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Making Sense Of The Nonsense Ending Of Bionicle.


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The ending of the Bionicle story really makes no sense at all.I used to hold the opinion that the ending wasn't so bad. There have always been details about it that didn't add up, but in my mind I thought that the ending was OK when you consider that the writers had to end it in a hurry when they learned of the cancellation.I don't know if I'm over-thinking it lately, or if I've just grown more cynical, but I think that I have had a shift in opinion, and that opinion is that there are way too many things that don't make any sense. I know that the questions I bring up will have no good answers, and have probably been discussed before, but on the off chance someone has something to add, I thought I'd start talking about it.For the most part, it comes down to this: the physical size of Mata Nui, the prototype, and Spherus Magna create a host of problems.Some facts: The Mata Nui robot is 40 million feet tall; this equals 12,129 km. The diameter of Earth itself is only 12,636 km. So, we can say that Mata Nui is as tall as Earth is wide. Using average human proportions, we can calculate that the size of his foot, (15% of his height,) is about 1,800 km; that's about double the length of Texas. Similarly, if the Mata Nui robot were to adopt a wide-leg fight stance like we see in the media, his feet could straddle the continental United States length-wise.This scale is beyond huge, and the problem is that none of the media or logic behind it follows this scale. Looking at any depiction of the two giant robots standing on the planet, or thinking about any of the things that happen during that fight, I would hazard to guess that the robots in question were only a few miles high, not thousands.1.) Gresh formed a plan to shoot exploding fruit at Makuta. (I wish to god I was making that up.) Launching handheld explosives at a giant enemy might be worth considering if the enemy in question was skyscraper or Godzilla sized. But Earth sized? Calling that plan "stupid" is like calling the ocean "damp." I don't know about you, but if a 5-story lion were charging at me, I wouldn't bother throwing 4th of July poppers at him.Now, if this was the end of it, it would be easier to brush off; but, it's not. Gresh then decides that if they break into Makuta, they can beat him from the inside. Consider this; if you were suddenly faced with a robot so large that its ankle was outside of your atmosphere, would you entertain the notion, for even a second, that you could get inside of it and reach its chest or head within your lifetime, let alone within the span of a fight?2.) When Makuta lands on the planet, the Glatorian are within walking distance of his foot. Granted, if Makuta wanted to send his armies out, he could have put his foot in an exact location on purpose. But at this point in time, the residents of Bara Magna were inhabiting the Mega-Village. The Mega-Village was build around the Prototype. The Prototype is 2/3 the size of the Mata Nui robot. So, you're telling me, that ALL of the important people on Bara Magna were within running distance of a giant foot that could have been placed anywhere along an 8,000 km area?3.) Let's talk more about the Prototype and the Mega-Village. First, it exploded... but it wasn't damaged. Isn't that convenient? It just broke into clean pieces. The power core detonated, but, it didn't ruin the machinery. The arms and legs and head came off, but they weren't ripped off; they just cleanly detached. When the power core was reinserted, there was no mention of it magically repairing anything; it just powered the thing up.Now, these arms and legs that have the size of small continents and an unfathomable weight are dragged - DRAGGED - into place over thousands of kilometers by a primitive society that is extremely low on resources and technology. Even overlooking the absurd physics of the situation, technologically, the idea of the Glatorian and Agori accomplishing this is a joke. Here is a society that, in the span of 100,000, has not managed to rebuild itself. For comparison, on Earth, we've gone from cavemen to where we are today in a fraction of that time; in ~300 years, the USA has built an infrastructure capable of supporting millions. On Bara Magna, in 100,000 years, they fight over water and use fruit for weaponry... and developed a method to move those robot pieces at the drop of a hat.Not to mention that any settlement that needs an 8,000 km barrier can, by no sane definition, be called a "village."(At this point, all of this is REALLY depressing me.)4.) What about the planet? Again, Mata Nui is the size of Earth, so it is obvious that Spherus Magna is much, much larger. The problem is, the largest terrestrial (rocky,) planet we've detected outside of our own solar system is only a couple of times larger than Earth. The largest theoretically possible is only twice the size of that.If Spherus Magna is 4 times larger than Earth, and 4 times as wide as the Mata Nui robot is tall, I might be able to imagine a couple of Unicrons fighting on it while standing up, but the gravity/physics of the situation still seem highly suspect to me.5.) Makuta and Mata Nui were fighting. As in, moving around and hitting each other. Even if their feet never actually left the ground, they would still be shifting their weight from one part of their foot to another. That much weight moving and grinding within walking distance from a battlefield, and there isn't one mention of earthquakes, random tectonic activity, etc? I'm no planetary physicist, but, I can't imagine any coherent activity happening on the ground near those two when they were fighting. And yet, we have this entire army vs army thing going on...For that matter, their weight isn't causing them to sink into the crust itself...?6.) Here's the big one; the reforming of the planet. (I think I'm going to be in tears by the time I'm done with this part.)It was originally intended for there to be two giant robots with magic gravity guns. (I say "magic" because, releasing a "gravity blast" at a planetoid won't reform a planet. Gravity itself is an attractive force, not a melding force. If I physically bump one planetoid up against another, they won't just stick and be right as rain. There has to be something else happening too. But I digress.)So, we know from this information, and from Brutaka's weird premonition, that two giant robots are required to fix the planet. Why?If I'm moving my couch, there are two possible reasons why I would need help. One, I don't have the strength to move the couch. My power level is insufficient. I need twice my power to get the job done. Or, two, I may have the power, but lack the control. If my couch is made of wicker, I could lift its weight, but it's so large, I still need someone else to help me with the task.Since the reforming of the planet happened in two stages, (first Mata Nui doing some stuff before Makuta arrived, and then the infamous "redirected" gravity blast,) we can rule out the "needs coordination" explanation for why two robots are requires. This leaves strength/power.So Mata Nui does half of the job, in an inferior robot with an inferior power supply, and Makuta did the other half. Remember, Makuta can't do more than half, because he doesn't have the amount of power needed. We know that he doesn't, because the job NEEDS two robots. So, Makuta just unleashed the majority of his power reserves in order to beat Mata Nui.... even though the prototype was unstable and about to die anyway. So... Makuta just exhausted most of his power for no good reason. He is now low on power, and still has a universe to conquer. Why would he do that? Why would he cripple himself before he could even begin his master plan? Unless... he didn't cripple himself; he still has plenty of power, or his power can be recharged, etc. But if THAT'S the case... then why are two robots needed in the first place?!If he DIDN'T unleash a lot of power at Mata Nui - if it was a small blast - then that doesn't make things any better. That would mean an inferior, degrading robot with an inferior power supply got the job mostly done, and he was interrupted to boot. By that logic, one good robot should have been able to do it, no problem. So, why the need for two?Do you see what I'm saying?Do you see how this makes no godly sense?7.) Back to the positioning of Makuta's foot; when he got head-clobbered and fell, he didn't fall on top of all these people that he was RIGHT next to? Even if he fell in the opposite direction, his foot didn't slide just a teensy bit? The equivalent of use moving our foot an inch would be about 100km for him. How did he A.) not wipe everyone out or B.) manage not to land on anything important at all?Let's do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. The volume of an average (6 foot) person is about 80 liters. A simple proportion says a 40 million foot tall person has the volume of 5.3x10^8L. Earth steel has an average density of 7.6 kg/L. I don't know the properties of protosteel, but let's say 7 kg/L. This means the Mata Nui robot weighs approximately 3.7x10^9kg. If it were to fall on its bum, the impact would have a nontrivial amount of energy associated with it. If the weight of his torso is 2/3 his total weight, and if the gravity of Spherus Magna is 3 times that of earth (cuz it's so big,), then 3.7x10^9kg * (2/3) * 27 m/s^2 * 6096000m = 4.0x10^17 Joules of energy associated with the impact. For comparison, the impact that created the famous Barringer crater in Arizona was 100 times less energetic.And, this falling robot impact had zero devastating consequences.8.) On a slightly different topic, but still pertaining to the end-of-Bionicle silliness.... the Golden Armor. I won't say anything else.So.There you have it. As I said, I don't expect anyone to be able to sort this out, but on the off chance even one of these things could have a light shone on it that would make it less mind-numbing... there you have it.

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For the most part, it comes down to this: the physical size of Mata Nui, the prototype, and Spherus Magna create a host of problems.

I've talked about this before; basically, I think the story shouldn't have defined the sizes. It's a "painting into corners" type detail that was really unnecessary, and was too easy to contradict. I think they should have just described the basic ideas and let us use our imaginations (and maybe theorize) as to the exact sizes. Less messy that way.So basically any contradictions between these I write off as results of that mistake.

This scale is beyond huge, and the problem is that none of the media or logic behind it follows this scale. Looking at any depiction of the two giant robots standing on the planet, or thinking about any of the things that happen during that fight, I would hazard to guess that the robots in question were only a few miles high, not thousands.

Not sure if this is what you're driving at here, but I've seen some people assuming that Spherus Magna, or at least Aqua Magna, had to be Earth-sized because of Earth gravity. You mentioned the diameter of Earth, but that's only relevant in giving us a good idea of just how astoundingly huge Mata Nui is, not as the measurement of SM's diameter too. SM is obviously much, much larger. I had a theory here recently about how the gravity could be Earthlike but the planet much larger. Or just refer to the general statement that Bionicle physics is different.Sorry if I misinterpreted what you meant. :)1) I don't remember Gresh deciding to throw fruit at the giant robot. Where was this stated? But maybe his mind just wasn't grasping how huge it is, and he was seeing it from a distance. As for taking it over from the inside, sure, that's what I'd do. Options: Stay outside and likely get stomped to death, or go inside where it can't stomp you? You'd go inside too if you could. :POf course, this seems foolhardy to us as fans because we have "inside information" from previous story that Makuta controls the physics inside, so inside is probably far more dangerous. But Gresh didn't know that.2) I don't really get what you're trying to say here. Could you clarify?3) Good point about the apparently non-dangerous explosion. I assumed it was more like falling apart, similar to what happened to the Toa Mata in the canisters, but on a massive scale. As for the putting together seeming to convenient, I'd probably agree if this was anything other than LEGO. I just saw that as one of many shoutouts to the whole LEGO building concept throughout the story, like Kaita, that make sense simply because it's LEGO.Call it LEGO physics if you will, but it's close enough to plausible for me. :PI suppose a more realistic explanation could be that the explosion simply overloaded circuitry, temporarily, that handled holding the robot together, so it was more of a magnetic connection than a physical one, but I admit that's a bit of a stretch. Or perhaps pressure on holding clamps was released; that should probably work fine.True, we didn't see such clamps, but I don't know if we saw enough detail to rule them out, and anyways the exact visual details could be written off as artistic license.3.2) Good point about the dragging. Again here I think the folly of defining the size rears its ugly head. The definition we have works fine as long as you imagine that there were really far more A/G than shown, so for those who prefer that explanation they would imagine that. Or for those like you who prefer to imagine the robot is smaller (but still mind-boggling even at a few miles), you would imagine that. And we could debate about it, and find a good overall solution with more thought put into it than they obviously did officially. Buuuut too late for that, sigh.3.2.5) The time of their societal rebuilding is a separate matter. I find it plausible for three big reasons. 1) The Earth you're comparing it to has plenty of water and food and such. They were just struggling to survive in a planet-wide desert. 2) It's a fallacy, and a pet peeve of mine, to assume that a totally alien culture must in any way follow patterns of development on Earth. And 3) it's just one society, not the many we have here on Earth, so all it takes is for that one society to decide to be a "set in their ways" people. And so they are.Even on Earth, re: point 3, there were many cultures that decided to find a stable balance and stick with it indefinitely. Global advancement has only come in recent centuries and decades because some cultures who did decide to invent and such invented stuff to aid global trade and communication, which then affected all other cultures. Many left to themselves would still be essentially ancient in their ways for who-knows-how-long.Also, the incredibly long lifespans of these beings stretches out any comparison to us a lot. We feel a pressure to adapt because our lives are so short, the end always in sight, but not so for the A/G.3.9) Actually terms like "village" and "city", as have been discussed on BZP before, are relative -- to a lot of factors. Personally I love the idea of something so huge being a "village", not a city. BTW, we should also mention there's good evidence they're a lot stronger than humans. But anyways, the choice of "village" for the "translation" is probably meant to evoke the feel of the place in terms of it being relatively primitive, rather than the size or population.4) Here it appears you are indeed talking about gravity vs. size. See my theory on that. Essentially, I think the EP modified the planet, changing its physics. The only difficulty here to begin with is that the surface seems to be normal matter. Physics in the MU we are already accustomed to being different. But the EP's presence gives one known (and IMO highly likely) candidate to explain this physics difference.So basically, I take that as a hint to a larger truth. It's also possible several of these other apparent "problems" are hints as well but nobody has simply happened to yet think of the right theory to explain them. :)5) I think the camouflage system already requires powers to be in effect normally anyways to null those and other side effects. I see no reason those powers wouldn't be in effect during the battle too. Gravity control and inertial dampeners would handle most of it.6) I've already posted a detailed response to this myth that reforming the planet isn't plausible. You can find it by going to the old forum and looking at my old sig; the link's still in there. Not entirely sure you are seeing problems that that answers, but check it out anyways just in case, if you haven't already. :)As for "can't do more than half" -- I don't know why the exact fraction would matter. I can imagine that since Makuta is bigger he may supply most of the power, but Mata Nui does the directing. I don't see why that would be a problem.6.5) A reasonable point as to why Makuta would do that. But it was stated that the reason he came there was to destroy his enemy, Mata Nui, once and for all. The robot just powering down wouldn't do that; Mata Nui might still find some other way to get to Makuta later. Especially powering it back up again somehow later, maybe with a more stable source. Also, I don't see where in the story it states that Makuta could have known about the power source problem to begin with; maybe he figured Mata Nui was as capable as he was, just sized down a little.Also, Makuta apparently wanted to destroy Bara Magna too, although I'm not really sure why off the top of my poor memory lol.I don't see why you are thinking Makuta somehow "crippled himself" intentionally. He obviously didn't expect Mata Nui to redirect the gravity to knock him in the head with a moon. As I said once before, Makuta's fatal flaw was that he failed to look up. :PThat's a mistake real people make all the time, so yeah. Yes, he ended up defeating himself, but not intentionally.6.9) Probably two robots were needed simply because it's a sphere, and two parts came out. At polar opposite points. It would have been more ideal for there to be two robots standing at opposite ends of the planet to watch each more closely. As it turned out, Mata Nui managed, but it was a lot riskier the way he did it. Obviously the GBs didn't intend the two robots to be fighting. But they did plan for it via destiny; Makuta still did his job even though he had tried to rebel against it.7) Easily explained if he simply fell perpendicular to where they were, so any foot sliding and where his body landed were in a line that did not intersect where the people were. Also, Mata Nui is an expert on guiding massive things into position, and he cared about these people personally now, so certainly he would make sure Makuta didn't fall on them!7.3) I see the word "Calculations." Bah. :P I'll skim it but like I said above, it's a big mistake IMO to worry about math in a story like this, beyond simple things that are required. It's a fictional place, where Earth measurements don't even exist, so IMO they should have little to no relation to Bionicle. That's partly the fault of the story, yes, but all such problems disappear if you simply ignore that detail. :)Your calculation appears to just be about seismic energy, yes? If so, see above. Specifically Mata Nui would null any such effects.8) What about the Golden Armor? Just its Deus Ex Machina-ness?

The Destiny of Bionicle (chronological retelling of Bionicle original series, 9 PDFs of 10 chapters each on Google Drive)Part 1 - Warring with Fate | Part 2 - Year of Change | Part 3 - The Exploration Trap | Part 4 - Rise of the Warlords | Part 5 - A Busy Matoran | Part 6 - The Dark Time | Part 7 - Proving Grounds | Part 8 - A Rude Awakening | Part 9 - The Battle of Giants

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(Referring to points in original post)1) He was desperate. Desperation makes you do some pretty stupid stuff.2) So what, they got lucky. Big deal.3) There's always the possibility the GB's anticipated the robot exploding, and they designed it in such a way it would do so safely.4) This is a FICTIONAL UNIVERSE. With GIANT ROBOTS. Kept safe by BIO-MECHANICAL PEOPLE WITH SOULS.And you're complaining about the physics?5) See the above. Different physics.6) See, we weren't told that two robots were needed. The Mata-Nui robot was made to fix the planet on its own, it's just that Terry would never reform Spherus Magna.7) Mata-Nui forced Makuta up to the top of the planet. So, when Terry was hit, he could be considered far enough away to be beyond doing too much damage when he fell.8) Okay, so there's a back up plan. What's wrong with that?

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6) See, we weren't told that two robots were needed. The Mata-Nui robot was made to fix the planet on its own, it's just that Terry would never reform Spherus Magna.

Actually, I think it was very specifically stated that the Great Beings intended to build two Mata Nui robots (not including the Prototype) because of the very fact that one Mata Nui robot would not be enough.Or it could be that they intended to build a second robot in the event that something happened while the first one was fixing the planet and something happened to it. I can't exactly remember.
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6) See, we weren't told that two robots were needed. The Mata-Nui robot was made to fix the planet on its own, it's just that Terry would never reform Spherus Magna.

Actually, I think it was very specifically stated that the Great Beings intended to build two Mata Nui robots (not including the Prototype) because of the very fact that one Mata Nui robot would not be enough.Or it could be that they intended to build a second robot in the event that something happened while the first one was fixing the planet and something happened to it. I can't exactly remember.
I think it was mentioned somewhere and retconned. We know the Mata-Nui 'bot was built to fix Spherus Magna, and I doubt the GBs would build one giant robot instead of two slightly-less-giant robots if they needed two.

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They planned to make a third (the prototype counted as the first), but for unknown reasons did not. This seems to imply that if Mata Nui had still been in the "second", he could have done it alone. The key here IMO is the GBs' obsession with backup plans and failsafes. They wanted the third robot to be a failsafe, and in actuality Mata Nui used the prototype as a failsafe. There was no retcon, simply a reveal that the GBs planned to make a third, but didn't actually make it.

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The Destiny of Bionicle (chronological retelling of Bionicle original series, 9 PDFs of 10 chapters each on Google Drive)Part 1 - Warring with Fate | Part 2 - Year of Change | Part 3 - The Exploration Trap | Part 4 - Rise of the Warlords | Part 5 - A Busy Matoran | Part 6 - The Dark Time | Part 7 - Proving Grounds | Part 8 - A Rude Awakening | Part 9 - The Battle of Giants

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Keep in mind that this is the Bionicle Universe - our physics don't always apply here. And yeah, another thing is that I saw a picture of Takanuva or someone coming out of Mata Nui;s foot, and he was about the size of it. So, either Tahu's reeeealy tall, or the Mata Nui Robot's really short. And Spherus Magna, Aqua Magna, and Bota Magna must have been HUGE. Like, Aqua Magna must have been as big as earth, if not bigger. The thing is, it's possible to have huge planets in this universe. Or at least, it's not impossible. This is because human physics don't always apply.

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Knuckles, are you sure about the foot thing? Where did you see this?The only images I recall like that are one from the Mata Nui Saga showing the foot to be huge and way off in the distance with the Rahkshi army, and several characters coming out that hatch in the comic, including both Takanuva and Tahu. I just checked the comics, it only shows the hatch, without enough context to say how big the characters were in relation to the foot.And yeah, Aqua Magna was much bigger than Earth too, and SM obviously much bigger than AM.

The Destiny of Bionicle (chronological retelling of Bionicle original series, 9 PDFs of 10 chapters each on Google Drive)Part 1 - Warring with Fate | Part 2 - Year of Change | Part 3 - The Exploration Trap | Part 4 - Rise of the Warlords | Part 5 - A Busy Matoran | Part 6 - The Dark Time | Part 7 - Proving Grounds | Part 8 - A Rude Awakening | Part 9 - The Battle of Giants

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He tried to stomp on them, but Mata Nui pushed him away. And as I said in the above long post, the robots would need to have gravity control and inertial dampeners and the like for the camouflage aspect, among other things (such as not killing everybody lol -- remember they were built to repair and rescue, essentially, not destroy), so that's why the only gravitational havoc is what Makuta tried to do with the moons, and then encountered as a result in the back of his head. :lol:

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The Destiny of Bionicle (chronological retelling of Bionicle original series, 9 PDFs of 10 chapters each on Google Drive)Part 1 - Warring with Fate | Part 2 - Year of Change | Part 3 - The Exploration Trap | Part 4 - Rise of the Warlords | Part 5 - A Busy Matoran | Part 6 - The Dark Time | Part 7 - Proving Grounds | Part 8 - A Rude Awakening | Part 9 - The Battle of Giants

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He tried to stomp on them, but Mata Nui pushed him away. And as I said in the above long post, the robots would need to have gravity control and inertial dampeners and the like for the camouflage aspect, among other things (such as not killing everybody lol -- remember they were built to repair and rescue, essentially, not destroy), so that's why the only gravitational havoc is what Makuta tried to do with the moons, and then encountered as a result in the back of his head. :lol:

Try running laps around a two-foot anthill and see how many you squish. Why didn't Mata Nui accidentally step on them?

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Watch out for my crazy paranthesis!just commenting on #7:Think about it, the plaet is being reformed, so the crater/earthquakes that hadn't been fully nully by Mata nui would have been reshaped with the planet of covered up with plants and/or rivers, lakes, and even oceans (that explains this scene (or that could be water from the agua magna chunk that lands ahead of the MU robot) , the water mata nui made whle creating the oceans, rivers, lakes, plants, trees, etc. fills part of the crater, and the crater could have been slanted or like a trench so the MU robot rolls on land, or bounces out of it with maybe his feet/lower legs in (which allow for this scene), or it could be part of this hole that was left when aqua magna ripped off, and then the water from aqua magna spread over more than just the area of aqua magna, making a very large ocean, that might spread up to the area near the MU robot, wherever that is), depending on how much mata nui nulled. and also, if your planet is getting hit by two moons on two opposite sides, yeah, there would be an earthquake, but since it was confirmed that it was a fragment of aqua magna that gave makuta a headache, that opens the possibility for them to be fighting somewhere other than in the immediate area of the collision(s). they were probably near the aqua magna side of bara magna (because the aqua magna chunk probably isn't going to curve around to the other side of the planet, lol) and so the earthquakes weren't as strong as if they were right next to the moons. so there ould be a pretty strong earthquake, but not too strong, and that would be combined with the makuta death shockwave.i think that makes sense, even though it took almost and hour to type.

Knuckles, are you sure about the foot thing? Where did you see this?The only images I recall like that are one from the Mata Nui Saga showing the foot to be huge and way off in the distance with the Rahkshi army, and several characters coming out that hatch in the comic, including both Takanuva and Tahu. I just checked the comics, it only shows the hatch, without enough context to say how big the characters were in relation to the foot.And yeah, Aqua Magna was much bigger than Earth too, and SM obviously much bigger than AM.

the picture bonesiii references is here, but knuckles may have confused it with this one.

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He tried to stomp on them, but Mata Nui pushed him away. And as I said in the above long post, the robots would need to have gravity control and inertial dampeners and the like for the camouflage aspect, among other things (such as not killing everybody lol -- remember they were built to repair and rescue, essentially, not destroy), so that's why the only gravitational havoc is what Makuta tried to do with the moons, and then encountered as a result in the back of his head. :lol:

Try running laps around a two-foot anthill and see how many you squish. Why didn't Mata Nui accidentally step on them?
Ironically, I always try to avoid stepping on ants. :P I don't kill if I can avoid it, even bugs. With almost universal success. Also, this is like ants on pavement, not with grass; dunno what you meant, but they were pretty easy to spot against the desert landscape.But the whole battle was going on in one limited spot. All he had to do was stay away from there. All the images show the robots in one area, the battle in another.Also, the ants analogy doesn't even really work, because I don't have Bionicle powers to aid my senses; I just have eyes.Edit: Hippopotomonstrosesquipeda, I think the battle was probably roughly near the equator, or so I've always assumed. Not really sure, but if so it would be as far as you can get from both poles, if there were quakes, even better than if nearer the ocean, heh. Also, I really doubt there were significant quakes, since Mata Nui would logically be designed to null 'em. ^_^ Edited by bonesiii

The Destiny of Bionicle (chronological retelling of Bionicle original series, 9 PDFs of 10 chapters each on Google Drive)Part 1 - Warring with Fate | Part 2 - Year of Change | Part 3 - The Exploration Trap | Part 4 - Rise of the Warlords | Part 5 - A Busy Matoran | Part 6 - The Dark Time | Part 7 - Proving Grounds | Part 8 - A Rude Awakening | Part 9 - The Battle of Giants

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He tried to stomp on them, but Mata Nui pushed him away. And as I said in the above long post, the robots would need to have gravity control and inertial dampeners and the like for the camouflage aspect, among other things (such as not killing everybody lol -- remember they were built to repair and rescue, essentially, not destroy), so that's why the only gravitational havoc is what Makuta tried to do with the moons, and then encountered as a result in the back of his head. :lol:

Try running laps around a two-foot anthill and see how many you squish. Why didn't Mata Nui accidentally step on them?
Ironically, I always try to avoid stepping on ants. :P I don't kill if I can avoid it, even bugs. With almost universal success. Also, this is like ants on pavement, not with grass; dunno what you meant, but they were pretty easy to spot against the desert landscape.But the whole battle was going on in one limited spot. All he had to do was stay away from there. All the images show the robots in one area, the battle in another.Also, the ants analogy doesn't even really work, because I don't have Bionicle powers to aid my senses; I just have eyes.
Everyone was just running around, It would be really hard not to stumble and hit one. Also, why didn't Terry squish somebody when he fell? He's too big for running out of the way.

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He tried to stomp on them, but Mata Nui pushed him away. And as I said in the above long post, the robots would need to have gravity control and inertial dampeners and the like for the camouflage aspect, among other things (such as not killing everybody lol -- remember they were built to repair and rescue, essentially, not destroy), so that's why the only gravitational havoc is what Makuta tried to do with the moons, and then encountered as a result in the back of his head. :lol:

Try running laps around a two-foot anthill and see how many you squish. Why didn't Mata Nui accidentally step on them?
Ironically, I always try to avoid stepping on ants. :P I don't kill if I can avoid it, even bugs. With almost universal success. Also, this is like ants on pavement, not with grass; dunno what you meant, but they were pretty easy to spot against the desert landscape.But the whole battle was going on in one limited spot. All he had to do was stay away from there. All the images show the robots in one area, the battle in another.Also, the ants analogy doesn't even really work, because I don't have Bionicle powers to aid my senses; I just have eyes.Edit: Hippopotomonstrosesquipeda, I think the battle was probably roughly near the equator, or so I've always assumed. Not really sure, but if so it would be as far as you can get from both poles, if there were quakes, even better than if nearer the ocean, heh. Also, I really doubt there were significant quakes, since Mata Nui would logically be designed to null 'em. ^_^
lol, now 'm starting to regret my name change for the staff meme.yeah, mata nui probably nulled most of the affects of the quakes, so what I said was probably in situation without mata nui nulling the falls.

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Everyone was just running around, It would be really hard not to stumble and hit one. Also, why didn't Terry squish somebody when he fell? He's too big for running out of the way.

Did you read my original post here? I answered that.And again, they weren't running all around the robots. They were just on one side, all together, locked in battle. And yes, it would be hard for us, but not for Mata Nui. :) With magical powers.

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Many of your points are summed up like this: "Real-life physics don't apply in Bionicle unless Greg wants them to." :P

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Many of your points are summed up like this: "Real-life physics don't apply in Bionicle unless Greg wants them to." :P

This is a very dissatisfying answer to some of us, but I'm afraid it's the only possible explanation at present.
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Many of your points are summed up like this: "Real-life physics don't apply in Bionicle unless Greg wants them to." :P

This is a very dissatisfying answer to some of us, but I'm afraid it's the only possible explanation at present.
Er, no. He's right that that sums up things. But more detailed answers are definately possible to most concerns. :) I agree that answer alone would be massively dissatisfying though. Edited by bonesiii

The Destiny of Bionicle (chronological retelling of Bionicle original series, 9 PDFs of 10 chapters each on Google Drive)Part 1 - Warring with Fate | Part 2 - Year of Change | Part 3 - The Exploration Trap | Part 4 - Rise of the Warlords | Part 5 - A Busy Matoran | Part 6 - The Dark Time | Part 7 - Proving Grounds | Part 8 - A Rude Awakening | Part 9 - The Battle of Giants

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1.) Gresh formed a plan to shoot exploding fruit at Makuta. (I wish to god I was making that up.) Launching handheld explosives at a giant enemy might be worth considering if the enemy in question was skyscraper or Godzilla sized. But Earth sized? Calling that plan "stupid" is like calling the ocean "damp." I don't know about you, but if a 5-story lion were charging at me, I wouldn't bother throwing 4th of July poppers at him.

These weren't 4th of July poppers. These are more like stock grenades in terms of explosive power. Also, the Glatorian didn't know what was going to stop this Earth-sized campaign of doom. The shooting of explosive Thornax was just a test to see if those would work. And they were pretty desperate to stop Makuta and help Mata Nui, and willing to anything to damage his foe, no matter how small or insignificant that might be. Explosive Thornax fruit was the most potent weapon available, so that's what they used.

Some facts: The Mata Nui robot is 40 million feet tall; this equals 12,129 km. The diameter of Earth itself is only 12,636 km. So, we can say that Mata Nui is as tall as Earth is wide. Using average human proportions, we can calculate that the size of his foot, (15% of his height,) is about 1,800 km; that's about double the length of Texas. Similarly, if the Mata Nui robot were to adopt a wide-leg fight stance like we see in the media, his feet could straddle the continental United States length-wise.

2.) When Makuta lands on the planet, the Glatorian are within walking distance of his foot. Granted, if Makuta wanted to send his armies out, he could have put his foot in an exact location on purpose. But at this point in time, the residents of Bara Magna were inhabiting the Mega-Village. The Mega-Village was build around the Prototype. The Prototype is 2/3 the size of the Mata Nui robot. So, you're telling me, that ALL of the important people on Bara Magna were within running distance of a giant foot that could have been placed anywhere along an 8,000 km area?

If I have a 1,800 km foot, I suppose so...but I think you are referring to Glatorian's running abilities. You'll likely remember that Mata Nui sent the Glatorian group into caves in the Black Spike mountains to get them out of the line of fire. My prediction is that Mata Nui himself was standing close to said caves to prevent Makuta from getting in between him and the Bara Magnans, but Makuta would like to be as close to Mata Nui as possible in order to defeat him in a more expedient manner and also to attack Mata Nui's friends and demoralized his opponent. I recall from Journey's End that Mata Nui sustained a fall during battle that flattened an entire mountain range; obviously he was close to that particular mountainous region, which would have put Makuta fairly close to the Glatorian.

6.) Here's the big one; the reforming of the planet. (I think I'm going to be in tears by the time I'm done with this part.)It was originally intended for there to be two giant robots with magic gravity guns. (I say "magic" because, releasing a "gravity blast" at a planetoid won't reform a planet. Gravity itself is an attractive force, not a melding force. If I physically bump one planetoid up against another, they won't just stick and be right as rain. There has to be something else happening too. But I digress.)So, we know from this information, and from Brutaka's weird premonition, that two giant robots are required to fix the planet. Why?If I'm moving my couch, there are two possible reasons why I would need help. One, I don't have the strength to move the couch. My power level is insufficient. I need twice my power to get the job done. Or, two, I may have the power, but lack the control. If my couch is made of wicker, I could lift its weight, but it's so large, I still need someone else to help me with the task.Since the reforming of the planet happened in two stages, (first Mata Nui doing some stuff before Makuta arrived, and then the infamous "redirected" gravity blast,) we can rule out the "needs coordination" explanation for why two robots are requires. This leaves strength/power.So Mata Nui does half of the job, in an inferior robot with an inferior power supply, and Makuta did the other half. Remember, Makuta can't do more than half, because he doesn't have the amount of power needed. We know that he doesn't, because the job NEEDS two robots. So, Makuta just unleashed the majority of his power reserves in order to beat Mata Nui.... even though the prototype was unstable and about to die anyway. So... Makuta just exhausted most of his power for no good reason. He is now low on power, and still has a universe to conquer. Why would he do that? Why would he cripple himself before he could even begin his master plan? Unless... he didn't cripple himself; he still has plenty of power, or his power can be recharged, etc. But if THAT'S the case... then why are two robots needed in the first place?!If he DIDN'T unleash a lot of power at Mata Nui - if it was a small blast - then that doesn't make things any better. That would mean an inferior, degrading robot with an inferior power supply got the job mostly done, and he was interrupted to boot. By that logic, one good robot should have been able to do it, no problem. So, why the need for two?

Keep in mind, the blast we're talking about here would have destroyed Mata Nui, the planet of Bara Magna, and everything else. Makuta would not have had to have fought another battle shortly after this blast was unleashed, because there would have been nothing else to fight with. It was basically Makuta getting tired of a battle with creatures that were obviously beneath him and deciding to end it in one big gravity blast. So given that, it would stand that this thing has a ton of power behind it, enough to reform a planet.

8.) On a slightly different topic, but still pertaining to the end-of-Bionicle silliness.... the Golden Armor. I won't say anything else.

What, that is obviously unrealistic to wipe out thousands of Rahkshi all at once using some strange kraata-frying energy? Welcome to Bionicle.:) Would you like fire-energy, ice energy, or light energy that might fry a few dozen Rahkshi? :)
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For the most part, it comes down to this: the physical size of Mata Nui, the prototype, and Spherus Magna create a host of problems.

I've talked about this before; basically, I think the story shouldn't have defined the sizes. It's a "painting into corners" type detail that was really unnecessary, and was too easy to contradict. I think they should have just described the basic ideas and let us use our imaginations (and maybe theorize) as to the exact sizes. Less messy that way.
I would normally agree with this (there were a lot of inconsistencies regarding the size of those robots), except that the reason for Mata Nui's incredible size is that he has to house the entire Matoran Universe. And since the island of Mata Nui (which covers the robot's face) was given a definite size as early as 2001 and Metru Nui was given a definite size later on in 2004, there's no way TLG could have left it all up to our imaginations. No matter what happened we'd be left with a visual estimate for the robot's size that would have been totally inconsistent with an easily-drawn planetary battle between the two robots on a planetary body.Most of these "problems" really don't make any difference to me as far as the story is concerned. They're not worth my time and effort to justify to myself, but they're also not worth my time and effort to analyze to the point that they cause me any stress.I do feel two of your complaints bear mentioning, though. First is the part about Gresh planning to shoot Thornax at Makuta Teridax. Even though that idea didn't end up working, there could have been some logic to it. Sure, it wouldn't have taken down Makuta Teridax, but it could have distracted him.Compare it to a real fight where one person has a bunch of insects stinging his feet. Even if the stings wouldn't win the fight (we're assuming they're not venomous, just painful, like Thornax would be), the person being stung would be at a disadvantage. It just turns out that the combatant who would have been stung is wearing thick rubber boots, so to speak, and the insects can't penetrate them to cause him any real pain.As for entering the body to wreak havoc on it, it would be a bit silly to expect that entering through the feet you could reach vital organs quickly enough-- if not for the fact that this sort of intercontinental travel is part of the reason the Mata Nui robot has its chute system. Granted, in 2006 when the Toa Nuva and later Jaller's group of Matoran had to get from Metru Nui to Voya Nui, the chute system was damaged and couldn't get them much farther than Karzahni-- the robot's shoulder area. But this could have been the equivalent of a neck injury (which would explain Mata Nui's potentially-fatal coma) and not a sign that the chute system further down the robot's body was badly damaged. Additionally, the Staff of Artakha, mother of all plot devices, had been used in late 2007 to repair all of the Matoran Universe's major injuries. At that point, getting between continents of the Matoran Universe would have probably been an incredibly quick and easy task.The real-world analogue to this re-introduces the stinging insect analogy, except this time the stinging insects are crawling inside the rubber boots of one combatant, and this time their stings are, in fact, poisonous. If the physical activity of the fight was boosting the fighter's heart rate, then the circulatory system could easily carry toxins from the feet to the vital organs. Again, depending on the toxicity of the poison, it might be more of a nuisance than a winning strategy, but that really counts for a lot in a fight.BIONICLE truly is a "biological chronicle", and when thinking about the workings of the Matoran Universe it's useful to use biological analogies. I can't come up with any similar analogy making sense of the huge deus-ex-machina that was the Golden Armor, unfortunately. But that's partly because its main influence involved the battle taking place on the ground.
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First of all, I have to say I completely agree on the fact that the robots' height is absurdly large. The same effect could have been gained by using smaller amounts. That said, I can still find some vaguely plausible explanations for some of the issues discussed:1)Perhaps the easiest to answer (and many have already given similar explanations). Gresh and the other Glatorian were doing what they thought could help Mata Nui. Their best weapons were explosive Thornax, so they used those against Makuta. Since in most of the previous battles they had done such weapons had worked against the enemy, they thought they would work here too. After all, there are several cases in human history too when outdated battle techniques were used again simply because they had worked before. And you can't expect fighters like Glatorian to work out that a robot as large as this is probably built out of very resistant materials (and many of the Glatorian we've seen don't pause to think at all before starting a battle).As for attempting to destroy the robot from the inside, again they didn't quite understand the improbability of it succeeding because they had never faced such an adversary before. And neither did they know how such a robot would be organized inside.2)As others have already said before, the Agori and Glatorian had all taken refuge more or less in the same place before Mata Nui had taken control of the robot. If the battle had been taking place close to that place, then they would have been close to Makuta's foot.3)The power source actually did repair some parts of the robot. To quote from Mata Nui's Guide to Bara Magna:

Once unleashed, that power fused the parts of the huge robot body together and powered it up.

I fully agree on the impossibility of the robot's parts being dragged. I think in this case we need to interpret the event a bit differently.First, we have to take a look at the Bara Magna map (the BS01 image unfortunately is unavailable). Roxtus is where the robot's head is, Tesara and Iconox probably are on one of the arms, Vulcanus I can't figure it out and Tajun close to the knee. Now, I believe the rest of the robot was actually there, under the sand, meaning the parts of its body were already quite close together. If you interpret the explosion of the Prototype Robot as it simply coming apart, it becomes plausible.So what I think Glatorian and Agori actually did is dig out the parts of the robot from the sand and possibly dragging them slightly (which however would still be an incredible undertaking) so the shelters were linked together.The only problem with this theory is that it makes the Bara Magna desert far too large to be crossed in a few days as it happens in the story. The only explanation I can give is that Sand Stalkers were modified by the Great Beings to be faster than real-world horses.4)Spherus Magna might be larger than Earth, but not much, since once again people get from one place to the other on foot in just a few days.As for gravity, I theorize that Spherus Magna's core is different than Earth's. After all, it had EP in it, so it might actually generate a lower gravity pull than a planet that size would in the real world.5)I agree with bonesiii and others who have theorized the presence of gravity and inertial dampeners.6)The reason two robots were needed is that one single robot couldn't perform the Melding all at once. But by the time it recharged, Bota Magna and Aqua Magna would have started moving away from Bara Magna again, as it happens in Journey's End:

The green light showed the speed and trajectory of the two other pieces of SpherusMagna that he had tried to pull toward Bara Magna. Both were drifting off course and wouldrequire more power to return them to the right trajectory.

7)Once again, I think gravity dampeners were at work and prevented Makuta's fall from being a true catastrophe. After all, we know artificial gravity remained active for a while inside the MU, so it may be that such devices did so too.

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As for entering the body to wreak havoc on it, it would be a bit silly to expect that entering through the feet you could reach vital organs quickly enough-- if not for the fact that this sort of intercontinental travel is part of the reason the Mata Nui robot has its chute system. Granted, in 2006 when the Toa Nuva and later Jaller's group of Matoran had to get from Metru Nui to Voya Nui, the chute system was damaged and couldn't get them much farther than Karzahni-- the robot's shoulder area. But this could have been the equivalent of a neck injury (which would explain Mata Nui's potentially-fatal coma) and not a sign that the chute system further down the robot's body was badly damaged. Additionally, the Staff of Artakha, mother of all plot devices, had been used in late 2007 to repair all of the Matoran Universe's major injuries. At that point, getting between continents of the Matoran Universe would have probably been an incredibly quick and easy task.

There's a chute system in the Mata Nui robot beyond Metru Nui? That surprises me that you would suggest that, seeing as in further years that Dark Hunters and Makuta and others traveled by boat (And some of this was before the Great Cataclysm *points to Legacy of Evil*). I'm thinking that they wouldn't bother doing so if they could just hop in a chute. Also, there is no mention of chute wreckage beyond Metru Nui, or any characters in the lower regions using them. I think chutes are unique to the Metru Nui area.

4)Spherus Magna might be larger than Earth, but not much, since once again people get from one place to the other on foot in just a few days.

I theorize that the area of Bara Magna - the area that most of the story takes on is relatively small compared to the actual planet size. The Agori's journey to the North would be a journey to what they knew as the North, which may not actually be the real northern regoin of the planet, more near the equator.
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3.) Let's talk more about the Prototype and the Mega-Village. First, it exploded... but it wasn't damaged. Isn't that convenient? It just broke into clean pieces. The power core detonated, but, it didn't ruin the machinery. The arms and legs and head came off, but they weren't ripped off; they just cleanly detached. When the power core was reinserted, there was no mention of it magically repairing anything; it just powered the thing up.

Stick chopsticks into a cardboard box. Insert a balloon. Pop the balloon. See my point?

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I would normally agree with this (there were a lot of inconsistencies regarding the size of those robots), except that the reason for Mata Nui's incredible size is that he has to house the entire Matoran Universe. And since the island of Mata Nui (which covers the robot's face) was given a definite size as early as 2001 and Metru Nui was given a definite size later on in 2004, there's no way TLG could have left it all up to our imaginations.

Well, I wouldn't have defined those either. :P Although, I'm glad they did, or else I might not have learned that lesson for my own stories lol. :PBut, I will concede that at the time I didn't mind the definitions of those two islands. But they could have left it there and let fans deduce as theories how big the Great Spirit was.

Most of these "problems" really don't make any difference to me as far as the story is concerned. They're not worth my time and effort to justify to myself, but they're also not worth my time and effort to analyze to the point that they cause me any stress.

I'm getting a little tangential here but I thought this was a good strategy, just wanted to say so. :) I think this is what Greg was trying to drive at when he said what he did about physics. I don't think he meant it as a copout, but as a point that it's silly to take what's meant as entertainment, and think hard specifically for the purpose of ruining your own enjoyment of it.What I was basically trying to say earlier is that thinking about these logical difficulties can be more fun to be had. But you have to have the right attitude about it. When it doesn't seem to make sense, that shouldn't ever upset anyone. We all know from the get-go that it's fiction and fiction not designed by physics geeks like me, so it's bound to have some inconsistencies. Especially since it sets up fictional powers; no writer can explain exactly how those work, or else we'd be able to do it in real life, heh.But if you approach it with the attitude of, "it's fun to think about these things and theorize how to make them make sense," then it's healthy. :)Out of time to say more now... Edited by bonesiii

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:kaukau: Ah, a Fermi problem...I like Fermi problems. I didn't read about Mata Nui's size (though I agree with bonesiii: they shouldn't have revealed it so that they couldn't too easily contradict themselves), so I didn't imagine him being that huge, only large enough to fit all those islands inside of him. Since the typical human proportions are 7.5 head-lengths high, I would have imagined that he would be 7.5 times the length of the island Mata Nui. However, since he has superhero proportions, I'll round up and say that he's 8 island lengths high, maybe even nine.If he was the size of the Earth, the island of Mata Nui would have been the size of South America. So this sounds grossly out of proportion to me, considering the general feel I've gathered from the MNOG games and the comics. The official measurement is actually 357 kio, which translates into about 303.91 miles. So if Mata Nui was 8 or 9 headlengths tall, he'd be 2431-2735 miles high. Although again, that sounds like an over-estimation of his height, since the island of Mata Nui generally didn't feel like it was over 300 miles long. 100 miles, at most. So the image I got in my head was of an 800-900 mile tall being.Since I didn't think of the robot bodies as being as large as the planet, most of these details didn't stand out to me, although the general idea of someone causing Earthquakes did. I mean, a Tyrannosaurus Rex in Jurassic Park can make a glass of water ripple ominously from a long distance away, and a stampede of large animals likewise cause strong vibrations, so even on such a relatively tiny scale, footsteps are associated with shaking ground. So Makuta/Mata Nui, being eight or nine times the size of the island Mata Nui, would have certainly caused seismic activity, especially when he touches down on the planet from outer space, considering the sheer amount of kinetic energy needing to be dispersed.Mount Everest, by the way, is about as high as a mountain can get on Earth, since it's massive enough that if it was much larger it would begin to sink into the crust. Unless Bara Magna's crust is super-thick (and it's shown to have volcanic activity), then Makuta would have most certainly sunk into the crust. Which would have been extremely cool and have made for an interesting fight, by the way. But hey, that's the loss of the illustrators.Your Honor,Tyrannosaurus Kraggh Edited by Tyrannosaurus Kraggh
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Not sure if this is what you're driving at here, but I've seen some people assuming that Spherus Magna, or at least Aqua Magna, had to be Earth-sized because of Earth gravity. You mentioned the diameter of Earth, but that's only relevant in giving us a good idea of just how astoundingly huge Mata Nui is, not as the measurement of SM's diameter too. SM is obviously much, much larger. I had a theory here recently about how the gravity could be Earthlike but the planet much larger. Or just refer to the general statement that Bionicle physics is different.

I think we may be talking circles around each other a bit :P SM is, indeed, much larger. And, of course, the physical size of a planet does not have any direct bearing on its mass/gravity. Still, a body as large as SM seems to be would most likely have higher gravity than Earth, I would say.

1) I don't remember Gresh deciding to throw fruit at the giant robot. Where was this stated? But maybe his mind just wasn't grasping how huge it is, and he was seeing it from a distance. As for taking it over from the inside, sure, that's what I'd do. Options: Stay outside and likely get stomped to death, or go inside where it can't stomp you? You'd go inside too if you could. :POf course, this seems foolhardy to us as fans because we have "inside information" from previous story that Makuta controls the physics inside, so inside is probably far more dangerous. But Gresh didn't know that.

I'm taking most of my information from the wikis, I don't have any of my source materials here with me; it says he initiated a large Thornax attack on the robot. I would argue that the notion of climbing inside the thing would only occur to someone so quickly if they DID have inside information. Most robots/living beings don't have huge hollow areas that are meant to be navigable. If a Terminator the size of Earth put it's foot down outside of my apartment, (and I didn't flee in terror,) I would never assume that his foot would have some door I could enter, and then there would be some convenient transport method for me to reach his organs... Maybe that's just me.

2) I don't really get what you're trying to say here. Could you clarify?

The villages used robot pieces for shelter. If we assume that the stated, canon physical robot sizes are accurate, any one piece should have been enough for all of the villages to combine under. But, it apparently wasn't. When they decided to unite the villages, they brought the gargantuan robot pieces with them. They wouldn't have gone through the tremendous work involved if it wasn't needed. If it WAS needed, then they needed all of the pieces to shield their village. If they needed all of the pieces to shield their village, the village expands around the entire perimeter of an 8,000 km robot. If the village is spread over 8,000+ km, the notion that everyone who lived there would be within walking distance of Makuta's foot is what I'm calling into question.

And 3) it's just one society, not the many we have here on Earth, so all it takes is for that one society to decide to be a "set in their ways" people. And so they are.Even on Earth, re: point 3, there were many cultures that decided to find a stable balance and stick with it indefinitely. Global advancement has only come in recent centuries and decades because some cultures who did decide to invent and such invented stuff to aid global trade and communication, which then affected all other cultures. Many left to themselves would still be essentially ancient in their ways for who-knows-how-long.

I think I'm missing your point, because the notion of a society stuck in their ancient ways is what makes it the problem. There could be no sudden spurt of invention and creativity needed for the massive undertaking of moving the pieces. Even if Mata Nui told them exactly what to do and how to do it, I cannot wrap my head around that society actually having the physical means to accomplish it. As you said, and as I already had in mind, resources are very, very scarce, which I'm sure is a leading factor in their stagnation. As such, even with literally god-given instructions of how to move the pieces.... vines and sand and a handful of people aren't going to accomplish that in such a short time frame.

4) Here it appears you are indeed talking about gravity vs. size. See my theory on that. Essentially, I think the EP modified the planet, changing its physics. The only difficulty here to begin with is that the surface seems to be normal matter. Physics in the MU we are already accustomed to being different. But the EP's presence gives one known (and IMO highly likely) candidate to explain this physics difference.

EP IS a wild card I hadn't given enough thought, so thanks for making me think about that more. It's still a bit to convenient for me to love the notion, but it's something.

6) I've already posted a detailed response to this myth that reforming the planet isn't plausible. You can find it by going to the old forum and looking at my old sig; the link's still in there. Not entirely sure you are seeing problems that that answers, but check it out anyways just in case, if you haven't already.

I never had a problem with the idea that he could link up the pieces, I was just saying, (like you said,) there needs to be some "reforming" power going on, there, too. In my original post, I was just pointing out that THEY never pointed it out. It was always just "gravity".

As for "can't do more than half" -- I don't know why the exact fraction would matter.

My words were ill chosen, I should have said, "can't do the entire thing" by themselves.

I don't see why you are thinking Makuta somehow "crippled himself" intentionally. He obviously didn't expect Mata Nui to redirect the gravity to knock him in the head with a moon.

I think that you think I was referring to the head injury when I said "cripple." I wasn't. I was referring to the fact that, if he expended most of his energy, that is a crippling action. Even if it was 100% justified, it would still be crippling. Like I said, two robots are needed. I stated how the only thing that makes sense, to me, is that one robot doesn't have enough power. (Not saying one robot ONLy has exactly 50% of what's needed, but, something closer to that seems more likely than one robot having 95% of what's needed. One would think the GB's could have just amped him up a teeny bit, in that case.)So, in order to reform the planet, Makuta needed to give enough energy to make it happen. That, as I have supposed, would be the majority of his energy. Thus, giving up most of your energy is a crippling thing.

It's a fictional place, where Earth measurements don't even exist, so IMO they should have little to no relation to Bionicle.

See... I hate this. Like you've said, just saying things like "Bionicle physics," is too convenient for me. It's like a get out of jail free card for making rational sense.Now, honestly, I CAN swallow that excuse, usually, if we're talking about being inside the robot. Because, he controls all space inside of himself. But if we're outside, in the real universe... then, it's the real universe. Physics is physics. In Middle Earth, in Star Wars, in setting where "Earth" and our reality don't exist, physics is still physics.

8) What about the Golden Armor? Just its Deus Ex Machina-ness?

"Hello there. I see that you need to defeat an entire army. Did I mention than I have a set of magic armor that has never been mentioned before that will do exactly that? Here you go."
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8) What about the Golden Armor? Just its Deus Ex Machina-ness?

"Hello there. I see that you need to defeat an entire army. Did I mention than I have a set of magic armor that has never been mentioned before that will do exactly that? Here you go."
The Golden Armor was a ridiculous, idea, yeah. But LEGO needed some cheap way to get people to buy the sets.

 

 

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As for entering the body to wreak havoc on it, it would be a bit silly to expect that entering through the feet you could reach vital organs quickly enough-- if not for the fact that this sort of intercontinental travel is part of the reason the Mata Nui robot has its chute system. Granted, in 2006 when the Toa Nuva and later Jaller's group of Matoran had to get from Metru Nui to Voya Nui, the chute system was damaged and couldn't get them much farther than Karzahni-- the robot's shoulder area. But this could have been the equivalent of a neck injury (which would explain Mata Nui's potentially-fatal coma) and not a sign that the chute system further down the robot's body was badly damaged. Additionally, the Staff of Artakha, mother of all plot devices, had been used in late 2007 to repair all of the Matoran Universe's major injuries. At that point, getting between continents of the Matoran Universe would have probably been an incredibly quick and easy task.

There's a chute system in the Mata Nui robot beyond Metru Nui? That surprises me that you would suggest that, seeing as in further years that Dark Hunters and Makuta and others traveled by boat (And some of this was before the Great Cataclysm *points to Legacy of Evil*). I'm thinking that they wouldn't bother doing so if they could just hop in a chute. Also, there is no mention of chute wreckage beyond Metru Nui, or any characters in the lower regions using them. I think chutes are unique to the Metru Nui area.
I think most beings didn't know about the chutes, but I think some of the underwater chutes did go from Metru Nui to other islands and maybe the northern continent. The Visorak were said to have come to Metru Nui by those chutes. Regardless, I'm pretty sure they couldn't have gone down to the feet 'cuz they were made by Matoran, but it was stated (if bad memory serves) that no Matoran had been in the legs.

Mount Everest, by the way, is about as high as a mountain can get on Earth, since it's massive enough that if it was much larger it would begin to sink into the crust. Unless Bara Magna's crust is super-thick (and it's shown to have volcanic activity), then Makuta would have most certainly sunk into the crust. Which would have been extremely cool and have made for an interesting fight, by the way. But hey, that's the loss of the illustrators.Your Honor,Tyrannosaurus Kraggh

Well it must be kept in mind that the EP was in the core, not what you'd expect if its interior was much like Earth. I see it as most likely solid rock almost all the way down to an open pocket in the center, possibly with some layers of magma. But some have theorized that the volcano might be a GB creation too, or some such thing, not a part of the natural geology. If so it might be all solid rock plus EP core.

Still, a body as large as SM seems to be would most likely have higher gravity than Earth, I would say.

Well my theory was basically that it does, but that either modified rock, or the EP itself, nulls any gravity beyond Earth gravity. Thus there would be no upper limit to how big it could be, or at least the upper limit might be very massive, possibly about Jupiter-sized, yet it could still have Earth gravity.

I would argue that the notion of climbing inside the thing would only occur to someone so quickly if they DID have inside information. Most robots/living beings don't have huge hollow areas that are meant to be navigable.

That's a very fair point. I was kinda thinking that maybe word of what the GBs had been building long ago might have reached Glatorian/Agori ears. After all, they did build it on the same planet. But the details wouldn't have been known, including the size possibly. Just the basic idea of a huge robot with beings living inside. Maybe.

The villages used robot pieces for shelter. If we assume that the stated, canon physical robot sizes are accurate, any one piece should have been enough for all of the villages to combine under. But, it apparently wasn't. When they decided to unite the villages, they brought the gargantuan robot pieces with them. They wouldn't have gone through the tremendous work involved if it wasn't needed. If it WAS needed, then they needed all of the pieces to shield their village. If they needed all of the pieces to shield their village, the village expands around the entire perimeter of an 8,000 km robot. If the village is spread over 8,000+ km, the notion that everyone who lived there would be within walking distance of Makuta's foot is what I'm calling into question.

Mm...I was frankly never very clear on exactly the relation of the villages to the pieces. The villages as seen in the movie didn't see remotely related to pieces of a giant robot, yet at the end they said something about that (the wording of which I'm too foggy on to try to paraphrase), and show dragging pieces that don't seem to show any villages on, or in, or around, or whatever. I dunno. That whole dealio was confusing and unnecessary.All the leadup story made it sound like the villages were over here, and the pieces were over there, and that would have been relatively tidy. Why the later story seemed to change that I'm not really sure.But I'm still not really sure what you are saying here. What do you mean about what was needed? The uniting, I thought, was of the pieces of the robot so that Mata Nui could use it, to hunt down Makuta and deal with him somehow. (Then Makuta came to him instead.)On that subject, another problem I had with connecting the pieces to the villages is that I really don't think the story was convincing that Mata Nui would so easily talk an entire culture into basically destroying their homes to put this massive broken robot together, basically on blind faith that he knew what he was doing. But putting the robot together would be less of a problem for them if their homes weren't related to them. Admittedly though the story made it clear the Skrall were destroying their homes anyways. :shrugs:

I think I'm missing your point, because the notion of a society stuck in their ancient ways is what makes it the problem. There could be no sudden spurt of invention and creativity needed for the massive undertaking of moving the pieces. Even if Mata Nui told them exactly what to do and how to do it, I cannot wrap my head around that society actually having the physical means to accomplish it. As you said, and as I already had in mind, resources are very, very scarce, which I'm sure is a leading factor in their stagnation. As such, even with literally god-given instructions of how to move the pieces.... vines and sand and a handful of people aren't going to accomplish that in such a short time frame.

Yeah, you're probably right about that. Again I think this is the mistake of defining sizes. If we were never clear on just how big it was, we would have less of a head problem with this, and better connect to the real point of the story which isn't about trivial details but the characters, etc.But putting that aside, since they DID define it, IMO they should have involved the Element Lord of Sand. It's basically across sand they had to drag it. There probably should have been a plot thread about finding that guy and convincing him to help them somehow. Could have been cool, too. (And I suppooooooose we could theorize it may have happened behind the scenes. Yeah unlikely but hey.) If he did help, it should be relatively easy.I do think Toa of Italy's theory makes a lot of sense, though. Especially if the power source's destruction merely disconnected the pieces after the robot already fell over, so there would really be far less distance to cross than it seemed in the movie. And I'm fine with just chalking up the movie's portrayal there as artistic license, because who would think that the CG guys would put all this thought into it? Their concern wasn't canon accuracy but to make a movie animation that looked cool.

I never had a problem with the idea that he could link up the pieces, I was just saying, (like you said,) there needs to be some "reforming" power going on, there, too. In my original post, I was just pointing out that THEY never pointed it out. It was always just "gravity".

Fair enough. I'm a big fan of LOST, in which even more basic things are intentionally left for fans to theorize out, though, so I don't mind it. :P

I think that you think I was referring to the head injury when I said "cripple." I wasn't.I was referring to the fact that, if he expended most of his energy, that is a crippling action. Even if it was 100% justified, it would still be crippling.Like I said, two robots are needed.

Well in hindsight, I realize you probably couldn't have been talking about the head wound; after all, that didn't just cripple him, it killed him dead, lol, so my bad.But where was it stated that two robots were "needed"? That's not how I interpret the story. It looks a lot like the main robot could have done it all by itself, if Mata Nui had been in control. The story portrayed that gravity attack as just one attack. I didn't get the feeling from how it was told that it was a last gasp effort by Makuta, just that it was the power he was using, and if that didn't work he would use another, another, etc. until he won. It only worked finally against him because of where Mata Nui hit him with the slightly redirected moon fragment; an instant kill shot. If it hadn't instantly killed him, it seemed implied to me the battle would continue until Makuta won.And the GBs never made the third like they intended, yet Mata Nui was still on his mission. It's not entirely clear whether they then intended him to use the prototype or not, though the destiny for Makuta to help was in place. But anyways, my point is I think the main robot could have done it alone, it's just that that would be a lot more risky.Rule #1 in understanding the Great Beings is that they are obsessed with backup plans and safeguards. And the reforming is the single largest goal they ever had. Since they do safeguards about everything else, why would they miss the big one? And if it was needed, why did it stay just an idea instead of actually making the third? So the idea of the second robot was almost certainly not needed but "just in case."

See... I hate this. Like you've said, just saying things like "Bionicle physics," is too convenient for me. It's like a get out of jail free card for making rational sense.Now, honestly, I CAN swallow that excuse, usually, if we're talking about being inside the robot. Because, he controls all space inside of himself. But if we're outside, in the real universe... then, it's the real universe. Physics is physics.

Well, again, a problem was created here in 2009 when suddenly they said that all this stuff, and beings with powers, on Bara Magna were NOT protodermic but made of real-world materials. If they'd just made it all fictional protodermis, it would be easier to swallow. But that said, physics is not physics. :P This is, for one thing, a totally different universe in which Earth doesn't exist. There are real theories that other universes could have very different physics. There are actual math reasons why they could.Also, as I pointed out long ago in my ancient topic, Wacky Physics, there's a common misconception about physics that oversimplifies it, and assumes that real-world physics can't enable wacky things. But there are ways to make mechanisms using real-world physics principles to explain just about anything in science fiction or even fantasy. The basic underlying physics can all be identical in the real world and in the Bionicle world (I call this general physics), while the actual results as seen by the characters can be very different, because very different mechanisms are built out of the same fundamental particles (I call this specific physics).For example, if you have a rock, you know how it behaves, and if you have metal next to the rock, you know how that behaves. The rock and metal don't magically pull towards one another. You identify this as a rule of their specific physics.But then if you take a magnetic rock, and put it next to magnetic metal, you see that they behave differently. You might make the mistake of thinking the fundamental or "general" physics were different, but that's not really true. The basic physics are the same in both situations, it's just that the magnetic rock uses those basic physics in a slightly different way, so it has different specific physics.Make sense?

"Hello there. I see that you need to defeat an entire army. Did I mention than I have a set of magic armor that has never been mentioned before that will do exactly that? Here you go."

Yeah, that's what I figured. :PMy real opinion on this, I unfortunately can't say, because I intend to use it for my Paracosmos fanfics near the end and I don't wanna spoil what I have planned. :P But basically, I agree it should have been done better. Other solutions should have been found, or they should have done something like what LOST did with Jughead (the nuke) in Season 5. It was present first as a problem, and then later, after we might have forgotten about it, Daniel comes back and says, hey there's this other problem now, and I wanna fix it by blowing up a nuke. It's obvious the writers didn't think of the nuke until Season 5, but the way they presented it made it seem not like a D.e.M. at all.I do think most of it made sense, though. Again, we know the GBs are obsessed with contingency plans. So I didn't see that as DeMish. Plus we've just been seeing the Mask of Life do all kinds of wacky things to living beings, so the idea that it would alter Tahu, I didn't see as unexpected either. But it comes across as DeMish because there didn't seem to be much of a tradeoff or major downside. And it made me wonder, if the GBs could just make Golden Armor like this, why not make a lot more than just one? But anywho... if I say much more I'll spoil my fanfics lol. Edited by bonesiii

The Destiny of Bionicle (chronological retelling of Bionicle original series, 9 PDFs of 10 chapters each on Google Drive)Part 1 - Warring with Fate | Part 2 - Year of Change | Part 3 - The Exploration Trap | Part 4 - Rise of the Warlords | Part 5 - A Busy Matoran | Part 6 - The Dark Time | Part 7 - Proving Grounds | Part 8 - A Rude Awakening | Part 9 - The Battle of Giants

My Bionicle Fanfiction  (Google Drive folder, eventually planned to have PDFs of all of it)

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Actually, I'd argue that most people over-complicate physics. Really, pretty much everything in physics can be explained by a few dozen fundamental constants (Planck's constant, speed of light, etc.) and some very simple relationships between them. Take gravity; it's not even really a thing; it's a description of how two masses interact with each other (with a force proportional to the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them). Furthermore, everything larger than the nuclei of atoms is the result of one of two things: gravity or electromagnetism.Anyway, on a semi-related note, I too have a problem with the Mata Nui robot's size. I'll ignore the effect its gravity would have on Bara Magna and the question of where the GBs got the resources to build a planet-size robot in any feasible time span. Instead, let's see what material the robot could possibly be made out of. (If you want to avoid math, skip to the summary at the end.)If you make a human-sized robot with the same density as a human but twice the size, its weight would be more than double a human's. It would have twice the height, twice the length (arm-to-arm), and twice the width (chest-to-back): 2x2x2 = 8 times heavier. Its bone structure (or robotic equivalent) would provide more than double the support as well: if you take a cross-section of the bone, it's twice the width and twice the length, so it's 2x2 = 4 times more support (making the bone structure taller doesn't make it provide any more support, which is why it's 2x2 and not 2x2x2 again). Because you're supporting a robot 8 times as heavy as a person with 4 times the support, the 'bone structure' would have to be made of a material at least 8/4 = 2 times stronger. This is an unfortunate restriction, but it would hardly make the robot impossible to build.But now what happens if the robot is 6666666 2/3 times larger than a human (this is 40 million feet, assuming the human you're comparing it to is 6 feet tall.)? The robot weighs about 300 million million million times as much, but only has about 45 million million times as much support. In order to stand on Bara Magna without collapsing under its own weight, the robot would have to be made out of a material about 17.5 thousand million times stronger than bone. Probably more, since it's made of metal and is more dense than a human.Summary: To be able to support its own weight and move around, the Mata Nui robot would have to be made of a material (at the very least) 17.5 thousand million times stronger than human bone. What is that thing made of?!

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Actually, I'd argue that most people over-complicate physics. Really, pretty much everything in physics can be explained by a few dozen fundamental constants (Planck's constant, speed of light, etc.) and some very simple relationships between them. Take gravity; it's not even really a thing; it's a description of how two masses interact with each other (with a force proportional to the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them). Furthermore, everything larger than the nuclei of atoms is the result of one of two things: gravity or electromagnetism.

I basically agree with that. As I put it, even most of what we think of as the "laws" of physics are really built from an even more fundamental physics in quantum mechanics, which operates quite differently. There may be ways to bring some of the strange physics of the quantum scale up to large scale, if the quantum machinery was built differently, enabling all kinds of wacky things. So the simple "base functions" of physics are in quantum mechanics (though admittedly the equations to describe them don't seem simple). Everything else is really "specific physics", even things we think of as absolute like conservation of energy.

Anyway, on a semi-related note, I too have a problem with the Mata Nui robot's size. I'll ignore the effect its gravity would have on Bara Magna and the question of where the GBs got the resources to build a planet-size robot in any feasible time span. Instead, let's see what material the robot could possibly be made out of. (If you want to avoid math, skip to the summary at the end.)

This shouldn't be a problem as it's made out of protodermis, which we already know has fictional powers and physics. Again, any gravity problems would logically be nulled by systems controlling gravity, etc.

Summary: To be able to support its own weight and move around, the Mata Nui robot would have to be made of a material (at the very least) 17.5 thousand million times stronger than human bone. What is that thing made of?!

If you're asking "How does protodermis do what it does?" you're never going to get a canon answer (most likely :P) because it's a fictional "fantasy" substance. Again, if we knew how to make such things we'd be able to do it in real life. The makers of the story are authors, not superscientists. :PBut I did present one theory with my "nanite cyberclay" theory; that each molecule is essentially a powerful projector of fields of energy which can do certain base functions like materialize from energy, teleport, and mimic other physics. Then everything else can be run by code (and we do know the Matoran language is programming code). So it can basically do almost anything, if you know how to code for it. (If I'm right. :P)

The Destiny of Bionicle (chronological retelling of Bionicle original series, 9 PDFs of 10 chapters each on Google Drive)Part 1 - Warring with Fate | Part 2 - Year of Change | Part 3 - The Exploration Trap | Part 4 - Rise of the Warlords | Part 5 - A Busy Matoran | Part 6 - The Dark Time | Part 7 - Proving Grounds | Part 8 - A Rude Awakening | Part 9 - The Battle of Giants

My Bionicle Fanfiction  (Google Drive folder, eventually planned to have PDFs of all of it)

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I would argue that the notion of climbing inside the thing would only occur to someone so quickly if they DID have inside information. Most robots/living beings don't have huge hollow areas that are meant to be navigable. If a Terminator the size of Earth put it's foot down outside of my apartment, (and I didn't flee in terror,) I would never assume that his foot would have some door I could enter, and then there would be some convenient transport method for me to reach his organs... Maybe that's just me.

Actually, that's an argument for what Gresh was trying to do. Open a door, smash everything inside, cripple a bunch of systems in there. But Mata Nui did say that "his people" lived inside. So Gresh could have conjectured that there was living space inside, seeing that a lot of people lived in there.

So, in order to reform the planet, Makuta needed to give enough energy to make it happen. That, as I have supposed, would be the majority of his energy. Thus, giving up most of your energy is a crippling thing.

Not if you can easily end the battle with it.

Keep in mind, the blast we're talking about here would have destroyed Mata Nui, the planet of Bara Magna, and everything else. Makuta would not have had to have fought another battle shortly after this blast was unleashed, because there would have been nothing else to fight with. It was basically Makuta getting tired of a battle with creatures that were obviously beneath him and deciding to end it in one big gravity blast. So given that, it would stand that this thing has a ton of power behind it, enough to reform a planet.

As for entering the body to wreak havoc on it, it would be a bit silly to expect that entering through the feet you could reach vital organs quickly enough-- if not for the fact that this sort of intercontinental travel is part of the reason the Mata Nui robot has its chute system. Granted, in 2006 when the Toa Nuva and later Jaller's group of Matoran had to get from Metru Nui to Voya Nui, the chute system was damaged and couldn't get them much farther than Karzahni-- the robot's shoulder area. But this could have been the equivalent of a neck injury (which would explain Mata Nui's potentially-fatal coma) and not a sign that the chute system further down the robot's body was badly damaged. Additionally, the Staff of Artakha, mother of all plot devices, had been used in late 2007 to repair all of the Matoran Universe's major injuries. At that point, getting between continents of the Matoran Universe would have probably been an incredibly quick and easy task.

There's a chute system in the Mata Nui robot beyond Metru Nui? That surprises me that you would suggest that, seeing as in further years that Dark Hunters and Makuta and others traveled by boat (And some of this was before the Great Cataclysm *points to Legacy of Evil*). I'm thinking that they wouldn't bother doing so if they could just hop in a chute. Also, there is no mention of chute wreckage beyond Metru Nui, or any characters in the lower regions using them. I think chutes are unique to the Metru Nui area.
I think most beings didn't know about the chutes, but I think some of the underwater chutes did go from Metru Nui to other islands and maybe the northern continent. The Visorak were said to have come to Metru Nui by those chutes. Regardless, I'm pretty sure they couldn't have gone down to the feet 'cuz they were made by Matoran, but it was stated (if bad memory serves) that no Matoran had been in the legs.
So that's why I don't see many Matoran traveling by boat. And probably most other beings, even if they knew about them, were too big to travel by those chutes. I remember Toa Lhikan and his team having to use a boat to get the Kanohi Dragon to Xia; he was probably too big to fit in a chute.
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Ugh, this subject.I'm not going to argue too much on the actual story points, but I will point out a few details regarding the size of Mata Nui (both the island and the robot). Let's take a look:matanui.jpgThat's a rough approximation, but I can't do much better right now, as I don't have a head-on shot that shows his legs. What we can gather from this, however, is that the robot is roughly eight times the size of his own head. (It may be less than that, as we seem to be looking up at him.)We've known for a long time that the island of Mata Nui is exactly 357 kio long (303.91 miles), so we can calculate the robot's height as roughly 2,431 miles tall (303.91 x 8). That's a great deal smaller than 40 million feet, which is his official size—that's 7,575 miles tall, which would stretch high above even the exosphere of our atmosphere (6,213 miles). Even at the comparatively modest height that I've calculated for him, he still towers over the International Space Station, which is only about 200 miles up. It's difficult to tell what angle we're looking at him from in this picture, but it's clear that we're pretty far below him. It's safe to say that his head should be far, far beyond the ozone layer, or any blue part of the sky; he is firmly in the black up there.This is assuming an earthlike atmosphere, of course. If it's a far larger atmosphere, we'd have to assume a tremendously massive planet, but that doesn't fit with what we've seen over the years. We've seen objects fall at normal rates, and plenty of other everyday evidence that suggests a world much like our own.The simplest solution to this issue is just to accept that it makes no sense. I find that if you imagine everything as fantasy rather than scifi, you can just accept Mata Nui as "really big" and not worry about the details of it. In fact, I kinda wish other planets had never been brought into BIONICLE, because then we could just assume the world was flat, and this stuff would be a moot issue.

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Actually, I'd argue that most people over-complicate physics. Really, pretty much everything in physics can be explained by a few dozen fundamental constants (Planck's constant, speed of light, etc.) and some very simple relationships between them. Take gravity; it's not even really a thing; it's a description of how two masses interact with each other (with a force proportional to the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them). Furthermore, everything larger than the nuclei of atoms is the result of one of two things: gravity or electromagnetism.Anyway, on a semi-related note, I too have a problem with the Mata Nui robot's size. I'll ignore the effect its gravity would have on Bara Magna and the question of where the GBs got the resources to build a planet-size robot in any feasible time span. Instead, let's see what material the robot could possibly be made out of. (If you want to avoid math, skip to the summary at the end.)If you make a human-sized robot with the same density as a human but twice the size, its weight would be more than double a human's. It would have twice the height, twice the length (arm-to-arm), and twice the width (chest-to-back): 2x2x2 = 8 times heavier. Its bone structure (or robotic equivalent) would provide more than double the support as well: if you take a cross-section of the bone, it's twice the width and twice the length, so it's 2x2 = 4 times more support (making the bone structure taller doesn't make it provide any more support, which is why it's 2x2 and not 2x2x2 again). Because you're supporting a robot 8 times as heavy as a person with 4 times the support, the 'bone structure' would have to be made of a material at least 8/4 = 2 times stronger. This is an unfortunate restriction, but it would hardly make the robot impossible to build.But now what happens if the robot is 6666666 2/3 times larger than a human (this is 40 million feet, assuming the human you're comparing it to is 6 feet tall.)? The robot weighs about 300 million million million times as much, but only has about 45 million million times as much support. In order to stand on Bara Magna without collapsing under its own weight, the robot would have to be made out of a material about 17.5 thousand million times stronger than bone. Probably more, since it's made of metal and is more dense than a human.Summary: To be able to support its own weight and move around, the Mata Nui robot would have to be made of a material (at the very least) 17.5 thousand million times stronger than human bone. What is that thing made of?!

Protodermis, a crazy weird substance that defies physics.

aouROFb.png

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But putting that aside, since they DID define it, IMO they should have involved the Element Lord of Sand. It's basically across sand they had to drag it. There probably should have been a plot thread about finding that guy and convincing him to help them somehow. Could have been cool, too. (And I suppooooooose we could theorize it may have happened behind the scenes. Yeah unlikely but hey.) If he did help, it should be relatively easy.

That is an interesting notion. I don't recall if the power of an EL is much greater than a Toa's or not, I would think it would still be a massive undertaking. But it is a good thought.

But where was it stated that two robots were "needed"? That's not how I interpret the story.

my point is I think the main robot could have done it alone, it's just that that would be a lot more risky.

And the reforming is the single largest goal they ever had.

Since it IS the largest goal they ever had... I would just assume that they would want it to go off without a hitch. If performing the task with a single robot is, indeed, "risky," then by that notion alone, I would argue than a second robot IS "needed." As for myself, I think Brutaka's weird possessed premonition thing sealed the deal. He said something like, the two must make them one. In Bionicle, a person's destiny has always been a fixed, immovable, definite thing that can be predetermined at a person's creation. If Makuta was created to inhabit a robot so that Mata Nui could inhabit another... I just believe that everyone involved was mighty convinced that there would be another, fully functional robot.If one robot really could have done the job... Then I just dislike the redirected-energy-blast-thing even more.

And if it was needed, why did it stay just an idea instead of actually making the third?

I don't know if any of Greg's comments lead me to this belief, or if it's my own fabrication, but I always thought the un-appearance of the third robot was part of the same big mystery as WHERE are the effing Great Beings during all of this? One would think they would be there when Mata Nui arrived ~100 years ago... and one would think the other robot would be there too.

There are real theories that other universes could have very different physics. There are actual math reasons why they could.Also, as I pointed out long ago in my ancient topic, Wacky Physics, there's a common misconception about physics that oversimplifies it, and assumes that real-world physics can't enable wacky things.

I really do my best not to sound like a know-it-all, honest, but I did just graduate in December with a bachelor's in Physics and minor in Astronomy, which includes John Ralston's wacky, zany quantum mechanics course, so I do think I know how the strange and logic-defying can, on occasion, be boiled down to the simple and every-day. Fictional substances and machinery aside, though, I still say that a looot of the physical happenings at the end of Bionicle smell hinky to me. I say this because, it's all just simple mechanics. The planet-sized robots have a fistfight and everything's normal; the planet-sized robot crashes to the ground and everything's normal... sigh.I actually wouldn't mind the notion of a story taking place entirely in a universe with "very different physics", as you say, if it were clearly labeled as such. But in Lord of the Rings, Star Wars... all these fictional universes without any mention of our Earth or reality... when physical objects bumping into each other don't behave as they should, nobody ever explains is as, "physics is different here!" So it'll always be too convenient outside of the robot, for my taste.

I do think most of it made sense, though. Again, we know the GBs are obsessed with contingency plans.

Oh I agree that just the existence of it makes a certain amount of sense, knowing what we know about the GBs. But, as a literary plot device... yikes.
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Completely agreed. And, according to the Bionicle Encyclopedia (updated, if that makes a difference), Makuta (the species) does not need a physical body. It can just float around in spirit form, looking for a empty body to take over (like Sauron or Voldemort). So how does being hit on the head kill Makuta?

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Completely agreed. And, according to the Bionicle Encyclopedia (updated, if that makes a difference), Makuta (the species) does not need a physical body. It can just float around in spirit form, looking for a empty body to take over (like Sauron or Voldemort). So how does being hit on the head kill Makuta?

Because he got hit by a moon.
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Completely agreed. And, according to the Bionicle Encyclopedia (updated, if that makes a difference), Makuta (the species) does not need a physical body. It can just float around in spirit form, looking for a empty body to take over (like Sauron or Voldemort). So how does being hit on the head kill Makuta?

Completely agreed. And, according to the Bionicle Encyclopedia (updated, if that makes a difference), Makuta (the species) does not need a physical body. It can just float around in spirit form, looking for a empty body to take over (like Sauron or Voldemort). So how does being hit on the head kill Makuta?

Because he got hit by a moon.
The way it works is that if you hold a gun to a Makuta and shoot him, two things could happen. If the Makuta was inhabiting the body you shot, the Makuta's dead. You shot the Makuta in the body.BUT - if the Makuta left the body before you shot him, it's just the body being hit by the bullet, not the Makuta himself.So if Teridax had seen the moon coming, and left the robot, he'd be completely fine. He'd just have to find another body quickly.

 

 

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Completely agreed. And, according to the Bionicle Encyclopedia (updated, if that makes a difference), Makuta (the species) does not need a physical body. It can just float around in spirit form, looking for a empty body to take over (like Sauron or Voldemort). So how does being hit on the head kill Makuta?

He does need a body to prevent his energy/gas from slowly leaking away. A massive impact like that would pretty much instantly spread him out. Also, heat can burn a Makuta, and impacts generate heat, Another problem he ran into was that his mind was "in" the robot's circuitry, and the instant hit did not give him time to disengage from it.So a triple threat, basically. :)

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