Originally published at: Netflix He-Man reboot hews close to original formula | Boing Boing
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Don’t know. My daughters and their friends love She Ra, if He Man doesn’t fit into that milieu I can’t see them watching it.
Maybe old men will make up the slack for Netflix but if it’s like the old one I can’t see the kids watching it.
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He-Man and She Rah had different target audiences, and while i understand why this reboot sticks to that division i think it’s a mistake. As you said they’re losing out on fans that might not be interested in the simplistic machismo-forward series, but if they made a new series that changed too many things angry nerds will just complain.
I grew up loving He-Man and had the toys and play sets, but i find the IP real boring now as an adult. There’s nothing inherently interesting or exciting about it, meanwhile She Rah is one that i’ve wanted to watch but haven’t gotten around to. I don’t really know what they could do to make the new show interesting and i don’t think it really needs to be retreaded.
Edit: meanwhile i’d love to see another reboot for Thundercats. I know they tried doing two new shows over the years but that’s one IP i think still has a lot of cool potential.
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It’s good fun. I watched a few but I don’t have the tolerance to inhale the whole thing that my children have. As to what they could have done to reboot He Man interestingly? Hand it over to a great creative team and let them get creative.
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The real commercial value of the original cartoon wasn’t its ability to attract eyeballs so much as its ability to sell action figures.
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Be sure to check out the Netflix episode “The Toys that Made Us: He-Man” too.
Apparently there are two reboots—a CG one aimed at younger audiences, and the Kevin Smith one that’s aimed at nostalgic '80s kids. So this one is essentially meant as fan service (although the kids one also looks like it’s doubling down on the ultra-macho He-Manity of the original, but who knows).
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Stop beating around the bush with the homoerotic subtext and just let the boys be their truest selves.
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My belief for good reboots is to give it to a team that likes the IP but doesn’t necessarily revere it. The more someone loves an old property the harder it is for them to break the rules and bring new ideas, creators get too precious about it and end up making something that while competent just doesnt have anything new to say. Kevin Smith is a good idea man but to me he’s just not the person i would’ve wanted to head up He-Man, and looking at those previews for the show it looks generic as hell. Maybe it’ll be good but it doesn’t look that way…
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So it will still be giving boys body image problems? (And also dissappointment at life for not being able to have a pet green tiger that you can ride)
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Always felt there was a suspicious trivial parallel (and, of course, highly toyetic) mapping function between the Thunder Cats and He-Man ‘universes’; but then i admit to cluelessly never remotely understanding the whole Brony thing (cartoon + avid subcultural fandom)
(But then i always thought “Grayskull” was a reference to skeletor’s …skull (“so mumm-ra and skeletor walk into a bar…”))
Wait, is there more beyond the stills and a brief blurb that the story follows after the final battles of the original series? Is there a preview sample out?
Or are people just deciding to hate on something ahead of time?
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Please gay this up… Please.
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I think it’s a missed opportunity to not tie He-Man into the Netflix She-Ra universe or multiverse if you will. It doesn’t need to adopt the humor or artistic style but having something that says, “Yes, these two exist in the same narrative but they’re happening at different times or places.” would be enough here. The style they chose isn’t bad but it’s too nostalgic for me. I think they should’ve gone with some other style (I’m thinking more like the rebooted early 2000s Thundercats here). But that’s just me.
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This looks like Castlevania, so I’m going out on a limb and saying this is squarely an edgy adult version.
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If you were to ask me which IP was more ripe for a gay reboot, I would definitely have picked He-Man over She-Ra. But hey, why not both?
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As long as it’s consensual, Fisto can do whatever makes him happy.
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So much this. She-Ra was wonderful and now I would love to see that same treatment for He-Man but If it is gay I think it will be by accident. I like Kevin Smith fine but I expect he is a bit cis and straight.
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Was anybody else just really confused by He Man as a child? I don’t mean in some zeitgeist subtext way, but literally: what the actual heck is going on with this world? A similarly aged friend (I’m 41, so solidly in the “watched He Man and She Ra in the 80s” demographic) shared a theory that He Man had actually stolen Skeletor’s house (why does the hero live in Castle Greyscull?), and he’s just trying to get his property back from the weirdo squatters in his place, and it makes about as much sense as anything I remember as a plot.
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