Do you want Matoro revived?

[Lenny7092]

Hi, guys. When I read the story about Matoro dying, I felt devastated. I didn’t expect the chosen one to have to sacrifice his life to save his world from destruction. 

I feel bad for the Toa Mahri for losing one of their own. Him being their close friend is one thing. I was hoping that the Toa would form two Toa Kaita, but down to one. So, I would love to have Matoro revived somehow. 

[Bambi]

I remember when it happened, I wanted him to be revived. But now, I feel like it would take away any sort of emotional impact his sacrifice had. Like oh yeah he died to save Mata Nui, but it's okay he'll respawn.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Bambi

[Nato G]

It's always a slippery slope when you allow resurrection to exist within a story. Death becomes cheap and inconsequential if it's not handled correctly. Sacrifices especially are meaningless if death is just a revolving door. Personally, I feel like Bionicle was starting to get to that point given that two members of the Toa Mahri - Jaller and Matoro - had already died and come back to life in the space of just a few weeks in-story. 

Which was what made Matoro's final death so powerful and impactful. The story made it abundantly clear that his was a true sacrifice, with no room for a return. Even the late Red Star retcon didn't walk it back. Matoro's sacrifice was tragic, and emotional, and meaningful.  

Besides, what would Matoro even do if he came back? Where would his story go from here? He fulfilled his Destiny, so he'd come back as a Turaga, not a Toa. Would he just be relegated to the background like most Turaga characters are? Would he go back to being Nuju's translator? Would he resume moping around grappling with his self-worth? Would he become arrogant and boastful in his new role as the ultimate hero? Would he be wracked with remorse for his role in allowing Teridax to take over the universe? I don't see a way for his story to continue that would live up to what he's already done. Just let the poor guy rest in peace. 

[confused piraka]

no. the point of a fictional death is for it to have meaning that's why jaller's 'death' felt so useless

Edited December 24, 2023 by confused piraka

[Lenny7092]

Hey, guys. Suppose Greg Farshtey comes back to re-continue the G1 story, combine the powers of the Legendary Kanohi, and use their combine power to bring back dead people that the Red Star cannot revive (like the Infinity Stones from Marvel), like Matoro, the Toa Cordak, Nidhiki, Krekka, and the Makuta. What would be your reaction to that?

[confused piraka]

keep dreaming greg is not even employed by lego anymore

Edited December 24, 2023 by confused piraka

[Master Inika]

7 hours ago, Lenny7092 said:

Hey, guys. Suppose Greg Farshtey comes back to re-continue the G1 story, combine the powers of the Legendary Kanohi, and use their combine power to bring back dead people that the Red Star cannot revive (like the Infinity Stones from Marvel), like Matoro, the Toa Cordak, Nidhiki, Krekka, and the Makuta. What would be your reaction to that?

I will pay anyone at LEGO any amount of money for that to not happen.

I marked "maybe" on the survey because marking "no" made me feel too much like a sociopath. Here's how storytelling works, you are supposed to want the bad thing to not happen but recognize that that is how dramatic tension is formed. It'd be great for Luke if Ben Kenobi didn't get killed on the Death Star but that's because it's an allegory for growing from a boy into a man and losing your parents and other mentor figures when you feel like you're only beginning to truly appreciate them. The story would be "better" if Obi-Wan didn't die in the sense that the people in the story would feel happier, but it would be a much worse story (and probably not be remembered at all) because it would not be about emotions that the viewers could understand.

On 12/23/2023 at 5:52 PM, Lenny7092 said:

I didn’t expect the chosen one to have to sacrifice his life to save his world from destruction. 

Have you ever read/watched any media featuring a chosen one ever?

I agree with @Nato G that the Red Star kind of ruined BIONICLE. I know that Greg a "zombies on a space station" story, and Greg has surprised me with his ability to make seemingly stupid story ideas work before, but on paper it just sounds weird. Virtually any death in BIONICLE being removed would also remove all our investment in why it happened. Matoro has to die for the story to be about humility and self-sacrifice, Mavrah has to die to show the danger of arrogantly trying to control nature, Sidorak has to die to show us how evil and detached Roodaka is, and Lesovikk's team has to die to turn Lesovikk into a grimdark atoner edgelord.

[Lenny7092]

Yikes. Well, if I were to have the power to re-continue the story, I would like to revive Matoro and some other characters, If I do that, would your reactions be the same? I would expect you guys to cry in happiness, as if this is like Avengers: Endgame. If I were to have the power to convinced Kevin Feige to revive Black Widow and Iron Man, I would hope the audience would feel happy to see them again, too.
 

If you guys really aren’t sure about reviving characters, please read this: https://prostorybuilders.com/back-from-the-dead-resurrect-revive-characters/#:~:text=The key is to make,it works in your story.

[Master Inika]

12 minutes ago, Lenny7092 said:

Yikes. Well, if I were to have the power to re-continue the story, I would like to revive Matoro and some other characters, If I do that, would your reactions be the same? I would expect you guys to cry in happiness, as if this is like Avengers: Endgame. If I were to have the power to convinced Kevin Feige to revive Black Widow and Iron Man, I would hope the audience would feel happy to see them again, too.
 

If you guys really aren’t sure about reviving characters, please read this: https://prostorybuilders.com/back-from-the-dead-resurrect-revive-characters/#:~:text=The key is to make,it works in your story.

That was a pretty good article. That source does make it clear how easy it is to get resurrection wrong and make it feel cheap and unearned. In particular, I think it is much easier to write an original story (and have more ability to establish the reader's expectations) that involves resurrection than it is to write fanfiction of an established lore that unnaturally resurrects characters who are just particularly popular.

I don't feel as though you are really engaging with what we are saying here. Why would you revive all these characters? In what way would the stories be better? Having Black Widow, Iron Man, Matoro and the others die allows us to see how the other characters react to their deaths. Since people die in the real world, this is something the average viewer is interested in seeing fictional characters react to. People (usually) don't come back from the dead in the real world, so it's not as interesting to see fictional characters react to resurrections.

I really can't imagine Matoro coming back in a way that does not cheapen his death in 2007.

[Nato G]

11 hours ago, Lenny7092 said:

Hey, guys. Suppose Greg Farshtey comes back to re-continue the G1 story, combine the powers of the Legendary Kanohi, and use their combine power to bring back dead people that the Red Star cannot revive

2 hours ago, Lenny7092 said:

Well, if I were to have the power to re-continue the story, I would like to revive Matoro and some other characters, If I do that, would your reactions be the same?

It's very hard to have a consistent discussion when you keep shifting the goalposts like this. 

You've asked people for their opinions, and instead of actually responding to people's comments you keep offering up these hypothetical situations to force the outcome you want and ask if that would change people's feelings on the topic. At this point I can't help but feel that you're unable or unwilling to take no for an answer (especially since I saw you post the exact same question to Reddit a few days ago and delete it after only four comments when no one would take your side wholesale). 

2 hours ago, Lenny7092 said:

I would expect you guys to cry in happiness, as if this is like Avengers: Endgame.

There's a vast gulf of difference between Endgame and what you're talking about. 

As emotionally-devastating as the ending of Infinity War was for some viewers, we as audiences knew the deaths weren't going to stick. It was obvious to anyone with a modicum of genre-savvyness that Thanos' victory would be undone somehow in the follow-up film. There was never a question over if all of those characters would come back, only how the surviving Avengers would manage to do it. The return of those characters was a baked-in expectation of the story, due to the nature of their deaths and the natural course of the narrative. 

That's simply not the case with Matoro. 

The whole point of a sacrifice is to give something up. Matoro's death was meant to be a moment of selflessness and acceptance to show the cost of heroism. The fact that he still didn't believe he was a hero even in his final moment is meant to feel tragic and unfair. His loss was meant to hurt. It was meant to leave a hole in his team. It was meant to leave a mark in our memories as readers.

Bringing him back for no reason would take all of that away. That's not to say resurrecting Matoro couldn't work, somehow, but I personally can't think of a way to execute that without cheapening or ruining his past story.

[Taria Pakari]

8 hours ago, Lenny7092 said:

Yikes. Well, if I were to have the power to re-continue the story, I would like to revive Matoro and some other characters, If I do that, would your reactions be the same? I would expect you guys to cry in happiness,

Absolutely not. Rendering that sort of pivotal moment in the story; not to mention Matoro's whole character arc, completely moot would make for a terrible continuation. It would serve only to satisfy you, and you alone.

[Lielac]

I have a "sort of" answer, and a theory that this "sort of" might have been intended to happen based on a couple things.

1. The Red Star's revival function exists.

2. The Chamber of Death on the path to the Ignika is A, a bit of a trial run for "be willing to sacrifice yourself in a permanent death", and B, lit entirely by red lightstones.

My theory is that the Chamber of Death is intended to create a backup or copy of the user of the Ignika, who would be returned to the Matoran Universe after their original was consumed reviving Mata Nui. This would conserve limited resources, and the Ignika user would only have lost hours or days of memories if all went well. However, the Red Star had already malfunctioned by the time anyone needed to revive Mata Nui, and so the copies of the Ignika users would be stuck up there.

Thus, my theory is that (a copy of) Matoro Inika could be on the Red Star, alongside the member of Jovan's team who used the Ignika. Matoro lives! ... kind of.

[Lorentz]

On 12/24/2023 at 12:32 PM, Lenny7092 said:

Hey, guys. Suppose Greg Farshtey comes back to re-continue the G1 story, combine the powers of the Legendary Kanohi, and use their combine power to bring back dead people that the Red Star cannot revive (like the Infinity Stones from Marvel), like Matoro, the Toa Cordak, Nidhiki, Krekka, and the Makuta. What would be your reaction to that?

That would be the worst possible writing decision ever, even worse than the Tuyet clone thing. 

" I would expect you guys to cry in happiness"

Why would you expect that? Our lips would lift in disgust.

Edited January 16 by Lorentz