CyclonatorZ

My current Bionicle display consists entirely of G2 sets, which means only about 10 percent of my collection is sitting on shelves. All of my G1 Bionicle sets are currently being stored in their original canisters or in plastic bags - with the notable exception of Maxilos, who has been modified into Makuta and is being displayed with my skull villains in lieu of an official G2 set of the Master of Control.  And my loose pieces from both eras of Constraction figures are sorted and stored in bins and fish tackle boxes for easy access, as I have done with spare Lego parts since the very early days of my hobby.

No, Bionicle will never get a cinematic film - because the mass public will not accept what most Bionicle fans actually want, which is robots that actually look robotic and exist in a completely separate reality from humans. Keep in mind, Hollywood is the industry where Transformers had to be pitched as the story of "a boy and his car" in order to be greenlit, and curiously enough, the mass public doesn't seem to mind one bit that the Autobots and Decepticons spend most of their time on screen as real life vehicle props or as blurred cgi messes fighting in the background of the human focused shots (which is to say, almost every shot in the films).

Knock knock? Who's there? Ice. Ice who? Ice sinks.

...oh, wait, that wasn't a joke, that was actual canon.

Its amazing to me that anyone construed the cameo as a take-that to Bionicle. As Aanchir mentioned, there's no way that TLG themselves would have ever approved of any reference that could be construed as outright anti-Bionicle sentiment, much like the kind you still see expressed by certain crusty old AFOLs. Considering the theme's definitive role in saving the company from bankruptcy, it's impending return as a physical product less than a year after the Lego Movie came out, and TLG's significant oversight of all the Lego movie scripts... well, there really is no consideration to make at all, except that much of the Bionicle fanbase (like basically all fanbases) takes its toys way too seriously.

 

 

 

This totally doesn't have to do with the fact that the forums are understaffed at the moment. Nope, not one bit.

Is it that terribly difficult to interview and hire staff?

Well, not all of us make it through the combat trial on the first try.

And here I was thinking it was the underwater basket weaving that seperated the members from the staff.

 

RIP in peace Kopakaroxmysox72. If he had known that the trial took place at the bottom of the Marianas trench, maybe he wouldn't have dressed in only his beachwear.

It got me into collecting Lego sets again, cause the sets are amazing - but the story isn't quite there. Option 2 for me.

Whoa, I signed up when I was nine. I'm 22 now, so I guess I've been on here for over half my life.

 

I just spent an hour or so browsing through old threads on the Wayback Machine, and it's clear that the average age has increased dramatically over the years. As evidence, I submit this thread that was the #1 hot topic one summer day in mid-2003: https://web.archive.org/web/20030801102503/http://bzpower.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=30&t=74636&st=0

Good grief. I remember how long it took me to get used to the minimalist art design of the rebooted forums, but looking at that link you posted, the old forums were an absolute EYESORE. Was there any real need for the post divider line to be that particular shade of maroon?

This totally doesn't have to do with the fact that the forums are understaffed at the moment. Nope, not one bit. 

I'm going to guess that the particularly freaky prototype mask people are dicussing were designed back when the line was transitioning from the Voodoo Heads concept to the Bionicle we know and love. Perhaps it was even part of the initial batch of Doo Head concepts that was said to have freaked out the test audience, leading to the design overhaul.

All this talk of trans reminds me: I will be forever irked that that there are no transparent dark blue bones. Every other element has a unique bone color, but for some reason Water sets are stuck sharing trans light blue bones with Ice sets. Even more annoying, the 2016 Water sets mix both new and pre-existing trans-dark blue parts into their color scheme, while keeping the same trans-light blue bones. It's probably for budgetary reasons, along with Lewa conspicuously not using transparent bones at all until his second incarnation, but it still really bites me hard in the OCD.

 

 

Reason number one the Red Star retcon was a bad idea: Greg F saying something along the lines of "there's a very good reason you don't see grave sites in the MU." Except for, you know, all the corpses that Matoro resurrected with his literal zombie-making mask.

Those were presumably Rahi though. I do not believe Rahi were sent up to the Red Star.

 

EDIT: Heck, they don't have to be Rahi. They could have been organic beasts native to Aqua Magna, since the Pit was above the dormant Mata Nui robot. 

 

-NotS

 

In addition to the above points, Matoro and the other Toa Mahri spent much of their time around Mahri Nui, in the ocean of Aqua Magna, which is beyond the bounds of the Matoran Universe; the Red Star does not revive biomechanical beings that die outside of the MU. So, all the Mahri Nui Matoran that died, for example, remained permanently dead. Matoro would have had plenty of corpses to use. Of course, as mentioned above, the important point is that Rahi are not revived and so their bodies are left behind, so Matoro would have had plenty of corpses to use even if he had been inside the Matoran Universe. 

 

I just checked my personal copy of Bionicle Legends #7, and yeah, you are indeed right about the corpses being specifically described as Rahi or other non-sentient creatures. Regarding the range of the Red Star revival mechanism, I was orginally going to say that felt like a rather huge cop-out, considering that I could have have sworn that retcon was originally pitched by Greg as the method by which he would finally explain Mask of Light's gaping plot holes. But then I remembered that both instances of resurrection in that movie technically happened within the MU - just at the edge of it, to be precise. Man, my knowledge of the Bionicle canon is a bit rusty these days. I guess I'm too busy building my own to worry about retcons that didn't even actually have a chance to happen within the written story. 

luckily i am fairly certain there's not a bionicle fan alive who doesn't find that "rule" silly and therefore most people just outright ignore it.

 

(i mean, if we're speculating and altering the canon, why not?)

There's a world of the difference between coming up with theories about how the canon works, and outright contradicting elements of the canon. However, as you said, in this particular case I don't think anyone cares - especially since it's been proven TLG themselves don't think it was a good idea, seeing as how they discarded it with first Bara Magna and how the whole of G2.

There's practically no sexual dimorphism in Matoran

Well, there wasn't until someone decided to go and make the (terrible) movie designs the canonical depictions - but circa 2001, you're totally right.

I think we should at least think of it from a glass-half-full perspective; we can acquire the sets for less. 

Indeed. My G2 Bionicle collection woudn't be growing exponentially if it wasn't for the sets being constantly on sale online and in brick and mortar stores, so I guess for the time being it's working out well for me. I even have a Makuta custom already on my villian shelf, ready to occupy the central spot for good if the line ends up being cut short without his royal shadowness ever getting a G2 set.

I went to my local TRU, and they had no more Umarak's..... THE END IS NIGH! Shut up. Do we have proof for such rumors as of yet? Noooope. Do we have a lick of evidence at all? Thats a big N O. So, until something does come up by LEGO about it's cancellation, then we can panic. But until then, let us embrace what we have now and make forth from it something anew if it is all gonna come crashing down.

There's a big difference between a store being sold out of a particular item and it outright not stocking it at all, refusing to even mark out a spot for it in the Lego isle. The latter situation is what I was specifically referring to in my post, and I would gander its the same situation for many Wal-Marts across the country. What does that tell me? It tells me that Wal-Mart does not think they would be able to make a profit off of any Bionicle sets they stocked this year, likely because they didn't make one last year either.

Reason number one the Red Star retcon was a bad idea: Greg F saying something along the lines of "there's a very good reason you don't see grave sites in the MU." Except for, you know, all the corpses that Matoro resurrected with his literal zombie-making mask.

There's only one problem with this idea: it brings us back again to the same unfortunate implications that inadvertently sprung from The Yesterday Quest Chapter 2, which is that one way or another, gender and elemental stereotypes have a specific correlation in the MU. Because apparently settling underground or in a jungle universally precludes you from being female, and as a general rule precludes you from being a female with the personality type tied to one of those elements.

Friggin' gender specific elements.

I went to walmart today and there were absolutely no bionicle sets. It really could be the end.

My Walmart has outright not had a spot on the shelf marked out for Bionicle sets since it sold off the last of its 2015 stock. The only exception was when a few copies of Tahu Uniter and Ikir showed up briefly, the latter already on sale for 50 percent off. That strikes me as highly unusual for a line that is supposedly selling "well enough." Factor in that every singe set is on sale on Amazon and Walmart.com, and you have a situation that doesn't look promising.

"The Visorak are mutated Fikou spiders!"

... I was 11 years old, what can I say. 

I choose to believe that Earth Toa control the ground itself and the underground, while Stone Toa control rocks and whatever else is on the ground.

My personal headcanon is going in the same general direction, although it predictably enough incorporates more than a dash of my own crackpot theories regarding the true nature of Bionicle. Sparing most of the details, lets just say that the whole G2 universe in my mind is made of biodermis just like the Great Spirit Robot of G1 was made of protodermis, meaning the six G2 elements are more or less different manifestations of the same singular substance. Earth and Stone are the closest to each other, not just literally but also metaphysically, one of them being grounded in wisdom (earth), and the other being elevated in knowledge (stone).

To be more specific, all the old posts were put in an archive after the new forum was launched. Then hackers destroyed the archive, and that was that. I'm just thankful I'm suck a packrat when it comes to my computer files, because I still have backups of a lot of my favorite fan-made content from the early years. I even managed to reunite another member with his old fan-fiction about a year ago. But it's really a drop in the bucket; 99 percent of the stuff from the first ten years of the forum is 100 percent gone for good.

Why haven't more people seen or +1'd this topic?

Well he only just posted it. That said, there are a number of people who believe the Great Spirit Robot was a horrible idea and contrary to what they felt was the very essence of Bionicle. Which is all fine and well, but it is also true that their understanding of the "essence" of Bionicle is completely in contrary to that of the Bionicle story team. And I'll be honest, I don't really understand that line of thought myself. Regardless of how Bionicle and its definitive twist were executed (and I think most can agree the execution of the story was at least somewhat lacking), you have to admit its metaphorical underpinnings are much deeper than most of its contemporaries in the action figure world. Transformers was nothing more than a ploy to sell a mishmash of prexisting transforming toys cobbled together from various companies. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was ultimately based on a joke comic, originally meant to last only one issue. Bionicle... Bionicle was the Biological Chronicle, the fictionalized, metaphorical account of a real person's cells waging a seemingly hopeless war against a horrific disease - cells that never gave up the fight even when their "Great Spirit" was asleep and close to death. It was so, so much more than Tiki robots throwing disks in the jungle, though we had no idea for almost its entire run.

Theory: year three consists entirely of the final, incredibly rushed battle against Makuta, because Bionicle is kicking the bucket all over again in the first half of 2017. Let's just hope this time that the sets aren't glorified AvtoranProtectors. 

Yes, there is a third Mask Maker - or shall I say, "mask mucker." He was not born in this continuity, however, and you can follow his trail of awkwardly shoehorned-in pop culture references all the way back to his home dimension. Behold, the inevitable G1/G2 crossover nobody has been asking for: Vezon, Master of Anarchy!

(please don't kill me)

Uh, I sure hope we aren't the Great Beings, because as portrayed in canon, the "Great" Beings are - ahem - grade A donkey crevices. Considering all the various horrible things they did or were planning to do before they official story line was cut to an abrupt, merciful end, I'd rather not think of them as an allegory for MoCists or fan fiction writers - especially now that I'm getting back into building and writing myself.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing they're taking the same route for this series as with the last Hero Factory movie, by which I mean they've apparently got the production staff doing at least some of the voice acting instead of actually hiring professional voice actors. That would explain why none of the actor names were recognizeable, and it lends more evidence to my growing suspicion that the budget for this production (and the Bionicle reboot in general) is really low.