"Von Nebula" Review

[Master Inika]

Can't believe LEGO got Mark Hamill and used him for this

"Von Nebula" is really bad. There's a lot about Hero Factory that I want to be forgiving about, like the unnatural way characters have to speak to accomodate flashbacks ("The last time I felt like this was right before the Von Ness mission..."). Little issues like that are just how the medium works. I want to stay focused on how Hero Factory is bad, not just compared to adult-oriented media, but to other LEGO franchises with similar audiences.

Seeing the four main Villains together wasn't as climactic as it should have been. One of the rare moments of competence was in Rotor and XPlode's dynamic in "Trials of Furno." It at least felt like they had met and committed crimes together. I also like how Rotor (one of the larger characters) was used effectiely as Furno's first captured Villain. There's none of that fun banter with the four of them together here in "Von Nebula," though. In a weird way the characters we've seen before like Corroder actually sound like even goofier, more kid-friendly versions of their (already goofy) earlier selves.

Meltdown only appears briefly in "The Enemy Within" and this is Thunder's first appearance, but neither of them make much of a mark. Thunder is just a worse version of Krekka.

If the showdown with Von Nebula were actually good, I could excuse the very barebones and unengaging fight with the henchmen. Even as a teenager, though, I was always weirdly confused and disappointed by what all the foreshadowing with Von Ness was leading up to. Von Nebula's motivations are vague in a way that makes him come off as more petty than fearsome. The overarching narrative of Rise of the Rookies is (supposed to be) Furno earning Stormer's respect but it feels like virtually all of that happens off-screen. "Trials of Furno" feels like the pilot to a full 26-episode season about their relationship but in the four episodes we get, there's very little. (The other four Heroes get it even worse in terms of characterization. Bulk and Stringer are so generically nice I sometimes forget they're even in the episodes.)

In an ideal Top Gun-like story like this, both the mentor and the student would learn to appreciate in each other, and neither of these plotlines lands. Stormer at the beginning doesn't have faith in Furno, and then by the end he just... does. Furno learns nothing in the entire four-episode arc. He starts off the series so aggressively goody-goody that there's really nowhere for him to go.

A more competently done version of HF would have an episode not long after "Trials of Furno" in which Furno, letting his success with Rotor go to his head, makes a foolish mistake on another mission that results on a Villain getting away. That would both make Furno more interesting and make Stormer's perspective feel more reasonable and nuanced. That proposed episode is nothing groundbreaking (it's both Vakama's arc in Web of Shadows and Ezra Bridger's in Star Wars: Rebels season 3).

This is on top of the other problems I pointed out last week, like the weirdly empty and desolate New Stellac City. Like the billboard, the monument to Stormer gives it an eerie feeling like we're seeing the remnants of a civilization we'll never get to see directly.

I now realize that, as a teenager, I would sometimes jump through hoops mentally to make Hero Factory better than it really was. I was still salty about what happened to Bionicle and I wanted HF to be more Bionicle. This happened most notably with Mr. Makuro, who is one of the strangest characters in HF. I appreciate the non-verbal storytelling in that he looks like an older, more clockwork-based analog robot than the other characters. That piece of implied worldbuilding always made me feel like he was more important to the story than he really was, and it was not until this most recent viewing that I realized just how absent he is from most of the story.

Mr. Makuro, in Rise of the Rookies, appears only once, talking to Zib. That single early appearance implies we'll see more of him, but we never do. There is no scene of either Furno nor Stormer looking to him for guidance, or of him having anything interesting to say about Von Nebula. He has the mannerisms of a Turaga Vakama-like character but, as with so much of HF, that check is never cashed. I'm reminded of Turaga Vakama's words to Takanuva in Mask of Light: "Finally you have found your destiny, yet still you seek answers..." Mr. Makuro lacks any similarly reflective scenes with Furno. It's hard to believe sometimes that Mask of Light and Rise of the Rookies are so similar in length (70-80 mins.) and use that time so differently.

Another choice that, in hindsight, feels obvious would have been having Mr. Makuro already dead by the start of the series, having been killed by Von Nebula. Already, that change would give much more weight to Stormer's sense of responsibility for what Von Ness became. If you've read the Hero Factory intro mini-magazine (I think it came one of the first few months after the Bionicle comics ended with a LEGO Magazine), you'll know the other Villains like Thuner have real criminal charges like extortion, but it's hard to seriously imagine those sorts of crimes in the animated world where nothing really bad ever happens to named characters.

In an attempt to say something nice about Rise of the Rookies, I'll identify Daniela Capricorn as the final time Hero Factory attempted to create any impression of a full world full of characters with their own lives. It's not much but her and her camera bot feel like the extra bit of effort that HF would already give up on even a few years later. In a version of the story where Mr. Makuro was killed by Von Nebula, virtually of his his dialogue (which is just exposition anyway) could easily be rewritten for her.

[Nato G]

2 hours ago, Master Inika said:

Seeing the four main Villains together wasn't as climactic as it should have been. Meltdown only appears briefly in "The Enemy Within" and this is Thunder's first appearance, but neither of them make much of a mark.

I've always found it weird the way the first wave's villains were handled. Ostensibly, they're supposed to be a team operating under Von Nebula's leadership, but it never really feels that way. Their appearances in the first few episodes make them seem like unconnected villain-of-the-week type bad guys, with no real indication that they were a united front working towards a common cause. Even in a show as barebones as HF's first season, the writers surely could have done something to establish some connective tissue. 

2 hours ago, Master Inika said:

I was always weirdly confused and disappointed by what all the foreshadowing with Von Ness was leading up to. Von Nebula's motivations are vague in a way that makes him come off as more petty than fearsome.

My biggest problem with it has always been that the limited flashback material we get for Von Ness effectively explains nothing.

Knowing that Von Ness used to be a hero who gave in to cowardice and ran away doesn't at all explain how he became a brazen overconfident juggernaut with magic black hole powers who doesn't even remotely resemble a Hero anymore (eg. Why doesn't he have a Hero Core? Isn't that where their 'souls' are supposed to be?) The two versions of the character are so drastically different from each other in both appearance and personality that they really don't feel like the same character.

A show with a greater number of episodes would have presumably given us some kind of flashback episode explaining his transformation, but as it stands it feels like we're missing some important context. Especially when we get to Breakout later down the line, where it seems like Von Nebula is regarded as this legendary figure within the criminal community, even outside of his established gang. 

2 hours ago, Master Inika said:

There is no scene of either Furno nor Stormer looking to him for guidance, or of him having anything interesting to say about Von Nebula. 

There's so much wasted potential with Mr Makuro. Even killing him off as you suggest would have given him a more meaningful role in the story than what we got. There's a thin line between a "mysterious" character, and an underwritten one, and Makuro is firmly on the wrong side of it. 

That the guy responsible for creating all of the Heroes has no commentary at all on one of his creations turning evil is a real missed opportunity. 

[Sailor Wah!]

They give him a flashback to establish his backstory, only to never actually mention any of his motives, and instead show us Stormer defeating some big robot. What also strikes me is that, it seems, every main villain in Hero Factory (besides the brains and the beast) is the same mustache-twirling Saturday morning cartoon villain who has some past with Stormer that is never explained.