Masters of the Universe: Revelation non-spoiler review followed by spoiler discussion

[Lord Insanity]

I am a child of the '80s. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was the cartoon to my 5 year old self. Obviously as an adult I realize the animation was low quality even by the standards of the time. The writing on the other hand (within the limits of what they were allowed to do at the time) holds up surprisingly well. When Netflix announced they were making a sequel to the original but with modern animation quality I was rather elated.

The results are not at all what I would have done as a sequel. It was overall very good though. There are numerous call backs and Easter egg references to the original cartoon but they very quickly depart rather radically from the formula that serves as the foundation to their story. That could have gone horribly awry but the story they tell makes sense in context to the events portrayed on screen. More importantly its good so far.

What is likely to be the biggest point of contention is that He-Man himself is hardly in the show. Now show runner Kevin Smith previously stated that their show "is all about He-Man." That is true in the Obi-Wan "certain point of view" sense. The best comparison would be to say that Superman in the most important character in Zach Snyder's Justice League despite hardly being in the movie. It works but some people will understandably dislike that regardless of how well written it is.

Master of the Universe: Revelation was split by Netflix into part 1 and part 2. Only the first five episodes have been released as part 1. This does end on a cliffhanger so fair warning.

Overall: not at all what I was expecting but surprisingly still quite good.




--- SPOILERS AHEAD ---



SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT FORWARD

So the biggest motivator to the plot is Teela rather abruptly finding out He-Man and Adam are the same person, right before he sacrifices himself to stop Skeletor and save the universe. Really they probably should have just advertised the show as a "what if" rather than getting fans' hopes up by originally saying it was direct sequel to the original. It is more of a spiritual successor to the original continuities (mini-comics, cartoon, newspaper strips, comic books, etc.) combined.

Twice in the story so far characters have attempted to tell Teela the other big secret she doesn't know yet (the Sorceress is her mother) only to be dismissed by her (so as of the end of episode 5 she still doesn't know that one) I still strongly suspect they are going to end this with Teela becoming the new Sorceress in an adaption of her classic mini-comic "Green Goddess" form.

So while most of the show follows what was established in the original cartoon as their baseline they did make a rather strange departure. Orko was referred to as incompetent even on his home planet of Trolla. The original cartoon rather clearly established Orko as a master wizard on Trolla and was only incompetent because Trollan magic literally works backwards on Eternia. (In fact when Adam found himself on Trolla he couldn't turn into He-Man because saying "By the power of Grayskull" didn't work. He realized everything was backwards and finally turned into He-Man by saying "Grayskull of power the by.") One of the jokes in the original cartoon is that the chances of Orko's magic succeeding were in direct proportion to how serious it was that it actually needed to work. So a minor "show" trick would always backfire while an emergency life saving spell would always work (but not necessarily quite they way he intended) It's a minor thing but considering how many other subtle things they got right it was a bit jarring.

[GuppyShark]

Disappointing to hear it was as the doubters claimed, a bait and switch.

Kevin claimed they watched every episode, so how did they fuck up Orco?

[bilateralrope]

Disappointing to hear it was as the doubters claimed, a bait and switch.

Yeah, that's my biggest issue with it. I watched these episodes and probably would have liked them had the advertising been honest. But the advertising wasn't, leaving me unhappy enough that I probably won't watch the next batch of episodes.

But I'm saying this as someone with minimal memories of He-Man.

[Solauren]

Orko gaining serious levels of skill could be him coming to the same realization that Adam did on Orko's home, that they are backwards to each other, and found that style of casting significantly easier then his native worlds methods. (In a world of all right handed people, he was actually lefted handed sort of deal.) The result is Orko becoming a magical bad-ass.

[Tribble]

Disappointing to hear it was as the doubters claimed, a bait and switch.

Yeah, that's my biggest issue with it. I watched these episodes and probably would have liked them had the advertising been honest. But the advertising wasn't, leaving me unhappy enough that I probably won't watch the next batch of episodes.

But I'm saying this as someone with minimal memories of He-Man.

It’s funny, like I in the other thread I was getting serious “Transformers the Movie” vibes right from the start of the trailers (aka He-Man and Skeletor take each other out during a final battle in the opening act and the rest is dealing with the fallout)… which was more or less what happened.

So for me the advertising was honest enough.

[Lord Insanity]

So I watched through the five episodes again with the kids this time. My daughter (12) and son (9) both loved it so they obviously did something right. Of course my kids did have the unfair advantage of having watched through the original cartoon a few years ago.

I caught a lot of little things on the second viewing. The scanner they are using in the second episode was straight out of the '87 live action movie. The towers in Preternia were an adaptation of the '86 Eternia play-set. Right after Moss-man gets torched Skeletor says, "Smells like pine." The original action figure was flocked with "pine scent" fuzz. Several of the original toys had cameos as vehicles and characters in animation for the first time. I totally get why Kevin Smith called this a love letter to Masters of the Universe fans. It pulls stuff from every major continuity and blends them together rather well so far.

Disappointing to hear it was as the doubters claimed, a bait and switch.

Kevin claimed they watched every episode, so how did they fuck up Orco?

I mean the original rumor was that Adam would step aside and Teela would become a better "He-Man" than he ever was. That was not at all what happened, I wouldn't really call it a bait and switch. Everything was framed around how awesome a hero Adam was and why he was the greatest of the champions of Grayskull.

While Orko's backstory was clearly different from the Filmation cartoon version, he was very well done.

The only real bait and switch was calling this a direct sequel to the Filmation series. It's kind of like a cross between the Filmation series and the 2002 Mike Young Produtions series with bits from the books, comics and live-action film for good measure.