Kevin Smith’s He-Man franchise revival “Masters of the Universe: Revelation” kicked off this past Friday on Netflix with the first five of the first season’s ten-episode run.
With short episodes clocking in at just 24 minutes or so each, the work aimed to be true in spirit to the original whilst offering a more adult take exploring the psychology of the characters. Gone are Man-At-Arms’ moral lessons and the wrestling-style fighting, replaced by genuine stakes, consequences and emotional fallout.
SPOILERS AHEAD UP TO THE SEASON FINALE
The critics swooned (97% on Rotten Tomatoes), but the series also suffered what has become increasingly common in recent years – a swift, vocal and organised backlash from part of the fanbase over their subverted storytelling expectations (ala “The Last of Us Part II,” various forms of “Star Trek,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”). A regular occurrence in the wake of this, namely review bombing of the audience score on both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb, then took place.
For those who wanted just a repeat of the old show, this was not it as both He-Man and Skeletor are absent for much of the five episodes. Instead, the focus is put on the side characters from the old show with Teela, Evil-Lyn, Orko and new character Andra moved to the foreground.
Characters had shifting motives, at least one properly died (and others seemingly died), and things ended on a cliffhanger.
Some of the backlash is from the usual ‘woke is broke’ suspects. Some is a complaint of false advertising as Netflix’s promo trailers did heavily focus on He-Man’s involvement and his fight with Skeletor.
There’s also the obvious question as to had the full ten-episode season been released all at once, would it have made a difference? Whatever the case Smith expected a backlash to some extent and when asked about the situation by Variety, says:
“Its been interesting, seeing who truly is a hardcore fan. Because anybody that’s like, ‘Oh, man, there’s not enough He-Man’ or something like that, doesn’t understand the show that we based it on. There were episodes where he lost the sword and he never became He-Man. It wasn’t like He-Man always saved the day. His friends helped him. That was the f—ing point of the show.
I see people online go, ‘Hey man, they’re getting rid of He-Man!’ Like, you really f—ing think Mattel Television, who hired me and paid me money, wants to do a f—ing ‘Masters of the Universe’ show without He-Man? Grow the f— up, man. Like, that blew my mind, bunch of people being like, ‘Oh, I smell it. This is a bait and switch.'”
Mattel Television’s Rob David says the second part of ‘Revelation,’ which will premiere later this year or early next year, will have more focus on Prince Adam following the consequences of the first part and that cliffhanger:
“A lot of Part 2 is a world in which Skeletor has the power – then we get to say, ‘Well, what made Adam special?’. ‘What does it mean to have the power? What made Adam the person who was most worthy to be He-Man?’ I will tell you this: Adam’s story is not done and will never be done. Not saying what happens to him, but I’m just saying the stories continues.”
Chris Wood, who voices Prince Adam/He-Man, confirms Adam’s not dead but is “very wounded”. He adds:
“If you want to light the whole world on fire, in terms of destroying a fandom, you’d take He-Man out and be like, ‘That’s it, he’s gone, bye!’ Now what they’ve done is they’ve found really interesting ways to turn the dynamics of the show on its head and raise the stakes to a point that the original never saw.”
In terms of when we’ll see the remaining run, Smith offered an update on Twitter yesterday saying its in the last stages of post-production now:
“Bear McCreary just recorded the live orchestra score for episode 10 and we finished the sound mix on Ep 8. So Revelation Part 2 is officially picture-locked, nearly wrapped, and ready to go! (And SPOILERS!!! Both He-Man vs SkeleGod fights are brutal.)”
The first five episodes of “Masters of the Universe: Revelation” are now online everywhere via Netflix.
