BIONICLE: The Soul of the 00's

Some people consider 2000s as the time of depression, paranoia and intensification of international terrorism. However, for those whose childhood or youth came at this era, 00's is the best time of life. The new millennium was marked by many technological, economic and cultural upheavals. One of such upheavals was Bionicle.

Bionicle is the quintessence of the noughties and of all the best things that were there, the reflection of the era, and its soul. It was one of several series that saved LEGO from a prolonged crisis of the 90's, returning the company to the world market. Because of its duration (10 years) Bionicle has captured the cultural image of its time, the zeitgeist. A huge amount of content and multimedia which is the attribute of any sufficiently large franchise provided the series an excellent background. Paradoxically, most of this filling has no connection with the canon itself. That is why Bionicle decently looks like an independent series without a background of 00's, and even as a separate universe without sets and toys. Of course, the fuller the image, the brighter and more saturated the impression of the entire series, but the multilayered nature is one of the advantages of Bionicle. If some fans only watched the plot, they missed a ton of games, merch, and other things that made this saga truly epoch-making. If before franchises were limited to toys, serials on TV, films, comics, merchandise, and other "traditional" types of media content, the Internet made new adjustments, becoming a milestone in the production and distribution of this content. Despite the fact that everything around was the product of its era, whether it be popular in the 00's 3D cartoons or characteristic baggy clothes, I will mention only the digital content. Hardcore fans of the series may not even read the article, because it's nothing but a statement of facts which, nevertheless, can become a bridge of nostalgia, "refreshing" the memory of those times.


The Website

The digital explosion of the 00's and the popularization of home computers and telephone devices have led to the fact that the Internet has become quite commonplace. At that time they, however, weren't that common, but LEGO was in the global web since 1996, supplying each new series with its own website. Bionicle was no exception, and its whole life has been captured on the web. Along with the growth in capacity and the evolution of the Internet, the site has been transformed, especially in the second half of the 00's. So, in 2006, such a section as "gallery" had appeared, allowing fans to share their MOCs. There have also been web-serials, distributed only on a special website BionicleStory.com. The Bionicle itself and its place on the web gave birth to a lot of fan communities, and some of them were even acknowledged by LEGO itself. Nevertheless, not all activity took place online. For example, most of the competitions remained exclusive for the Brickmaster magazine until the closing of the series.

Online Games & Animations
At the dawn of the Internet, Macromedia Flash was born, which gave users a huge basis for creating their own media content. A sufficiently powerful toolkit allowed almost any person to become both a developer and an animator. So, LEGO began to attract various studios to create games, both small and advertising like BIONICLE: Colgate and large-scale, deep adventures like MNOLG and MNOLG II. In general, this dilogy is considered a classic and even after 15-17 years looks great and quality. Animations were also a successful idea: being inexpensive in production, they could both reveal the history and characters, and show the battles in all their glory. Most notable are the Bohrok and Bohrok-Kal Online Animations made in the style of MNOLG, and also the Search for the Mask of Light. However, in 2007 flash animations were replaced by real CGI-videos. The games have been released till the end of the theme, without losing their quality. The last game, Agori Defender, is distinguished by a unique style among a lot of similar casual games. Also, one can mention the series Glatorian Arena on Unity which can be played directly in the browser thanks to the widespread introduction of the appropriate web player in the late 00's.

Video Games
When LEGO realized they needed to keep pace with modern trends, they rushed to master the digital entertainment market. In the new millennium, their attention was attracted to portable games; compact but popular enough to keep the series afloat. Full-fledged games on the consoles and PC were also coming out, but not the Bionicle ones. The Legend of Mata Nui had been cancelled in October 2001 and remained in the shadow for 17 years until the game was leaked into the web in 2018. This stirred up the whole community and allowed fans to see the "workshop" of the developers, as well as to feel all the aesthetics of that era. However, in 2003 BIONICLE: The Game came out, while the next game, BIONICLE 2: City of Legends, was canceled too. But 2006 was presented by BIONICLE Heroes which became a cult even outside the fan community of the series. Games came out even on cell phones, the symbol of the 00's. The last non-browser game of G1 was a mobile game BIONICLE Defenders that came out in 2007.

Music
Throughout the years Bionicle has been accompanied by various music. At the beginning of its journey the series managed to capture the techno popular in the 90's, organically mixing it with ethnic music. The soundtrack to the films, written by Nathan Furst, consisted of orchestral music, which supported some splendor and epic heroism of Toa. In 2005, when 'Caught In a Dream' by All Insane Kids had been playing in the end titles of the Web of Shadows, LEGO succumbed to fashion and switched to Alternative Rock, which only strengthened the image of the series in the context of its own era. Also, All Insane Kids songs were uploaded to the official website. However, after three songs the band mysteriously disappeared. 2006 was a year of large-scale rebranding, and therefore, the most "media" year. Moving from post-apocalyptic Metru Nui to the even more dangerous and wild Voya Nui, LEGO updated many things, giving the series a more "fashionable" image. This is confirmed by the great and terrible Piraka Rap, as well as the FreeTheBand promo campaign with The All-American Rejects, in which the fans needed to save the musicians from the six Skakdi. In 2007, the band Cryoshell joined the series and was dedicated to it until the very end, even continuing to work on Hero Factory series. Their cult songs like 'Creeping in my Soul', 'Gravity Hurts', 'Closer to the Truth', and 'Bye Bye Babylon' are forever remembered by the fans and have become an integral part of the second half of Bionicle. In other cases, LEGO took the songs of other alternative bands, such as Linkin Park and Daughtry. So, Bionicle was seeking through many music styles, creating a soundtrack of the generation.

The original Bionicle has ended in 2010, and Hero Factory joined the game. This series was just an experiment to introduce the universal system of CCBS, so it was not particularly memorable. While honing their skills on "heroes" and "villains", LEGO applied all the experience of the past years in 2015, reviving the former theme. Extremely, G2 turned out to be a good impersonation of the second half of the 2010's with their digitalization and simplification (tablet games, a series on Netflix, contests in social networks instead of magazines). Unfortunately, the creators didn't make enough effort, and the series has failed.

Thus, Bionicle, even if not consciously, proved to be an epoch-making thing. This is the advantage of short franchises over larger ones: they are self-sufficient and entirely are the product of their era, whereas full-scale universes that exist for 20 or 30 years don't have clear boundaries, even if they are divided into "generations".