Masters of the Universe: Revelation (new cartoon)

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
Some of the things that bothers me is
How He-Man, the great hero of Eternia was less than useless, he was the CAUSE of the whole situation! Not only do they keep him out of most of the show, they kill him TWICE! And during the scene where Duncan tells the Royal Family their son died, TEELA HAS THE %^!@#% AUDACITY TO MAKE IT ABOUT HER! Heroic man dies, Women most affected! Seriously??

I am not a purist, by any stretch of the imagination. I liked the MCU and Raimi's Spider-Man, and didn't mind the little changes they did there, for the most part, but this, this... Abomination is not only really boring, it 'reads' like none of the people actually cared about any of the original story lines.

I mean, they got some right.
King Randor's disrespect to his own son, while harsh, WAS a thing in the 80's show. Which was a nice, mature story of the time without having to delve into tryhard violence.
And some character cameos was pretty cool. But the rest of the 5 episodes...

...Nope, talking about it doesn't help. Still infuriated.
 
The show definitely assumes a watcher is going in already familiar with the original series, which is what makes some of the choices so baffling to me. Like, the new She-Ra cartoon didn't bother me a bit, because it's obviously a reboot aimed at a new audience, a generation I'm not a part of. Fair enough. But this is like the intended audience is clearly older longtime fans but it also seems to go out of it's way to alienate that fanbase, while simultaneously doing nothing to introduce the world or characters for a new audience.
This. TristramEvans TristramEvans did a good job of summarizing how I feel. I approached this with an open mind accepting that it is aimed for a new generation of viewers but walked away confused.

There was stuff I liked. Giganotosaurus Giganotosaurus summed up the highlights. They were just buried in mediocrity, I just roll my eyes at the massive hype and sycophantic critic reviews but I can understand why super fans would be upset.
 
My issue with She-Ra is
that the entire show is about an abused victim hooking up back up with her abuser. Every other plot point, characterization, story hook either gets ignored, dropped or abandoned for that single thread. This is not a show for the alleged audience.
But it's own thing, unattached to the actual MOTU beyond the names, which I heard (RUMOUR) was all that Stevenson's crew had the rights to. So it doesn't actually stain the property.

But He-Man was always promised as a 'direct' sequel to the 80's show, then got walked back (Because Universal actually owns the right to MOTU, Mattel sold it back in the 90's, I believe. But Mattel no longer owns it) to a 'spiritual' sequel, but we've ALREADY covered why it's bad in general.
 
The original was, let's face it, a very crappy cartoon, character design aside, so I can't find much motivation to care one way of the other.

The idea of an adult He-Man cartoon sounds like a bad idea to me, I couldn't get into She-Ra because it was clearly aimed at kids but ultimately that makes more sense for this material.

We've seen how making superheroes 'adult' went, don't feel the need to do the same to 80s Saturday Morning Cartoons.
 
Last edited:
I always found it strange that Prince Adam was buff in the original and had the same haircut and no one put two and two together. He was like Clark Kent but never wore glasses and didn’t even slightly adjust his hair. I liked later iterations where he is basically like Billy Batson.
 
I always found it strange that Prince Adam was buff in the original and had the same haircut and no one put two and two together. He was like Clark Kent but never wore glasses and didn’t even slightly adjust his hair. I liked later iterations where he is basically like Billy Batson.

I like the absurdities of the original. The more you try to make it make sense, the more it comes unraveled, just like Superman...

DC_Comics_Presents_47.jpg
 
We've seen how making superheroes 'adult' went

How it went? It created the most successful media empire of the decade.

That's if one pretends that superheroes haven't been written for adults for over half a century

Whatever this current iteration of MOTU's problems are though, it's not that it's "adult", not by a longshot. I very much felt, with the dialogue and characterization, I was watching a children's cartoon.
 
How it went? It created the most successful media empire of the decade.

That's if one pretends that superheroes haven't been written for adults for over half a century

Whatever this current iteration of MOTU's problems are though, it's not that it's "adult", not by a longshot. I very much felt, with the dialogue and characterization, I was watching a children's cartoon.

I assume you're referring to the MCU films. For me it led to a lot of shitty 'dark' and 'adult' superhero comics, starting way back in the early 90s, long before the current changes that have a portion of the aging superhero comic fandom all worked up.

The films are something else from the comics, I like them but I'm not as in love with the MCU as others.

They're generally good with some admirable craft but I wouldn't really say their success is in any meaninful way because they are 'adult' in the sense of post-Watchmen superhero comics.

The opposite actually, they retain the humour, strength of the earlier comic's idealism and origin stories, etc.

The MCU films have appropriately muted violence and are notably sexless, they seem aimed squarely at the family market to me. Just because adults can watch and enjoy a film doesn't make it an adult film imo, Pixar makes films kids and adults can enjoy but their films are properly made for kids I think.
 
I assume you're referring to the MCU films. For me it led to a lot of shitty 'dark' and 'adult' superhero comics, starting way back in the early 90s, long before the current changes that have a portion of the aging superhero comic fandom all worked up.

In the early 90's? Superhero comics reverted to being far more juvenile than they'd been in a decade. Like, I'd say there's nothing adult about this stuff...

51332236617_2f97798294_o.png


Can you actually imagine showing those to an adult? Without being embarrassed?

The films are something else from the comics, I like them but I'm not as in love with the MCU as others.

They hew much closer to Bronze Age comics, especially the early MCU films, if dumbed down quite a bit for a wider audience.*

* actually Netflix MCU was probably the most faithful to the Bronze Age comics it was based in, in regard to tone. And even they shied away from the more extreme stuff, like Karen Page becoming a drug addict and having a background as a pornographic actress.

They're generally good with some admirable craft but I wouldn't really say their success is in any meaninful way because they are 'adult' in the sense of post-Watchmen superhero comics.

Again, I can't tell how you are using term "adult" there. Because when it comes to mainstream superhero comics, the period post Watchmen was when style took precedence over substance, catering to the collector's market and the lowest-common denominator "guns, guns, guns! (and pouches for some reason)" pre-adolescent crowd. If you mean Post-Watchmen as comics aimed at a mature audience with complex characterizations, literary value to the stories, and tackling complicated adult issues, well then, we're talking stuff like Sandman, The Invisibles, Books of Magic, The Extremist...in other words Vertigo comics. About as far from mainstream superheroes as one can get really, especially at the time (with rare exceptions like The Maxx). It wouldn't be until the late 90's that superhero comics began to catch up and shed the juvenilia of the early 90s with works like Marvels, Year One, Starman, etc.

The opposite actually, they retain the humour, strength of the earlier comic's idealism and origin stories, etc.

Well, yes, exactly, the MCU, at least the films that made it popular, is deeply steeped in pre-Watchmen comics, The Bronze Age. This was when mainstream superhero comic books really shifted to telling adult stories. By the late 70's the average age of a comicbook buyer was university-level. To have superheroes begin to deal with real-world issues, to come to terms with death, complex morality and motivations, the black and white simplicity of the Golden age that Marvel began deconstructing in the Silver Age gradually shifting the average readership from children to college age. And yes, Idealism is present...because "cynicism" isn't the same thing as maturity. You can't set foot on a high school campus without finding a hundred jade, angsty teens reveling in cynicism (or, at least, when I was in High School, I admit I haven't set foot on a High School Campus since the last day that I had to). And I don't think one can place "humour" in an age demographic.


Voros said:
The MCU films have appropriately muted violence and are notably sexless, they seem aimed squarely at the family market to me.

To a degree, sure. And again, in this way they definitely differ from the Pre-Watchmen Bronze Age comics, admittedly bowdlerized for a general audience.

But I think there's a huge gap between the MCU films and entertainment aimed at children, such as the Masters of the Universe cartoon. The MCU films may appeal to children, but are definitely designed specifically to appeal to adults. And they are far and away more mature than anything you'll find in a Saturday Morning cartoon from the 1980's.
Just because adults can watch and enjoy a film doesn't make it an adult film imo,

No, of course not. But you seem to be drawing this line between solely adult and solely children's entertainment, and there's a pretty huge margin in between the two. I daresay most adults could not watch and enjoy the original Masters of the Universe cartoon. Probably for the reasons you dismiss it as "crap". But it's not crap, it's just aimed at an audience from 4 to 10 years of age. Just as I wouldn't expect a child to enjoy watching David Lynch's Inland Empire. But media doesn't have to be one thing or the other. I'd say most really successful media is mature enough to offer complex plots, characters, and verisimilitude, while still presenting enough adventure, fun, and stimulus that kids can enjoy it. Media doesn't require extreme portrayals of sex and violence to be "mature". In fact, I'd say MOST of the time, immaturity leads to a misuse of those elements.
Pixar makes films kids and adults can enjoy but their films are properly made for kids I think.


kinda...I mean, you couldn't pay me to sit through a Toy Story or Cars sequel. OTOH, you have a film like UP that operates on two levels, the basic adventure story that children can enjoy and the incredibly melancholy meditation on death and aging that can engage an adult audience. And yeah, I find a there's a lot of entertainment aimed at children that deals with those two levels. Even when I was a kid. Take a film like Labyrinth. On the one hand, it's a very whimsical fairy tale that as a young child I greatly enjoyed. But as an adult I can now see the incredibly dark and mature elements and symbolism under the surface, dealing with everything from materialism, to abusive relationships, to incest. And I agree, operating on two levels like that makes for "family entertainment" with a very broad appeal.

On the other hand, the MCU is essentially the opposite: films aimed at adults, that on a surface level can be enjoyed by children.

But taking this back to your original statement, MOTU: Revelations seems like an attempt to take a children's cartoon and inject that other level to it - but an attempt that fails more often than it succeeds. Despite ostensibly being the protagonist, the only thing one could say about Teela's character is that "she's unusually angry". Her newfound sidekick has slightly less character development than Marlan Wayan's character in the Dungeons & Dragons film. At one point I thought they were going in an interesting direction with Skeletor, but turns out that wasn't Skeletor at all...? Actually, I'm still not clear on that. And they keep HINTING at depth for other characters, like Adam himself, but so far haven't explored it at all. Orco is sorta given some surface level character development, but really it's just a set up for one of the most WTF BS Deus Ex Machina moments in the miniseries.

But that's all referencing what I think of in regard to storytelling being more adult.

Going by the use of "adult" to mean extreme violence and sex...no, there was no attempt in this series to do that. It's slightly - ever so slightly - less censored than the original MOTU cartoon in regards to violence, where He-Man was never allowed to hit anyone in the show with his sword, but even so it's even more bloodless than ANY MCU film. I think Pixar's The Incredibles was probably just as violent, if not more (that did have someone getting sucked into a turbine engine at least). As for sex? Well, I think the original cartoon probably had more of a sexual undercurrent than Kevin Smith's miniseries.
 
The horrible irony of the Dork Ages of comics is that they became so vapid and juvenile in pursuit of the success of brutal deconstructions of superhero comics that only worked, not because they were gritty and sleazy, but because they were legitimately more mature, more adult, than the majority of their contemporaries.

Frank "WHORESWHORESWHORES" Miller made his career writing The Dark Knight Returns and motherfucking Robocop, and spent the next three decades coasting on sad parodies of those masterpieces. Mark "you got any more of them goats?" Millar made his entire career off of comics fans confusing adolescent contrarian rebellion for the maturity of artistic freedom, and for confusing blind hatred of the superhero genre for insightful and constructive criticism of it.

There is without a doubt some vapid fanservice bullshit in MOTU:R and some angsty pizza cutter bullshit, but there's also some brilliant real adult shit happening in a TV-PG show that's mostly safe to watch with your kids.

In the Snake Mountain episode... in addition to the body horror of the Motherboard transformation-- which is fire-- you get these poor, wretched refugees begging to join Tri-Klops' cult, drink the "magic" nanopotion. When the father drinks the potion and goes through his horrific transformation sequence, screaming the entire time, the other people in line are terrified.

But nobody leaves.

When Teela and Andra attack, the transformed man is confused. He isn't being mind-controlled by Motherboard, he doesn't know what to do, and Tri-Klops has to order him to attack.

He's not a mindless (or coerced) slave to Motherboard. He's not fighting to force anyone else to drink the potion. He's fighting so his daughter has the chance to undergo the same horrifying transformation, because it's her only opportunity for a better life. That's not bullshit, that's real shit.

So, I mentioned upthread this show was 8.X/10 for me but the first two episodes threatened to ruin it for me-- I am not a fan of Randor and Teela's reaction to learning about Adam's secret and his death. I understand why they did it, to set up the mise en scene for the story they wanted to tell, but it was grossly out of character for both characters (and Duncan), grossly disrespectful of Adam/He-Man's legacy in their world and ours, and just grossly fucking gross.

But their later handling of Teela dealing with Duncan and Adam, dealing with her anger and grief, was pretty good. When she's given... pretty hard reasons for why they made the decisions they did, why they believed they had to, she doesn't forgive them immediately. She starts to forgive them, and she starts by giving them the opportunity to earn her forgiveness... even if she has to justify it, herself, by the necessity of the situation.

Is she not her father's daughter, after all?

Adam is the only Champion of Grayskull to choose to live in Preternia in his untransformed shape. Adam is the only Champion of Grayskull to ever leave Preternia to keep fighting for Grayskull after his death. Holy shit.

So, yeah, Evil Lyn is playing them the whole time and the only reason I didn't see that coming was that it was the lamer than the rest of the show deserved. But the entire time she's trying to fool Teela and Andra... she's not sucking up to them by pretending to say what they want to hear, and she's not undermining them by sowing dissent. She actually helps them, by telling them real truths that she's learned by throwing her own life away. She helps Teela, and she especially helps Orko, when it doesn't really benefit her at all.

It's too bad she couldn't take her own advice. But if you listen to her telling it... she knows that. She knows she needs someone else to tell her what she's telling them.

There's just too much good here, and too much authentic Masters of the Universe storytelling, to throw it all out over some questionable (and some deliberately wrong) creative decisions.
 
The horrible irony of the Dork Ages of comics is that they became so vapid and juvenile in pursuit of the success of brutal deconstructions of superhero comics that only worked, not because they were gritty and sleazy, but because they were legitimately more mature, more adult, than the majority of their contemporaries.

Yeah, Moore (and Veitch, the one who is always forgotten), and to a lesser extent Miller, wrote legitimate, literary works of deconstruction, and people of inferior skill, talent, and creativity only saw "violence!" "grimdark"! "Kewl! Soooo Exxxx-treme!" and aped that. It's one of the reasons Moore wrote that he was "horrified" to learn that DC was pushing Watchmen as how "all comics should be", and spent the ret of his time in the industry trying to show people how to do reconstructionist stories.

Frank "WHORESWHORESWHORES" Miller made his career writing The Dark Knight Returns and motherfucking Robocop, and spent the next three decades coasting on sad parodies of those masterpieces.

I'm not going to give Miller credit for Robocop (he didn't have anything to do with the original,, andonly submitted a script for the sequel, and the film version was substantially changed after the studio basically declared his script "unfilmable"), but credit where credit is due, Martha Washington, Daredevil Born Again, and Batman: Year one earned him his well-deserved reputation. I kinda think after DKR (which I don't rate as highly as everyone else seems to) is where he started to acquire brain rot.



In the Snake Mountain episode... in addition to the body horror of the Motherboard transformation-- which is fire-- you get these poor, wretched refugees begging to join Tri-Klops' cult, drink the "magic" nanopotion. When the father drinks the potion and goes through his horrific transformation sequence, screaming the entire time, the other people in line are terrified.

But nobody leaves.

When Teela and Andra attack, the transformed man is confused. He isn't being mind-controlled by Motherboard, he doesn't know what to do, and Tri-Klops has to order him to attack.

He's not a mindless (or coerced) slave to Motherboard. He's not fighting to force anyone else to drink the potion. He's fighting so his daughter has the chance to undergo the same horrifying transformation, because it's her only opportunity for a better life. That's not bullshit, that's real shit.

Yeah, I agree, the Motherboard cult stuff was very cool (Cybermen have always been my favourite Doctor Who villains), which is why it kinda sucked there hasn't been any further exploration of that and they are just treated as cannon fodder cultists in the subsequent episodes


So, I mentioned upthread this show was 8.X/10 for me but the first two episodes threatened to ruin it for me-- I am not a fan of Randor and Teela's reaction to learning about Adam's secret and his death. I understand why they did it, to set up the mise en scene for the story they wanted to tell, but it was grossly out of character for both characters (and Duncan), grossly disrespectful of Adam/He-Man's legacy in their world and ours, and just grossly fucking gross.
I would have been OK with it if it had begun and ended in that one scene. But having it define Teela's character for the rest of the show really bothered me.

But their later handling of Teela dealing with Duncan and Adam, dealing with her anger and grief, was pretty good. When she's given... pretty hard reasons for why they made the decisions they did, why they believed they had to, she doesn't forgive them immediately. She starts to forgive them, and she starts by giving them the opportunity to earn her forgiveness... even if she has to justify it, herself, by the necessity of the situation.

Unless I missed it, Adam never gave a reason yet. It's the bit of character development I was waiting for the whole series, especially after...



Adam is the only Champion of Grayskull to choose to live in Preternia in his untransformed shape.

...THAT was revealed. That seemed like the perfect setup for some character development, a heart to heart conversation with Teela, and revealing some interesting new perspective on the relationship between Adam and He-Man. I can only be optimistic that it is coming in a future episode dump. But as it is, it's hints at something interesting, but hints aren't a substitute for actually being interesting. They need to follow through


So, yeah, Evil Lyn is playing them the whole time and the only reason I didn't see that coming was that it was the lamer than the rest of the show deserved.

Huh, I didn't read it that way. I think Lynn was genuine when she was with them, and then just chose Skeletor when he came back because the choice was offered and in the end she preferred what Bone Daddy had to offer. I honestly think of all the characters in the miniseries, she came off the most three-dimensionally human. In other words, I don't think she switched alignments, she just made the best of the situations as they resented themselves to her

There's just too much good here, and too much authentic Masters of the Universe storytelling, to throw it all out over some questionable (and some deliberately wrong) creative decisions.


(shrug) It will really come down to the follow up I think. Taken in isolation, I'd say that these 5 episodes doesn't really add up to anything other than, as someone put it upthread, semi-decent MOTU fanfic. But there's still the opportunity to turn that around.

And even if not, there's then an opportunity for someone else to come along and take those nuggets of clever ideas and hints and turn them into a worthwhile story.

...hopefully with Teela's hair and skin colour properly restored.
 
Okay full disclosure, I was always disappointed with the original show. So much potential and such a bad and preachy thing. It's like Berenstain Bears fantasy.

I thought the new show was better than any of the attempts since the original. It's just a generic fantasy show without much of the weird science fantasy stuff that made the original interesting. No, I didn't like that newer one much, I think I was spoiled by the original comics in the toys when He Man was just some barbarian guy.

I have complaints about the new show, it's pretty obvious and unoriginal in its direction. Oh no, the hero died and years later everyone has gone their ways and lost heart, but now they have to get the band back together. But the lame humour and even the recogniton of the lame humour was great. Evil Lynn filleting Merman with fish puns hooked me. I don't know, it's bad, but it's bad like the original was and that rings true for me.
 
I'm not going to give Miller credit for Robocop (he didn't have anything to do with the original,, andonly submitted a script for the sequel, and the film version was substantially changed after the studio basically declared his script "unfilmable"), but credit where credit is due, Martha Washington, Daredevil Born Again, and Batman: Year one earned him his well-deserved reputation. I kinda think after DKR (which I don't rate as highly as everyone else seems to) is where he started to acquire brain rot.

Basically he used to be really that good, but he hasn't been for a really long time. I'm not qualified to speculate on what happened, and I'm not going to insult the man, or the quality of his older, better, works by trying. Believe it or not, that's not the sort of thing I get off on. :smile:

Miller used to be a genius who inspired other geniuses (Eastman/Laird, anyone?) and now... well, Sin City was still really that good, wasn't it?

100% agreed, whether Masters of the Universe: Revelation is great or mediocre-- or terrible, but I don't consider that likely-- is going to boil down to the execution of the back half, how well they handle bringing Adam and Orko back, how well they reconcile Adam and Teela, and how well they establish what the new status quo is going to be moving forward.

The best part of the Masters of the Universe franchise is that whatever comes next isn't going to be based on this show, it's going to be based on the whole "canon" including this show.
 
So Part 1 of things I would have done differently...

There was an episode of the original show called "Teela's Secret", which I went back and watched after seeing the mini-series to confirm if my memories about it were correct.

In that episode Teela finds out the truth about who her father and mother were, where she came from, how Duncan came to adopt her, and her destiny to one day take over as The Sorceress of Grayskull. But at the end of the episode, because everything hd to go back to status quo for serialized children's television, arbitrarily the Sorceress declares "you can't know any of this stuff yet" and then GOES INTO TEELA'S MIND AND ERASES HER MEMORIES. And Duncan and He-Man have no problem with this.

Finding out about THAT, and Duncan and Adam's complicity in her "mind rape", rather than just finding out He-Man's secret identity, is something that I could legitimately believe as the source of her freaking out and carrying a grudge for years. That's what I would have used as the catalyst of events in the miniseries.
 
... well, Sin City was still really that good, wasn't it?

Like DKR, I don't get the acclaim. I liked about 50% of the movie though.

And I liked 300. Even if by that point Miller's "art" had already devolved
 
Sit down with some pens and try to draw like Miller. It's not easy to make what he does look like anything. He's like Mike Mignolia that way: what he does is amazing even if it looks crude and simple.

But what do I know, I loved Dark Knight Strikes Again.
 
It came to me in a flash. People don't like Teela because she is basically Poochie, 'memba him?
 
It came to me in a flash. People don't like Teela because she is basically Poochie, 'memba him?


I love Teela, she was one of my favourite fictional characters growing up. I had a life-size standee of her in my room from the age of kindergarten to about 2nd grade.

I just didn't buy her motivation in the new series. I think at one time while watching I actually said out loud "He's dead! Get over it already!"

I wish she could have acted cool like Poochie. Poochie wouldn't have been moping for years because someone who died didn't tell her a personal secret!
 
And they never gave the Prince a funeral. They forget him right quick...
 
You know, we really don't see King Randor's response at all beyond his firing of Man at Arms. Perhaps He-man's been thought dead enough times that they decided to wait and see.
 
You know, we really don't see King Randor's response at all beyond his firing of Man at Arms. Perhaps He-man's been thought dead enough times that they decided to wait and see.

It isn't really that fine of line between dismissing a loyal vassal from your service and exiliing him from your domain upon pain of death, though. Honestly, Teela would have been right to walk away from him for dishonoring her father in that way... if she weren't also doing so herself. Rest of the series aside, this scene and this episode really are just that bad.
 
You know, we really don't see King Randor's response at all beyond his firing of Man at Arms. Perhaps He-man's been thought dead enough times that they decided to wait and see.
The problem is that Duncan is allegedly Randor's best friend, he should have given his former Man-At-Arms a chance to explain himself.
 
You know, I've watched it all. I expected them to do something to give us a truly dramatic story. I kind of expected much of this (before people spoilered it everywhere.) I suspect I'm one of the few that believe there is something more waiting at the end of this limited series than we expect. I hope I'm not wrong. I might be, now if it was Joss Whedon doing this stuff? I'd be "Yep, murder the person everyone loves, and completely mangle your shows in the same way." I think there is a hat trick and no one is willing to wait for it. Honestly.
(Obviously Teela doesn't NEED the sword to be a heroine) But I'm not going to spoiler the reasons I'm expecting a very different end than everyone else.
 
I missed it, sorry. I'll endeavor to read more next time

No worries. I think aside from Mr. Brady, the general impression seems to be the first half is unimpressive but not horrible, and the second half could make or break the series.
 
The show definitely assumes a watcher is going in already familiar with the original series, which is what makes some of the choices so baffling to me. Like, the new She-Ra cartoon didn't bother me a bit, because it's obviously a reboot aimed at a new audience, a generation I'm not a part of. Fair enough. But this is like the intended audience is clearly older longtime fans but it also seems to go out of it's way to alienate that fanbase, while simultaneously doing nothing to introduce the world or characters for a new audience.
Haven't watched it, but that sounds like about what I'd expect from our current cultural moment.
 
I've friends who are old fans, and watched it and would NOT shut up about it, I watched it and said "I see what he's doing" and generally enjoyed it, but, too many fans think He-man/Adam are gone, they've no imagination anymore, they've lost it to age and cynicism. Sure they want the show about He-man, not focused on Teela, I understand that logically, but I'm not sure that the first half was the place to tell that story.

Unfortunately, we didn't get the whole show/seasons all at once, so we're stuck waiting to see, which was definitely a flawed way of doing things in this case. Kevin Smith confirmed, at least from my perspective what's likely to happen.
 
I've friends who are old fans, and watched it and would NOT shut up about it, I watched it and said "I see what he's doing" and generally enjoyed it, but, too many fans think He-man/Adam are gone, they've no imagination anymore, they've lost it to age and cynicism. Sure they want the show about He-man, not focused on Teela, I understand that logically, but I'm not sure that the first half was the place to tell that story.

Unfortunately, we didn't get the whole show/seasons all at once, so we're stuck waiting to see, which was definitely a flawed way of doing things in this case. Kevin Smith confirmed, at least from my perspective what's likely to happen.

I can't really get worked up over He-Man but I wonder if this will be a Ahsoka on Clone Wars where so much of fandom over-reacted to her early bratty behaviour missing that it was part of a longer character arc.

One of the things I hated about AV Club's episode-by-episode reviews of a series is that for a TV show you rarely get anywhere watching an episode in isolation, one needs to consider the series as whole.
 
But what does the 8 year old boy demographic think?
Given that people die, graphically (Sure it's not flesh melting or guts showing, but...) I don't think they're the market. I'm actually not sure WHO the market is. Even taking away the MoTU coating of paint, the story is pretty crap.

Powerful sorceress apparently knows that the bad guys are coming for the castle of holding the power, but doesn't bother setting up defenses. Falls to a trap that she had apparently deduced, but not? (And this is in the first five minutes or so.) Way to go Bird Lady.

A plant guardian that had apparently been there all along shows up to get turned into a literal briquette within 30 seconds near the end of the fight, instead of I don't know, trying to slow the bad guy down, or maybe using his powers over foliage (which are implied to be great) to mess up the army outside? And how did they sneak up on the castle anyway with tanks and flying grinding machines?

So, the bad guy finally unlocks the macguffin he's been wanting to capture for himself, and then breaks it, literally dooming the universe to obliteration. Sure, he got himself stabbed, but setting himself to get killed so he could free the magic thingy but that seems like a bad plan, especially given how much he seemed to want it. What was the point, exactly?

And the great hero's great plan is to break his sword to... Slow the death of the universe down. So instead of a quick pop, it's now a slow grind into oblivion. Great move there Champion of Champions! Man, he can't do anything right.

That was just the first episode. And I may have missed a few key bits, I've only watched it once, and refuse to do it again, but that's pretty much what happens.
 
People dying actually seems more out of keeping then anything else I've heard so far. If there's one thing I remember about 80s cartoons, it was that swords got waved around but never actually drew blood.

I don't know. This whole thing seems weird. There's probably an essay in it somewhere about modern popular culture.

One, I would have naturally assumed it to be an attempt to relauch He-man for a new generation of kids, perhaps relying on some parents nostalgia to try and direct their kids to it.

But apparently not. To be honest I find the idea that there are adult fans who would be interested in this as something other than something to watch with their own children a bit odd in the first place.

But assuming there are such fans one would think you would want to appeal to them I guess.
 
Last edited:
People dying actually seems more out of keeping then anything else I've heard so far. If there's one thing I remeber about 80s cartoons, it was that swords got waved around but never actually drew blood.

I don't know. This whole thing seems weird. There's problem an essay in it somewhere about modern popular culture.

One, I would have naturally assumed it to be an attempt to relauch He-man for a new generation of kids, perhaps relying on some parents nostalgia to try and direct their kids to it.

But apparently not. To be honest I find the idea that there are adult fans who would be interested in this as something other than something to watch with their own children a bit odd in the first place.

But assuming there are such fans one would think you would want to appeal to them I guess.

People die, but it's still bloodless. Think 1950's action films.

As for the intended audience? No idea, that's the most baffling thing to me. It's not for kids, and it's not really for adults either. It's definitely not for a new audience - it doesn't introduce any of the characters or the setting, the obvious assumption is that the viewer is familiar with the original series. Yet it seems specifically designed to alienate longterm fans. So you think, maybe it's for Kevin Smith fans? But no, none of Smith's characteristic "witty" reparte is present - in fact, if his involvement hadn't been highly publicized I never would have guessed it was anything to do with him.

All I can figure is...

"Are you a 40-something longtime fan of Masters of the Universe who always wished the show was all about Teela, if Teela didn't look or act anything like the Teela from the original show? Well, this is your lucky day!"
 
People die, but it's still bloodless. Think 1950's action films.

As for the intended audience? No idea, that's the most baffling thing to me. It's not for kids, and it's not really for adults either. It's definitely not for a new audience - it doesn't introduce any of the characters or the setting, the obvious assumption is that the viewer is familiar with the original series. Yet it seems specifically designed to alienate longterm fans. So you think, maybe it's for Kevin Smith fans? But no, none of Smith's characteristic "witty" reparte is present - in fact, if his involvement hadn't been highly publicized I never would have guessed it was anything to do with him.

All I can figure is...

"Are you a 40-something longtime fan of Masters of the Universe who always wished the show was all about Teela, if Teela didn't look or act anything like the Teela from the original show? Well, this is your lucky day!"
Pretty much, it's like made by someone who hated the show and was angry they were being forced to use it.
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top