Pewku thread. Bionicle focused so hard on super-powered heroes, villains and their millennia-spanning cosmic mysteries, it's easy to forget that one of the main heroes had a giant cute pet crab who behaved like a dog, complete with licking tongue and wiggling tail, and was ridden like a horse.

A Godzilla.

Thread on Mangaia, the Makuta's lair in Bionicle: Mask of Light. The underground realm below the island Mata Nui was always meant to show that there had been more to this setting than previously thought. Different media portrayed it as either technological or biological.

A thread on how Bionicle: Mask of Light handles Onua's character. In short, he's probably the one the movie gets the most wrong, portraying the opposite of what he's supposed to be like. I can't reconcile him as the same character from the source material.

The two Toa in Mask of Light I feel strayed the farthest from their established characterization are Lewa and Onua. This thread is for Lewa, whom the directors described as a cross between a Native American and a hippie. Basically, stereotypical nature lover and devotee of unity.

Kopaka, described by Mask of Light's writers as a mix between Clint Eastwood and Batman, receives a special role as the most effective Toa, making the most of his short scenes. He halts multiple Rahkshi, stops and helps purge Tahu of poison, even takes the time to save Pohatu and Onua off-screen.

A thread on how Bionicle: Mask of Light handled the Toa's personalities. Expect some subjective remarks that you may disagree with. To me, the film's most accurately adapted Toa are Tahu and Pohatu. I can imagine both of them being the same characters from the comics and books.

Nods to other films in Bionicle: Mask of Light. Directors Terry Shakespeare and David Molina learned animation by working on Don Bluth films like The Secret of NIMH, which they reference in the scene where Makuta with his glowing eyes threatens Takua.

Enough of Bionicle for a moment, time for some REAL Lego. This speed boat is important for me because this is the first Lego set I have memories of seeing, way back in kindergarten. My second Lego-related memory is my Mom telling me it's too expensive and that we can't buy such things.

One criticism I've seen once or twice regarding the films' handling of the Turaga is that they took the "elder" part of their role literally and made them old and weak, despite the concept of aging never being well defined in Bionicle. This idea evolved a lot during production.

Apart from lacking heartlights, the Turaga chests in Mask of Light are notable for another reason. Their chest armor carries elements of their respective masks, like Vakama's segmented "beard" motif. Jaller and Takua also share this design cue, as they're from the same tribe.

On the subject of heartlights, I like the thematic implication that Makuta's standard body lacks one, as he is "heartless" and light is his weakness. Once he merges with Takanuva whose light "cleanses" Makuta of shadow and corruption, their combined form gains a heartlight.

I wasn't sure if it was worth doing a thread on the Bionicle movies' Turaga designs. It's plainly obvious and very well known among fans that their bodies were based on the Bohrok Va toys rather than the actual Turaga toys. But there are other details worth taking a look at.

A thread for some fun oddities about Mask of Light's Kolhii scene. For example, Macku keeps disappearing from her goal. No wonder Hewkii scores so many points. Now, she does like to sneak away to be with him, but Hewkii is right there on the playing field in front of her the whole time.

The Kolhii shields are styled after Bohrok shields, mostly the Pahrak's Stone Shield and the Nuhvok's Earth Shield, but each has its own elemental motif. It's a fun way to incorporate familiar Bionicle details into the movie's world.

One persistent oversight in Mask of Light is how the Kolhii sticks of the fire and stone element characters are switched. Ta-Matoran have a tan/yellow marking on their sticks and Po-Matoran have a red marking. Should be the other way around.

The exchange about Takua's "new move" shows some rough but clever editing. Takua's optimistic "Of course. It's what the audience came for!" line is dubbed over a clip where he actually has a sad expression and isn't moving his mouth.

Mask of Light gives us a glimpse inside its Matoran CG models as Jaller clips into the camera on his way to the Kolhii stadium. Very insightful for aspiring 3D model makers.

Mask of Light's Kolhii tournament scene has many continuity inconsistencies. Some were deliberately done to make the scene flow better. Others are just odd. Like Turaga Onewa and Nokama standing behind the wrong elemental banners. Onewa is at the blue water banner, Nokama is at the tan stone one.

I'd like to make a detailed thread on Kopaka's movie design too, but there's not a lot to say. He looks great. He has proper symmetrical arms unlike his toy, his armor is more white but he has many grey bits that preserve his original colors, and his glowing eye-scope lens is a nice touch.

One of Mask of Light's strangest design choices was giving Lewa retractable foot claws despite having none on his toy, while Pohatu never gets to show off his own foot extensions. This seems like an arbitrary change, since Lewa doesn't use his claws for climbing in the film.

I've tried to think of justifications to explain Gali's color changes in Mask of Light in my previous thread, but what about Tahu? Why is he so darn red and where is the bright orange from his Lego toy? I can think of a few reasons for the change, detailed below.

Lika Pohatu, Gali's design in Mask of Light also cleverly incorporates traits of an upside down Toa torso for broader hips and a thinner chest. Early concept art made this very obvious, the axle-hole on the belly even looked like a navel. The final design simplified the details.

Compared to Pohatu, Onua's film version is less defensible. Possibly the worst-portrayed character in Mask of Light, nearly everything is off: design, personality, behavior, powers, lack of tool use. But this thread is about his design, so I'll save most of the other complaints for later.

After going over general character designs and masks from the Creative Capers Bionicle films, time to look at the Toa in specific. Starting with the elephants in the room: non-hunchback Pohatu and Onua. Of all the ways these two were mishandled, their design is the most apparent.

One overarching aspect of the first 3 Bionicle films is their semi-disregard of filler material. Each film went into production nearly two years before release, so stories that take place before the films were actually written during production and could thus not be incorporated.

Still on the topic of masks in Mask of Light, despite much of the film revolving around one, it doesn't explain how masks work, why characters wear them, and the mask-swapping feature from the toys isn't shown at all. Presumably, viewers were expected to have some base knowledge.

Continuing this thread, treating the characters' masks as their faces had some awkward effects on both the films' visuals and writing. For example, rather than switching masks like in other media, characters just put masks on top of masks, which is weird if you think about it.

Thread #1 on the faces in the Creative Capers Bionicle films, or rather their absence. Many proposals were sketched out for how unmasked Matoran/Toa/Turaga could look and work in movie form. And in the end, the filmmakers decided to simply not bother with faces at all.

Liquids in Mask of Light were done with tricks and only minimal simulations because the filmmakers didn't have the tech and time to properly calculate and render fluids in each shot. You can see the distortion effect on the lava "lift up" the lava for a few frames in this shot.

Mask of Light showcases some of the Toa's physical prowess, adapting the older promotional images and videos into movie form, though Pohatu and Onua sadly don't get to do much. When it comes to showing their abilities, they are among the film's worst-treated characters.

The Mask of Light's inscription has long been debated by fans because the third word is hard to make out. TECHNIC ORGANIC APPS(?) ONE DESTINY. The initials of the first three words give us Toa. A reference to the old franchise tagline "Six Heroes, One Destiny".

Makuta thread #4. The 2nd film, Legends of Metru Nui, changed him further. Now, ideology informed his actions. Makuta's past as a hero who turned villainous to enforce his idea of order was more clearly referenced in an exchange that got slightly muddled in rewrites.

Makuta thread #3. One of the best known Bionicle factoids is that Christian Faber's benign but inoperable brain tumor inspired the franchise's base concept back in the late 80s. Hence the title Biological Chronicle, a story about the biological workings of a giant space robot.

Makuta thread #2. He was for a time proposed as Mata Nui's destructive side. He destroyed not out of evil, but to ensure that more creation can take place. It was an analogy of playing with Lego sets. Mata Nui builds, Makuta takes apart. Neither are evil, both serve each other.

Makuta thread #1. He deserves an expansive discussion because he reflects Bionicle's different development phases. The version seen in the movies is not his original conception, nor the final one. It's a middle-point that hints at rich unrealized potential.

This thread is mostly just admiring the pretty art direction of Mask of Light, well illustrated by the lava cave scene. Never mind the multitude of CGI errors and kinda stilted animation, Creative Capers deserve praise for daring to be this ambitious with the low, early 2000s tech they worked with.

I know consistency should be expected rather than praised. But this was such a foreign concept for Bionicle a lot of times, often contradicting itself on basic things, that I applaud the film for sticking close to Ta-Koro's design from MNOG, a fortified village in a lava lake.

Takua's movie portrayal encapsulates how the Creative Capers production team wanted to tell these films. There has to be an arc, characters must learn, change and mature as people. Their way of doing this was to reduce Takua to an irresponsible goof in order to build him back up.

The epic opening being followed by Jaller yelling "TAKUA!" over and over became one of Bionicle's biggest memes. Many fans point to Jaller's overly youthful "surfer dude" voice as an unfitting casting choice. Film Jaller is more of a dork than the military leader from MNOG.

Bionicle: Mask of Light had 4 writers on paper. But Alastair Swinnerton's original script was rejected and only some unspecified ideas from it made it into the film. Greg Weisman was fired from the film early on (for yawning at a meeting, supposedly) and didn't contribute much, if anything.

Each movie handles the Makuta stone differently. Legends of Metru Nui first gives it a blue tint to represent Makuta's original benevolent nature before it turns red. It stands opposite the much brighter Mata Nui stone as a fellow guardian, with the Toa stones in the middle.

The visual decisions of Mask of Light's introduction scene also merit a look. In canon, legends were told by the Turaga in the Amaja-Nui sandpit, part of the Kini-Nui temple complex. But we see the Amaja-Nui in later scenes and it looks different from the pit in the intro.

Mask of Light's intro scene also establishes tone. Much of Bionicle's initial media was atmospheric, slow, eerie. The original versions of the Legend of Mata Nui scene were very minimalistic, with monotone or no narration. The movie made it emotional, energetic, frantic and epic.

The key to Bionicle's presentation is that the audience only knows as much about the story and world as the focal characters do. The legend shown in the film's introduction is being told with stones by Turaga Vakama both to us and to his in-universe audience, the Matoran and Toa.

The opening scene of Bionicle: Mask of Light, which tells the Legend of Mata Nui using stone symbols, is already rich in discussion material. According to the directors, this was a last-minute addition to the film. It's quick and doesn't burden the audience with too much jargon.

Bionicle was handled by its creators as a "film franchise without a film". The moody and cinematic tone, marketing, art, music, the intricate world and ambitiously epic story were meant to make it feel like a grand experience, not a toy line. In its 3rd year, it got a film.

I always wondered when and why it was decided that Bionicle characters should be bio-mechanical cyborgs rather than fully mechanical robots. Early toys had no fleshy bits and media prior to the Miramax movies followed the toy designs. Finally, the films gave them visible muscles.

This thread is about mask designs in Bionicle: Mask of Light. Expressive masks are a contentious topic for fans but they showcase interesting design decisions, like Turaga Vakama's mega-eyebrows that go along with his metal beard.

Franchise co-creator Bob Thompson wanted each piece of Bionicle media to be instantly recognizable. The sets, ads, comics, online content, games and the movie were all meant to have different art styles. Designs were open to interpretation, as shown in internal documents. Set accuracy wasn't a rule.