Many people have their own opinions about old shows and movies being rebooted, remade and in most cases coming out with a completely different look and feel to the source material. While this has been the case of novel to screen adaptations for years, people attached to the things they watched as children seem to be a particular bugbear when it comes to remakes and this has been apparently recently with the likes of Thundercats Roar!
Now there is another ’80s favourite getting a modern update with the flashy and chunky CG iteration of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Not to be confused with Kevin Smith’s reboot sequel to the original 80s cartoon, this version if very much aimed at a younger audience, so while many old school He-Man fans probably won’t like what has been done to the characters, showrunner Rob David and executive producer Jeff Matsuda haven’t made it for older fans.
“Masters of the Universe is just one of those stories, I’m not going to call it a brand, it’s a living breathing story,” David told ComicBook.com. “It’s a special story in that it has the potential to speak to multiple generations at once. What we did with this is that we had the opportunity to re-imagine the Masters of the Universe for this next generation of kids and for those like us that are kids at heart.”
In short, if you grew up with the 80s cartoon, and possibly even its more recent revamps, there is every chance that you are going to hate what has been done in this newest version, and that is ok, because there are a lot of young children who have no idea who or what He-Man is, and David wants this show to be the one to introduce the character and the world of Eternia in a way that they will consider “their” He-Man.
“We wanted to give this next generation their He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. We wanted to distill what makes the original great at its core, and then look for a way to recontextualize it for kids today. At its heart, it’s pure MOTU but it’s told with new instrumentation.”
Kevin Smith’s recent release of Masters of The Universe reboot on Netflix caused a bit of a stir for a number of reasons. First, being a continuation of the power battle between He-Man and Skeletor, Smith managed to annoy a large portion of the franchises loyal fan base by not including either the lead protagonist or antagonist for much of the first half of the season. He also shifted focus to Teela being the main character, which again, fell fowl of many an online rant. However, there were plenty of older fans who took to the series, and were happy to see the characters with pretty similar looks and appearance to how they remembered them.
The newest addition to the He-Man family is a different kettle of fish entirely. This CG-fest is clearly aimed at a different audience to the 30-40 year olds who live with a constant nostalgia for 80s cartoons. Essentially it is something like the James Bond or Doctor Who principle. Every generation believes theirs is the best, and for some children, they are about to get the He-Man that they will always remember.