Aanchir

I didn't talk to them as far as I can remember. I would give them voices when playing with them, though, as a number of other people have said.

I hope they don't hold it against me that I wasn't more sociable!

That concept looks more like Skull Grinder to me. 

It seems to have elements of several of the skull villains (Basher's oversized horns, Slicer's oversized forehead, Grinder's color scheme, etc). Perhaps this was just a general concept for what the overall skull villain aesthetic might be like, and the looks then diverged from there as they developed that concept into a full series.

(I totally want dinosaurs in space, we need that to trend among kids.)

Space dinosaurs, huh?

Anyway, I'm quite amused that some of the knights in the teaser videos are the ones from the Yellow Castle!

Hate to be cynical, but...

I'm not particularly enthused about this. I don't really like blending traditional/ancient things with futuristic stuff. (One major reason I didn't like Ninjago.)

There's nothing cynical about admitting you don't like something! Everybody's tastes are different. I don't report news like this expecting it to be exciting or interesting for everybody, just to call it to people's attention and then let them make up their minds about it from there.

I'm pretty excited about this theme myself, possibly more excited than I should be since I'm already collecting Ninjago, Bionicle, and Elves — I don't really need another expensive theme to add to my wish list! It might end up just being another theme like Legends of Chima where I only collect a handful of sets on the side, particularly when I see them discounted.

I will say, though, that LEGO would probably love this to be a hit on the same level as Ninjago!

I've since bought the "Guide to the Crystal Gems" and the first graphic novel! I enjoyed both, but not as much as the show. I want to try and introduce my parents to the show, but finding time to do that is tough.

I wish it could have a LEGO theme, but I don't know how realistic that is. I don't know if any style of LEGO figure (minifigure, mini-doll, constraction, etc) is truly well suited to depicting the many different body types of the characters. Still, it surprises me that I haven't seen more Steven Universe MOCs. I'm going to try my hand at it. I'm already thinking of ways to create the main characters as Miniland-style brick-built figures.

Also, it seems he's been reading the posts in this topic, because he posted about it over in the LMB. Just quoting him here:

 I noticed on one of the fan sites that there was a topic relating to my writing of BIONICLE, and it's fine (not everyone is going to like what I did, it's cool, and some people will. But there were a LOT of misconceptions in the topic, and since I cannot post there, I am posting here --)

 

1) I am responsible for the line losing its "mystical tone" after 2003.

FALSE. The Metru Nui storyline came from Bob Thompson and the story team, not me. In fact, there is not a single year of main story that was created solely by me -- it all came from the story team as a whole. So if you love some part of main story, credit the story team, and if you don't, that's the story team too.

 

The notion that I had some ability to unilaterally change the story is just not accurate. EVERY word I wrote had to be approved in Billund before it went out. If the BIONICLE team had disapproved of something I was doing, they would have said so. I may have been the public face of the story because of being on fan sites, but I was part of a team, and proud of it. There is no LEGO line where the story comes from just one person.

 

2) There was something wrong with my not outlining my stories.

FALSE. A lot of writers, all of whom are better than me, do not outline. NY Book Editors recently published an article advising that writers not outline. To quote from it,  "When you head into a piece of writing without the planning, the job of the writer is to create. Your writing can exist in a mutable state for a very long time. The best writing happens when the writer is discovering what happens as he or she is creating."

 

3) Some of the serials did not work.

TRUE. The serials, especially in 2010, were an attempt to do a favor for fans upset over the line ending and to hold on to the trademarks. In retrospect, it was probably a mistake, for a lot of reasons. I felt bad about the line ending, I felt others did too, and I wanted to make it easier. Didn't happen.

 

Yeah, a lot of these things are things I often try to remind people of. There's a widespread perception that Greg started "taking over" the story direction in the later years, but it just doesn't align with the facts. Greg did become a lot more involved in the story at two points: 2003, when he started writing the books as well as the comics, and 2007, when he started writing the serials and other online side-stories. But neither case really involved him taking creative power away from the rest of the story team, since Cathy Hapka was never on the story team, and the serials didn't really take the place of any other type of story media — except, perhaps, the books Greg was already writing, since those were gradually reduced from year to year.

It's good to see that in retrospect Greg does recognize that continuing the serials after the theme ended didn't work. I'm sure if he had known that at the time he probably would only continued them long enough to wrap up the loose ends the 2009 serials had left behind. But it was a decision made with the best of intentions, and one that involved a lot of personal sacrifice (since after the theme ended he was no longer being paid for continuing the story).

 

Anybody else note the names of Greg Farchety, Christoffer Raundual, and Christian Faber in the credits? Even if they still aren't working on Bionicle, TLG still lists them as the series creators.

It should be noted that those three seem to be the BIONICLE veterans that were consulted as the new line was developed - it isn't meant to imply that they were the original team creating BIONICLE. I don't remember if Christoffer was on the original team, but Greg wasn't and several of the people that were aren't listed.

 

Christoffer Raundahl was definitely on the Bionicle team from the very start (he designed the original Tahu and Kopaka sets, and even before that his name appears on the patents for some Slizer/Throwbots parts). But he wasn't the design manager at that time — that was a later promotion.

Greg was a member of the story team from at least 2001 onward since he was the writer of the comics. But he wasn't involved in the earliest stages of the theme's planning like Christian Faber, Martin Andersen, Bob Thompson, Alastair Swinnerton, or Jan Kjær.

All the jokes you mentioned from G1 are better than Kopaka making an element pun.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. The "tickle spinner" line is the only one of those G1 jokes I mentioned that was funny to me at all, and even it pales in comparison to Taipu's obliviousness in 2001 or Pohatu getting magnetized to a bunch of goats in 2003, let alone any of the G2 jokes I mentioned. I just generally prefer more lighthearted humor to the sarcastic one-liners and out-of-place pop culture references that characterized so many of the "jokes" in the later years of G1.

 

Is it just me, or is it really creepy that the Friends characters have exactly the same face? I mean, there's definitely a precedent for that in girl shows ala Bratz etc, but the increased realism and detail is weirding me out.

I wouldn't be surprised if more people noticed that. Come to think of it, same face syndrome shows up everywhere, last time I saw that happen was in one of the Batman Arkham games where all the female characters such as Harley Quinn, Catwoman & Poison Ivy looked identical. 

 

From what I've seen in the LEGO Friends cartoon (I've only watched the first TV special from 2012) it tends to affect a lot of the male characters as well. Though for cartoons in general it tends to be more of a problem with female characters, perhaps because character designers are preoccupied with making female characters conventionally "pretty". Some cartoons these days like Steven Universe (which I just started watching yesterday, yay!) are starting to get better about recognizing and correcting for this rather than just taking for granted that female characters should resemble some strict archetypical "baseline" while male characters' features can be exaggerated for comic effect.

I suppose in cases like LEGO Friends, My Little Pony Equestria Girls, Bratz, Monster High, etc. it's partly a consequence of the characters being based on toys that use a common face sculpt. In the LEGO Ninjago cartoon and sets, making a character's face look different is as simple as adding a different 2D decoration to give the character wrinkles, more defined cheekbones, a uniquely-shaped smile, etc. Changing the facial features in the LEGO Friends TV specials would more likely mean actually sculpting the face differently, which would be more costly and time-consuming, and for the main characters it could be construed as "off-model". So the features that do vary tend to be simpler features like eyelashes, makeup, and freckles rather than changes to the actual shape of the face. It's definitely still something I hope they could improve on with a larger budget.

Media reach aside, the quality of the animations/movies/commercials is what matters. So far we've been getting five second cheap-as-dirt fights with mildly good animation (with several flaws), corny jokes to emphasize toddler-type humor, and little to no character development. And these animations haven't inspired me to buy the sets at all.

 

Plus if they intend to move through a series this fast, how can they have a reasonable storyline? I'm not saying Hero Factory was good; it was terrible. But much more effort was put into it than what they have now.

Which of the humor do you consider "toddler-type"? I can't help feeling that you don't genuinely know a lot of toddlers.

From what I've seen in this and other communities I've been in, the humor in the webisodes has been popular with a lot of people, even adults. Like Onua nearly admitting to his part in the damage of the City of the Mask Makers and Lewa shushing him, or Lewa's joke about Onua knowing how to "grab" attention, or Kopaka's "I didn't slip" and "I hate fire". Not only are these all quality jokes, but they help establish the personalities of the characters in question: Onua being humble and forthright, Kopaka being prideful to a fault, and Lewa being an easygoing jokester. A lot of these examples also have a memetic quality that makes them more fun on a social level.

And to be honest, I'd consider all those examples a lot funnier than "Alright, who fired the tickle spinner?" from Web of Shadows, the Jaws reference from "Federation of Fear", or the Wizard of Oz reference in "Brothers in Arms".

I agree with Fishers here, it's like the Lego group isn't even trying.

Not sure if you did or didn't read my previous post about LEGO basing their marketing efforts on precedent. But let me bring something else up. Considering that the Hero Factory TV series got fewer and fewer episodes each year (4 in 2010, 3 in 2011, 2 in 2012, one in 2013, and nothing but a free online episode in 2014)... has it occurred to you that maybe the Hero Factory TV episodes weren't that successful? And thus, that LEGO might rather try something new (a series of shareable mini-webisodes) than repeat a mediocre marketing tactic?

Plus, unlike Ninjago, I certainly don't remember reading about the Hero Factory TV series setting any viewership records. So I can't imagine a lot of TV networks would have been champing at the bit to get the broadcast rights for a theme whose immediate predecessor performed so poorly. LEGO isn't going to pour a lot of money into a series that nobody except them wants to broadcast. Now that Netflix has picked Bionicle up for a four-episode series it goes without saying that it finally merits a bigger media investment.

 

 

Hope this will be good. Maybe? Maybe.

Hadn't LEGO said early-on that they weren't going to make a show based on Bionicle, though? Or perhaps it's just my imagination.

That was years ago - times change. TV today is something LEGO is already closely familiar with, and experimenting more and more with all the time. Back then, it was something they had hardly even begun to touch.

 

No, no, I was meaning sometime during the release/announcement of G2. Maybe I was wrong.

Well, I think the specific question was about whether Bionicle would get a TV series like Ninjago or Hero Factory, so a Netflix series (which occupies a weird grey area between a TV series and a web series) wouldn't entirely qualify. Plus, even if the question had been worded more broadly, I don't think they'd have been at liberty to disclose anything about their 2016 media plans at that time.

 

Literally the only reason Bionicle G1 ever felt any more consistent than Ninjago is because we were in constant dialogue with one of the writers, giving him freedom to make up whatever excuses he wanted for the many, MANY contradictions that sprung up over the years. 

I disagree here. Literally the only reason people actually noticed said "contradictions" is that they had to incorporate every single piece of media into a coherent canon so they could wave the authority of said canon around in a discussion.

 

The contradictions are mostly due to each piece of media telling a different story because of lack of communication and marketing prerogatives, not due to one form of media contradicting itself. For example, the book version of the story made sense, the movie version of the story made sense, the comic book version kinda made sense...but they all contradict each other.

 

I simply selected the version I liked the best and moved on, which is what most sensible people do. The fact that Greg was answering questions meant that he had to have definitive answers in spite of the media contradictions, which is what bred this idea that he was responsible for coherency. Frankly, throwing all the Bionicle media together and trying to resolve all the contradictions always made less sense to me than simply accepting that stories can be told differently and have different versions of themselves.

 

As for Ninjago, there are contradictions within the TV show itself, from my understanding...mostly I think it has to do with some characters remembering history incorrectly and trying to hide stuff, and a really weird time-travel episode that Bionicle thankfully avoided. 

Bionicle never had a time-travel episode, it's true. But that doesn't mean that its dealings with time didn't create contradictions or that those contradictions were always between different types of media. In Time Trap, Krakua sends a message to Vakama from the future, telling him that he will one day bear the burden of sending six heroes on a perilous quest (directly alluding to the Matoran who will become the Toa Inika). And yet Vakama never sent those Matoran on their quest. Nokama did! And this wasn't years apart, or in two different types of story media, or offhand lines that weren't very important in the first place. These were major moments in two books by the same author that came out one after the other!

I believe Greg explained this by saying Vakama not stopping those Matoran was tantamount to sending them himself. Which is an unbelievably flimsy explanation — after all, in the next book, when Dume announces to the Turaga that one of them had betrayed the others' trust by revealing to the Matoran where the Toa had gone and why, Vakama expresses disbelief that Jaller would ever be so reckless as to leave Metru Nui and bring other Matoran with him. It hadn't even occurred to Vakama that Jaller leaving was a risk, so there's no way it would have occurred to him to stop them.

I don't care how kiddy-y this will be. I don't care if they shove life lessons and manners in your face and ruin the characters. I am watching this.

Sticking some life lessons in could actually be an improvement, if it's handled well. Many of the lessons about unity in Bionicle (whether in G1 or G2) can feel pretty shallow, as if "unity" is merely about strength in numbers — so many conflicts over the years have been resolved with hardly any strategy beyond "let's all do the same thing to the same target at the same time". They're rarely explored from the perspective of how different people are good at different things, and those differences make them a stronger team. That sort of message about appreciating one another's differences can be a very valuable lesson for kids and adults alike, and can also result in some much more interesting stories since each character will get their own individual moment to shine, instead of all their biggest achievements being moments where they work together in perfect unison.

Ninjago got a TV show and now it is so successful that LEGO talk about it "becoming an evergreen theme".

Is it too much to hope for that BIONICLE could do the same?

 

Both themes have the elemental heroes thing going on (right down to the "Master of Water" being the only female in both teams), so there are similar pull factors. But I worry that Ninjago succeeds because its storyline resists gaining depth (the show's writers don't seem to care about viewers having watched prior episodes, seeing how much core mechanics like the elements have been retconned since the beginning), whereas BIONICLE G1 succeeded precisely because of its detailed and consistent narrative...

Literally the only reason Bionicle G1 ever felt any more consistent than Ninjago is because we were in constant dialogue with one of the writers, giving him freedom to make up whatever excuses he wanted for the many, MANY contradictions that sprung up over the years. Bionicle G1 was just as bad about characters and powers and plot devices randomly dropping out of the story just because they no longer tied in with the current sets, entire scenes being scrubbed from the canon, the story explicitly contradicting itself and having to explain one version of events as a lie or a mistake or a dream, etc.

Plus, instead of having one consistent form for the canon story with other media as supplementary material, the "canon" events of the G1 Bionicle story jumped around from web games to comics to web videos to books to movies to online serials to web-exclusive short stories with reckless abandon, so while keeping up with the current story was difficult but manageable, catching up with the story after the fact was a chore — even with the help of fan-created resources like BS01. Catching up with the LEGO Ninjago storyline mostly just means binge-watching the TV series, making it much more accessible to new fans.

I don't for a minute expect G2 Bionicle to become as successful as Ninjago, but I also don't for a minute think that kind of growth would be a bad thing for the theme in terms of its quality and consistency of storytelling.

I don't know which is worse: That we have Simpsons LEGO or there are Angry Bird LEGO coming.

Depends. Are you bothered by Simpsons because you think it isn't kid-appropriate (in which case it's easily worse, since there's nothing particularly "adult" about Angry Birds), or do you just think it's your call what people should or shouldn't enjoy?

I'm not an Angry Birds fan myself, but I know the game and I know plenty of fans of the game. It wasn't any kind of fluke that it became so popular! Its appeal is based around a distinctive physics-based gameplay mechanic with arcade-like simplicity, plus charming and colorful character designs. Plus, from what I've seen, it's a series that hasn't been afraid to innovate in subsequent installments, like Angry Birds Space which added non-linear gravity into the equation.

Whether the LEGO theme succeeds will probably depend heavily on whether the movie succeeds. I don't see any particular reason to assume it won't. The trailer seemed pretty cute and funny to me.

Finally got around to watching Horse People 3: Sports People today and generally enjoyed it. Probably not as good as Rainbow Rocks (which had more songs, and I think better ones on average). Still, a very good movie! I look forward to getting the Blu-Ray and seeing what scenes got cut in the American broadcast.

I thought by now this fad was dead.

That's probably what some AFOLs were saying about Bionicle ten years ago!

So I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but the second chapter book got a cover on Amazon. It's just the Vizuna boxart.

 

TAK

That's been up for a while. But it says "For Solicitation Only". That and the lack of a finalized title on the cover tells us it's preliminary.

They might keep the same artwork for the final cover or they might not. Impossible to tell at this point.

I haven't read it, as previously stated, but how does TLR as a novelization do when compared to the movie? Is it the same? Is it better? Also, would it be worth reading all of 2009's (non-toddler) books?

IMO, the young readers books in 2008 and 2009 were excellent and definitely worth reading at least once, if only for the illustrations! Original illustrations (i.e. not just stock art) are something I always appreciate. Given their age range, these stories also managed to avoid the "grimdark" tone that bothered people about many of the later books and serials.

The TLR novelization was probably the least entertaining Bionicle movie novelization for me. It wasn't outright bad, but I don't remember it adding a lot, whereas the novelizations of the second and third movies included both scenes that got cut from the movies themselves and some impressive internal monologue.

Overall, I think Greg Farshtey's work was fairly good, for what it was. He's a more versatile author than a lot of people who only know him for his Bionicle and Hero Factory work give him credit for. I definitely recommend his Ninjago chapter books/handbooks and Legends of Chima storybooks. His Ninjago graphic novels can be a bit more iffy story-wise (they generally don't fit neatly into the canon), but I still think they're worth a read. And let's not forget how much great work he did for the Bionicle comics from the very beginning.

His dialogue with the fan community also deserves great respect. Even if at times it could result in storytelling foibles (like canonizing random details that aren't so much as alluded to in the actual media, or providing an easy avenue for retcons when he carelessly contradicted himself), the fact that he made himself so available to an incredibly demanding, sometimes nigh-unpleasable fanbase really went above and beyond what a lot of writers would be willing to do. The fact that so many fans (including myself) are used to referring to him by his first name speaks to how close he was with us.

Ehhh...  On one hand I applaud the effort made to make a LEGO game with the toy-based system that's made Skylanders and Disney Infinity hits.

 

But on the other... I am REALLY unsure as to how/why Tt keeps making LEGO games the way they do.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but it really seems like they're rehashing the same formula over and over again.  Then again, I haven't played many of the newer games, so I have no idea.

Well, the basic formula has served them quite well. At the same time, they HAVE innovated on that formula in a number of ways. LEGO CIty Undercover opted for an open-world, GTA-style game design and introduced a lot of gameplay mechanics based on the Wii U gamepad (since it was exclusive to that system). LEGO Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin introduced a Spinjitzu mechanic that lets you defeat enemies and solve puzzles, as well as "scrap builds" where you collect segments of a model throughout a level and then assemble them. And now LEGO Dimensions is introducing a number of game mechanics based around the Toy Pad itself, like the ability to warp your character to different positions on the map, change their size, or grant them different elemental powers.

My family hasn't gotten a lot of the more conventional licensed games so I can't really tell you what any of those might do to break away from the typical gameplay patterns of LEGO games, but I'm sure most of them have their own share of new gameplay mechanics to mix things up.

 

 

I mean, what sort of play features did the reviewer expect it to have? It's a car. You can put a minifigure in it and drive it around. I think that's pretty much the extent of what a set like this can be expected to do.

How about wheels that turn or opening doors, trunk, or hood? Maybe instead of the cones and cheese slopes we could have gotten some tools and/or a mechanic to be a pit crew. There's plenty that could have been done in theory. Was any of that feasible at the price point while still trying to stay accurate to the shape of the car? We don't really know.

 

I honestly thought for a second that the wheels were fixed in place and couldn't roll, only to realize later that you were referring to a lack of a steering mechanism. 

 

As for price point, I'd compare this one, which is $13 and doesn't have any functions like that either. The difference in price point of $2 could be accounted for in more parts alone, making me wonder about how much Lego actually has to pay for their license. 

Yeah, the smallest set I know of that has working steering is 31030 Red Go-Kart from this year's Creator range. It is lighter, cheaper, and has fewer pieces than this set, but already that makes its wheelbase is much larger (10 studs wide instead of 7), and as a go-kart it doesn't have to fully enclose the steering mechanism the way a supercar would. Trunk/hood features would have perhaps been more feasible, although they might have reduced the authenticity of the shape.

I was already a dedicated LEGO fan by the time Bionicle came out and had quite a few Technic sets, including the Throwbots and RoboRiders sets. My first glimpse at Bionicle was in LEGO mini-catalogs that came in some of the 2001 LEGO sets (the Technic mini-catalog included a story brief, while the System mini-catalog just included the names and pictures of the six Toa).

At the time I was quite weirded out by the designs. The specialized masks, the focal point of the designs, were a whole lot different from the more generic faceplates I was used to from the Throwbots and Roboriders. And likewise the new weapons were a lot more specialized in appearance than the repurposed System tools of those earlier sets. It was not what I was used to LEGO being like.

However, when I got my March/April 2001 issue of LEGO Mania Magazine, with a special offer for the Tahu and Vakama sets in the back, I took the plunge and ordered those sets. And after that I was hooked!

Which season of LEGO Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu do you think had the best premiere, and which do you think had the best finale?

Personally, I feel like my favorite season premiere was probably "The Invitation" from Season 4, and my favorite season finale is still "Day of the Great Devourer" from Season 1.

EDIT: Added a poll.

It is an interesting thing to think about, that's for sure. For instance, if there had been just four Toa, three-Toa fusions like the Toa Kaita would not have been possible. So what kind of combination models might there have been? A pair of two-Toa fusions? A single four-Toa fusion? Maybe even both (like the McToran sets that could form both a Matoran Kaita and a Matoran Nui)?

Better character development for the Toa might have been a possibility if they didn't have to compete so much for screen time. But at the same time, that depends not just on the amount of characters but the amount of media they have to split between them. And for all we know, if there had been fewer sets, LEGO might have also dedicated less media to promoting them. Other LEGO themes with four-character teams have been System themes, which means they generally do not have a 1:1 relationship between the number of characters and the number of sets. But since Bionicle is a constraction theme, fewer characters per wave would probably have meant fewer sets per wave.

Also, needless to say, as long as one of the tribes was still female, it would have probably meant better gender ratios for the theme as a whole. On the other hand, given that the reason for those poor gender ratios is toy industry concerns that female action figures won't sell as well as male ones, LEGO might have been more reluctant to include a female Toa in a team of just four heroes. Other themes that began with four-character teams (Knights Kingdom, Exo-Force, Ninjago) have only included girls or women as secondary characters, if at all. In Ninjago specifically, Nya didn't become an actual ninja until this year, at which point the ninja WERE a team of six.

I'm hoping for an Exo-Force reboot after Ninjago fades away.

As much as I loved Exo-Force, I think you'll be waiting a long time if that's your condition for when an Exo-Force reboot would be possible. As of this year, Ninjago is an evergreen theme like LEGO City, and according to the LEGO Group's employee magazine their plans for it extend at least ten years from now.