Masters of the Universe: Revelation (new cartoon)

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Still not sure I trust Kevin Smith or modern revivals, but the glory of the Matter of Eternia is that the various versions have been so inconsistent that picking and choosing what you like is not only a possibility, but a necessity. :smile:
 
Also, bear in mind Smith has had a track record of projects not coming to fruition. However, I am hearing that it's a Mattel/Netflix production which means that it's likely that it will.

However, I do have some trepidation. I've been hearing that it's going to focus on Teela. And given the current... Predilection of how these types of shows have been turning out lately, I'm not having much hope of watching He-Man getting upstaged in his own property.

But I remain cautiously optimistic and will remain so until I see the finished product.
 
edited because it will lead to political stuff
 
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I don’t mind if they flesh out the other characters a bit more, as long as He-Man himself is one of the main protagonists. Like the Witcher, or Mad Max.
On one hand, I agree, I WOULD love to have had more on The Sorceress and Teela, as well as Man-At-Arms, as well as Skeletor, Evil Lyn and the like, but on the other hand, I'd rather not have 'The Best Friend Squad' that's been happening on other shows.
 
I'd really like something that adhered to the original story of Teela from the mini-comics, as a warrior goddess who is secretly a clone of the Sorceress who was rescued from Skeletor and raised by Man At Arms, and now wanders the desert plains riding atop her unicorn
 
I'd really like something that adhered to the original story of Teela from the mini-comics, as a warrior goddess who is secretly a clone of the Sorceress who was rescued from Skeletor and raised by Man At Arms, and now wanders the desert plains riding atop her unicorn

Wow, I didn't remember any of that! I think I have an idea for an NPC now...
 
Wow, I didn't remember any of that! I think I have an idea for an NPC now...


You should check out the original MOTU series bible - way different than how things eventually ended up in the cartoon, with some really fascinating ideas ripe to be mined for RPGs

Edit: forgot to include the link:
 
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(sigh) looks fine. But I miss that old Rotoscoping.
 
The problem I'm having with this, is that Kevin Smith LIED. The synopsis came out years ago, claiming that Teela (a secondary character at best) was suddenly going to be the one who saves Eternia, and He-Man was getting sidelined in his own show. Then some YouTuber posted something about it on Twitter, and he lashed out at them, claiming they were wrong. Then an article REPEATED the YouTubers' worry, and he attacked them (Politely, much more politely) and got them to retract a section of the story.

And it turns out COMPLETELY TRUE! He-Man gets replaced in his own story, it's going to be all about Teela saving the planet. And then we got THIS picture:

kevin-smith-masters-of-the-universe-revelation-first-look-orko-andra-teela-roboto-evil-lyn.jpg
 
Sorry, but I'm not interested in a MotU series that includes "stories of abuse. ... stories of isolation, grief" and "about "a hero who has to live under deception in order to protect those he loves, but it's about how that deception rots at the core."" https://ew.com/tv/masters-of-the-universe-revelation-photos-premiere-kevin-smith/

And I have no confidence in anything that uses the name 'Skelegod' for an empowered Skeletor.
 
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I mean....I'm too old for He-Man. I don't care. There's no way this was going to be written for someone like me, who was more interested in the sword and sorcery lore from the minicomics that anything else. If Kevin Smith wants to do a female emporwerment show with HeMan characters...well, whatever. It's not like I've watched any of the bajillion different Ninja Turtles or Transformers cartoons that came out after the original.

...or the last few years of Kevin Smith films, for that matter.
 
Kevin Smith is Kevin Smith.

He’s not going to create a masterpiece of animation.
 
Kevin Smith is Kevin Smith.

He’s not going to create a masterpiece of animation.

Another data point is that he considers the new She-Ra series "clearly a work of art." I expect feelings about that will strongly correlate to feelings about this, although he did state that Mattel's giving him considerably less creative freedom than Noelle Stevenson had.
 
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. There's no way this was going to be written for someone like me, who was more interested in the sword and sorcery lore from the minicomics that anything else. If Keven Smith wants to do a female emporwerment show with HeMan characters...well, whatever.

Damn, you beat me to it. I would be far more interested if the reboot was based on the the awesome minicomics and not the children's cartoon. THAT is the MotU I want to see! Hell, the name of my current campaign is "Masters of Carcosa" and I make all kinds of callouts to the spirit of the old comics.

That being said, I try to keep an open mind with reboots of beloved franchises and am withholding judgement until I actually watch an episode.
 
I don't know He-Man well, what's up with the picture? Is it that He-Man is missing or something?
The redhead was one of the prettiest characters in the show (And the template for the 80's She-Ra spinoff), named Teela, a bad ass fighter. The Black character was from the Comics, Lieutenant Andra, who was another Red Head.

The new rumours is that He-Man is killed in the show, although what we DO know is that it's now Teela's show.
 
Man what is up with Orko in that picture? He's got claws, and his eye's are wigging me out. Like is he going to be evil?
Maybe the "stories of abuse. ... stories of isolation, grief" are about Orko and one day he finally snaps under the all the other masters making fun of him, kills skeletor and becomes the new main villain.
 
Man what is up with Orko in that picture? He's got claws, and his eye's are wigging me out. Like is he going to be evil?
Maybe the "stories of abuse. ... stories of isolation, grief" are about Orko and one day he finally snaps under the all the other masters making fun of him, kills skeletor and becomes the new main villain.
You know, I will give credit for the 80's series. They had an episode where he had a soul search and realized that while in his own dimension he was a master mage, on Eternia he was worse the inept. And so by the end of the episode, he gave his goodbyes and LEFT the show. It was actually a pretty serious episode.
 
Man what is up with Orko in that picture? He's got claws, and his eye's are wigging me out. Like is he going to be evil?
Maybe the "stories of abuse. ... stories of isolation, grief" are about Orko and one day he finally snaps under the all the other masters making fun of him, kills skeletor and becomes the new main villain.

SPOILERS:
This is almost the exact goddamned plot for DC Versus Masters of the Universe. And It. Is. Glorious.
 
Man what is up with Orko in that picture? He's got claws, and his eye's are wigging me out. Like is he going to be evil?
Maybe the "stories of abuse. ... stories of isolation, grief" are about Orko and one day he finally snaps under the all the other masters making fun of him, kills skeletor and becomes the new main villain.

So, as revealed as far back as the original show, Orko is an alien being from Trolla and one of the greatest sorcerers of a planet reknown for its mastery of magic. So if they want to make him look a bit wyrd and eerie, there's plenty of reason to do so.

According to a YouTube video posted my Mattel's MOTU line developer through the releases of the Classics toyline (so mid-aughts through the early 2010's?) there were a lot of new storylines and revelations planned for the old MOTU Powers of Greyskull revamp in the mid-80's, before the toy sales collapsed and ended the original MOTU project run. A lot of those were used in the lore dumps in the 200X series. One line of info that (apparently, I wasn't following at the time) was explored in the Classics-era minicomics was that the Trollan High Council of old made the Sword of Power (which they called the "Sword of He", 'He' being the Trollan word for power. Eh, get it? He-Man? Get i- anyway...). And another aspect of this was that the current Trollan High Council were worried that the sword had resurfaced on Eternia, and was in the hands of one of the local techno-barbarians. So, they selected one of their most powerful agents and sent him to Eternia in a magical "accident" to keep an eye on the Sword and make sure it wasn't misused.

So, Orko is actually a Trollan spy, keeping a non-hostile but wary eye on the Sword and how He-Man is using it. There were also apparently suggestions that the whole, "Gosh, Eternia's magic is so different, I can't get my spells to work right!" bit might have been Orko "Clark-Kenting" it to appear less threatening.

Again, this is from a YouTube video from the guy who ran the toyline for a while, but he was apparently also a fan who used his access to the old Mattel project files to make sure the Classics range drew from as much old and new lore as possible. Whatever the validity of the whole "Orko is a spy pretending to be comic relief to fit in," thing, I personally love the idea and have decided to believe it as head canon, if nothing else!

...I really need to find some sort of collection of those Classics-era minicomics and comics. That guy references them a lot, and they sound pretty interesting.
 
...I really need to find some sort of collection of those Classics-era minicomics and comics. That guy references them a lot, and they sound pretty interesting.

I find the Classics canon overly convoluted and prone to trying too hard to fit everything in, myself, but you can find the first three minicomics in the hardcover minicomics collection from Dark Horse, the bios that conveyed 90% of the information in the Classics section of the new toy guide, and the breakdown of details in the Character Guide and World Compendium.
 
I liked the aesthetics of the comics more than the stories or lore. They portrayed a very gritty fantastical place much more than anything else I’ve seen in that franchise.
 
If you're going to kill He-man in a story it needs to be super epic. Like at least Skurge holding the bridge to Hel awesome. I'm not saying it can't be done or shouldn't be done but it ought to be absolutely incredible.
 
In the original lore doesn’t his son He-Ro become The Most Powerful Man in the Universe®?

That was the root concept for a series proposed by Lou Scheimer in the mid-90s (and possibly an earlier version in the late 80s that became the New Adventures of He-Man), but while a full presentation and bible was put together, nothing came of it at the time. Like so much else, the concept was picked up by the Classics line, which produced a figure of "He-Ro II."

Why He-Ro II? Because that was actually the second attempt to build a spinoff around a character named He-Ro. The first one made it to the brink of production in 1987, as "The Powers of Grayskull." It would have centered around the origins of said power in the ancient days of Preternia, a land of dinosaurs and giants where heroic wizards battled the evil Snake Men. The leader of the forces of Good would have been said He-Ro, ancestor to He-Man and She-Ra and the "most powerful wizard in the universe." Unfortunately, while the first three dinosaurs saw release, the first two giants got a very limited European run, and prototypes of He-Ro and Eldor were solicited in a Mattel catalog, the line was cancelled before launch. He-Ro and Eldor were finally produced decades later, first in Classics and then by Super7 as figures who were about as close to the vintage prototypes as you can get.

The final bit of confusion? The name 'He-Ro' was an eleventh hour change. Up until the last lead-up to the eventually cancelled line, the character's name was ...

Grayskull.
 
Wasn’t Grayskull an ancestor of Prince Adam?

I liked the fact that they made the evil Keldor King Randor’s half-brother in the 2002 cartoon.

King Grayskull originated in the 200X series, independently of He-Ro/"Grayskull". If the writers on the tie-in comic had gotten the go-ahead to do everything they planned, they would have made King Grayskull a transformed He-Ro. Classics made them two separate characters; the DC comics made He-Ro the son of King Grayskull.

Randor's brother Keldor goes back to the last year of the vintage line as well; we're told that he tried to master magic but was "lost in dimensions beyond time." Randor tried to find him in the mini-comic "The Search for Keldor," but that effort was thwarted by Skeletor, who feared that if the forces of Good discovered what happened to Keldor, it could destroy him. Based on this, some fans theorized that Skeletor was actually Keldor ... a fact that, years later, was confirmed to be what Mattel had been hinting at with that plot point, but never made it into any produced material. The 2002 series took that, added and changed some elements (half-brother instead of full brother, the different races element that would have been a greater plot point had the series continued, and the fact that everyone now knows that Skeletor was once Keldor), and it's gotten woven into many subsequent iterations.
 
This is some great stuff by Alcala. He sets a certain tone for MOTU even if the plots themselves were silly at times. 2376F16C-59DC-46D6-9B72-C699ED7492EF.jpeg1559D2B6-AD36-4864-AA37-C8063A5602AF.jpeg
 

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Wasn’t Grayskull an ancestor of Prince Adam?

I liked the fact that they made the evil Keldor King Randor’s half-brother in the 2002 cartoon.


I preferred it when Skeletor was an invader from another dimension. Making him He-Man's uncle just felt weird, what with the gay analogy of their relationship in the original series.
 
I've been a He-Man fan from its very beginning, and practically from my own very beginning. I haven't found bad He-Man yet.

Right now, I would say I prefer the recent DC run to most anything else, followed by the 2002 cartoon, and then the minicomics. But it's all love.
 
I've been a He-Man fan from its very beginning, and practically from my own very beginning. I haven't found bad He-Man yet.
I sincerely hope you're right. But given all the information we've had, I don't have much hope.
 
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