Bionicle Movie or TV Show?

[Toa Of Anarchy]

SO I've been thinking lately (I know, there is a first time for everything ;P)

And I was wondering which would be more entertaining/story based, a Bionicle movie series going through '06-'09, or a consistent TV show over the same period of time?

I personally would think that more movies would have been better as I think Bionicle lacks enough mini-plot to make enough episodes.

So what do you all think?

[Makuta of Time]

I saw TV episodes. I would have recorded the entire series until the season ended.

[Aanchir]

Hmmm, tricky. I think the stories for that period of time would have to change considerably for either of those two scenarios. They were too long and in-depth for a movie, I think (even if you trimmed out stuff that wasn't essential to continuity) but not episodic enough for a TV series.The stories could probably work BEST as 44-minute TV specials like Hero Factory had in 2012 and summer 2011, but with three or four per year instead of just one. Each one-hour special could cover approximately the content of one chapter book, which if you trimmed some of the fat from the 2006 stories would be sufficient for each year. But this would be difficult to advertise compared to single movies or a regular weekly series. So it probably wouldn't be the best solution from an advertising perspective.I think if we had the option to "do it all again", the best thing to do for the sake of brand strength would be to do either a regular TV series made of 22-minute episodes or a series of movies. Which doesn't entirely matter — the story would have to be heavily rewritten either way. Movies would allow the writers to maintain a sense of continuity and inertia from year to year, while a TV series could potentially broaden the audience.

[Hitoshura]

TV shows would work well, but I don't watch TV unless it's on YouTube. But I do the same with movies as well so TV would be good.

[Sir Kohran]

And I was wondering which would be more entertaining/story based, a Bionicle movie series going through '06-'09, or a consistent TV show over the same period of time?

I personally would think that more movies would have been better as I think Bionicle lacks enough mini-plot to make enough episodes.

 

It's ironic you should say that when I (and others) feel the movies suffered from trying to fit so much plot into quite short features. Despite it being my favourite, Legends of Metru Nui is the worst in this regard by a long shot. So much is left unexplained - the background of the Great Discs, or the fates of the Vahki and Dume, or what was outside the barrier and how the Toa found Mata Nui. There simply wasn't room to cover it all in less than an hour and a half of story.

 

I think it might depend on the time periods covered by the different story arcs - short ones like the Kal or the Mask of Light could be covered adequately by a single movie, whilst year-long stories in which a lot of time passed and that featured subplots like '01, '04 and '06 would benefit from an unfolding episodic format.

Edited November 26, 2013 by Sir Kohran

[Hitoshura]

 

And I was wondering which would be more entertaining/story based, a Bionicle movie series going through '06-'09, or a consistent TV show over the same period of time?

I personally would think that more movies would have been better as I think Bionicle lacks enough mini-plot to make enough episodes.

 

It's ironic you should say that when I (and others) feel the movies suffered from trying to fit so much plot into quite short features. Despite it being my favourite, Legends of Metru Nui is the worst in this regard by a long shot. So much is left unexplained - the background of the Great Discs, or the fates of the Vahki and Dume, or what was outside the barrier and how the Toa found Mata Nui. There simply wasn't room to cover it all in less than an hour and a half of story.

You might as well mention the Morbuzakh...or the lack of.

[Aanchir]

 

It's ironic you should say that when I (and others) feel the movies suffered from trying to fit so much plot into quite short features. Despite it being my favourite, Legends of Metru Nui is the worst in this regard by a long shot. So much is left unexplained - the background of the Great Discs, or the fates of the Vahki and Dume, or what was outside the barrier and how the Toa found Mata Nui. There simply wasn't room to cover it all in less than an hour and a half of story.

You might as well mention the Morbuzakh...or the lack of.

 

The Morbuzakh appeared briefly in the "finding the great disks" montage, attacking Vakama. But overall, leaving things out is not a bad thing if they are not necessary to understanding the story.If the Morbuzakh had taken up half of the story of Legends of Metru Nui, like they did in the 2004 story as a whole, it would have felt disjointed and bloated, and the defeat of the King Root would feel anticlimactic since it didn't actually do much to bring the Toa Metru closer to their eventual goal. As it is, a person watching Legends of Metru Nui didn't even have to know the Morbuzakh existed to understand what was going on in the story the movie was telling.What was outside the Great Barrier wasn't important either. It's great extra information, but why does it matter? The important thing is that the Toa Metru escaped Metru Nui and eventually reached a new home. And the fate of the Vahki wasn't addressed at all in the 2004 story anyhow. It was not mentioned until the 2005 chapter books, and even then it was trivial and unimportant compared to the overarching plot involving the Visorak horde, the search for Keetongu, and Vakama's angst.This "everything MUST be explained" attitude is one thing that bothers me about the BIONICLE community. It was really painfully apparent when Hero Factory was new and a lot of BIONICLE fans had to wrack their brains to understand how and why the robots of the Hero Factory universe came to exist (short answer: it doesn't matter) and how and why they have thoughts and feelings (short answer: they just do).If you were telling a story set on Earth in the present day, you wouldn't start with the Big Bang, the time of the dinosaurs, the birth of Jesus, or even World War II unless those things were important to your story. You wouldn't even have to tell about your protagonist's childhood if it didn't become relevant. These things would give you more information, sure, but in many cases they simply wouldn't be a part of the story you initially set out to tell.Similarly, if there were a movie of the 2006 story, you could probably omit almost all of the events of BIONICLE Legends #4: Legacy of Evil, focusing only on the important bits like where the Piraka's Antidermis supply came from. If there were a movie of the 2007 story, you could probably omit the events of the Toa Nuva Blog, which happened alongside the Toa Mahri's quest but scarcely ever affected it directly. If there were a movie of the 2008 story, you could probably omit Mazeka and Vultraz's side-story, which was hardly relevant to anything in the grand scheme of things, and most of the other serials as well.All things considered, almost all of the events of the 2009 story other than those covered in BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn were irrelevant to the events of that movie. They were relevant to their own individual stories, but in the grand scheme of things they were just lengthy exposition that helped set the stage for Mata Nui's arrival (and in the meantime, promote the sets that didn't yet have a movie to serve as their backbone) Edited November 27, 2013 by Aanchir: Rachira of Time

[fishers64]

This "everything MUST be explained" attitude is one thing that bothers me about the BIONICLE community. It was really painfully apparent when Hero Factory was new and a lot of BIONICLE fans had to wrack their brains to understand how and why the robots of the Hero Factory universe came to exist (short answer: it doesn't matter) and how and why they have thoughts and feelings (short answer: they just do).If you were telling a story set on Earth in the present day, you wouldn't start with the Big Bang, the time of the dinosaurs, the birth of Jesus, or even World War II unless those things were important to your story. You wouldn't even have to tell about your protagonist's childhood if it didn't become relevant. These things would give you more information, sure, but in many cases they simply wouldn't be a part of the story you initially set out to tell.

If I was telling a story on Earth in the present day, my audience knows about all of those things, because they are on Earth in the present day. Therefore, when approaching a story set on the Earth in the present day, the audience naturally makes a series of assumptions about the setting, the weather, the culture, and so on because they live here. They assume that apples fall from trees and hit people on the head, that people wear clothes and have childhoods and don't come from nowhere, and even that that iPad I just referred to is the same one your friend saw in Target last week.

 

With Bionicle, nearly all of that is pretty much scrapped. We are looking at an entirely different universe, with entirely different people (biomechanical beings), entirely different culture (worshiping the Great Spirit, Toa Code, etc), entirely different technology (elemental powers), and even entirely different physics (stretch, to be sure, but I haven't seen any EP around here just yet).

 

Therefore, the audience demands an explanation for all this eccentric and unusual stuff. They don't ask for one about stories set on Earth, because they know what they are. The audience wants to understand, and they want that explanation in terms of the reality they know. I think that is perfectly reasonable.

 

Similarly, if there were a movie of the 2006 story, you could probably omit almost all of the events of BIONICLE Legends #4: Legacy of Evil, focusing only on the important bits like where the Piraka's Antidermis supply came from. If there were a movie of the 2007 story, you could probably omit the events of the Toa Nuva Blog, which happened alongside the Toa Mahri's quest but scarcely ever affected it directly. If there were a movie of the 2008 story, you could probably omit Mazeka and Vultraz's side-story, which was hardly relevant to anything in the grand scheme of things, and most of the other serials as well.All things considered, almost all of the events of the 2009 story other than those covered in BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn were irrelevant to the events of that movie. They were relevant to their own individual stories, but in the grand scheme of things they were just lengthy exposition that helped set the stage for Mata Nui's arrival (and in the meantime, promote the sets that didn't yet have a movie to serve as their backbone)

Agreed here, though. Except for the part of Mazeka's and Vultraz's side-story being irrelevant, although I'll grant you that it shouldn't be in a 2008 movie.

 

* * *

Yes, that's right, 2008 should just have one big movie. All that background material could have been delegated to the books where it belonged - the movie should focus on the Toa Nuva battle, and maybe a little bit on the Teridax-in-the Core Processor fights. (To some degree I think they actually did that with the Advance/Ghost movie for the year, but hey could have expanded it without harm IMO.)

 

2006 and 2007 would have been trickier to do a movie for. I think 2006 could have been done through a series of TV shorts, but the films would be so disparate that only ardent fans would be able to link it together. For example, you could have one focusing on the Piraka, culminating in the Toa Nuva battle. Then one focusing on Jaller and his journey through Karzanhi, then focus on the Toa Inika for a few more episodes culminating in the battle with Vezon and the mask's descent. I think it would be good as an episodic format, simply because there was so much disparate stuff happening.

 

2007...not sure. Again, lots of stuff happening, so it makes sense to do episodes, but there would be fewer of them.

 

The problem with the above is that there wouldn't be enough episodes, and nobody wants to run a TV show for only two years. So they didn't.

[Sir Kohran]

If the Morbuzakh had taken up half of the story of Legends of Metru Nui, like they did in the 2004 story as a whole, it would have felt disjointed and bloated, and the defeat of the King Root would feel anticlimactic since it didn't actually do much to bring the Toa Metru closer to their eventual goal. As it is, a person watching Legends of Metru Nui didn't even have to know the Morbuzakh existed to understand what was going on in the story the movie was telling.

 

This much I agree with.

 

What was outside the Great Barrier wasn't important either. It's great extra information, but why does it matter? The important thing is that the Toa Metru escaped Metru Nui and eventually reached a new home.

 

It matters because it concludes the movie. Showing us where the characters end up and the state they're left in as a result of the events and decisions that have occurred is the purpose of the movie's story (particularly in the case of this movie, as it's a prequel of sorts). All the previous scenes have been building up to it.

 

The script never makes it clear or even hints that there's a different land above Metru Nui. The beach at the end could be on the other side of the planet for all we're told. Nor is there any moment when the Toa decide or are instructed to move their civilisation there. The closest to that is Vakama stating something like "our destiny lies beyond the great barrier". It's confusing.

 

Think of a movie in which every scene until the last was set in entirely European locations. Then, in that last scene, the characters are in New York, with no explanation of how or why they went there. If the movie was your only source of information about the story, you'd think that was a plot hole.

 

The only reason the Legends of Metru Nui ending doesn't seem like a plot hole is because the background information was provided elsewhere.

Edited November 27, 2013 by Sir Kohran

[Aanchir]

Think of a movie in which every scene until the last was set in entirely European locations. Then, in that last scene, the characters are in New York, with no explanation of how or why they went there. If the movie was your only source of information about the story, you'd think that was a plot hole.

I don't think this is a good analogy. Rather, if the last scene you saw in Europe was the characters getting on a plane or boat bound for America, then you COULD show them arriving in New York in the last scene with no problems. You wouldn't need to show everything that happened while they were on the plane or boat unless something happened during that journey that was important to the story you were telling. The departure and arrival are more than enough to show the audience that the journey took place.While the adventures in BIONICLE Adventures #5 were interesting, they didn't really have any impact at all on the condition the Toa and Matoran were in when they eventually arrived on the shores of Mata Nui. There could have been a hundred miles of hazards between the Great Barrier and the shores of Mata Nui, or there could be nothing but five miles of tranquil ocean, and it would have had no impact on the Toa Metru's arrival. Showing a bunch of subsequent struggles during the journey would simply undermine the climactic nature of the Toa Metru's defeat of Makuta. Once that battle was over there was little point delaying the resolution with a bunch of unrelated and overall unimportant conflicts.Now, the scene on the shores COULD have been changed to depict the Toa Metru's initial arrival on Mata Nui rather than their final arrival, during which they gave up their Toa power. This would have made it easier to set the stage for the third movie, in which the Toa Metru went back for the Matoran they had left behind, which instead ended up taking place between the climax and resolution of LoMN. But I don't know that the writers knew there was going to BE a third movie when LoMN was being created, let alone what it was going to be about, and bringing the Toa Metru's story to a close was definitely an appropriate and poetic way to end a movie that was intended as their story. If 2005 had not introduced a second physical and emotional journey for the heroes, then it could be assumed without much difficulty that the Toa Metru simply took multiple trips. Edited November 27, 2013 by Aanchir: Rachira of Time

[Vorahk1Panrahk2]

If there's one thing the Series of Unfortunate Events movie taught me, it's that movies composed of a compilation of stories just don't work. They tend to lose a lot of what made those stories appealing in the first place. Granted that movie had other problems, but I think I'd rather see a TV series than a movie. Even if you make it a series, you're still loosing a lot of story content. the 2004 movie, for example, lost the Morbuzakh conflict and the journey to Mata Nui. A lot of really fascinating stuff happened in that latter event that I think would have been really cool to see.

[Taka Nuvia]

I guess I would prefer a movie series, simply because TV episodes seem a bit too short. Particularly for story worlds that are so very different from everyday experience, you need some time to fully get in sync with them, and if it all ends again after 45 minutes (although, kids' shows these days sometimes tend to have even shorter episodes) that can be very disappointing, at least for me.

[BobaFett2]

I think I prefer movies to TV shows as the structure of TV shows would shorten any drawn out story - unless the TV shows were 45-50 minutes long each, in which case I think they would better showcase all that went on in this period. A TV show is definitely better for showing side stories than a movie, and would allow for more of the detail that was left out of the comics during these years.

Edited December 1, 2013 by BobaFett2