They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot/Toys
Examples of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot in Toys include:
- In the Bionicle serial Destiny War, we learn that Ancient was not merely a founding member of the mercenary organization known as the Dark Hunters and possibly the only "friend" to the other founding member (the Shadowed One), he had also been a double agent to a secretive good-guy band, the Order of Mata Nui. When he received an order by his real boss to keep an eye on the Shadowed One, it seemed like a great set-up for another round of cross and double-cross, with Ancient playing along with TSO's plan to take over the universe, while at the same time informing his true higher-ups and doing his best to keep his secret identity to himself, adding a lot to his character development. When would he reach his breaking point, and decide to blow his cover? Would there be a clash between these age-old, ultra powerful "allies"? We never learn, because the moment Ancient meets TSO, the latter blows him to bits. TSO never even learned the true allegiance of Ancient, and this whole revelation never had any effect on the storyline. The reason why TSO killed his bud' was his own selfishness, since he wanted to keep the secret of the mysterious viruses he discovered to himself. To add insult to injury, his plan was never touched upon again.
- Also, there has been another notorious wasted plot, made frustrating by the fact that it was the Grand Finale of the story, and made more understandable by the fact that it was a case of Executive Meddling. YMMV! The set-up: the long-awaited, ultimate fight between the forces of Makuta and Mata Nui, the story's version of Cain and Abel, who are both immensely powerful giant robots with full universes inside them, while the normal-sized beings fight on a smaller scale. What could have been: these normal sized characters storm their opponent's robot bodies, trying to wreck them from the inside or trying to keep them from being sabotaged. Mata Nui would have had to come up with a delicate way to defeat his reckless opponent, in order to keep his people (who are inside Makuta) out of harm's way. Our main heroes would have had to come face to face with the fact that their hailed god was a gigantic mechanoid the whole time, and an easily fallible one to boot. What we got: a huge Beat'Em Up-styled brawl between the two robots, with the smaller combatants running around under their feet, and the villain being defeated by the hero crudely shoving his head into a moon when he wasn't looking, and his inhabitants miraculously surviving. As said, this wasn't the fault of the writers, though: LEGO wanted to be done with Bionicle, and gave them very little time to come up with a better, more thought-out plot.
- The Legend Reborn, Lego's first Bionicle movie in four years, was hotly anticipated by fans. It finally came out, and…they got a badly plotted film with numerous contradictions to the official storyline and a godawful script. Greg Farshtey, the writer of the series and creator of the story-pitch, claimed that the writers showed him a different version of the script than the one eventually released.
- The ending of the serial Brothers in Arms started out from a pretty good setup of the two main characters ending their life-long feud with a spectacular clash, while the world-sized cavern around them inches closer to being demolished by a rising electric storm (meaning that whoever wins will also have to make for the exit, adding another layer to the intensity of the fight). Instead of all this, they somehow get teleported to a different dimension, where everything's dandy, and the hero just has to talk his way back to his own world. He takes the Bizarro World's version of the main universe's Big Bad with him (Makuta was a good guy here), in exchange for the villain who was left behind in the other universe. Leading to...
- So the real Makuta (at the time the overlord of the real universe, controlling the giant robot that was once Mata Nui) senses the sudden appearance of his good alternate-universe cousin, and sends some Mooks with Fridge Horror backstories at him. After a brief Curb Stomp Battle, the good Makuta wins, ready to sabotage his evil self, and it would have been intriguing to see how these two larger-than-life personalities may interact (remember, both share the same character traits, only the Bizarro-Makuta actively forces himself to stay on the good side), were it not for the fact that the real Makuta was already killed by this time. Leaving the good Makuta with nothing to do.