Mount Coronet

But you could summarize it in short synopses or 3-minute videos! Surely the Cliff's Notes version of the story will be just as compelling and enthralling to kids as the actual story had been to the people who owned the characters and could experience it as it happened! There's no way the resulting list of events could just seem dull, repetitive and convoluted!

I would only consider that if they used this video.

But you could summarize it in short synopses or 3-minute videos! Surely the Cliff's Notes version of the story will be just as compelling and enthralling to kids as the actual story had been to the people who owned the characters and could experience it as it happened! There's no way the resulting list of events could just seem dull, repetitive and convoluted!

 

Or they can just go over to BS01, right? I once wanted to watch a movie but I couldn't so I just read its dry Wikipedia summary and got the exact same experience!

Really, they already have a video pretty much summarizing the whole bionicle story, at least from 2001-2008, add on a minute more at most for the last two years and boom, summary for new fans.

Summaries by definition are short and only cover the most essential events.  Bionicle, however, is ridiculously complex, and any continuation would necessarily draw upon those complicated elements in some way that a summary can't properly relate.  It would also require the newcomers to piece together how the old line affects the new line, and again, how many 8 year olds are even going to care to do that?

Really, they already have a

pretty much summarizing the whole bionicle story, at least from 2001-2008, add on a minute more at most for the last two years and boom, summary for new fans.

I'm not arguing that you couldn't summarize the old story. I'm arguing that you couldn't do so and make it interesting enough. That video summarizes everything important that happened in the original story, but it fails to convey what made that story so great. For older fans, who get to relive all those memories in the space of a few minutes, it's great. For new fans? I reckon many of them would get a glimpse of how big, repetitive and convoluted the story they're getting into was and they'd run in the opposite direction.

Plus, LEGO already tried releasing plenty of summaries and videos like that several times and they didn't work. New fans STILL found the old storyline tedious, confusing, and inaccessible.

 

If that video were the miracle people make it out to be, then BIONICLE would have been every bit as successful in 2008 as it had been in 2002. It wasn't, not by a longshot. The only thing videos like that were genuinely any good for was a recap and nostalgia trip for people who had already experienced the older storyline. Their benefits for new fans were paltry by comparison.

 

The summary in question being four to seven years out-of-date won't magically make it more effective — if anything, it will reduce its effectiveness by recapping a storyline that even fewer fans within the target audience will have any nostalgia for.

I think something old fans need to grasp is that we're not the primary target audience anymore.  I'm sure Lego would like us to come back, but what they really want--and need--is for a new group of younger fans to fall in love with the series.  A reboot makes this a whole lot easier to accomplish because there's no prerequisite information to take into the beginning of the line with you.  The story is what you see, not what you see coupled with a decade's worth of dense information.

 

When I discovered Transformers as a kid, I thought it was interesting that there were old series, but I don't think I did much research into them at all until I was a little older, because I didn't want to.  If I was actually required to look into all that info, then I probably would've felt like Transformers was more trouble than it was worth and ask for more Bionicle sets instead.  Lego doesn't want the kids they hope to sell Bionicle sets to turning to Transformers' newest reboot because it's easier to get into.

 

We need a reboot, people, and there's no reason to believe it won't be awesome.

Hey kids! Want to hear a cool story about magic and robots? Heroes vs villains?

 

YEAH!

 

Great! Here's your introductory packet. Ms. Stenson will be going over this year's itinerary after this brief summary video titled "Mata Nui and You : The Inside Story". Please have your parents sign on this dotted line and we can begin.

 

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It's an over-exaggeration, yes. But I really think a lot of people are not grasping just how unappealing researching what could be your first fandom's history is. It's marketing poison.

i'm not in a sarcastic mood but anything i planned to type was basically already done i applaud you three mak octo and lychir for that 

 

pretend all my punctuation marks are there 

I wanna make summary/introduction videos and stuff available for new peeps who want to get into the whole big backstory (I love love love when I get into a cool thing and it has like a decade or five of cool stuff to catch up on! Like Star Trek and Dr Who; marathoning old stuff is a blast! It's so much more satisfying than running out of that thing quickly cause it's new) but it in no way should condemn the majority that is everyone else to suffer being horribly confused and turned off from getting into it.

We had our ten years, let the new Bionicle run its course and be its own thing. One of the big reasons Star Trek and Dr Who work so well despite having 50-ish years of history each is that you can jump in with any individual part of it (the different Star Trek series, the different Doctors) without knowing about anything else and get a satisfying, full experience. Bionicle has a chance at success again despite being bogged down with 10 years of prior content through the most obvious and tried-and-true means: reboot/ignoring what came before. A continuation could work just fine, so long as it distances itself from the past completely. Bionicle 2015 has to be its own thing with its own story. The old fans are gonna get easter eggs, not catering, and that really is the way it should be unless the old fans are so entitled that they want to watch our big comeback crash and burn.

I personally loved old series with a lot of history as a kid, particularly video games and comics, but I really doubt the average kid has the patience for a 10-year archive trawl. Lego already tried to create a continuation in the form of the Bara Magna arc, but kids still didn't like doing the necessary research to understand the plot. We're probably looking at either a spiritual successor or a continuation-in-name-only.