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What even happened in 2004? Bad story telling and the "B-stories" in general.


Fry

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What's up with Bionicle always having B-stories? Immediate examples that jump to mind are the Bohark Kal half of 2003, and especially the Morbuzakh in 2004... I'm not even sure I understand that one. In the movie Legends of Metru-Nui the Matoran are transformed into Toa Metru, but apparently sometime between that and them finding the great Kanoka disks they fought a bunch of sentient vines? And like befriended a bunch of other Matoran, one of whom was that a**hole Ahkmou? 

I feel Bionicle in general despite its reputation as a story-centered toy line really didn't have a very focused story. Telling massive swaths of a given year's story in, and forgive me here, what basically amounted to throw-away media (comics, books, online animations) and NOT movies and video games. Especially the latter, I feel the Bionicle world was just begging for some high quality video games to flesh it out and I don't think it every got it outside the MNOG. I hope what I said about "throw-away media" isn't too inflammatory, but what I mean by that is that probably 80-90% of Bionicle's target audience never consumed them, and by extension never had those pieces of the story. When I was a kid, I didn't know anything outside what was shown in: the first three movies, a handful of flash animations, and MNOG/Bionicle: The Game.

And then there are the B-stories, like the Morbuzakh, the Vahkii, the Bohrok Kal, The Makoki stones in 2005 (and something about the mask of light???), there's probably more examples but my interest as a kid petered out and I gave most of my attention to the earlier Bionicle years. I literally cannot even begin to imagine why any of those things exist. Why not just spend the entire year on the main story? Or if you want to explore a little subset of the Bionicle universe and dive into more detail, make a game out of it! Take a lesson from MNOG!

Wow three paragraphs now? What are YOUR thoughts on this?

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I think a lot of people experienced what you describe, though (at least in the US) most people read the comics growing up (more than played MNOG, I would guess).

The issue is primarily that the movies couldn't tell an entire year's worth of story, but they also couldn't be made more often than once a year. This left the story team (primarily Greg) to fill in the rest of the year with story that supplemented that year's movie story - but without making the movie an incomplete experience without reading everything else.

I think movies 2 and 3 do a good job of showing the opposite ends of how this can go:

With Legends of Metru Nui, the movie is relatively self-sufficient as a story - the extra stories at the beginning of the year with the Morbuzakh and the Krakha aren't bad, but they feel a bit like filler, since they don't strongly contribute to the main narrative of the year (the movie).

With Web of Shadows, however, the main plot point of the movie - Vakama's betrayal - feels like it comes out of absolutely nowhere if you just watch the movie. In this case, Greg actually used the preceding "filler" stories to better build up to this moment, showing Vakama's obsession with living up to Lhikan, and how it drove him to make the wrong decisions in a misguided effort to protect the Matoran.

These are really just the kind of issues you're almost definitely going to run into with the kind of multi-media story that Bionicle had - not all of the media can be synced up (nor should it be, if you want to take advantage of the multi-media format), so you end up with places where there's filler or discrepancies.

That being said, though, sometimes the "filler" stories are some of my favorites - those were the ones where Greg had the most freedom to just write a story of his own invention without having to adhere to the plan laid out by the story team, and the results were often great (The Darkness Below and Time Trap come to mind).

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2004 is when BIONICLE got weirdly narrative. It had a lot of consequences that ultimately made it stronger as a story but weaker as a toy line.

"You are an absolute in these uncertain times. Your past is forgotten, and your
future is an empty book. You must find your own destiny, my brave adventurer.
"
-- Turaga Nokama

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I think there are a few factors that lead to the "B-stories" in 2004. 

First off, of the people credited with creating Bionicle; only Faber was still around by the end of 2004. Alastair Swinerton left sometime before 2003, and I think Bob Thompson left in 2004. Greg was moved into a much more important story role, now having to fill out ten novels for the 04-05 arc for Scholastic & the ongoing comics for DC; and fielding questions for fans online. The loss of Swinnerton and Thompson, and the increased influence from Greg shifted the style of the story being told. 

Then the toy release schedule limited what was available at the time of publishing certain materials. The Vahki didn't show up in set form until summer 2004, same with Dume and the Dark Hunters. The only sets physically available were Toa and Matoran. 

As such 2004 ended up becoming a waiting game until the Vahki were released in the summer. So the Toa faced the b-plots to keep things moving. All the villains were intangible things kids could imagine (The Morbuzka plants), villains made as combiner models from the Toa (like that one shapeshifter Rahi), or recycled villains from old waves (like the Rakshii in the Archives or the 2001 Rahi the Toa would encounter). It was all filler until the real villain sets were released at the years end. 

They kind of avoided that in 2005 by mentioning the Visohrak horde from the beginning, although again the complete sets weren't available until summer. 2006 & 2007 released the villains first, then focused on their b-plots before the Toa arrived in summer. 2008 split the villains and Toa to have three Toa and Makuta come out per canister wave as a solution to the whole issue. G2 tried to avoid it by releasing one large villain (LoSS, Umarak) and smaller villains (Skull Spiders, Shadow Traps) along the Toa winter wave; while the villain summer wave also included some form of Ekimu in hero form to aid the Toa. 

Edited by Xboxtravis
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Bob Thompson left the company in the fall of 2005. However, I agree that Gregg began to have a much greater influence on story after 2003. As he said in a recent podcast, the story of the Morbuzakh was completely invented by him. And this is very clearly visible even due to the fact that the great disks were intended for the mask of time, and the "destroy the morbuzak" function was added later.

In fact, I want to say that b-stories began in 2003, and this directly depends on the movies. Previously, Bob Thompson said that the plot of each year is like Lego-bricks, from which children themselves recreate pieces of one whole story. This is very well implemented in 2001. We have QftT - this is the beginning. Then the Legend of Mata Nui is the story of the Toa. Finally, MNOG is the story of Tohunga. We also have comics that describe the small adventures of the Toa. It's funny enough that in every media we see the arrival of different Toa on the beach. In one game - Onua, in another - Tahu, in Greg's comics - Kopaka, in the comics from the magazine - Lewa.
2001-2002 were the best story-telling years, because there was no "most important media" and all pieces of history are equal. We had a beginning - the arrival of the Toa/awakening of the Bohrok, and we had an end - the battle with Makuta/Barag. The rest is a huge number of small stories, both official and those that children themselves can come up with. Everything changes when we get movies. In 2003 and 2004, we have the “main media” - this is a movie. You cannot influence its plot; it is unchanged. But movies are released at the end of the year, so all other media is support for movies, all the rest of the story is secondary. For example, B-story of the 2003 was about Bohrok-Kal and Qust for the Nuva Masks. In 2001-2002, this was not, because there was no "main media", we learn the whole main plot from all types of media right away, because he is described in legend and comercials.

Edited by Mister N
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