User blog:Berrybrick/BIONICLE: This one is about reboots

How would you feel if BIONICLE 2015 were a reboot?

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That is what I am hoping for

I would give it a try

Betrayed

Don't care/indifferent

I just want to see the results

7 votes have been cast since the poll was created on 04:28, 4 October 2014.

poll-id 91369511B7DAC4F2EAECD8A429882C0F

If Greg Farshtey's hints not to expect BIONICLE characters like Helryx and Artakha to show up in the new story after NYCC actually mean anything, then it would seem that this Thursday (or some day during NYCC, but I like Thursday the best) we will have an answer as to whether or not BIONICLE 2015 is a hard reboot, soft reboot, or continuation, and, just to clear things up, here are the definitions of the terms I will be using.

Hard reboot (sometimes just reboot): A reimagining from the ground, or anywhere else, up.
Soft reboot: The old canon is intact, but has little bearing on the current events. This is what the Bara Magna arc was supposed to be.
Continuation: The story is continued right from where it ended.
Remake: Everything is exactly the same, or at least pretty close to how it was before. Not to be confused with a hard reboot. This seems pretty clearly out of the question just based on the Lord of Skull Spiders.

Being a master of non-answers, Mr. Farshtey's comment that we should not expect to see Helryx and Artakha means very little. He never said they would not appear, just not to expect them to. Being a master of non-answers, Mr. Farshtey's comment that we should not expect to see Helryx and Artakha means very little. He never said they would not appear, just not to expect them to, and that hints at neither a continuation nor a reboot if they are "removed" from the story, despite being fairly important characters. In a straight continuation, they would likely be killed off screen by Velika and we would learn either via LEGO Message Boards, or a footnote somewhere. And then in a reboot, they would not necessarily exist in the first place, though I personally would make use of them.

I would. I can't say the same about you, or someone (else?) unfamiliar with the story. Some people seem to view the possibility of a hard reboot as a chopping block, and I don't entirely understand that. Can reboots fail? Clearly, anybody who is a fan of any franchise with staying power knows that. A soft reboot (such as a time skip) or direct continuation (picking up exactly where the story left off: With minor characters on the run from intelligent sand gorillas plus a rogue poet and scary robot murdering every character with any semblance of power between themselves), the latter of which people would seem to agree is unlikely.

Anyway, I will try to cut to the chase. Yes, I want a reboot. The serials were not going in the direction they should have been. Light Teridax versus an army of Shadow Takanuva? The Shadowed One with viruses that put giant robots to sleep? A Great Being civil war? Resurrecting Lhikan as a zombie? And what about all of the deaths Marendar and Velika were causing? Yeah, no thanks. Aside from the possibility of the Great Being civil war, I seriously doubt that any of those plot lines would have gone anywhere to wrapping up the story, and even that might be overkill. I have said this before, but I think that 2010's ending was okay. I would have liked something better set wise, of course, and the golden armor was probably the most blatant gimmick in the story. Oh, and then there was the convenience of the timing. And rock 'em sock 'em robots. But thematically, I liked how it ended. One lesson I was taught for writing is to connect the beginning to the end. Once again, the Toa and Matoran are without their Great Spirit in a dangerous paradise and are tasked with rebuilding their civilization alongside the Agori and Glatorian. Yep, that'll do it for me.

Personally speaking, as always, I would not reopen that. The serials were tasked with closing loose ends, and they poured salt in the wound. In a soft reboot, they could be (and probably should be) ignored, but even then there is too much baggage without that for a soft reboot to be satisfying. We clearly have the classic six Toa back, judging by appearance I would say they have been rebooted (those tattoos on their chests would fit right in back in 2001, but not after they reintegrate into Metru Nui and explore the Matoran Universe and Spherus Magna), but that's a tangent, and what I mean to say is that 2010 ended with two pairs of similar species, the Toa/Glatorian and Matoran/Agori living together. The issues with this? Try and explain how they are different, and confusion will be had. As much as I make fun of it, visual identity is a big factor in understanding characters. I cannot think of a solution that would really work:

Separating the Agori/Glatorian from the Matoran/Toa: This would betray the ending of the original series, to put it simply.
Using a time skip to drop the Agori and Glatorian: This makes absolutely no sense considering how long these characters live, and the inference that they can reproduce again. Still, I think it had to be acknowledged because I have heard this once or twice.
Merging them into one species would be a cop-out, in my opinion. That could be the reason for the "Master" and "Protector" titles, but if people don't have an issue with that solution, since it is just about as "disrespectful" or "dumbed down" as people seem to fear a reboot would be, then I do not see why they would have a problem with a reboot.

The issue with the Glatorian and Agori is that they were the products of a reboot themselves and were intended to replace the Toa and the Matoran in the main narrative. The end of the story brought them together, of course, but one must wonder if the Toa were ever intended to interact with them before that. The sets were clearly not designed for the market to distinguish between them, the almost organic helmets and weapons (I am not sure how else to describe them) were not really so obviously not Toa (erm, I hope you understood that) any more than the Nuva, Hordika, or Inika were.

And that, essentially, is my entire argument, or at least the most basic part of it. We could get into how the serials which featured all sorts of nonsense (the conclusion of Reign of Shadows is one of the worst I have ever read this side of fan-fiction) which people often point the finger to for becoming too bloated, and they are mostly to blame, but even in what would be considered irrevocable, good luck resolving that and making it both accessible and appealing. Even though LEGO might be aiming for new fans first, they won't want to alienate the old ones if they can avoid it. The problem I have with time skips, or unneeded continuations for that matter, is that I usually walk away with them unsatisfied with what characters' fates have been, and all sorts of questions which are opened contrary to what I wanted to believe. And that is probably the problem that people have with a reboot, yes? So I suppose that I had better explain what it is about them that I do like.

I hope I'm not trying to reason with the same type of people up in arms over underwear going inside of the pajamas....

Perhaps it is because I am a DC fan and I feel like without them we never would have gotten to nor gone from Adam West Batman or Lynda Carter Wonder Woman without reimaginings, retcons, and reboots. Even if the entire universe is only reset every so often, the individual characters and their own corners seem to constantly be undergoing changes to the point were it is excessive and I won't even pretend to glorify it, especially because many of them do not work. But some of them do. Whether Superman is a boy scout who can turn back time to save his girlfriend, or a tormented farm boy trying to become a symbol in a world that does not appreciate him, both are Superman to me. I like seeing things taken apart, rearranged, and injected to create something new, and is that not in the spirit of LEGO? In the last 100 years, or more, really, but especially since the invention of moving pictures, television, and above all, the internet, we no longer really have oral tradition preserving works in our society, but for so many centuries that was how our mythology grew. The Egyptians had at least four different creation myths, Greek myths from different city-states contradicted themselves, the Chinese had their myths rewritten for cultural control, and the Romans borrowed everything from everyone and made it their own, sort of. Is that a good metaphor? Hardly, but my point is that stories change and as long as they have reason to be remembered, and I sincerely hope that any fan of BIONICLE or another rebooted franchise realizes this, it will be remembered. A reboot does not stop stories from existing, it just means that new ones do not exist concurrently.

My mantra on the subject is for better or for worse, classics get remade, epics get reimagined, and blockbusters get sequels. Nothing against blockbusters with sequels, I love a good sequel when the story has somewhere to go, but honestly, I'm not feeling it here. All of these possibilities of exploring Spherus Magna? Okay, maybe if they do a true time skip far enough into the future where things can actually be different, which when these characters' lifespans are considered would be a number with so many zeroes it would look ridiculous, but it seems pretty clear that that is not the case. All of those arguments about "if it isn't old BIONICLE, then don't call it that," well, if our Master of Fire isn't Tahu, why call him that? If a time skip is what we get, then so be it, I will give it a try because I really haven't got anything to lose (something which people seem to forget), but from my point of view, a time skip has more potential for deterring the old story (since it is technically part of the old story) while delivering less possibilities than a reboot. But, at the end of the day, even if the story does turn out to be a piece of garbage, at least we have the sets. Now that I have had four years to think about what I want, those are what came to mind as the most important.

And as for next time, I have one final idea for a BIONICLE blog. Expect a retrospective and some obscure mythology. Or some rambling about whatever the NYCC reveal is. Or maybe both. I would be amazed if it is both.

Comments (5)

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Anonymous user #1

116 months ago

Score 1

Ah ok, yeah, now you mention it, I think in the very beginning I did think Makuta was one guy because of the game, then it went to being a group, then back to one guy, then finally a group :P

Then I used to always get the name mixed up with Muaka (a Rahi, I think that was its name) :P

Teridax was a mad scientist? I think I'm glad I didn't keep following Bionicle :D

Ok, Rebels review time, I think I'm just in "Star Wars mode" after seeing those images, if you don't want to read, the short answer is the bottom paragraph :P

The first ten minutes (which were released early as a preview) were pretty awful. ~~Aladdin~~ Ezra jumping around a market stall and stealing fruit (I mean, come on Disney... someone even called him a "street rat". He even looks like Aladdin. If they kept going with the Aladdin references in the episode, I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen him turn up as a minidoll in the Disney Princess line).

There were some pretty bad lines early on too- Kanan going "who is that guy?". Then Ezra going "Who are those guys?". Then later, Sabine going "If [Zeb] catches you, he's going to end you", followed shortly by Zeb saying "If I catch that kid, I'm going to end him". Groan.

However, about 15 minutes or so in, I'd say the story picked up. Without giving too much away, I've got to say overall it was pretty good, much better than the first episode of The Clone Wars. As I said, early on, it was disappointing. After seeing those first ten minutes, I was actually planning on not watching it, but I got bored so I did, and I'm glad I did now. I mentioned bad lines, but there's a few ok ones in there too- I actually laughed at one moment with a Stormtrooper, I can't remember really doing that with TCW at all. I found one section, which was a direct reference to Episode III, almost... moving. Maybe the wrong word, but it was really nice to see (although that's probably only if you're a huge Star Wars geek, I'm sure most people would be like "meh").

I think they've overdone the Imperial Officers- typical officers are meant to be a bit pompous and useless, but I feel they went overboard with that (but again, that was mainly in the first half). Except for Kallus, I quite liked him, and didn't expect to at all. Maybe that was because the "dumb name syndrome" continues through him- General Loathsom, Ima-Gun-Di, etc. But he seemed like a pretty interesting character, not just the Inquisitor's useless underling, which is what they sort of made him out to be in the promo material.

It's also good to see them quickly bringing concepts from the EU right back and establishing them as canon. MINOR SPOILER (For example, Kessel is still pretty much as it was described in the EU.) Which to me indicates they're not looking to completely obliterate everything that we previously knew about the galaxy.

Overall, I'd say it's worth a watch. For now at least. I guess there's always a chance it could get worse, but hey, if it does, all that's happened is that you've wasted a few minutes watching some TV, which isn't exactly a huge deal :P

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Anonymous user #1

116 months ago

Score 0