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Lyichir

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Posts posted by Lyichir

  1. There are several reasons I'm generally opposed to assuming that the other Lego themes could always be "realms":

    1. The fact that it would rule out future original realms (truth be told, if I had been one of the writers of the story (I probably wouldn't have numbered them in the first place to avoid locking the story out of future possibilities). Ninjago hasn't yet finished telling all the stories it can tell, so I feel like filling out all the extra "slots" for realms with past Lego themes, many of which are unlikely to be revisited, would be a waste of potential.
    2. The fact that tying themes together into a tangled multiverse creates more issues than opportunities. Most Lego "crossovers" have adhered mostly to their own internal rules rather than establishing a coherent multiverse, which is why I tend to treat things like Clutch Powers' cameo in Ninjago or the Ninjago cameos in Lego Universe, Lego Dimensions, and The Lego Movie as independent of that—otherwise you end up with overlapping crossovers all with their own contradictory rules about how they interact with and affect one another. This is also a reason why I don't really feel like a theme like Bionicle, which has its own complicated multiverse with its own entirely different set of rules, would make sense as an individual realm connected to Ninjago.
    3. The fact that several themes very specifically take place in a version of "our world", which I feel doesn't fit with Ninjago or Chima's wholly invented world. This is mostly a personal preference, but it's a strong one. For instance, Hidden Side very explicitly takes place in the American South, and Jack Davids is originally from Boston. And Monkie Kid's story is a sequel to a classic Chinese story explicitly set in China, albeit a highly folkloric version of it—I think it would feel insensitive to take that and fold it into a corner of Ninjago's established fictional multiverse. And of course, even Pharaoh's Quest takes place in Egypt.
    4. This is a little more shaky as far as preference goes, but I really feel like it's easier to visualize Ninjago's other realms also being minifigure-based themes. As big a fan as I am of themes like Bionicle, Friends, and Elves, I feel like their visual identity would be a really dramatic break from the Ninjago-specific realms or even a theme like Chima.

    Of the themes you mention, a theme like Nexo Knights that also takes place in an invented universe and also uses minifigure characters seems like it'd be the strongest case for being a realm alongside Chima and Ninjago (though I doubt its use of "realm" in the story had any deeper meaning than medieval-esque jargon). I'm less convinced by some of the others, which feel like more of a stretch or like they would complicate things without meaningfully enhancing the story of either theme. For those I think any crossovers would be better approached with a looser set of rules like that of the Lego cinematic universe or Lego Dimensions.

    • Like 1
  2. On 6/15/2020 at 2:40 AM, Lenny7092 said:

    Over-exaggerating, but okay. They are a pretty good pilot episodes, but Ninjago’s better. I hope that Monkie Kid’s world is a one of Ninjago’s Sixteen Realms. 
     

    Anyway, I have a feeling that the show would last 1 season. It’s about monkeys, after all. 
     

    Anyway, is it me, or is the Demon Bull King being played by Steven Blum and the Demon Princess played by Grey Griffin.

    Personally, I hope this ISN'T one of Ninjago's realms. Considering the series' origins as a sort of "sequel" to the real-world Chinese folktale "Journey to the West", it feels to me like it would be insensitive to have it be anything other than a fictionalized version of real-world China—and I don't know how I feel about any real-world locations, even highly fictionalized ones, being tied into Ninjago's core multiverse.

    I also think there's very little chance of this only lasting a single season. Lego has clearly invested a lot into this and they've only really scratched the surface of characters and elements they could draw from the original story it's based on. Even the intro to this pilot episode shows off multiple villains from the original story who have yet to make an appearance in this sequel.

    And yeah, both of the voice actors you list are correct. The Monkey King is also played by Sean Schemmel, the voice of Goku in Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z (fittingly, considering that the original Dragon Ball itself started out as an embellished retelling of "Journey to the West").

    • Like 1
  3. 1 hour ago, Sir Keksalot said:

    You seem to be under the impression that I'm saying Bionicle is particularly good. I'm not. Bionicle's story ranged from decent to outright bad at times, but it had a lot more heart behind it. Ninjago, on the other hand, is starved for ideas and just sucks unabashedly, with little care put into it. Like I said, it never gives the sense that the writers actually care about it.

    I didn't really criticize Ninjago's humor at any point. All I said was that just being comedic doesn't compensate for bad writing.

    Never said it did. I said Bionicle had more interesting worldbuilding, which largely owes to it having a direction from the start.

    I didn't say it was. It's a weakness that they're ONLY archetypes. They don't go above and beyond to be a whole lot else.

    That's actually something I wanna talk about more. Bionicle swapped out its main cast every so often so you weren't stuck with the same bland characters for a decade, something Ninjago has done. I feel like even after a few seasons, there just wasn't any more to see of these characters. Again, the "Jole" incident exemplifies this. It's contrived, it's pointless, it's idiotic, and it was the thing that made me give up on the show entirely.

    That's not really interesting. Like, at all. That's the bare minimum one should expect from having multiple characters.

    Sure, if you call Zane learning that he's a robot and getting over it in a matter of minutes and Cole literally dying and becoming a ghost for a while only to move on no sooner than he gets his corporeal body back "personal crises and personal growth." The closest analogue to this nonsense in Bionicle that I can think of is the incident where Lewa gets mind-controlled for the second time, and even then, he's visibly shaken up by it for a while, having serious self-doubt and fearing that the other Toa don't trust him, so while that didn't have nearly enough of a long-term impact as it should have, it still HAD an impact. Zane was a little sad for a while and then BAM! He's over it and he gets more power for it.

    This largely owes to Bionicle being too edgy. In the early years, Mata Nui was described as an island paradise; there was a sense that there was some good to return to once Terry was defeated. Then 04 happened and the default state for the world became 1984 with cyborgs. If Greg were a good writer and knew how to write characters better, then maybe that would have helped out some more; but the worldbuilding is mostly to blame here.

    I'm wondering at this point whether we've even been watching the same series. Like, the episode where Zane discovers his true nature has more emotional impact in it than pretty much... anything I can think of in Bionicle. Maybe Matoro's death came close? And yes, Zane didn't let that completely devastate him... but it continued to have an impact on his characterization, motivations, and emotions throughout the rest of the series. It's not something that just went ignored.

    You think the characters in Ninjago are bland. I can't exactly comprehend how you feel that way, especially if you think a character like Vakama is somehow written better (he's not) but opinions are opinions. But keep in mind that it's "just" an opinion. You can say the writing is bad until the cows come home, but you seem to be really struggling to articulate how Bionicle was some uniquely special story that somehow managed to be that way despite never really having great writing, yet Ninjago is somehow lazy and bad and terrible despite its strong points being stronger than Bionicle's and its weak points being less weak? It's asinine trying to argue with you when somehow all of Bionicle's stupid decisions can be handwaved away as "Greg being bad at writing" but Ninjago's weaker plotlines, which the story has a good track record of overcoming and moving on from, are somehow emblematic of everything that makes it worse.

    And yeah, you're right that having characters have families, hobbies, and the ability to react, change, and grow from changes in one's circumstances should be the bare minimum for having multiple characters. So why are you praising a story that struggled to meet those standards time and time again as superior to one that has met them consistently?

  4. 18 hours ago, Sir Keksalot said:

    One thing that I tried to make clear early on was that I'm well aware that Bionicle's story is...well, kind of a mess. However, one important point I've been making is that you can tell there was an attempt, and the story was mostly just marred by Greg being a lousy writer/worldbuilder. It's evident that he had a lot of fun with the job he was given and just went to town putting in what he thought was cool, whereas Ninjago has failed to convince me that the writers actually like the IP in that way. Case in point: they're clearly out of ideas, as shown by the video game motif, which should have gone to an entirely new theme.

    And Bionicle was honestly more creative in its worldbuilding, even if that worldbuilding was a mess. It tied into itself in a meaningful way, with basically everything revolving around the GSR. It had a direction, a point to everything. Ninjago seems to be just adlibbing everything even harder than Bionicle was. Bionicle lore had payoff, even though it was cut short. Ninjago lore is just "oh yep we're doing this I guess" every year.

    Where characters are concerned, Ninjago's just outright suck. I've gone at length about this already, but they're basically just walking cliches without a lot of interesting personality traits. At least some Toa went beyond this. Vakama, in particular, became significantly dynamic through the arcs he had as a Toa; and the character interactions just bleed personality, especially in the movies.

    But that doesn't mean the story's issues can be fixed by adding more jokes. The presence of comedy can be useful to a story if done right, but just adding appropriate levity at good times doesn't make a story good by itself.

    Your criticism of Ninjago's humor is just as applicable to Bionicle's worldbuilding. Interesting worldbuilding on its own does not make a story good. On the contrary, having too much worldbuilding makes a story harder and less rewarding to get into than a story where the worldbuilding is done according to the needs of the story and characters at any given time. "Creativity" isn't worth much if the story is a chore to get through and the worldbuilding barely contributes to the characters' emotional growth.

    Speaking of characters... most of Ninjago's characters, like the vast majority of Bionicle's characters, are archetypes. Yes, they are types of characters that are familiar from a wide variety of stories, but that in and of itself is not a weakness. And honestly, cherry picking the few Bionicle characters who happened to express decent emotion or exhibit significant growth doesn't make that franchise's characterization any better. Most Bionicle characters were just as shallow as Ninjago's, if not moreso, which wasn't helped by the story's tendency to sideline its cast in favor of a new one every two to three years. It also wasn't helped by the Bionicle story's reluctance to ever let its characters experience a full range of emotions or have lives outside of being heroes. Ninjago's characters have WAY more interesting traits than most of Bionicle's. They have families, they have hobbies, they react to different scenarios differently from one another. They experience personal crises and personal growth in ways that are not merely a linear path from "not getting along as a team" to "getting along as a team" with no meaningful development or change beyond that point.

    I think that's one of the reasons why Bionicle's ending felt so unsatisfying—the big evil was defeated, everybody could finally live peacefully, but the story had given us barely any idea what that was supposed to look like for characters whose only roles up to that point were either being heroes, needing to be rescued by heroes, or working their lives away in a dull monotony that was supposedly their only purpose for existing. "Happily ever after" doesn't work when you have rarely allowed your characters to actually be happy.

    • Upvote 1
  5.  

    Yes. Both Bionicle and Transformers are known to have stories as the most interested parts of themselves. I mean, we love their stories as much as toys.

     

    Eh, I'd say that's still more about the toys.

    My observation, at least, has been that, before the Michael Bay movies, Transformers was primarily a toy line with an associated story, but I don't remember wanting or seeing advertisements for Michael Bay Transformers toys that much. The advertising and cultural relevance was almost exclusively on the movies. BIONICLE has only existed in the first phase. My hope with this Christian Faber stuff is that it could successfully transition to phase two.

     

    It's true that Hasbro is a little more involved in the media angle of their brands than Lego is (unlike Lego, they have started their own movie and TV studios to produce content based on their brands), but make no mistake—toys are still their primary business. As someone who has worked there, the toys are a big deal, and like with Bionicle tend to shape the direction and emphasis of the story content.

     

    And honestly, I don't really want to see a Bionicle that's divorced from the toy aspect. As a Lego fan, I doubt a version of Bionicle like that could ever really live up to the Bionicle of my childhood, in which the story and the toys reinforced one another.

    • Upvote 1
  6. They really should figure out the whole situation with the 3 stud length legs because that is such a missed opportunity with Jack Skellington.

    To be honest... I don't mind. Minifigure height by and large is distorted from "real" proportions, and using the taller legs opens up a wide variety of issues that make the figures harder to use in displays than typical figures (for example, preventing figures from sitting in normal chairs or fitting through typical door frames). In general I think those were an experiment that didn't really prove their worth, and am grateful that figures like the new Toy Story figs have moved away from them and back toward standard length legs for even fairly lanky characters.

  7. I hope that's a lot of stickers and not all printed parts (I see a few specifically noted parts like the Mustang badge and the GT logos)... this car is a favourite of mine, the blue is one of my favourites as well, so to get so much blue in such a nice set would be wonderful. But if things like the runner stripes and stripe divider on the hood are all printed... not as versatile once the Mustang itself gets redistributed among other MOCs!

    A lot of the parts are printed (especially the stripes). New Elementary has more details in its review.

  8. Well, I know what I'm going to be buying at some point!

     

    Two questions:

    Does anyone know where to find the soundtrack (the songs, not the score) on CD?  I can only find it digitally on amazon.

    Does anyone know where the score is being sold on CD besides amazon?  I was hoping for a pressed CD, rather than the on demand CD-R, but if not I won't be super picky.

    I've read that the soundtrack will get a wider physical release at an unspecified later date. No idea about whether the score will as well or not.

  9. No, not really at this point. Cinematic universes are a pretty tall order (at least distinguished from plain old franchises of movies with sequels) and considering how much I disliked the sprawl of the G1 story I'd much prefer one good Bionicle movie or TV series, with the possibility of sequels or additional seasons, rather than a commitment to a mess of sprawling side-stories and overambitious crossovers. That, or just one good Bionicle movie as part of the Lego Movie universe.

    • Upvote 1
  10. Good review!

     

    This set is quite the glow-up compared to the original, which looked and felt very much like a box with wheels (even compared to some of the earlier Power Miners sets that used that drill piece). It’s great how they’ve designed the function so that it can be activated either while driving or ar a standstill. And the brick built giant stone warrior is a great addition.

    • Upvote 1
  11. As far as I can remember it's never NOT been a thing. The Lego video games have been packed with humor dating back to the first one (Lego Island). And even before that, the Lego Mania magazine comics tended to feature plenty of humor. Even for licensed themes like Lego Star Wars, the earliest sets featured silly comics in the instructions, often involving whichever character was featured in the set getting into some sort of crash or scrape and having to rebuild their ship into an alternate model better equipped to deal with whatever pickle they'd found themselves in.

     

    When you get down to it, they're toys. There's an inherent childishness to them that is better off embraced than avoided.

    • Upvote 1
  12. Kinda wonder why they chose Maori when Bionicle's overall story had almost nothing to do with the Maori culture and history.

    I don't want to dive too far into this debate, which is at risk of overwhelming the actual interesting subject matter of the topic as a whole. But I can answer this—I remember reading that Lego went with Polynesian languages and an island setting to help it stand out from the mainstream European fantasy that was taking off in franchises like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

     

    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.

     

    Ultimately, I think Lego's response to that whole kerfuffle was a good one, changing the names that caused the offense to replacements (most of which were homophones anyway). It doesn't hurt anyone to err toward cultural sensitivity.

    • Upvote 1
  13. For me it's usually "none of the above" since I usually prefer either the Hero Factory fists (like the '09 ones but with five fingers instead of four) or some variety of brick-built articulated hands (whether they use ball joints like Axonn's huge hands or System-based robot arms like Hydraxon's). The '09 hands were decent for what they were but were pretty quickly supplanted, while older non-articulated "hands" like the Toa Mata or Metru hands have a certain nostalgic charm but that's about it.

  14. I would amend that to "no Technic-based constraction figures". While not what we typically think of as Constraction, there is a line of brick-built, articulated Minecraft figures releasing next year that arguably qualify as buildable action figures.

    I wouldn't necessarily declare Technic-based constraction dead just yet (since there's always the chance of a renewal, even as soon as the summer of 2019) but it does certainly look more dire for the genre than it has in a long time. Innovations like Mixel joints that make System-based articulated figures more feasible at a wide range of price points may well have rendered systems like the CCBS (which, as a Technic-based system, is almost a subsystem of a subsystem) too niche to continue to devote full product lines to. And unlike in the late '90s/early '00s, there's no immediate need to try to force Technic-based Constraction to work for them—not when Lego's audience continues to expand in other areas with boys, girls, kids and adults alike.

    • Upvote 2
  15. Missed the hype by like two years, but they actually look pretty nice. Might get some of them.

    You could say the same thing about Minecraft when it first debuted (and in fact, many people did). And yet it went on to be a highly successful theme that has lasted over five years.

     

    Modern video games tend to be a very different beast than movies when it comes to licensing, with the biggest success stories not always that predictable prior to release but often having a long "tail" (the persistence of a game's popularity after release), ESPECIALLY for games like Minecraft and Overwatch with both a robust multiplayer scene and a steady stream of new content and updates. As such, it's probably a safer strategy for a company like Lego to wait and see which games can maintain their popularity in the long term before jumping into a major licensing partnership.

    • Upvote 1
  16.  

     

    Any Idea how I could use some transparent "Shell 6x12x6 w/bow/angle"? a semi-recent example of this piece would be the large transparent piece on Ronin's vehicle from Lego Ninjago back when the main baddies where ghosts.

    Like with the previous part you mentioned, I'd think a skylight would be the best application for a large curved glass piece like that in a City layout. For a piece like this I'd think it might be suitable for letting light into a large modern building like a train or bus station.

     

    Hm, okay then, thanks for the suggestion.

    Next piece is the various lengths of "corrugated pipe"

     

    Those can often be good for things like HVAC ducts or downspouts on the sides of buildings.

  17. Any Idea how I could use some transparent "Shell 6x12x6 w/bow/angle"? a semi-recent example of this piece would be the large transparent piece on Ronin's vehicle from Lego Ninjago back when the main baddies where ghosts.

    Like with the previous part you mentioned, I'd think a skylight would be the best application for a large curved glass piece like that in a City layout. For a piece like this I'd think it might be suitable for letting light into a large modern building like a train or bus station.

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