"BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn" - Talkback (Spoilers)

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easy24q

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BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn
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Release Date: September 15, 2009 (DIRECT TO DVD)
Cast: Michael Dorn as Mata Nui
Jim Cummings as Ackar
Marla Sokoloff as Kiina
David Leisure as Metus
James Arnold Taylor as Berix, Vastus
Mark Famiglietti as Gresh
Armin Shimerman as Raanu
Fred Tatasciore as Tuma
Jeff Glen Bennett as Strakk, Tarix
Dee Bradley Baker - Bone Hunters/Skrall/Vorox
Mark Baldo - Villagers and Village Leaders
Bonus Features:
Extended Ending "Metus' Revenge"
Deleted Scenes
"Bye Bye Babylon" Music Video by Cryoshell
Character Gallery.
TV spots​


Plot: Cast out of his own universe, his stature gone, Mata Nui fights to unite a devastated land and find the secret to reclaiming his own lost empire.
In this ever expanding universe of heroes and villains, Mata Nui, once a great and powerful ruler, awakens to find himself in a remote, decaying wasteland of scrap parts and burnished metals. A desert junkyard. Local villages scavenge for what remains, building shelters, survival gear and ultimately arenas where they can settle their disputes. Pitting the best gladiator in each village against one another, tribes can quickly end quarrels based on the outcome of the fight. Mata Nui, in search of how to get home, quickly finds himself in the middle of one of those battles.
 
And it's been released in the USA!

This film basically grabbed a portion of its potential and left the rest behind. First big problem: It's only one hour and 11 minutes long.
The stories seem to go by way too fast and there's not much room for character development.

The animation is mostly inferior to that of the previous films, which were produced by Miramax as opposed to Tinseltown Toons.
My biggest complaint about most designs being almost identical to the sets is it leaves no room for "movie-style" MOCs. Which is very disappointing.
Also, reusing the character designs for Raanu, Berix, Metus, and Tarduk just got annoying.

The voices were hit and miss.

Mata Nui: Awesome. Michael Dorn is a great voice actor.
Kiina: Almost every line of hers made me cringe. It's that bad.
Gresh: ..Meh.
Vastus: I couldn't hear enough of it to judge.
Tarix: Pretty Good.
Ackar: Close to what I wanted for him, so I thought it was great.
Strakk: Few lines, Russian accent kind of works.
Vorox: I liked it. Even though they had no actual lines.
Bone Hunters: The ONE line they had.. Pretty good.
Metus: I have to say, this is probably the 2nd best voice work in the film.
Berix: It's alright.. But if I'm looking away from the screen and only listening to the audio, I can't visualize Berix saying it. I see Johnny Test.
Raanu: I liked it.
Tuma: I didn't think it was as bad as others said.
Skrall: Gee, I dunno. No lines at all, unlike what was said. In fact, it's funny how Skrall is shown on the cover as if he's important at all to the story of the film. Ha.

This just did not feel like a movie. This felt like the first three episodes of a BIONICLE tv series.

I'll post a more in-depth review later on.

Oh, and the music in the credits = AWESOME
 
"This film basically grabbed a portion of its potential and left the rest behind."

Gotta agree with this. At its best, it reminded me of Beast Wars, which was a very, very good thing.

However, it constantly felt throughout the whole film that they were Holding Back on the real potential this had. The acting and battles were good for a start. We get a lot of fights with hits both elemental and physical that actually connect.

The bad points, as you mentioned, were that the charachter models looked almsot EXACTLY like the CGI models used in the commercials. having the charachters look exactly like the toys really reduced a lot of the believeability for the movie, and prevented me from feeling as much for the charachters as I otherwise would have.

About the Skrall, and Tuma, it's Mask of Light/ Legend of Metru Nui all over again. Developed, complex villains in the written story are reduced to one-note stereotypes in the movie.

Perhaps they dumbed Tuma down to better showcase the real villain of the movie, who I will not spoil here(Although the DVD Box does >_
 
Malum sort of had a cameo. The scarabax beetles (I think that's what they are) all formed into a giant figure that resembled him.

Gelu is apparently a retired Glatorian, which would explain his absence.
 
Yeah, I caught that cameo, although it wasn`t really him.

This one really had a good sense of place, about where it goes in the overall storyline, more than the other movie, IMO.

I noticed there were a few scene transitions taht looked like they held places for commercials, and I`d love to see this asan "Intor movie" to a bionicle TV series.

Mata Nui, IMO really made the movie for me. A refreshing Main Charachter whose type is rarely seen in animation as the lead.
 
The movie was all right, in some ways it was a step forward from the previous three movies and in some ways it was a step back.

I liked the overall look of the movie better than the original three though it did have a little less life to it in motion.

Tuma was probably the worst-developed villain I've ever seen. In fact, there was no development there at all, because he didn't even have any lines until he started fighting. It almost felt like he was shoehorned in there.

Still I think it's actually a good thing that this movie felt like the first chapter of a trilogy. As part of a planned trilogy it can tell a bigger overarching story rather than having three standalone movies like the first three. The short length is enough of a hindrance as it is.

There were some characters missing, but there was so little character development that they couldn't really have handled adding any characters to the main cast. The length was a real issue here.

Otherwise I found it all right, it did have less cheesy lines than the first three, though they weren't eradicated completely of course. Not a fan of the tired Click humor.
 
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