I’d rather not have another hand-me-down “oh, they’re gay now” character. Give us something new and cool and gay from the start.
He’s great for a positive masculinity icon, though. He’s wearing leather straps for clothing, he’s got a legendary pageboy hair cut, hangs out with a bunch of other musclebound, scantily clad men, and hugs them all the time; that’s a man confident in his heterosexuality and not afraid to be good, close friends with other men.
I watched the first two seasons of She-Ra, and used to watch the old cartoon, though I don’t remember it well. I really don’t think the new one is that far off from the old show. It is certainly MUCH better in all regards - plot, character design and development, etc. But the story line was more or less similar. And the formula basically the same - the Horde vs the Resistance. The look was updated, and it worked. I LOVED Hordak’s new look. Reminds me of Tim Skold.
On the other than, He-Man fandom never really went away. There have been comics and a classics collector toy line, and the recent updated reissues of the classic characters. I am pretty sure the desire for this series is an updated look that adheres to the classes designs, and have the basically same mythos and plot - just with, hopefully, way better stories. I have rewatched some of the old classics, and wolf, we really sat through some dreck as kids. Though I am not really up on it, I do know they explored a lot more of the world through vintage books and comics, and newer comics. So there is a lot more to the world than just the old show.
Just looking at the stills - I love that animation look. I hope all of the characters are as brightly colored.
While we are talking about 80s reboots, the Thundercats series that only got one season was really good, and they should have given it longer.
Was it not always gay? Didn’t the art design just look like it was ripped off from Tom of Finland?
If I’m remembering it right the TV/Film rights for She-Ra have different ownership/licenses from He-Man.
So it’s less a mistake in that sense. It’s not the same people unnecessarily splitting the approach. The IP’s are already split, it’s a different group of people with a different idea about what to do.
That’s why the new She-Ra could only roughly reference He-Man, didn’t have the rights for much of the material.
I do think it’s foolish of Mattel not to resolve that rights split, or run with the success Stevenson had though.
Despite being in the target audience for this. The only person apt to watch this I know, who wasn’t hoping for Stevenson to be involved is my brother. Who described the new She-Ra as “for gay babies” and “ruined by liberals”.
I was around 10 or 11 when the He-Man cartoon came out - I forget what show slot it replaced, but it came out of nowhere and I distinctly remember thinking “wtf”? To me, there was something profoundly annoying about Prince Adam, his haircut and his cowardly tiger. (I found out about two weeks ago it was because they could get the tiger toy for cheap.)
It was this cartoon that made me realize there was a Filmation show style. At that age I was getting bored with the more juvenile cartoons, and was trying to figure out which ones still had any appeal. Filmation pretty much dropped to the bottom of my list. I watched She-Ra for a bit and it was marginally better, but not by much. When Bravestarr came out a couple years later it felt like it had so much potential but… well, no potential would get realized because it was doing the Filmation thing.
Two things I’ll give Filmation credit for, though. I was not expecting a plotline about Teela’s mother; cartoons generally didn’t pull that kind of thing back then, so it was a surprising if fleeting moment. And Filmation’s background art was great, they were really good at creating an atmosphere. In every other respect… (shakes head).
If there’s going to be a new He-Man, I would love it to be anything but like the original.
I think there is something interesting about He-Man that you might not be tuned into if you’re already familiar with it: He-Man is deeply, deeply weird. The naming conventions, the physicality of the characters, Man-E-Faces, the fact that the main character is fighting a skeleton man and there’s a skeleton castle but the skeleton castle isn’t the skeleton man’s castle it’s the main character’s castle. It’s weird stuff.
And deliberately so. It’s something the toys that made us episode mentioned up thread really hammers home.
He-Man is significantly rooted in 3 toy designers in a back room thinking up the dumbest, most ridiculous things they could and seeing what sticks.
Then you take that, and hire a low rent animation operation to turn it into a syndicated show targeted at 5 year old boys.
The whole thing is bonkers top to bottom.
What is that from?
It’s very different. For one, there is an actual over arching story. For another, the characters have depth. For yet another, they are shaped like actual people… There is actual world building, believable writing (for the universe), humor, and emotional heft.
A commercial for some financial service company, don’t ask me how it’s supposed to tie in thematically. Here’s the full clip:
Exactly. I hope the He-Man reboot brings the same qualities.
We’ll see what Silent Bob brings to the table…
Honestly I don’t care much about how closely it hews to the original. The reason the she-ra reboot was good was because it was executed well. You could take the same storyline and make a horrifically terrible show where no one yells “Adventure!” and no boats get set on fire. Similarly, you can take the routine formula of the original show and make something great of out it. We’ll see if they do make something great out of it.
It turns out the people who made the toys actually had completely different ideas than the people who subsequently made the series. So you’re not far off:
One of the things She Ra’s new fans are mad about is the poor availability of She Ra toys and merch since the show ended. The Netflix show was very popular but I can’t help but think that Netflix’s disinterest in merch is so deep that it’s an impediment to selling toys. Changing fashions and hair every season (or mid-season) and such.
The new He Man might have some marching orders on those lines that profoundly discourages an “interesting” reboot. Muscles, dialog, in-world toys and locations seen every episode, and so on.
Well, yes. The Filmation cartoons were lacking in all of those things and super formulaic. And the new cartoon is better in all the ways you mentioned.
By “not far off” I mean it is still a show about the “Princess of Power” combined with the rest of her friends who fight against the Evil Horde. The general synopsis of the show is the same - just… better in every way.
The early criticism I saw was that they looked different. Which they do - but in a good way. I really like the character design.
The thing that would be most successful is “the original, exactly that, but with a budget and more consistent and well-planned stories”
I am not a huge He-Man fan. I had some toys, and watched the show, but that Spector Creative Channel I have found super interesting for the back story of the show and toys and the various differences in how how the two came to be - and the stories in the mini-comics.
Except for that crossover holiday special.
Which, by the way, is probably the best I have seen of either show to date. I haven’t seen any of the new shows.
It’s not the same, even if the original concept is similar.
was largely from angry men that yet something else was not being made just for them… because they could beat off to old She-ra, but the new one had fattys… /s
He-Man boils down, to an almost ludicrous purity, that entire dimension of 1970s psychedelic, post-apocalyptic, primitive-world-with-technology science fantasy. So it is the ne plus ultra of that genre.
It’s weird in another way, in that it was made by Jewish guys who were quite conscious of the ideology and symbolism they were toying with.
I riffed on that stuff in this video I made about 15 years ago. (I now realize that irony is cultural nitroglycerine and toxic to consume in any quantitiy)
