Bionicle: Mask of Light

Bionicle was a line of toys made by the Lego company during the early 2000s. Feeling like Lego’s attempt to copy Transformers with their metallic look and mouldable bodies, it’s no surprise they did surprisingly well with young kids, enough that they would grow their own sub-section against Legos other brands. Along with all the merchandise, the brand also had its own book series which in turn created its own world and mythos, and its surprise popularity mixed with this aforementioned popularity meant that even a movie was eventually created and released in 2003 and served as an adaptation to the latter half of the toy line’s 2003 narrative. The film is question was titled, Bionicle: Mask of Light. Set in the world of the Bionicles where bio-mechanical beings are tied to elemental-based tribes, a young chronicler named Takua (voiced by Jason Michas) is chosen by a prophetic mask of light to find the Seventh Toa, a being with a position of power above other Bionicles who are chosen as protectors of each of their respected realms. Along with a captain of the guard named Jaller (voiced by Andrew Francis) who has now become Takua’s herald, the two set out to find this seventh Toa as an evil being an Mukata (voiced by Lee Tockar) plots to unleash all evil on the world by releasing his brother, the true darkness of the world, to destroy the light god of the world, Mata Nui. The strangest part about this movie is not only that it came a decade earlier than The Lego Movie (meaning the offshoot brand of Lego got a movie before the ACTUAL brand did) but rather in a bizarre and even pleasant twist, it’s actually not too bad of a film all things considered. This movie is clearly meant for young kids who like the product and is just meant to sell toys and it has some typical issues that can spout from most kids’ movies, but as product-milking films go, it’s nowhere near as poor as it could have been, and the movie is surprisingly harmless and even slightly entertaining.

The story is strangely both too complicated and too simplistic at the same time, which also strangely enough works as both a pro and a con. There is surprisingly a lot of backstory involved with the production of this film, with the idea being green lit in 2001, getting animation studios Creative Capers Entertainment, Taiwanese studio, CGCG, 310 Studios and Hacienda Post to work on the film in pre and post production (the choices of Terry Shakespeare and David Molina as directors, along with Sue Shakespeare as a producer were picked from Creative Capers), Miramax was chosen as the distributed of the movie, and it featured several writing talents both within the Lego brand as well as professional Hollywood writers to create this story. This combo of high-scale and low-scale talent in the entertainment space makes sense with how the story is presented and flows. It seems to echo a similar vibe to that of Lord of the Rings; where this singular item holds the power to vanquish evil and two lower beings must transport the item across dangerous lands as the higher powers fight the evil overhead. The movie has a lot of complicated names, dramatic world building and grand-scale climatic battles that from an outsider’s perspective can be a bit much. This franchise has a backstory built into itself already from other sources, but the movie doesn’t do the best job displaying that clearly. For something this front-loaded in backstory, the initial set-up feels pretty formulaic; featuring expected cliches known within this kind of story and genre and it doesn’t really portray them in that much of a different light, it feels like it’s going a step further and a step back for a movie of this calibre. With that said, the mythos created does help this movie come off as less predictable than other pre-made storylines where it’s nothing but bad clichés, as while the names and titles can be complicated for kids, it feels like it has more effort and understanding than a simple cash-grab movie. This might come from the fact that two of the writers, Alastair Swinnerton and Martin Riber Andersen, helped co-create the brand of Bionicle (and by extension its universe and mythology) and two of the other screenwriters, Henry Gilroy and Greig Wiesman have been attached to franchise work with built-in mythologies previously like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Young Justice, The Spectacular Spider-Man and even Gargoyles, so they no doubt assisted in amplifying the unique attributes that came with this seemingly innocuous franchise. Even though it’s obviously made just to sell toys, it doesn’t feel very manipulative in regard to how it tells this story, as you can feel the passion put into it and that the talent involved are just showing off their sub-section of a brand than squeezing them in just to create a new toy (even though that element is still definitely there). The ending, however, is a complete mess; its weightless, the threat isn’t there, a lot of moments that used to mean something become pointless afterwards, and it rushes to a happy ending.

Most of the characters obviously take some designs from either pre-existing toys or ones that were specifically made after this movie was premiered in 2003, but the team put in a lot of effort to reconstruct their traditional CG designs used for commercials and adapt them to contain more expressive features to work better in a movie format. It’s hard to ignore the obvious aspect of trying to sell more merchandising with a brand like this, but it doesn’t feel like that with these character as most get something to do and have an identity to work off of. The designs of the characters can sometimes be a bit messy; while some can look alright and distinct, the miss-match of colors splattered over some of them can make them a bit distracting to look at. One of the serious detractors to this movie is the main character of Takua, who is very unlikable, bland, annoying, and not worthy of the main position of the movie. Not only is he stuck being the typical ”chosen-one” archetype that was already a pretty dated idea in stories at this point, but he does nothing but complain, lie, and cower his way out of almost every situation and somehow, he gets to be the hero by the end. The character of Jaller actually does a lot more things that work for a main character and honestly makes for a far better fit overall in the story, yet he’s thrown away for this annoying character. He does nothing of value, his voice is grating, he has no likeable personality traits, and he doesn’t do anything that makes him worthy other than the story wrote him to be, it’s a serious issue. With that said, some of the side characters are pretty likeable. The other Toa’s of this world are all pretty cool; each with their own color schemes, element to control and even distinct identities that comes from some pretty reconcilable talent like Scott McNeil, Dale Wilson, Kathleen Barr, Trevor Davall and Michael Dobson, they all have some good moments. The villain, while sounding pretty cool thanks to Lee Tockar’s voice acting, doesn’t really have any build up or presence to him, he just seems to be there so they can fight something.

When looking at it today, the animation would not be something that people would feel is up to standard, but for early 2000s CGI technology on a product like this, it’s perfectly fine. It’s not as fake-looking and dough-like as other properties at the time, it occasionally had a nice shine to it and the colors themselves look okay and visually creative considering the kind of world they inhabit. It’s not something that looks movie worthy and especially not for cinemas, but rather looks like a higher budget CG TV show at the time, where these kind of Lego designs could thrive a lot better in 3 dimensions than 2 dimensions. Each character design can look like a knock-off from other brands with similar transformable designs (like the Transformers themselves), but the actual structure and look of the models and character do work well in the Lego style, so it makes sense how they would work for them. Looking at the character’s faces and mask-like structure, it means that sometimes the expressions on the character are a bit hard to see and understand, and seeing a character express is how you get an emotional connection, but the eyes still manage to emote well enough that it works fine. The music composed by Nathan Furst has a nice tribal element and tone to it that helps build an almost ancient atmosphere to the world and its mythology, but also contains enough modern flair and orchestral build that it contains this nice epic quality to it as well, it’s surprisingly strong.

For what it could have been, Bionicle: Mask of Light is much stronger than it arguably deserves to be and is even a fine movie to show kids. It may not seem like that high a praise, but at a time where almost every product that was made to sell toys did so through a shallow and often mindless property that only existed to manipulate kids into buying stuff, seeing something delivered with at least a hint of care is a pretty impressive feat. There are other movies and properties connected to Bionicles that seem to do okay, so there’s clearly something nostalgically engrossing about this product. Much like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers, it took what was obviously a toy and made something out of it that people could get into, and while it doesn’t have the lasting impact and memorability that those two have, it’s still work fine for young kids by containing a decent understanding of its world, a few memorable characters, a distinct visual style and even some pretty nice music. It’s no Lego Movie, but it’s also no Play Mobile Movie either, check it out for yourself and watch a long-forgotten toy brand come to life again.