Dina Reviews: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021)

 

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe! Or, MOTU to you and me! It’s one of the ultimate 1980s franchises, isn’t it? Unlike, say, Transformers or TMNT, it never really had the sort of big revival that re-inserted it into the public eye after its initial glory days was over. 

It wasn’t for lack of trying… you had the sci-fi continuation The New Adventures of He-Man in the 1990s, the Mike Young Productions reboot cartoon in the early 2000s, the “Classics” toyline in the 2010s, and the ABSOLUTELY PUTRID DC Comics series in the late 2010s… but with the possible exception of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which really distanced itself from MOTU anyway, most of them have really only been noticed by the fanbase that’s already there. A fanbase that I have repeatedly tried to engage with but found to be pretty damn toxic and intolerant. The exact type of fans, in fact, that chased me away from the superhero comic fanbase… the type of fans who cry “RUINED FOREVER!” and “WOKE PANDERING TO THE SJWS!” the moment a franchise features anything but a white cishet dude in the lead and/or the female characters get to do stuff without the guys leading the way everywhere… or, horror of horrors, don’t all have perfect hourglass figures.

2021 saw two new attempts at a revival, both Netflix original series. First out, earlier this year, was Masters of the Universe: Revelation, helmed by Kevin Smith, which was angled as a continuation/finale to the classic  MOTU… and which got all the hatred from a whiny fanbase, but that’s neither here nor there right now. What I want to focus on is the second series, which is a complete re-imagining of the franchise, aimed at a younger audience to get some much needed fresh blood into the fanbase: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

And what’s new about this series? Well, it leans a lot heavier into sci-fi territory. Not that MOTU was ever a stranger to mixing sci-fi and fantasy, but this is borderline cyberpunk. In fact, this is very clearly an all-new take on the franchise; a lot more streamlined and more accessible than the old franchise, which I don’t actually mind because honestly it was getting a little bloated and convoluted with its decades of continuity.

While there are tons of little Easter eggs and sly nods to earlier incarnations of the franchise, they mostly remain Easter eggs – if you know the history of the franchise you’ll get it, if you don’t then you’ll still understand what’s going on. The focus is on the new and updated version of Eternia and its characters, not to mention the character dynamics.

In this version, we meet Adam, a young dude who lives in the jungle with a people who call themselves “the Tiger Tribe” because they coexist alongside a pack of talking, green tigers. Adam doesn’t know where he came from or who his parents are, he was found wandering around the jungle as a kid, unable to remember anything, and was essentially adopted by the tiger Cringer. And there’s also his kindasorta adoptive sister Krass, a purple-skinned young space babe with a big helmet and… very tight pants… 

Butt…

Ahem. Sorry. I think the animators may have been a little, um, carried away with a certain part of her anatomy.

The idyllic life in the jungle is only interrupted by robotic poachers… and, to kick off the series’ plot there’s the arrival of Teela, a teenage techno-witch on the run from a pair of villains she recently betrayed: The brutish Kronis and the scheming sorceress Evelyn… and their scrawny sidekick Duncan who kinda would like to NOT be a villain, thanks.

It’s Teela who brings the Sword of Power, stolen from the Palace of Eternia and kept away from the villains, a talisman that – oh, you know this part – allows Adam to transform into the muscle-bound warrior He-Man. Unlike the original continuity, in this version the Adam/He-Man dual identity is not a secret; “He-Man” is just a nickname Krass thought up for Adam’s more powerful form, and then she play-fought him until he agreed to it.

The revelation of He-Man sets in motion a number of events that not only sees Adam clash with his evil uncle Keldor (nicknamed “Skeletor” after a curse turns him into a skull-faced demon), but also leads him to discover he is in fact the lost Crown Prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of the mysterious Castle Grayskull.

In a bit of a twist from the old mythos, however, Adam is not the only one who ends up getting superpowers from Grayskull. See, this incarnation is on a pretty big “power is meant to be shared, not hoarded” kick, and so Adam shares the Power of Greyskull with Teela, Cringer, Duncan and Krass, who become a five-person team with lots of flashy transformation sequences and superpowers: Sorceress, Battlecat, Man-At-Arms and the delightfully named Ram Ma’am!

This is a change that a lot of people have protested. At least three people I have talked to have gone “what, He-Man has a team of superheroes now?”

And… um… YES. Hate to break it to you, but MOTU was always a toy-driven franchise. He-Man ALWAYS had tons of superpowered allies, all of them with their own gimmicks and all of them available at your local toy store. Sure, the sharing of the power is a new angle… or ALMOST new; we still had Cringer/Battlecat in the original… but it actually leads into a very interesting difference between Adam and his archnemesis Skeletor: Where Adam shares his power, Skeletor hoards his. It’s an interesting update on the dynamic.

All in all, after having seen the first ten-episode season of the show, I have to say it hits more notes than it misses. People who only want a nostalgia trip don’t have much to look forward to here (though I have to say, the He-Man these people think they remember seems to be a different He-Man than the one that actually existed in the cartoons), but there’s a lot of smart updates to the setting and the characters. Lots of character and setting themes that were fine in the 1980s but wouldn’t fly today, have been altered or updated, meaning that this is definitely a show for modern day kids.

Some of the updates are especially interesting… I’ve already mentioned Krass/Ram Ma’am as a female version of the Ram-Man of yore (with a cute butt!), but I also have to mention Eldress, the former Sorceress of Castle Grayskull who sacrificed her life to save Adam and now hangs around Castle Grayskull as a helpful ghost… but my fave might be Orko. Okay, fine, Orko’s my fave in ANY MOTU production and unless he’s in there I tend not to be interested at all. But this take on him is one that you THINK wouldn’t work and yet somehow does. This Orko is a floating robot that thanks to being accidentally upgraded with the writings and memoirs of an old Trollan court mage named “Orko the Great” believes himself to be that very same Orko.

But… and here comes the BIG question… what about Skeletor?

One thing you should probably know about me is that Skeletor has always been one of my fave villains in any franchise, and apart from Orko I definitely think he’s the best MOTU character…. But he has to be done RIGHT. Which means, he can not, under ANY circumstances, take himself too seriously. Sure, he can be menacing and threatening, but like a good Disney villain he should also be a total ham who gets all the best dialogue. If Skeletor isn’t the funniest character on the show, you’re not doing him right.

This show does Skeletor SO right.

He’s a conniving, manipulative schemer who sets up to betray and trick friend and foe alike. He hungers for power and will do anything to get it… and he also constantly laughs, creatively insults everyone around him and gets a total kick out of messing with people. He may be one of the most ruthless and cold-hearted Skeletors I’ve seen, but he’s also one of the goofiest and most consistently entertaining.

I loved Skeletor in Revelation, where he had limited screen time but stole the show every time he was on-screen. Here, he has a major role and STILL steals the show every time he’s on-screen.

So, don’t I have anything negative to say? Well… the show doesn’t really have that much PUNCH. It’s very quick, flashy and high-energy, but the pacing is so high-tempo that many of the emotional beats don’t have time to land. One very big example is the first episode, where the Tiger Tribe’s village is set on fire… it’s supposed to be this big, scary thing for Adam, Cringer and Krass, but the emotional beats don’t land because we barely ever SEE the village. They don’t really spend any time there, or interact with any of the villagers, so it’s more like we’re TOLD that this is sad, but we’re not shown WHY. The show has one too many bits like this; emotions and character beats are just rushed through and as a result they don’t have any real impact. Only occasionally did an emotional character beat really have the impact it intended; Orko’s character journey and eventually having to face the fact that he wasn’t the original Orko DID land and felt properly emotional, but his story was among the exceptions.

What ALSO doesn’t have any impact, bizarrely enough, is the action scenes. Now, the action scenes are probably some of the flashiest, most spectacular, most bombastic action scenes you’ve seen in ANY MOTU incarnation… they look cool, they sound cool and they feel cool. In the moment. Problem is, they don’t have any impact. The characters pull off these hugely impressive-looking special moves, and they don’t ACCOMPLISH anything with them, other than maybe take out a couple of robot minions, so in the end it just feels like a lot of light and spectacle for nothing.

I think it was four times or something when He-Man did this “Lightning Strike” attack that called on lightning and created this HUGE energy beam that looks like it could level buildings, and really SHOULD have ended the fight there and then… but the bad guys just acted like it was a slap on the wrist. It almost became a running gag, that the most spectacular attacks actually came across as the weakest ones because they so seldom DID anything.

That is my main complaind about the show, though. The emotional impact is lacking, and the action scenes too often feel like pointless spectacle. If the show hadn’t rushed through so many of its plot beats,  or it had made made the biggest flashiest attacks actually MEAN something, I probably wouldn’t have had much to complain about.

Really, this show is at its best when it just dares to be goofy. Luckily, it often does.

…and Krass IS seriously adorable. As is her butt.