Sir Kohran

 

 

 

Does a Turaga's tool have to be connected with their Toa one or ones?

 

I don't see much in common between Vakama's disc launcher and fire staff.

Isn't Vakama's firestaff his old mask-forging tool?

 

Never heard that before. I always thought it was just an object, not any kind of technical device.

 

Is there any info on how/where Turaga get their tools?

 

Yeah, it's the same Firestaff he used as a Matoran: https://biosector01.com/wiki/Firestaff

 

Some Turaga use their transformed Toa Tools (the tools change with them when they become Turaga), and others use some other tool they have an attachment to (like Vakama's Firestaff). It's just personal preference. Source: https://biosector01.com/wiki/Badge_of_Office

 

Okay, but what did Vakama's launcher and (as it clearly states her trident was made by her) Nokama's hydro blades transform into?

 

Does a Turaga's tool have to be connected with their Toa one or ones?

 

I don't see much in common between Vakama's disc launcher and fire staff.

Isn't Vakama's firestaff his old mask-forging tool?

 

Never heard that before. I always thought it was just an object, not any kind of technical device.

Is there any info on how/where Turaga get their tools?

He literally said this isn't an official Bionicle project and Lego isn't involved. It's fan art or a Cryoshell thing, nothing more.

 

Where? Seeing as everyone in the Instagram comments is going crazy about Bionicle coming back (again).

Does a Turaga's tool have to be connected with their Toa one or ones?

I don't see much in common between Vakama's disc launcher and fire staff.

I was never a huge MOCer so many of my sets have always been in the original builds, but from some rebuilding I can say there is something pleasing about having a set in its 'official' state.

You guys noticed the description?

“You have been dreaming for an eternity. Amazing stories of light and darkness. Shaping your mind like a stream carves the rock. You know all and nothing. The moment before waking”

 

Now look at Kopaka's dialogue from the first Issue of the Comics:

"I have slept for so long. My dreams have been dark ones. But now I am awakaned. Now the scattered elements of my being are rejoined. Now I am whole. And the darkness cannot stand before me."

 

Isn't this strikingly similar?

Darth Jaller already pointed this out on the previous page.

To go on a bit of a tangent, the landscape looks like Ko-Wahi.

It does, but did Ko-Wahi have a huge volcano sticking up over it?

 

So, this appears to depict a Toa canister drifting to shore....

Oh, my! This is getting suspicious! The picture with the canister and that caption. Extremely suspicious. I tell you.

I wonder if this means G3 or the continuation of G1 by reintroducing classic stuff from the 2001 storyline (I hope either of these could happen, but I’m going with the continuation with G1 the most, and FF seems to like that idea).

 

I don't see how G1 can continue with stuff that's already been/happened in its story.

This looks more like a rerun or very close reboot to me.

They should bring G1 back.

1. The story was largely finished so it can't be easily continued.

2. If Lego wanted to continue it they probably would've done years ago.

3. Adding new story to a story that was already complicated will make the complication problem even worse.

4. Today's kids weren't even alive for it so for them it wouldn't be a 'return' as they wouldn't recognise it.

5. The people who would recognise it are now adults who mostly aren't interested in Lego toys anymore.

Let it rest.

 

 

 

Well, the logo looks robotic and is missing “nicle”, so it could be a mix of Bionicle and Hero Factory, maybe also with RoboRiders and Slizers/Throwbots. Maybe it’s a crossover where the characters from these themes meet.

I can't see anything from Slizers or Roboriders being used, seeing as they ended almost twenty years ago and weren't around long enough for many people to recognise them now.

 

I don't know if Hero Factory was close enough to Bionicle in style for a crossover to be realistic.

 

One thing for sure, HF was told to have a planned live-action theatrical movie in 2012, even though that this movie is not made, so I think that people probably find this memorable. HF must’ve done well and be popular enough, but not as much as Bionicle. So, you’re right. RR and S/T may not be memorable because they’re too short. Hero Factory is know to do technology, so it could have a crossover with Bionicle with that kind of logo. I’m betting for a crossover for both of these successful themes, even though that I am on Bionicle more, to be honest.

 

1. Pretty sure that live-action movie was a hoax. I saw a note about it on Wikipedia, but I've also seen gross misunderstandings of Pascal's Wager there, too, so I wouldn't take it as gospel.

 

I think I asked about a Hero Factory movie some years back and got told it was just a rumour.

Should there be a reboot, or continuation, of BIONICLE, I hope however that it takes into account that the fans of BIONICLE are now very different from what they were 10 years ago... to put it simply, we've all grown up (this is one of the things G2 refused to take into consideration and, in my opinion, partly explains its quick downfall).

I don't think its end was anything to do with not pleasing older fans, it was down to not winning enough new fans. There wasn't much media beyond the episodes and the story moved a little too quickly for people to keep up.

Well, the logo looks robotic and is missing “nicle”, so it could be a mix of Bionicle and Hero Factory, maybe also with RoboRiders and Slizers/Throwbots. Maybe it’s a crossover where the characters from these themes meet.

I can't see anything from Slizers or Roboriders being used, seeing as they ended almost twenty years ago and weren't around long enough for many people to recognise them now.

I don't know if Hero Factory was close enough to Bionicle in style for a crossover to be realistic.

 

This popped up on Christian Faber's instagram. Granted, it could be an April Fool's joke, but I'll post it anyways.

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvuSFY2Hr1_/

Anything posted on April 1st is probably not legit. The only way it would be is if it was a devious attempt to mask a real leak as a joke to build hype when it turns out to be real, but that doesn't sound like an effective strategy.

 

He's just posted another part of the same image. Given that April 1st was now days ago, this has to be real, whatever it is.

Sad news, rest in peace.

this was also the year the story got more convoluted than ever

It got more complicated, yes, but I don't think it was 'convoluted' then because the new characters, story and their media were all directly part of the main story (apart from maybe Lhikan and Nidhiki's past). It only got convoluted once Greg started writing 'other' books that, good as they might've been, had almost nothing to do with the main story in terms of what they showed and introduced.

for a child's toy that needs to both hold on to fans and bring in new ones to succeed throughout its lifetime, they ultimately did a lot of damage in the long run. The story became a mess to get into for newcomers, even if veteran fans could follow along just fine

That was largely down to the canon story getting too hard to follow due to being largely stuck in the books, and the disappearance of media like the movies and Templar stuff that people generally liked. This wasn't really a problem back in 2004.

I don't expect everyone to agree, but I think this was Bionicle's last really great year.

Metru Nui was the last island that was really fleshed out, with many people, locations and creatures, the Toa Metru were likable main characters, the Morbuzahk was an interesting change from the villains there'd been before that, the story was a bit more complex but still easy to follow with the simple media available, the mystery surrounding Dume was very involving, and the movie was a huge step forward from Mask of Light with a more serious feel, better animation, better music and much stronger emotion in many scenes.

The only negatives are that the Vahki didn't get a lot to do, the movie is a little rushed with how much story it tries to cover plus its ending makes most of 2005 a bit pointless, and Templar's short Vahki clips weren't much for what was, sadly, their last contribution to Bionicle.

Good to hear after the previous decline.

 

 

G1 got lucky with heavy advertising and a lot of luck

No, it earned its success by having a simple and enjoyable story and decent to brilliant canon media to tell that with. It went wrong when it began to abandon this approach.

 

So, like, am I the only one on Earth who actually liked the fact that BIONICLE had an immersive, complex storyline and universe despite its humble toy line origins?

 

And it’s not like it didn’t start out that way. According to Bob Thompson (I think), the originally planned “seven books” were drawn out even before the line was first released, and they had know idea if it would even last into 2002.

 

It's not wrong to have a complex story at all, and (though I said above it was simple) even the 2001 story was certainly complex compared to pretty much any story Lego had made before then. It's just wrong to have a story without the right media there to help people understand it. The books weren't terrible by themselves, but they clearly didn't get the job done in terms of keeping Bionicle a big success.

I guess there's quite a narrow line between a story that's complex enough to be interesting and a story that's complex and just confusing.

One issue is that there is no new Bionicle content anymore.

Even when Bionicle did return, the rise in activity wasn't extremely big or long lasting, perhaps in part because the return just wasn't on the scale of the original.

Although I'm not sure, I believe it means "If I'm Honest," or something like that.

Wouldn't it be 'IIH' then?

And if you want to indicate honesty you generally say 'TBH' ('to be honest', rather obviously).

With regards to the Jaller quote you initially mentioned from the fight with Vezon, it's expanded a bit more in the novel Inferno, which might help:

 

"Jaller, no!" said Hewkii. "You won't last more than ten seconds in that cauldron!"

"That's ten seconds longer than any of the rest of you would," the Toa leader answered. "With my natural resistance to heat and flame, maybe I can buy enough time to retrieve the mask and toss it to you. [...]"

 

So... their resistance buys them a few seconds over other Toa or Matoran, maximum; but that seems to be the full extent of it.

 

Thanks, that's certainly helpful, but do we know whether 'ten seconds' was meant exactly or just as a simple way of saying 'not very long'?

And how did they know how long he'd last? I mean, when was the last time a fire Matoran/Toa had actually been in lava to the point of dying?

They seemed to be in a big hurry to leave Ta-Koro when it was sinking, too. They took the land route instead of jumping into the lava and swimming to safety, maybe that indicates lava isn’t safe for them, I dunno...

Movement across a solid surface is almost always easier than moving through liquid.

Bridges are there for a reason.

the release of Nathan Furst's BIONICLE Miramax movie trilogy scores and the potential live concerts of them in the future

I can't see there being demand among the public for concerts. We're not talking about famous films, famous tunes, a particularly famous line or a particularly famous composer.

Also, I also think I remember hearing that Lego sourced more of the names from a proto-Polynesian language, rather than directly from Maori. The reason the issue arose is because of the extant Polynesian languages, Maori is the one that has the most in common with that earlier language, leading to the issue of certain terms having culturally important meanings to indigenous people of New Zealand.

Do you know which language this was or might've been? I'd be interested to know if more name meanings could be found from it.

Thor is the god of thunder. He is from Asgard. His dad is Odin, the one-eyed king of Valhalla. Loki, a trickster and former friend of the family, does some stuff and everyone's like "please don't do that stuff" but he does it anyway. All manner of things from the Prose Eddas are lifted and re-tooled. Stan the Man changed various details to make it usable as a superhero comic, but it's very obviously a ripoff of Germanic mythology. Stan took something he did not create and made something new with it.

I guess it would depend on whether it was close enough to count as a 'retelling', or just taking preexisting mythology and telling a largely new story with it (like Disney with Hercules).

First, I wasn't under the impression Agrabah was supposed to actually be a representation of the Middle East. I thought it was like Camelot--a made-up, faraway land somewhere in a part of the world that exists.

If it's not the Middle East, why are there mentions of Allah, and the words 'sultan' and 'vizier'? And the film's city was originally meant to be Baghdad until the Gulf War.

And none of the responses from Disney people tried to claim they were depicting a totally fictional culture or people. One of their arguments was actually "Aladdin and Jasmine are Arab!" (IE, we're depicting Middle Eastern people in a positive light.)

Obviously the part where Heracles kills his kids might not have made a good cartoon musical for children, but Jesus H. Christ, they literally did not do their homework at all. When you try to represent something from a culture outright and then proceed to A. completely miss the point and B. change literally everything so that the whole thing is totally removed from the thing you're selling it as and lacks everything that made it timeless to start with. Which isn't to say that it's a terrible film (I personally haven't even seen it), but...they made Hades the bad guy! Hades! A bad guy!!! And Zeus is a competent dad!!! And Hera!!! Is just there!!! How do you fail this badly???????

Do you mean all this or are you being sarcastic to make a point?

If they accurately represented (as best they could, given constraints) the Heracles myth, there'd be less concern from the Greeks and mythology nuts everywhere.

It's not really clearly if they were trying to retell the original story or just using it for a new story.

Objectively, the Maori were unaffected. They didn't lose anything, nor were they taken advantage of.

They arguably were taken advantage of, by a company using their language for financial gain without any consideration of them.

They're a newspaper making satirical political cartoons meant to say something about the real world. Of course people will react to that in some way. I'm talking about cultural appropriation purely for art's sake, not for satire; though art can be satirical, as with Life of Brian, for instance.

I don't think the context really matters; the basic point is that when you handle culture or other content that's associated with other people, there can easily be reactions.

The shooting was uncalled for, in any case. Even if it offended people, there's no cause to shoot someone. That's never acceptable.

The men responsible obviously thought there was cause, just like the Maoris thought they had cause to be upset with Lego's use of their culture, though to their credit they didn't start killing people over it.

Look at the Avatar series, which blatantly rips off Japanese and Chinese culture on multiple accounts, even borrowing bits from other cultures from time to time (Agni Kai is derived from the name of...actually, I referred to Agni in the OP, ironically).

I see what you mean, but - a bit like the English language - Japanese culture is so widespread that it isn't under threat of being distorted like Maori possibly was with Bionicle. I mean, Ninjago uses 'ninja' in a fictional setting, but I think most people do already know that ninja existed in the real world, so the use of the word 'ninja' isn't really controversial.

So he rounds up his studio, gets some funding, and makes a real auteur film with characters whose names are derived from English. Sells it as original work. Now, he's going to profit off of something from someone else's cultural heritage. He is appropriating American culture. Is Ted harming us Americans in any way? Are we being exploited?

It would depend how closely the end results resembled the original (real) elements. If there was a character exactly named 'George Washington' leading people exactly called 'Americans', then I could understand Americans reacting to it (positively or negatively). If the character and people had made up names (English or otherwise) and only vaguely resembled anything real, I probably couldn't.

Using Maori words for worldbuilding doesn't worsen its chances of dying off.

I feel it does, because giving the words new meanings that are irrelevant to the Maori culture/world can lead to the old 'true' meanings being replaced and forgotten.

If anything, it gives a small chance for it to get around a little more.

Problem is that it's not in a way that has it recognisable as a real world language with the original meanings.

especially when there's plenty of dead languages to use in the stead of Maori.

Kinda wonder why they chose Maori when Bionicle's overall story had almost nothing to do with the Maori culture and history.

If you appropriate culture in such a way that harms the culture or the perception of it, then that's bad; if you do so harmlessly or even beneficially, then it's not bad.

And I guess you feel Lego's use was the second?

it's pretty hard not to do at times, especially where worldbuilding is concerned.

This is more a matter of how you do it and in what situation.

It's still lifting someone's cultural heritage for use as your own work.

Which I feel is at the very least dubious, though I'd need to know more about how the comics used the mythology before I could say for sure that it was outright wrong.

That doesn't normally happen, though, mostly for the aforementioned reason that--and I cannot stress this enough--this happens all the time. Why would Lego expect a cultural group to get upset when it's so rare for a company to get in hot water for this?

It may be rare, but it has happened. In the decade before that point, Disney got a bad reaction from Middle Eastern people over the portrayal of Arabs in their Aladdin movie, and from the Greeks over the huge changes made to their mythology in Hercules.

Therefore it would make sense to consult with the people concerned when dealing with them or their culture.

Because there's A. nothing to get upset over

In your opinion as somebody who wasn't affected (I assume you aren't a Maori). The Maoris clearly felt there was something to get upset over.

And that's probably for the best. Can you imagine if colonialism got involved in all this? It'd be a much messier situation.

I'm not quite sure what colonialism has to do with this?

There's no need for them to do so. Whole religious narratives can be lifted from living cultures with only minor eye-batting

Yeah, the people involved in Charlie Hebdo got only eye-batting for their handling and portrayals of Islamic content, right?

They are, but why should their usage require compensation for the cultures who consider that part of their heritage? It's history, it's information, it's not the product of a small group trying to make art.

No, it probably shouldn't require compensation, and I doubt the Greeks or Japanese have been paid for all the movies that have been made about or with their culture - but then, the movies didn't ever pretend the culture was that of a fictional world or people as Lego did with the Maori words.

That doesn't change the fact that it's still part of our collective cultural heritage. If the English-speaking world bands together and says "this is our cultural heritage and we don't want you to use it," are we justified in doing so? Prevalence doesn't change the language's cultural significance.

I feel it does, as you'll find English speakers in almost every part of the world now. Its use by so many different people means that English just isn't specifically any person or group's cultural heritage at this point, whereas the Maori language remains the cultural heritage specifically of the Maori people because it hasn't spread beyond New Zealand in any significant way.

There's also the fact that English itself contains many words that are there almost intact from other languages (French and Latin mostly), so English words are not 'uniquely' English in the way Maori words are.

there's nothing that needs protecting. Language, like other cultural constructs, is going to be spread around no matter what.

This is distinct from ripping off contemporary art, where the artist loses their thunder when they get ripped off because they worked on something and aren't being credited for it and because homogenizing something otherwise totally original makes it less distinct. Language, on the other hand, loses nothing from this.

Whilst languages may not be commercial or copyright property, they do need protecting when they are dying out with the rise of another language, or just aren't spoken by many people to begin with (as is the case with the Maori). Language, when it is of a specific group of people, is or can be an important part of a culture's heritage and its people will probably want to make sure it's not used in a manner that changes it in an undesirable way (as Lego's use for their line of building toys arguably was).

It would have been interesting to see how the lawsuit would have panned out if they had gone through with it. How would a court decide if they “stole” things that weren’t originally “owned” in the legal sense?

Lego might have actually won on the grounds that (as you say) the words probably weren't the Maoris' strictly legally, but 'big Western company exploits natives and gets away with it' wouldn't be too good for Lego's image, so they may have actually wanted the Maoris to win to a degree.

And/or perhaps they just realised their use of Maori culture for their own products without any kind of consultation wasn't right, as I've argued it wasn't.