The Turaga physically appear for the first time here during the Kolhii match, so I'll take the time now to explain what they are. The Matoran are regular folks, the Toa are heroic warriors, and the Turaga are sages. There are six, and one is the leader of each village. They exist mainly to be generically wise and to explain the year's storyline, but get some more attention in Bionicle 2. ~foreshadowing~
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| From left to right, Onewa of Po-Koro (not to be confused with Onua, Toa of Earth), Vakama of Ta-Koro, and Nokama of Ga-Koro. |
Vakama is the one who narrated the prologue, and he also makes a short speech here:
"We are thankful to the Great Spirit for his gift of six guardians, who represent the elements: our mighty Toa. We now enjoy peace and prosperity, and the opportunity to build...as we have, with our new Kolhii field!"I have to admit, watching this movie once again for this deep dive, I'm occasionally impressed by its....competence. While he makes his speech, some other things are happening.
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| Jaller places the mask in his bag and grabs his Kolhii staff. |
The speech is important (though forced) exposition, so the audience's focus should be on it, not what Jaller is doing. Because of this, his face is off-camera. There is a second Kolhii staff next to his so you know Takua grabs his own without having to see it.
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| Ta-Koro is very hazy, since it's in a volcanic area and there's all sorts of fumes and stuff, which gives the island a mysterious air. But it also means I can't really tell what the place looks like, and therefore what it feels like. |
Maybe it's just me, but I feel like a typical movie would cut back and forth between the stadium and Jaller and Takua to raise the tension of "ooh is
The camera does a thing where it sort of circles around the path to the stadium and passes beneath it rather than showing you the speech being made. Don't you think a Hollywood movie would just be cutting between shots of the audience and Morgan Freeman's face? Like I said, maybe it's just me.
This sort of spiral isn't unheard of, but it's still fairly dynamic and acrobatic. While I don't think the part where it passes beneath the path has any benefit, the rest gives a sense of distance and scale in a unique way.
Also, despite the fact that Vakama outright says, "Things sure are going super-great right now!" I suspect the filmmakers didn't realize (and maybe this is my tendency to see the least in people) that what they were doing here was, in a single brushstroke, showing the audience how super-great things are going. No scenes of Takua doing Regular Life Things and then going home to his single mother to have a stilted conversation about his Absent Father - just a sentence, a little swooshy camera thing, and an upswell of strings.
Now, cinematically speaking it's actually not well done. The buildup to and reveal of the stadium is four shots when it really ought to be One Continuous Shot, and the editing doesn't quite line up with either the speech or the music. There are also no upward-facing shots of the stadium to make the audience feel the scale of it, since it's something very grand and special to the Matoran.
On the subject of the speech, the first sentence is really bald exposition. It explains what the Toa are, but that would have been natural back in the prologue, whereas here it's awkward. That said, it's not unusual for a speaker making an address to state things their audience already knows, particularly in this case where it's semi-religious and thus semi-ritualistic. At least he doesn't say, "As you know, the Great Spirit gave us the gift of six guardians..."
Handy Writing Tip: If you're going to have one character tell another something they already know, for the love of all that is good in this world do not have them say, "As you know". If reading bald exposition is like, say, eating burned food, then putting "As you know," in front of it is like your waiter dropping a lit match on the food while staring you in the eye.
By the way, we've now crossed the 7:30 mark. Just 4500 words in and we're already over 10% of the way through the movie! And yet I'm probably still less verbose than Fred Clark examining Left Behind or Ana Mardoll deconstructing the Chronicles of Narnia.
Vakama introduces/expositions the Toa who will be joining us this evening, but again this is a "My next guest is a..." situation, so while it's very direct there's nothing wrong with it. Gee, I keep saying pretty positive things about this movie. I'm sure that will continue.
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| "Toa Tahu, the Red Ranger!" |
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| "The chick: Toa Gali!" |
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| "And the brown one: Toa Pohatu." |
Gali is blue. Can you guess what her element is? Pohatu is brown. Can you guess what his element is?
As a bit of trivia, every year the stone/brown sets (oops i gave away the answer) were the worst sellers, compared to the other five elements/colors, because brown is a dull color people don't like. So in 2006 they started experimenting with new colors, settling on yellow in 2007.
As each Toa is introduced, the Matoran of their village cheer. Somehow, there's something uniquely strange about each crowd.
The Ta-Matoran are...yellow? Why aren't they red? That makes it very hard to tell them apart from the...
...Po-Matoran, who have Texas accents because they're from a desert. Like you d--- Wait a minute.
No, it couldn't be. It couldn't possibly be. It couldn't possibly...
It is. The Po-Matoran crowd is identical to the Ta-Matoran one. Same masks, same animations. They just mirrored it. Or rather, the Po-Matoran crowd was made first, and then they mirrored it for the Ta-Matoran one. But forgot to recolor them.
And nobody noticed.
How??????
Oh. And in the shot of the Ga-Matoran one of them clearly shouts, "Go Ga-Matoran!" which is a dumb line. That's weird or something I guess.
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| The Toa Nuva's masks are unique, so in 2003 there were 12 different masks a Matoran could have, but all the background characters wear only five different types: Huna, Kakama, Komau, Rau, and Ruru. |
Incidentally, all Ga-Matoran are women. All Ta-Matoran, Po-Matoran, Le-Matoran, Ko-Matoran, and Onu-Matoran are men. That's fuckin' stupid.
Also they don't reproduce so really them having genders at all is weird. It is canonically established that new Matoran are in fact constructed. That is so intensely G-rated it actually goes back around to being creepy, but in 2009's storyline it kinda sorta becomes (as the kids call it) Fridge Brilliance. But mostly it's the first thing I said.
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| TAHU: "Pleasure to see you again, Gali." GALI: "Thank you, Tahu." |
Tahu and Gali immediately get snippy, apparently barely able to tolerate being near each other. This is where some of the movie's more pernicious problems start to show. The discovery of the Mask of Light is dumb and contrived and poorly-conceived and dumb, but that's plot stuff. Machinery. These are problems with the softer, creamier, gooier parts of storytelling.
Back in 2001 when Bionicle debuted, the Toa were designed with highly contrasting personalities so they could be a dysfunctional team and learn the Value Of Teamwork.
Tahu was a hotheaded fiery guy. Kopaka was an emotionless loner ice boy. Lewa was a dumbass. Gali was calm and a peacemaker and capable of basic rational thought. Onua was the same but talked less. Pohatu existed.
Standard fare. By the end of the story year they did indeed learn the VoT, and in 2002 got along like normal people do. In the first half 2003's storyline... Well, everything about that story semester (?) sucked. The Toa became the hideously-designed Toa Nuva, they were more powerful so their characters reset and they stopped working together, this power-up was immediately followed by them losing their powers, the antagonists were literal recolors of the ones from the previous year, and the ending was exceptionally contrived.
But at least we got to see the Mask of Time!
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| The Mask of Time was the first one LEGO designed. You can tell. |
Mask of Light has now reset their characters again. What happened before doesn't matter. These characters don't have histories, they just sprang into existence the moment the Miramax logo showed up on screen.
I understand why they did it. Because it's easy. Because otherwise they would have had to try. They would have had to, as SFDebris says, give a shit.
I don't mean they don't care about Bionicle - they actually seem pretty damn excited about it in the 'making of' feature, though of course they do. I mean they don't care about, aren't dedicated about, good storytelling. Or, if you prefer, they're bad at their jobs.
Don't believe me? Have you seen this movie!? The character designs are hideous! Of course they're bad at their jobs!
If you feel like I'm being too harsh on one little thing, well, there will be more.
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| POHATU: You two, still so ill at ease? Put your petty differences aside! Rejoice! |
The scriptwriter apparently did not know what the phrase "ill at ease" means. "Ill at ease" means "anxious", not "engaged in mutual dislike".
The voices for the Toa are a mixed bag. They actually bother me a lot less now than they did when I was a kid, since now I'm both more used to them and less invested. And trying to find the right voices for characters like these isn't trivial. But still.
Tahu and Gali both sound 20 or 30 years too old. In terms of JRPG classes, Tahu is the Hero (just a shitty one), but here he sounds more like the Hero's retired father, or maybe the local blacksmith. Gali is supposed to be the White Mage and sounds incredibly wrong in this scene, but better in subsequent ones where she acts more in-character - but still sounds too old. Pohatu's voice works fine. I would've gone with something a little less flamboyant, but it's a legitimate interpretation of the character.
As for the Toa who have yet to appear, Lewa's voice I disliked as a kid but am fairly happy with now, Kopaka's is basically perfect because Cold Serious Lone Warrior is scientifically proven to be the second-easiest character voice there is (the easiest is Sonic). and Onua's is an abomination before the Lord, but we'll get there when we get there.
I realize I've discussed the voices and characters of these secondary players but not our two leads. I intend to do that in a later post, probably Part 5.
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| GALI: I think my brother is afraid of having his fire extinguished. |
Brace yourselves, folks. Things are about to get a n i m a t e d.
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| "Sister, against me you'd be nothing but" |
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| "Steam." |
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| "Hot" |
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| "Air" |
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| "As they say." |
Ohhhhhh, it's a pun. I didn't get that when I was 10. Okay I guess that makes sense. Like, this sketched-out exchange is pretty weak because as far as I or anyone else can tell they're just being a little over-competitive about sports. And seeing as nobody's died yet, maybe not even "over".
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| ONEWA: "The Toa squabble like Gukko birds over a berry." |
They squabble like...Gukko birds? Over a...berry? Are you sure? Because Gukko birds are pretty big. I know, because you have one in your movie:
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| Maybe it's a watermelon. |
No wonder they had Takua say "Hold your Rahi". If they'd been more specific he'd probably have said something like "Hold your Kofo-Jaga".
After the Turaga say wise things amongst themselves about how the Toa have forgotten how they need each other and such, the Kolhii match starts to begin to initiate.
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| "We dedicate this Kolhii field to the Grrrreat Spirit, Mata Nui! And to the Three Virtues: Unity, Duty, Destiny!" |
They hammer on the Three Virtues really hard in this movie. I've been trying (not very hard, but still trying) to find out when the concept of the Three Virtues, and the symbol associated with them, was first introduced. It's definitely before this movie, but I'm very curious how much before. Oddly, BioSector01, the repository of all Bionicle knowledge, doesn't seem to record this kind of trivia. Regardless, it's never been harped on as much as it is in Mask of Light.
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| It's hard to see, but the symbol is also inscribed on the field itself. |
With the dedication done, the match has finished beginning to start to initiate and now moves on to starting to initiate. An announcer speaking in a reasonably generic announcer voice (and using a snail-shell-type thing as a megaphone) introduces the three teams. That might sound like a lot, but each village only has like three named characters apiece, so the teams are small.
For some reason, portions of the wall pull aside and these massive stone heads come sliding out, the mouths opening like a Metroid door, in what must be an incredibly elaborate mechanism. The teams walk out of the mouths of these statues, and they're also used as goals during the game. There's absolutely no sense of weight to their appearance in the animation or sound effects, and they come sliding out like they're on well-oiled wheels. And wheels don't exist in Bionicle!
These aren't just stone heads, by the way; they're unmasked Matoran heads. Now, people have made giant sculptures of human heads all time (these and similar statues in the MNOLG may have been inspired by the Easter Island megaliths). But they usually don't then walk out the open mouth like they're being vomited up by a giant. And these are maskless. Matoran die without their masks. The teams are walking out of the jaws of skulls. Bionicle is apparently extremely metal.
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| Not sure where the confetti is coming from either. |
Here are our contestants:
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| "From the desert village of Po-Koro, copper mask winners and undisputed Kolhii champions, Hewkii and Hafu!" |
Somebody in the crowd chants, "Kolhii! Kolhii! Kolhii!" The background dialogue in this movie is...questionable. Oh, the announcer mentioned copper masks. A copper mask is...it's a trophy. That's all. Nothing special about it.
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| "From the shining seas of Ga-Koro, the challengers, Hahli and Macku!" |
Wait if Po-Koro is the champion and Ga-Koro is the challenger, what does that make Ta-Koro? The host?
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| "And from Ta-Koro, your own Captain of the Guard, and the Chronicler himself, Jaller and Takua!" |
Yeah, Jaller is the captain of the Ta-Koro Guard. He really exudes that captainly aura, doesn't he? As for Takua, well...we already know why they call him the Chronicler.
As Takua walks to the center of the field, Jaller tells him to try his new move, to which Takua replies, "Of course. It's what the audience came for." I can't tell if he's joking or being conceited, or if said audience knows he's been working on a new move or not. As far as the writers are concerned, I think the answer is "All of the above".
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| "Play well." |
I think this is the first time it's established that Kolhii players always say "Play well," at the start of a match. This is a bit of an inside joke: LEGO's name comes from the Danish words "leg godt" which means "play well". Maybe it's just because I've heard it so many times, but I like it a lot. It's distinctive and recognizable, but not bizarre to a non-fan.
Okay, the game is about to begin. Time to place your bets! Who's gonna win? The champions, Po-Koro? The plucky heroes of Ta-Koro? Or the we-needed-three-teams, Ga-Koro?
You've got time to mull it over, because the Kolhii match commences...next time!
Yeah, I thought the match was going to be "a whole post" but it turns out I'm a long-winded motherfucker and this post is already over 2000 words long. So...two whole posts. Next time: Editing! Takua tries his new move! A character is assassinated! Look forward to it!
つづく
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