just needs to stay in the spirit of Bionicle, and forcing a square peg into a round hole will only serve to either pump out worthless shlock and/or deprive Bionicle of its identity.

My vision is Lego giving Bionicle an animated series in the vein of TLA or TF:P. A cinematic universe makes no sense for Bonkle and Hollywood can keep its grubby, anti-art mitts away from my android wizards.

An animated series would suit Bionicle much better than anything else that could be done for it. Even the G1 movies have flaws, like leaving out key parts of the story for the sake of time constraints. TV episodes could fill those holes in quite well.

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A cinematic universe works for Marvel because the franchise is already designed for this sort of connected storytelling. Marvel and DC have their characters designed such that they can just have their own stories and crossover when needed. Bionicle was designed to deliver a continuous story with a single endpoint. This doesn't mean there's no potential for spinoffs, but a dedicated cinematic universe is overkill and doesn't have enough to back it up beyond the main series.

 

I totally agree with you here. You kinda misunderstood what I was getting at; perhaps I should have reworded it when I said "cinematic universe" but I didn't mean that as in literally being the same structure as the MCU. Hence the quotation marks, and why I referred to it as simply a "film series" in all other sentences. I do agree that Bionicle is a continuous story with a single endpoint, but the story was divided into arcs with each year of its run telling a different arc in the story, which would be fitting for a series of movies or a TV show. Similar to how the first four movies each covered a separate arc of the Bionicle storyline, but the idea here is if they were to tell the entire G1 storyline in a series of about 9 or 10 movies - not a total reboot of the franchise or creating a new storyline, rather, simply adapting the already established storyline into visual media.

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Taika Waititi for director, please and thank you. (I'm thinking they should tell a serious story, but still pack lot of humour and demented fun into it).

 

I actually think the Star Wars model might be a little better than MCU, in that you have films in trilogies for some story arcs, but then flesh out the world through other media in between. I've often said that the first three years of Bionicle are very cinematic in nature, but the complexity of the Metru arc is much better suited to a TV series as so much detail was cut from the films. The backstory of Bara Magna prior to Mata Nui arriving, and the events in the Matoran universe during Makuta's reign would also make good spin-offs. Having multiple series in the same continuity allows variation in animation styles and tone as well.

 

The key to making the franchise last is to provide good entry points for new fans every few years. So, you have some come in on the original trilogy, then a few years later new children are old enough to be brought in by the Metru arc show (which still has appeal for the older fans) , then some years after that there's the Ignition saga as another film trilogy, etc. The original G1 suffered from continuity lockout, so breaking the story into 2-3 year chunks through different media might be the answer.

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Bionicle was designed to deliver a continuous story with a single endpoint.

 

By the way, the Bionicle storyline does have an "endpoint" as far as the main tenure goes but the story never really came to an end after that, because Greg F. kept writing the story long after the sets stopped releasing, and the story never came to a true ending. If they were to turn these serials into part of the movie series, it would open up a new possibility of turning them into visual media, since we never got comics for them or anything. I think a revival of the G1 story would allow Greg to continue writing the storyline until it does actually come to an endpoint, although the amount of continuation Lego actually had planned past 2010 would be enough to double the entire series' length.

I actually think the Star Wars model might be a little better than MCU, in that you have films in trilogies for some story arcs, but then flesh out the world through other media in between.

 

I agree here, I do think Star Wars would actually be a FAR better comparison to Bionicle in terms of story structure. I only mentioned the MCU because I had just watched Infinity War and it's an equally ambitious franchise as Star Wars; I was more so referencing its CGI and special effects than the structure of the series, but that can certainly be applied to Star Wars as well.

I've often said that the first three years of Bionicle are very cinematic in nature, but the complexity of the Metru arc is much better suited to a TV series as so much detail was cut from the films. The backstory of Bara Magna prior to Mata Nui arriving, and the events in the Matoran universe during Makuta's reign would also make good spin-offs. Having multiple series in the same continuity allows variation in animation styles and tone as well.

 

The key to making the franchise last is to provide good entry points for new fans every few years. So, you have some come in on the original trilogy, then a few years later new children are old enough to be brought in by the Metru arc show (which still has appeal for the older fans) , then some years after that there's the Ignition saga as another film trilogy, etc. The original G1 suffered from continuity lockout, so breaking the story into 2-3 year chunks through different media might be the answer.

 

I like these ideas. I do agree there's a lot of potential for spin-offs; whether they are movies or TV shows doesn't matter to me but I suppose a TV show format would fit some of the more fleshed-out spin-off arcs. As I said above, I also think the incomplete continuation of the storyline after Teridax's death would make for a great spin-off, if not an actual continuation of the main film series.

 

I never thought about the entry points thing either, but I agree with that idea that having multiple arcs allows for multiple waves of fans to come in one by one - I think the original Bionicle G1 tenure allowed for that very easily. You have kids who grew up with the 2001-2003 Mata Nui story, the kids who grew up with the 2004-2005 Metru Nui story, and then younger kids like me who got into it after the 2006 story.

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A cinematic universe works for Marvel because the franchise is already designed for this sort of connected storytelling. Marvel and DC have their characters designed such that they can just have their own stories and crossover when needed. Bionicle was designed to deliver a continuous story with a single endpoint. This doesn't mean there's no potential for spinoffs, but a dedicated cinematic universe is overkill and doesn't have enough to back it up beyond the main series.

 

I totally agree with you here. You kinda misunderstood what I was getting at; perhaps I should have reworded it when I said "cinematic universe" but I didn't mean that as in literally being the same structure as the MCU. Hence the quotation marks, and why I referred to it as simply a "film series" in all other sentences. I do agree that Bionicle is a continuous story with a single endpoint, but the story was divided into arcs with each year of its run telling a different arc in the story, which would be fitting for a series of movies or a TV show. Similar to how the first four movies each covered a separate arc of the Bionicle storyline, but the idea here is if they were to tell the entire G1 storyline in a series of about 9 or 10 movies - not a total reboot of the franchise or creating a new storyline, rather, simply adapting the already established storyline into visual media.

 

Alright, fair enough. However, G1 had a lot of flaws that would be pretty hard to directly translate to film and still work with. It needs to be heavily cleaned up and entirely reworked to be truly successful--and at that point, just make a new, distinct reboot, one that can get right everything G1 got wrong.

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