Bionicle: The Mask of Light was released in 2004. I was 10, and a huge fan of Bionicle. As a kid, I didn't really understand what I didn't like about the movie, but I knew I didn't like it. I mean, it was okay, I guess. The effects were nice, the animation was good, I liked it when things exploded but I didn't quite realize just how badly this movie screwed up one of the most interesting and unique fictional worlds invented for a kid's thing.
You might be thinking 'but it IS just a kid's thing, why are you going to be so harsh on it?' because the movie assumes it's audience are dumb and aren't paying attention because they're kids, despite the fact that part of the appeal of Bionicle is it's detailed and varied mythology and backstory. In other words, the kids who wanted to watch this movie were smart kids.
Okay so the movie starts with a quick introduction to the Bionicle world and the Matoran villagers. For reference, they're basically naturally-occuring robots, but nobody really understands why. All they know is that the Great Spirit, Mata Nui (which they named their continent after) brought them there and gave them purpose in the form of the three virtues, Unity, Duty, Destiny. Makuta, a dark spirit and Mata-nui's brother, came out of nowhere and put Mata Nui into a deep slumber, using his evil abilities to take over the wildlife and generally cause havoc in order to wipe out the Matorans. The intro doesn't mention the Toa, heroes who fell from the sky in capsules and protect the matoran, nor does it mention the six elements (earth/onu, rock/po, ice/ko, water/ga, fire/ta, air/le) but whatever, we'll get to that when they show up.
Afterwards, the movie shows off it's title along with theme song and has a nice pan over some mountains surronuded in gray/brown fog before diving into a volcano, where a big castle-city thingy is sitting on a pillar above the lava. This is the main city of the fire matorans, Ta-Koro. Ta-Koro is shown to be made of some sort of grayish beige clay stuff when it's supposed to be made of pitch-black volcanic rock but whatever, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt as an artistic difference and not bring up anything quite so nitpicky again unless it's completely stupid.
Now, we find Jaller looking for Takua in the for-some-reason completely empty city. He casually says 'he's got more rocks in his head than a po-matoran'. Po-matorans being the matorans who live in the rocky desert regions, not animals or wild beasts, another civilization. So one of our two main characters is a racist, great start.
Takua finds a mysterious totem thingy with a spotlight on it from absolutely nowhere, considering they are inside a volcano that should already be pretty bright and the fact that Ta-koro famously has no sunlight on account of being inside a really smokey volcano. I guess it's just magic or something, whatever. Anyway he figures nobody's seen this before, despite it being on the other side of a lava flow with convenient platforms with an obvious light above it. Not only that, but Jaller finds him almost immediately so it's not like he's even that far from the city. Also it's worth mentioning that Jaller is the typical 'stop breaking the rules, it's not safe' type of character, which is fine, if he weren't such a whiner about it. Oh, also, Takua is supposed to be at a Koli match, Koli being a weird combination between hockey, basketball and football, so he's also blowing off an interwahi (wahi = nation I made up interwahi it's dumb) sports event in order to explore caves. So, our heroes are irresponcible, whiny, and racist. Great.
Takua grabs the totem but things start shaking and breaking and it falls into the lava. It sinks and melts, but a mask floats to the surface from the remains and Takua takes it.
Okay might as well use this oppurtunity to bring up another issue- the masks. They look nothing like the masks the toys wear. Well, maybe they redesigned them to look less like the toa masks, fine. But they also move like faces. I dunno about you, but masks typically don't perfectly match the motions of my face. Infact, the movie seems to forget several times that they aren't faces. Quick explanation of the masks by the way, in Bionicle lore, all creatures wear these masks of power. The Toa have special masks that give them powers (which this glowy mask is apparantly one of) while the Matorans wear them as a life-source; if they take them off, they die. This will be worth mentioning later.
The mask glows with a weird light when Takua holds it, and it's got some weird language on the back that he doesn't recognise. Apparantly the totem was connected to the bowels of the earth somehow because it's removal caused a lava flow and now it's heading right for them. Takua throws the mask to Jaller and tries to save himself from the lava flow by... riding a lava surfboard onto the lava. This isn't a cool badass moment where he surfs the flow, because it isn't even there yet. He just ends up sitting in the middle of the lava while it comes towards him.
He's saved by Tahu, the Toa of Fire, who has a lava surfboard because it's fucking awesome shut up. I'm not sure what he was doing down here when there's an international sports event happening upstairs that apparantly the entire population of Ta-koro is at but okay, fine. He picks Takua up and does some cool tricks, including protecting himself from lava with his mask of protection, which is basically a big energy shield. He brings him back to where Jaller was hiding from the lava... which... is right next to the lava river... uh... anyway he's relieved that Takua is alive, as is Takua's pet crab thing which I only mention now because it's plot-important in one scene later and otherwise doesn't factor into anything even though it's there the whole damn movie.
Tahu notes the mask and tells them to take it to Turaga Vakama... uh... Turaga are like matoran except they're old and wise and are like village elders I guess, they can use magic mask powers too. Anyway Tahu says that they can tell Turaga Vakama about the mask after they win the Koli match. Uh. Why not now? It wouldn't take long at all 'hey Vakama, we found this, we don't know what it is but I guess you might want to look at it'. Why doesn't Tahu look at it? He could just put it on right now and see what it does, but he doesn't. Nobody ever just tries putting it on. At least for the Matoran they don't have the option, considering the whole 'death if you take your mask off' thing.
Jaller puts the mask in his backpack... which he doesn't take off or store anywhere during the Koli match, a game which involves alot of running around and hitting things really hard, physical contact, violence, and a big heavy rock moving very fast. I mean, you don't know how fragile this mask is. Maybe it's really old and it could shatter at any moment. Whatever, I guess he knows what he's doing.
Anyway, Koli is a 3-team sport, so here it's Po-wahi, Ga-wahi (who are the only females, by the way), and Ta-wahi, and their respective Toas, Pohatu and Gali, are also here to oversee things, along with the Turaga, who I forget the names of because they're not very interesting. Gali establishes herself as an ice-cold bitch who doesn't really like Tahu, and Pohatu as someone competitive and not too bright, but friendly . This... doesn't really fit their personalities in any other appearance. Gali is compassionate but a bit distant at times, and Pohatu is someone with a lot of skill and intelligence and likes to show it all off, for better or worse. Gali and Tahu do have a rivalry on account of her calm compassion and his passionate leadership, but the movie portrays it more like the two actively hate and avoid eachother, which isn't true at all. Toa have worked together almost literally since they were born, they wouldn't treat eachother like this!
The Turaga lament their rivalry which still doesn't make sense and then announce that this koli stadium is dedicated to the great spirit- which is sort of like dedicating a stadium to the fact that the universe exists. Anyway, the match happens and it's not all that interesting because the stadium looks the same from all angles and you can't tell who's going where and they keep reusing animation because this movie is dumb and lazy and okay I'll just sum up the important bits. Jaller flirts with one of the Ga-matorans, Hali, during play, Takua tries a really fancy move that isn't actually any more efficient than just hitting it but he fucks up, and the Ga-matorans win instead.
Then Jaller accidentally drops the mask out of his backpack somehow in front of everyone and sets up the plot of the movie by kicking it over to Takua, who kicks it back. Whenever Takua touches the mask, it lights up, and it ends up leaning on his foot in such a way that it's shining right on Jaller's face. The Turaga read the symbols on the back of the mask (the water one has a mask of translation) and discover that the mask belongs to a seventh toa, the toa of light, who is destined to defeat Makuta and free Mata Nui. They say that the Toa won't appear, and must be found, so they choose Jaller to do it on the grounds that the light from the mask was shining on him instead of sending one of the three experienced and powerful heroes who are right fucking there to do it, one of them being the single fastest living being on the entire island. They also plan to send Jaller to do this incredibly important and potentially dangerous task ON HIS OWN until he suggests that Takua should come to chronicle it.
Gali has apparantly left to meditate and notices that the constellation representing the 6 toa suddenly has a 7th star. Also Makuta schemes in a dark murky place, tearing some sort of freaky worms out of his flesh in order to make 3 new evil snake guys I guess.
Anyway Jaller and Takua leave, Takua acting sort of jealous of Jaller's fame and adventure even though in the previous scene he was trying to worm his way out of coming with. Vakama tells them to use the mask to guide their path, so they kind of point it aimlessly and follow where the light goes.
Back to Gali and there's a lot of scene transitions in a short period here damn. Anyway she notices some weird weather, like it's getting all dark and birds are running away from something and then some of the floor explodes and those 3 snake things hop out. There's a brown one, a green one and a black one hey wait, rock, air and earth. That's what those colors usually represent, like, every villain group so far has come in 6s for that purpose. I wonder if there's going to be three more of them in red, blue and white oh wait yes there are because everyone who watched this movie already had all 6 toys of these guys so when this film later brings out the other 3 and tries to make it a surprise it just comes off as totally idiotic.
Anyway they turn out to be pretty damn powerful and Gali hides until they leave, following them using the river which they are conveniently following too. She notes that they are heading to ta-koro- wait there's no rivers anywhere nearby ta-koro. I mean, there's a beach, but that's still- oh whatever she gets there first and tells them to sound the alarm and close the bridge, but the snake guys can fly. Vakama notes that these are 'Rakshi', and that their arrival was foretold in the same prophesy that mentioned the Toa of Light. So... why didn't you mention this earlier? Pretty sure your herald of the toa of light would've liked to know about the homicidal snake robot monsters that are now on the loose. Also, he says 'exactly as foretold', which is odd because he says this when they are visible, not when they're actually attacking or doing anything, so maybe they're stronger than foretold? Or maybe they're goodguys? You don't know!
Well they're not, obviously, so Tahu and Gali try to kick their asses but they're outmatched and outnumbered, the Rakshi running rampant by... wandering around harmlessly and knocking rocks around. No, seriously, the only thing they attack is the Toa. Also Tahu traps one of them by making flaming lines either side of it that it could easily jump over or FLY OVER but it just stands there like it's got nowhere to go.
Gali decides that Ta-koro is lost and they need to gather the Matoran and retreat. Hey wait wait they haven't done anything yet. They showed up and then you attacked them and then one of them got trapped, and now the city is lost? Whatever. The Rakshi do break open a few homes but they don't actually hurt anyone, just kind of knocking stuff around and wandering like they've lost their keys.
Tahu tries a twist on his fire-floor trap thingy but the green Rakshi deflects it with... poison?... uh anyway it rams it's staff thing into the floor underneath Tahu, which causes cracks to surround him and he reacts pretty much like the fire trapped one from before before the Rakshi just flips it over and they struggle around. I'm only mentioning this because it's dumb.
Gali continues evacuating the Matoran and joins in with the fight by shooting a blast of water at the Rakshi on top of Tahu. Tahu manages to get the upper hand and flips over just in time to be hit by this blast, which somehow deals more damage to him even though both him and the Rakshi got hit equally. Also, it leaves a cut in his mask that glows green, despite Bionicles not having blood or any bodily fluid that would glow green, the mask being a face accessory and not his actual face, and the fact that he was SPLASHED WITH WATER.
The green one has poison powers, so they need to escape before he poisons the whole to- wait the poison is just a glowy green thing that spreads on the brick. How is he poisoning brick? It's not like that thing where poison and acid are referred to as the same thing because it doesn't actually burn through anything. Maybe it does later, whatever. Point is that them knocking a few things over and poisoning the floor somehow causes the whole city to sink into the lava, which Tahu isn't exactly happy about. Vakama notes that they were just there to find the mask of light. Gali suggests warning the other Toa, but Tahu says not to bother. This is... not Tahu. Tahu is someone who doesn't always think things through and does get angry but he also always puts the other Toa before himself and takes his role as the leader of the Toa very seriously. Right now he is deliberately NOT co-operating with the people he considers his closest allies when faced with an enemy more powerful than anything he has ever encountered before. This is stupidity on the highest level and Gali immediately calls him on his bullshit. Luckily, he relents.
Takua and Jaller find themselves in the jungle and discuss the fact that Takua, despite being a Ta-Matoran, has no real place and no real story of his own as he has dedicated his life to writing the stories of others. For reference, Takua has saved people plenty of times before and was the person who found Vakama his staff. He was one of seven chosen Matorans who defended a secret shrine in the center of Mata-Nui while the Toa fought Makuta, one of the most significant events in matoran history and the beginning of the age in which matorans tried to defend themselves instead of relying on the Toa all the time.
IN OTHER WORDS TAKUA HAS A STORY AND HE'S KIND OF A BIG FUCKING DEAL
Whatever, they get attacked by a bear thing and Lewa, the Toa of Air, saves them. You remember my earlier complaints about characters getting fucked up by this movie? Lewa is the worst by far. Okay, a few things to cover first. Le-Matorans, and thus, Lewa, have a weird dialect called Treespeak where they combine certain words to form new meanings. For example, Down-Tree means 'on the ground', Top-leaf means 'treetops' or 'as high as the treetops', etc. . This movie doesn't know any treespeak and assumes that the audience doesn't either- bearing in mind that when this movie came out, the Bionicle website HAD A TREESPEAK DICTIONARY. That's just semantics though, the real problem is Lewa himself. He acts like some weird peter-pan robin-hood pansy elf man thing who is perfectly in tune with nature and that isn't Lewa at ALL. Lewa is the prankster! He's the funny guy! He's sarcastic and stupid and makes a fool out of himself a lot. Sure, he cares about nature but he's not a total pansy about it, he's more likely to smack the back of your head and make a stupid quip about it than say 'go now mother bear' in this stupid sing-song voice.
Anyway he lends them a bird thing that Le-matorans use as transport. I'll give the movie credit, Takua mentions he was a 'second' on one of them before but he's never flown one himself. The 'second' rides on the back and acts as someone looking out for problems or throwing stuff at any attacking animals or whatever. Also they abandon the crab because it won't fit on the bird and Takua just tells it to go home for now. They fly right up a steep cliff that isn't on Mata Nui anywhere and crash in a snowy wasteland. The crash knocks Takua's mask in an awkward and 'funny' position on his head, which means that it's not fixed permenantly to his head, which it should be if he doesn't want to DIE. Anyway Lewa hears from the drumbs that the Makuta-sons (treespeak for rakshi wait why do they have a word for) have attacked and destroyed Ta-Koro. Jaller wants to head back, but Takua tells him to man up and continue the quest he agreed to do, so Lewa promises to visit Ta-koro and see exactly what happened before abandoning the two most important matorans on the planet in a snowy wasteland.
The two of them argue over who the real herald is, further proving that Takua is an irresponcible, jealous prick who wants all the glory without working for it, completely ruining any previous characterisation in games and comics he was in, and they bump into a bohrok who is only in this movie so fans of the bohrok can go 'yaaay' and then be dissapointed when it doesn't do anything. Also the two of them are threatened by the Bohrok at first until they realize it's frozen solid. Bohrok were the previous enemies before the Rakshi, and their thing was that they weren't strictly alive like the other robots on Mata Nui were, instead, they contained mask-like organic creatures that lived inside them and controlled them. The thing is, all of those mask-like creatures are dead. As in, ALL of them. Toa magic killed their hivemind and Bohrok reverted to subservient worker robots. So even if it was unfrozen, it'd be like being terrified by a forklift.
Anyway, they were apparantly frozen by Kopaka, Toa of Ice. Kopaka is trying a bit too hard but he's actually pretty accurate. Kopaka is a loner, he doesn't like hanging out with the other Toa, not because he considers them inferior or anything, but just because he prefers being alone. In this movie, they kind of make him more of a 'oh everyone but me is useless' character, which he's not, but still, he's sort of close.
We cut to the remains of Ta-koro, where Tahu is being all depressed. Gali shows concern about his scratch and Tahu yells at her for caring more about that and less about the destruction of his home. He's got a point, but he mopes too much so I stop caring. Gali reminds Tahu that the Toa are strongest together and they need to gather the rest, but Tahu brushes her off and acts all angry, even though he is THE LEADER OF THE TEAM and his JOB is to be the one uniting them. Hell, that's the reason him and Kopaka don't get along that well! Oh fuck it fine whatever.
Ko-koro has apparantly been attacked by the Rakshi, which makes no sense since Ko-koro is the ass-end of nowhere but whatever, fine. Kopaka sends Takua and Jaller off on his snowboard thing (bionicle had a lot of 'guy who rides a board' characters) and starts fighting the three of them alone, doing about as well as you'd expect and ends up getting knocked out while the Rakshi knock over the snowboard and catch up. They try to do a 'oh no is he dead' moment with Jaller after they're knocked over, but nobody fell for it because the movie is just over halfway done and nothing that dangerous happened, so the triumphant music when he wakes up just irritates me.
Takua does something idiotic by riding the snowboard into a lake with the mask to take attention away from Jaller, which is entirely pointless because IF THEY GET THE MASK YOU ARE TOTALLY FUCKED. Kopaka saves his stupid ass with a badass one-liner/ice pun that is completely out of character for Kopaka, freezing the 3 Rakshi forever in the process. Also Takua's mask gets pushed into a dumb position again and the crab somehow managed to find a way into Ko-Wahi even though the only way there is by riding tram things that he is way too big to fit on. Kopaka abandons them because that's how he rolls and they find a cave. Takua complains because he hates caves and he's annoying, and then he goofs off with some glowy plant things and gets lost as a result. While lost, he hears an ominous voice, which turns out to be Makuta, who can talk through shadows. Makuta tells Takua to bring him the mask and he'll spare everyone, but if he continues, Makuta will keep destroying everything and killing everyone. Takua, instead of being a dumbass, decides to be a dumbass by telling Jaller he can't continue this adventure but not explaining why. I'm pretty sure if you were on a destined quest and your friend said 'the equivilant to the devil just told me to betray you, so I'd best go' you'd probably understand, but no, Takua doesn't say anything and just leaves.
Makuta makes 3 more Rakshi to replace the 3 Kopaka froze, and also he's pissed about Takua not stealing the mask.
Well, enough of boring villain we don't care about, back to boring heroes we don't care about. Pohatu, the toa of rock, is talking with Onua, the toa of earth. I've just got to adress this rock/earth thing I don't know what the difference is, I'm sorry, I just... I don't know...
Onua and Pohatu get along pretty well considering they do the same basic thing. Pohatu is apparantly here to announce the discovery of the Mask of Light, not knowing about the Rakshi just yet. Takua mopes his way into Onu-koro and they ask where Jaller is, and he lies that they were seperated when they met the Rakshi. Neither Pohatu nor Onua know what the Rakshi is, nor does anyone in the crowd, despite all of them showing great excitement and enthusiasm when the Toa of Light was mentioned.
So let me get this straight.
There is a prophesy stating that the mask of light will be found, and someone will use it to find the Toa of light. Okay. There is a seperate prophesy stating that the Rakshi will wreck shit up. So... Why is the good prophesy more commonly known than the bad one? Wouldn't the Turaga want to tell everyone about both? Speaking of the Turaga, where is the earth one? Shouldn't he be right there, listening to all of this? I mean, surely he'd have something to say about nobody knowing about the Rakshi, since he's the wisest and he knows all this stuff. Wait, why don't the Toa know about this? Even if they kept it quiet to avoid panic, why wouldn't the HEROES OF MATA NUI know about the SONS OF MAKUTA.
Well whatever the Rakshi and Onua causes a cavein on their heads, but it doesn't work. The earth Rakhi can apparantly drain people of their strength and the red one can... uh... something. Takua feels bad about all of this even though he didn't cause any of it and tries to charge into battle to save everyone, and Tahu has to show up out of nowhere to save his sorry ass.
Wait how did Tahu get here.
There's a tunnel in Ta-koro to Onu-koro but that got destroyed so
did he go all the way around the entire island!? That's pretty impressive for someone who has no special mode of transport other than surfing lava. Did he just run the whole way or what?
Whatever the white Rakshi zaps him with something and he starts going crazy, attacking Gali who also shows up out of nowhere. Meanwhile Lewa grabs Takua and flies somewhere safer, telling him to warn Jaller before flying off again.
I would like to note that 'somewhere safer' is a few feet away instead of outside of Onu-koro where the Rakshi will have a harder time finding him. Instead he is still in the same room as them basically, but he rides out of there on his crab.
The Rakshi climb up after him, but Pohatu and Onua intercept. Wait. Where did Lewa fly off to? Shouldn't he be fighting the Rakshi? So, if he's not fighting the Rakshi... is he helping out Gali with Crazy!Tahu? Wait, where did Onua and Pohatu even go? Were they just standing around and waiting until they could do some badass saving thing? Goddamnit this movie is dumb.
Onua does his 'cause a cavein on their heads' thing again in exactly the same way he did the first time except this time it apparantly warrants a 'WELL DONE' from Pohatu and also causes the whole cave to start collapsing. I would like to note that this fight is still happening in Onu-koro and nobody seems to care about it getting destroyed even though that's the entire point of Tahu's character arc in this dumb fucking movie. Kopaka shows up to freeze Tahu solid before he can kill Gali, and Lewa is nowhere to be fucking seen where did he even fucking go this fucking movie- oh wait he lands right next to frozen-tahu, so when he flew away from Takua, he could've stayed and protected him instead or did something useful but no I guess he had to... land next to Tahu in time for the scene transition as onu-koro starts collapsing. Again, nobody cares about this.
Takua gets out and they head off to warn Jaller. I have no idea WHERE he's heading exactly considering they have absolutely no way of tracking eachother nor any definate direction in which to go, so there is literally no way of nowing where Jaller is right now BUT FINE. OKAY. WHATEVER.
Next scene, Tahu is strapped to a rock and struggling to tear some heads, so the other Toa decide to gather their healing powers together to toa don't have healing powers. Gali does, she's the water toa. Water = healing apparantly, but nobody else does. The other two heroes she has with her are Lewa, who has the mask of levitation and wind powers, and Kopaka, who has the mask of seeing things really far away and ICE powers, the natural opposite to Tahu, so what the fuck are they going to do here? Power of friendship I guess whatever just heal him.
Okay so they heal him by combining the power of Tahu's fire sword and Kopaka's ice sword, which should either do nothing or steam. Either way it makes Tahu writhe around a bit and then she just heals him with her powers. She has to go regenerate in a river and laments to Kopaka that they might have actually lost their unity, but as she's talking Kopaka leaves because he's the smartest character in this movie and he has a fucking plan.
Cut to Jaller almost falling off a cliff and dying. As he's hanging off the edge an incredibly ominous shadow that looks exactly like Takua on the back of a crab heads towards Jaller, who promptly freaks out, and a terrifying claw that happens to look exactly like a koli stick reaches towards him... and it's fucking Takua on the back of a crab trying to pull Jaller up with a koli stick why did the movie even try that it wasn't funny or clever and nobody was FUCK IT MOVING ON
So they reunite and Takua mentions the 3 new Rakshi, as well as the fact that he doesn't think they're after the mask, but Takua, so they decide they'd better hurry up and find out where the hell they're supposed to go.
Back to the toa and Tahu is pissed but grateful.
Back to Takua fucking hell movie stick with one of your two plots for more than five fucking seconds.
...
Back to Takua and Jaller and they end up at Kini-Nui, a temple in the middle of the island that is accessable from anywhere. The movie isn't being stupid just yet, and Takua is pretty pissed that they've been everywere to end up somewhere they could've gotten to from anywhere. He takes the mask to see if it's even working right, and the glow suddenly turns into a giant laserbeam that his the temple. Good thing it was pointing that way and Takua wasn't aiming it at anything else.
The temple explodes and collapses into a different shape, but before they can really look at it, the Rakshi show up and start chasing after them. Takua chooses this moment to accept his role as the herald of the toa of light and they run for it, but the other 3 Rakshi show up and they're surrounded.
Luckily for them, the Toa show up, Pohatu and Onua only managing to find them with Kopaka's help. See, I told you he had a plan. Even the loner who doesn't like friendship knows to get some fucking allies geeze, Tahu, way to look like a fucking idiot.
Uh.
Anyway they fight and glowy things happen. Out of these glowy things, there are some dumb glowy things.
- Gali jumps in front of the white one, the green one, and the red one, entirely on her own. The white one swings at her, and she dodges by making a tiny pathetic movement. It swings again and hits the red one, who is immediately down on the floor and writhing in pain until it stops moving.
- Tahu and Lewa use sand and fire to seal some of them in glass, despite them already trying that with ice and it only being a temporary solution
- Gali jumps in front of the black one and the white one and they turn to face her. Then Kopaka jumps behind them and they slowly turn around. Then Pohatu shows up next to them and they slowly turn to face him. Then Pohatu throws his claw thingies at them and it clamps around their wrists like handcuffs somehow, then Onua and Tahu drop lava on them, which seems to just kind of mildly annoy them, Gali cools them down with water for no discernable reason, and Kopaka just freezes them again.
wait that was basically all of the fighting
okay so the red one that got knocked out by his buddy was faking and suddenly gets up, trying to use his fear powers to kill Takua, but Jaller jumps on his staff and absorbs all of the... fearness... instead. So Jaller dies from being thrown not that far at all and there's a long dramatic scene of his death while the Rakshi and Toa stand around and watch I guess. After Jaller's death, Takua decides to do what should have been done at the beginning of the movie and just put the damn mask on... though he does it by putting it ontop of the mask he is already wearing. Anyway, it starts glowing and Takua pulls his koli stick literally out of thin air before spontaniously growing into the Toa of Light. He zaps the red Rakshi with his staff and blows up the rest of the temple to reveal his own face.
Takua, now Takanuva, wonders why the hell he had to go through all of that and Vakama says he had to go through the journey not to find the Toa but to find himself or something like that, I find it hard to justify this kind of bullshit when Onu-Koro, Ko-Koro and Ta-Koro, three of the six most important places on the entire continent have all been lost.
Takanuva uses the pieces of the Rakshi's bodies to build a bike thingy (this would be grosser if they weren't robot things) and puts one of their snake head things in it with the logic that 'what is the makuta's will return to him', even though they didn't seem to really have any particular desire to do that until now.
They take Jaller's mask because.
Pohatu notes that the bike only has one seat and Takanuva explains that only he can fight Makuta.
wait
wait wait wait so
your ENTIRE JOURNEY has been building up to this
Your Journey, where you learned to stop pushing your responcibility onto others, where you realized that working alone is ultimately not as good as working together, the journey designed to make you the best Toa, toas being a TEAM of heroes, and you end it by going alone.
My.
God.
I mean I kind of get it. The Toas learned about Unity because when they worked alone it fucking sucked. Takua learned about Duty because he has to take responcibility for what he's done. That's fine, and Destiny is a harder virtue to teach in a film because... I mean, what does it even mean? But the problem is that now, your ending is completely ruining both of those morals. The Toa's duty is to fight to free Mata Nui and defeat Makuta, protecting the Matorans by any means necessary. But you won't let them do that, and I don't need to explain why you're taking a shit all over Unity.
Are we sure this is the Toa of Light? Like, maybe the mask made a mistake, maybe it WAS Jaller after all. Or what about that one Ta-Matoran that could move so slowly he could teleport?
Even the other Toa don't seem convinced by his explanation that his destiny is to defeat Makuta and theirs is to protect the Matoran. They're protecting him FROM Makuta you ignorant fu
okay so he rides his bike and crashes it into Makuta's lair so that he has no way out and Hali snuck in with him because she's a moron. Makuta starts doing his evil speeches and Takanuva tells her to 'summon the matoran'
wait what
WHAT
Summon them
to
like, here?
you
you do realize where you are, Takanuva, right?
The Matoran are pretty good at defending themselves when they have to, sure, but this is the fucking DEVIL, or as close as you can get in Bionicle. Weren't you just saying that it's your destiny to defeat him? Why do you need Matoran!? What are they gonna do, play Koli at him!?!?
oh speaking of Koli that's what Makuta decides to do.
you remember that boring match at the beginning I designed in vague detail because it was dumb
yeah that's supposed to be a 'book ends' with the climax of the film
the big bad
the self-proclaimed living embodiment of the natural desire to destroy
the single most dangerous and powerful thing alive right now that the Toa know of
and he wants to bet the fate of the world
on a fucking sport
...
Let me tell you how Makuta has been portrayed before now. Makuta is a shapeshifter, he can be anything, anyone, he exists outside of physical definition. In the movie and all further movies, he's a big scary thing with red glowy eyes. The first time Makuta is onscreen fully previously, he takes the form of a matoran with a stoney, rusty, horribly ancient looking texture and simply walks up to the Toa, and tells them to their face that as long as any living being wants or is capable of destruction, he will always exist, and there is absolutely no way to truly destroy him, because he IS destruction. When they fight Makuta, he attacks by exploding into a formless mass of whirling NOTHING and utterly WRECKS THEIR SHIT until they manage to pull together long enough for a counter attack.
Here he says generic evil things and plays Koli.
FUCK this MOVIE like it FUCKED MY CHILDHOOD
so they play Koli with no actual defined goals, they basically just throw the ball at eachother aimlessly, with nobody keeping track of score or anything.
Cut to a pointless scene that doesn't add anything of Hali going back and saying 'hey guys we gotta go' and the turaga saying 'no that's dumb'
Cut to dumb Koli stuff
Cut to Hali saying 'no seriously we should go' and everyone saying 'okay'
Cut to more dumb Koli and the Matoran showing up. Makuta laughs and says they're here to see Takanuva loose, who replies with "maybe they will not see me win today, but the Matoran will go on, and someday, THEY WILL TRIUMPH"
no
not if you fuck up while they're all RIGHT THERE WHERE MAKUTA CAN EASILY MURDER ALL OF THEM
you FUCK
Makuta is smart enough to just smash the entrance to his lair down so they can't escape.
Then some dumb stuff happens and Takanuva ends up doing that same move he did in the first match but without fucking it up this time, the ball smashing Makuta in the chest so hard that he goes flying backwards.
So were they playing Koli or just using the ball as a weapon.
why not just hit eachother with their actual weapoFUCKIT
So Takanuva stands over Makuta's unconcious body except he's not unconcious at all and he gets up, coming up with a weak justification for why he put Mata Nui asleep- apparantly if he's asleep, he's ignorant to all the bad things happening, so it's okay.
Not quite 'I am destruction. You cannot destroy me.', Makuta. Fucking
okay so Makuta mentions the mask of shadows and Takanuva decides if he pulls the mask off, he can beat Makuta, so he jumps on Makuta's face and they struggle around a bit and both fall in a pool of protodermis which is basically magic glowy power water for bionicles.
Makuta and Takanuva climb out of the pit as one combined being of Light and Shadow along with ominous music, even though Makutanuva is a goodguy. Apparantly the 'light' illuminated what Mata Nui wanted, so Makutanuva opens up the door to Mata nui and holds it up for everyone to run through. I'm not sure why they need everyone to do this awakening thing but okay.
Makutanuva stops Hali last minute and takes Jaller's mask, using his special powers to revive Jaller completely! Horray!
Wait so
was that a shadow power or a light power
well it glowed a lot and it's pretty positive so I'd guess it was light
but wait wouldn't that mean he could already do that
if you could just revive people why didn't you do that at a more convenieFUCKIT
so everyone runs through to wherever mata nui is I guess and Makutanuva can't hold up the door anymore, so it crushes him and he dies, the mask of light and mask of shadows now seperated (though the mask of shadows is on the other side of the door HOW CONVENIENT)
They revive mata nui by sacrificing Hali as unity, Jaller as duty, and the mask of light as destiny, and all of them die forever
no okay they light up the unity and duty things with Hali and Jaller, and put the mask of light on destiny, so it starts glowing then it raises into the air and Takanuva is alive again and they make a dumb callback to an earlier line that was dumb too wasn't that entirely pointless.
Mata Nui wakes up and everyone's happy the end.
oh wait no there's sequel bait that never happened because the second and third movies were both prequels
AND THAT IS WHY I HATE BIONICLE : THE MASK OF LIGHT
FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
you can go home now