CyclonatorZ

It'd have to be my lone Mctoran. I missed out on the McDonalds promotion (and really, the whole first three years of bionicle), so I never expected to actually own one. I nearly got my hands on an Onepu someone left at our church, but I can't recall what ever happened to him. Then, one year when I was a teenager, I bought a couple containers of mixed lego at a local yard sale. I dumped them out, and amidst the jumbled lego, megabloks, and other assorted garbage (yes, it was that kind of collection), I immediately noticed the Hewkii Mctoran relaxing in the center. He even had his disk!

Tatorahk. Finally, he knows the answer: I do love him very much.

No... I thought he was the villain.

If we have to go back to G1 in any way, a "remaster" is definitely not the answer. Rather, the approach should be akin to how the early Ultimate Spiderman comics rebooted the mythos of the Amazing Spiderman: same basic themes, some of the same characters, but a lot of retooling and refocusing - ditching everything that hasn't aged well or didn't even work the first time around.

Also, it have to be infinitely better than the fanfiction I totally didn't post a first and only chapter of years ago.

But seriously, give it up. Bionicle is not coming back, not after how badly G2 bombed. The theme just isn't viable from a commerical standpoint anymore. In fact, I'm doubting constraction as a whole has much of a place in today's market. We'll have the answer within a year or two, I'm sure.

In universe, I'm guessing it's because the Toa named the six regions and villages on Mata-Nui after the equivalent districts of Metru-Nui. The island was after all, their home away from home.

My guess is that, yes, it was intended to have been written by natives of the MU, possibly even the Order - but Greg forgot and retconned it to be the Great Beings in a Q&A session on the lego.com message boards, accidentally creating yet another continuity error in the process.

Ah well, we can only speculate on what could have been back then. I do enjoy that theory quite a bit, Zarkan, and I'll have to go dig up Faber's blog post that mentions it.

Thanks! But I should warn you again before you try fruitlessly to find a specific post on Faber's blog that mentions this: there really isn't one. As I said in my previous post, it's more just a general feeling I've gotten from a lot of his writing, especially when he occasionally talks about real world issues. I think there's one post in particular where he shares a concern about religion causing conflict all over the world, and by and large I would guess his philosophy is that of secular humanism. Based on where he lives, and where Lego itself is located, I would gander that some of the other people working on Bionicle share that philosophy. How much of this, if any, was actually intended to be a part of the message and themes of Bionicle, we'll probably never know. But I do enjoy theorizing about it.

Alright, after looking over the rules, I'm going to take a gamble that what I'm about to post would technically not quality as a

"religious post," merely a post that happens to discuss religion within the specific contexts of bionicle's narrative and themes. If the mods disagree, that's fine, but I might as well throw this out in writing at least once.

Basically, my personal theory is that, had Bionicle's actual execution been true to the original concept, the "Find the Great Beings" arc would have revealed that the GB were actually the true villains of the Bionicle universe, possibly even eldritch abominations along the lines of Tren Krom. This would play into the overall "Biological Chronicle," which unlike most people, I do not personally believe refers to the nature of the characters it features. Rather, it was far more thematic in nature than we even could imagine, because it was in fact a parable about real life nature. About life, about evolution. And it would have ended with the Toa and Matoran throwing off the myths of old, their misguided beliefs in a Great Spirit who wasn't actually that great, and in Great Beings who were in fact cosmic donkey offices.

Now, I realize there's no actual proof of any of this, and I can't even really provide any any clear-cut evidence, beyond the overall philosophy I've personally gleamed from Christan Faber's musings. But it has always bothered me why, for the longest time, Lego was so cagey about revealing the Great Being's appearance - or really, any concrete details about them at all - enough that I recall they outright vetoed depicting them in full in the last Bionicle Graphics Novel. And now, years later Greg F. casually reveals that they were just ascended Glatorian? I very much doubt this wasn't another one of his retcons, which leaves open the very important question of what the Great Beings actually were in the original story bible.

Again, this is all just a crackpot theory of mine. Remember, I'm the guy who previously made a thread proposing that the MU inhabitants were retconned from being fully robotic to merely biomechanical. I've just had a growing suspicion that there was fare more complexity to the Bionicle concept than any of us ever imagined, possibly including stuff that might have made the Maori appropriation seem like a mild controversy in comparison.

 

Personally, I have a suspicion that this wasn't the original plan for the Great Beings, I can't really go into why I feel this way on BZP, because it touches on one particular discussion topic that is banned by the rules. I will say this, though: if a single stray comment I noticed on the Faber Files blog a while back has any bearing on what he and the rest of the story team were planning, I can see why Lego probably didn't want to go through with something that edgy.

 

I know you can't ellaborate more, but now I am deeply curious. I honestly do not know this detail.

 

The best way I can put it without breaking BZP policy: I feel like if that "Find the Great Beings" arc actually happened instead of the whole Bara Magna deal, and the story was actually true to what I theorize Faber and the Story team had envisioned.... well, let's just say that the Toa would not like what they found.

Personally, I have a suspicion that this wasn't the original plan for the Great Beings, I can't really go into why I feel this way on BZP, because it touches on one particular discussion topic that is banned by the rules. I will say this, though: if a single stray comment I noticed on the Faber Files blog a while back has any bearing on what he and the rest of the story team were planning, I can see why Lego probably didn't want to go through with something that edgy.

Holy topic revival, Batman!

So, use the talkback to suggest the theme that should be covered first? 

 

Ninjago. Definitely Ninjago.

If you're waiting for photos, I'm afraid you're out of luck. The BZP twitter mentioned that there's a prohibition on photographs of the Lego Ninjago Movie sets.

I think the biggest issue with G1 wasn't any year in particular, it was the clear lack of planning that went into the story that eventually grew into a convoluted mess. Really, the Mata Nui robot twist was the only thing they had planned, so the rest they were just making it up as they went along, and it shows.

I'm going to stop you right there, because this is factually wrong. Years ago, Greg F. made a topic on these boards detailing which elements of the story were planned and which were not, and it revealed that everything from the Ignition arc to Makuta being a species was in fact part of the original story bible. The topic disappeared with the forum archives, obviously, but it did exist, and there's no need to rewrite history in order to justify the (largely correct) viewpoint that the Bionicle story-line was a convoluted mess.

The artbook is now the single greatest thing to have come out of G2 - and it's definitely in the running for one of the top pieces of Bionicle media ever. A shame that, as far as I can tell, they were probably mandated to not include much of anything from the planned third year.

Nope gotta move all the budget to make those monstrous looking CCBS Star Wars figures that no one asked for!

Maybe no one asked for them, but a lot of people seem perfectly happy with them, judging by the fact that they're selling well enough that Lego keeps making more. And for the record, if we get nothing but Lego Star Wars CCBS for the next few years, I'll be very happy myself.

Aren't, uh, LEGO sets always hot toys at the holidays...? (The rest of the year too, come to think of it.)

It's quite a turnaround from when I was a kid. The dark ages were the dark ages for a reason.

I think it's a good move, but I wonder how serious it really is.

 

Take Transformers, for example. All sorts of companies steal their characters and designs and sell their own versions for heavy pricetags, but Hasbro and Takara never do a thing. I would suspect LEGO to be even bigger than them in terms of sales, so it really makes me wonder why they'd go after what would seemingly be a very small portion of sales.

The third party transformers market doesn't actually steal the exact designs that Hasbro sells, though. And they primarily focus on filling gaps in people's collections that Hasbro/Takara have yet to. In contrast, there are actual transformers bootlegs that are created by people stealing figures from Hasbro's factories before they are ever released, and they copying them and selling them on the cheap.

That's actually the primary "appeal" of LEPIN's bootlegs. They copy Lego's designs to a tee and then sell them for far less that TLG does. People are even justifying this over on other sites, due to Lego's perceived "price gouging." They apparently haven't considered economics - namely that, in contrast to Lego's Chinese factory, which at least probably pays a passable wage, bootlegs of all sorts keep their prices down via wage slavery and even literal slave labor.

Early Bionicle seemed like it may have been aiming for a message about how enemies frequently have actual motivations for what they do, and that you should try to understand and work with them rather than blindly antagonizing them. Unfortunately that just seems to have been forgotten somewhere along the way.

I'd say you can at least partially thank Mask of Light for that. It was in the end really hard keep any of the original intentions of Makuta's character, once the decision was made to cap off the first big story arc with a terrible movie made by people who thought Bionicle was Lord of the Rings with robots.

Awesome. And also ugh. It's nothing you could, ahem, control, but seeing this creation once again reminds me that we never got the ribcage or any bones in trans-dark-blue. The creation is pretty, ahem, cool, despite that, but I can't help but see two tendrils of ice instead of one tendril of ice and water a piece.

Still, anything that manages to homage MNOG Makuta and the idea of the Mask of Ultimate Power possibly being the true villain of G2 is cool in my book. And a giant MoCo made of CCBS parts is by default more original than probably at least 50 percent of the other contest entries submitted. A lot of people just can't move beyond the creative constraints of the generic G1 Makuta look, so kudos to you for, ahem, forging a different path.

apologies in advance for all the terrible puns

Beautiful. Simply beautiful. I am not exaggerating when I say that solid gold like this is literally what will keep the Bionicle community alive and even thriving in the years to come. ...I don't suppose there's any possibility of you opening a Patreon to fund a whole series of these animations? 'Cause I'd put my money down faster than you can say "Kanohi."

So, Bionicle is canceled again. I guess I'm just not really emotional about these kind of things anymore, cause I came to realize a while ago that nothing lasts forever, and cool stuff in particular tends to get the short end of the stick (Firefly, The Spectacular Spiderman, etc). And between me not being invested in G2's storyline and no longer putting G1 on such a massive pedestal like I did when I was a kid, I'm fine with the two years of awesome sets we got. Plus, It means that for the first time in my life I can feasibly collect an entire theme - I'm only missing like, less than a dozen sets. So again, I wouldn't really call myself upset, although I would have probably preferred it to get one more truncated wave with the Masters and Makuta. It's also nice of TLG to once again let the story people rush to a conclusion instead of just canceling the theme abruptly on a cliffhanger. That's what, twice in a row Bionicle actually gets wrapped up? Poor Exo-Force fans could only have wished for that kind of generosity.

Anyway, rest in peace Bionicle. And I pray for BZP's sake that the fan base can stick together this time instead of fracturing in a fit of rage. If there is any conceivable way BIonicle ever gets a G3 years down the line, it certainly won't happen because people are spending their time making fruitless petitions and lashing out at each other in anger, instead of focusing on the positive and keeping the Legend alive through fan-created media. It's Unity, Duty, Destiny, you know, not Animosity, Avarice, Armageddon.

There is also precedent for this kind of blatant reference:

Took advantage of the TRU deal while I was on vacation, and picked up Skull Grinder/Mask Maker, Lava beast, Quake beast, and the remaining two creatures I was missing. My G2 collection is really filling out my designated Bionicle shelves now. 

From my limited exposure to the G2 story (basically just the 2015 web episodes) I would have to say Skull Slicer. The website depicted him as being a skilled warrior and possibly a reluctant villain, but in his one very brief appearance he was defeated about five seconds after appearing and doing a stereotypical cartoon villain laugh.

Ikir at 50 percent off. This was also the only shipment of any creature set my entire town has gotten. 

Yeah, for the record, this sale appears to have the primary purpose of cleaning out the absolutely MASSIVE amounts of Skull villain sets TRU has leftover from 2015. The only question is why Quake beast is included, considering that its a brand new set. Also, Lava Beast is already discounted, and one of the TRU's I visited also had a huge amount of 2015 Masters on clearance as well.

Nope, nothing to be worried about here, folks.