Kevin Smith has already denounced the Screenrant article. "With all due respect to @screenrant, I’ve read every @MastersOfficial script for our shows (plus wrote a few) and viewed 4 amazing animatics. While Teela is as present as she’s always been in the MotU adventures and she plays a big role, our series is LITERALLY all about He-Man."
And this remains fairly consistent with what we knew from the initial announcement, though it sounds a lot less like just outright being "Teela's story" than how it sounded at first.
...darn it...and I just subscribed to Netflix for this and Transformers. But I’ll wait until the show actually airs...
Frankly my confidence dipped when I saw the whole Dark and Serious™ motif the Netflix exec and Kevin Smith are constantly saying. Like, did the 2002 show do this? I'm confused at this trend. There's a difference between playing it straight and what the above implies. I guess the latter will resonate more with adult fans.
Were the show it's own continuity that's just loosely based on the Filmation series (like using a lot of the same character designs and a few plot points from the show) I think it'd be fine, but they've talked about it as a sequel repeatedly and that just doesn't seem quite right with this playing it straight stuff.
Yeah, if it's a sequel to the original '80s toon than it should be campy. The franchise has really always been campy. Sure the 2002 series made it a little more serious in design and tone, but they still kept a lot of the campy nature of the original. Inherently MOTU is just kind of like that. Trying to ignore it's natural campy nature really isn't going to go over well impo.
The mini-comics beg to differ. The first few, in particular, are going for a Conan-lite vibe. They were my first exposure to the MOTU mythos, so the toon always felt overly simplistic and disappointing to me, even as an eight-year-old. Of course, the toon is far more widely known and a much bigger cultural influence on the general public’s perception of MOTU. But just because that became more well-known, don’t mistake that for the only interpretation of the mythos.
Okay, you're right that the mini-comics were more Conan the Barbarian-esque in execution. So there is an arguement to be made for a show like that to be created. If they said they wanted to do a new rebooted version of MOTU that followed the tone of the mini-comics than that would be fine. But we've been told multiple times that this is going to be a sequel to the original toon. Since that's supposed to be the case it really shouldn't be super serious or dark and grity (which is usually what "more mature themes" tend to be code for). But either way I'm waiting until I get a chance to watch it before I pass any kind of judgement on the show.
Oh, for sure. A continuation/sequel to the Filmation show should keep the campy humor, definitely. I also think there’s room for a more Frazetta/D&D take on the property, but it should be a straight reboot and stand apart from Filmation. I think trying to mix grit and camp is what sunk the Dolph Lundgren movie lo those many years ago, trying to be all things to all people.
The Mini-Comics were my first interaction with MOTU as well and easily my favorite part of the whole franchise, then and now. But I grew to love Filmation more over time. It would be awesome if they ran with the mini-comics story. It’s really a lot of fun and weird, would absolutely be my first choice. No one has ever really done the mini-comic style world in another medium well.... that I can think of anyway. There could be another way to look at this. It might just be Filmation with fights. That is really what the series lacked, the action. They really neutered the violence right out of the show. He-man has a sword and he doesn’t even use it. So yeah you don’t have to go crazy with violence but you know have some. I think that is what Kevin Smith is saying, Action and Fights were missing from he original. They’re fighting toys, sans the fighting.
I dunno, were these villains ever deep enough characters in the old show for that? Closest Skeletor came to being good was that hilarious Christmas cartoon. And compared to the 2002 Evil-Lyn the original was just your archetypical scheming underling without shades of grey. The rest, not even that nuanced, they were just dumb henchmen. Yeah, that is my more immediate worry. I mean this is a guy who named his own daughter Harley Quinn. I am a giant nerd but even I find that cringeworthy. Okay, so then the article was all fake? I dunno why they post such things then stating they are true... That quote makes me think the of certain old Trekkies, who do not see the original 60ies series as campy... when it was very much so at times. I guess this guy grew up on MOTU thinking it was super serious and never rewatched it? Because of course, I too grew up on G1 Transformers thinking how certain episodes of the show were super epic and serious. Boy was I in for a disappointment when I rewatched them during university. Treating old MOTU like Shakespeare is just... misguided. Unlike Star Trek TOS the show was not about some great messages or moral dilemmas, it was just a 20 minute toy advert with a fun fantasy story. Yeah, but the mini-comics are not canon with the much more well known toon. I seen a few as I had a classmate whose dad had a toy store and could import stuff for his son (oh how I envied him... he had G1 Snarl!) but even then I found them very different than the stories I saw in the toon. And in general, most fans who never collected the toys and just followed the toons are not really aware of them. It's similar to how many Transformers fans never read the Marvel comics, basically, and only knew the toon.
To me if they want to make a more grown up he-man show like the 2002 series (people did die in that show!) that's fine. But i hate when they take a kids show and make a "new season" but start killing people or making it more adult. Yes i hated samurai jacks last season for that also. If you do a new season of a classic KIDS show you need to stay in the tone of that show. He-man never killed mer-man in the filmation show so i don't want to start having man at arms or evil lyn getting killed here. Again you can make a new universe if you want he-man more adult. If this is filmations he-man they need to follow the rules of filmation.
