Bionicle 2015 Discussion

[The Outsider]

This is gonna be a long one, so I'm splitting it into spoiler tags.

Response to Kalhiki:

Spoiler

On 9/9/2018 at 4:53 PM, Kalhiki said:

Interesting... Gave a look at the Story Bible. Mostly stuff we knew aside from the Mask of Time. Anywho, here's the quote from the Bible about that:

Personal thoughts of mine:

To be blunt... I think this was a bad idea. Especially the line, "What exactly 'happened' is not important to us...". To me, part of what makes Bionicle "Bionicle" is its involved lore. Pretty much everything has been explained in G1 in regards to how the universe functions. By not explaining how the Vahi comes into play, it goes against the essence of Bionicle in my eyes. And if the two lines are going to be connected, then G2, in essence, becomes an extension of G1's story, and I feel needs to live up to its quality. 

Moreover, this whole "half a mask" bit annoys me, too. It was never half a mask to start with. Sure, it looks like one, but a top half never existed, nor was one intended. Which makes the mask's involvement feel like a paper-thin excuse to connect the two stories. At the end of the day, I feel it'd have been better to have just made G2 its own thing. I mean, if you didn't want to be restricted by the original's lore, why bother trying to connect them at all?

I'm not saying G2 needed a deep plot (at least not as deep as G1's) in order to be good. Heck, I enjoyed G2's story for the most part. But as I said, tying the two together, no matter in how small of a way, makes me feel G2 needs to live up to expectations. 

 

Anyway, sorry for the rant. Cool that we got this material at all, but... Just gotta vent a little.

 

I don't entirely agree. If they wanted to make this a continuation, they could have gone with the Beast Wars approach: treat the previous continuity as ancient legends, with an equal mix of fact and myth, and only confirm things when they directly affects the current story. That way you don't outright disregard what came before, but you can select and build from it, especially since the "involved lore" of the original (which I also loved, by the way, but that's the encyclopedic me) was what apparently made the storylines too convoluted and hard to follow.

The key expression, however, is "if they wanted to make this a continuation", and I think that's the problem. While I kept wanting for them to insert more references to G1, maybe a new set or character that resembled a previous one, or a mention of a recognizable location or object, that's all I wanted: references, a wink and nod to what came before, because bringing the real thing to this new world wasn't gonna work. G2's storyline and the way its world worked were already so divorced from G1's that any sort of direct link feels forced, unless they pull an "alternate universe" explanation. In this case, you either choose a direct continuation or a new direction; you can't have both. Otherwise you get stuff like in the New 52 where Batman has been operating for only six years and yet has already trained four Robins, with two of them grown into adulthood and another being his 11-year old son (which they later explained with artificial aging but still).

As for the Vahi, I could see how it could be explained (full Mask of Time is built but is too powerful > the Mask is split to make it more manageable > the G2!MoT ending up in Okoto somehow > the Vahi is split again into the Great Disks and hidden, explaining how people knew of them and that they could create the Vahi), but again, it feels forced and tacked on, especially since the MoT ended up doing nothing for the main story.

Then again, there's 1/3 of the planned storyline we don't know about; maybe 2017 would explain more about the MoT and the link to G1 would be better explored there (though I find the latter unlikely).

Style Guide/Target Group:

Spoiler

What I found more annoying, however, was the style guide; namely, the "target group/moodboard/product placement" section. It felt too much of an attempt to catch current "fads" and "being hip" (...I sound like a "back in my day" old geezer, don't I?).

This is something I felt back with The Art Of BIONICLE, when they claimed to "attempt to modernize" the masks using "sports and racing gear" as references (might be paraphrasing, but it's basically this). The thing is, while they shouldn't make them carbon-copies of the previous Kanohi, it doesn't make sense for the masks to be modernized, because they're not in a modern setting. One of the things that attracted me to BIONICLE was how they had this unique mixture of technological beings in a tribal environment with mystical items and abilities, and the masks translated that perfectly: mostly primitive and tribla, but with small tech details like vents and eyepieces (well, except Gali; ironically the "modernized" Mask of Water looks more tribal than the scuba-gear-like Kaukau). While they eventually moved on from that to the point the masks looked more like high-tech helmets, it still made somewhat sense since the setting had changed to sci-fi. But to start them in a primitive setting based fully on the technological is just too clashing.

But maybe that's just because I'm not a fan of multimedia and sports.

Also, did we even see any of that associated merchandising they were planning?

Not enough reason to push it?:

Spoiler

This is and idea I had after watching LEGO's episode on The Toys That Made Us and they talked about BIONICLE and how it saved the company after several missed lines (which was great by the way, but it was frustrating how they kept describing G1 while showing sets/MOCs and media from G2, but I guess Netflix needs to promote its own shows). Maybe some of you have already said it in different words, but I'm gonna lay it out anyway.

Many of us felt the team didn't try enough to push the brand, that the marketing and development of the line was too weak. Other defended that times had changed, G1!BIONICLE had been released in a time where LEGO was facing bankrupcy, and now it was just another in a long list of far more profitable lines.

But what if both are connected? What if they didn't push enough because there was not enough risk?

Back when G1 had been launched, they had to succeed. They had to give their all in merchandising, in lore, in media, because it was their last shot on a long string of failures; they had to put everything in this new line and either get a big hit or go out with a bang. So they gave their all, and it succeeded spetacularly.

G2, on the other hand, was different. While there was obviously still love for the brand and what it did to LEGO, the company wasn't on the brink anymore. If it failed, it was just another line, with many others already bringing it the needed revenue. They could make things simpler, at a smaller scale.

And they did. Maybe a bit too much.

 

[Steven the toa of flight]

I wish that al of a sudden hero factory makes a return with better parts and then hero factory is replaced once again with bionicle