He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) was aimed at pre-teens, so people born in the 70s. Kevin Smith was born in 1970 and is 41 now.
Older than that and your high school peers would give you wedgies and stuff you into a locker for watching kiddie toons. I know for a fact many of the trolls attacking Smith are over 50. Did you really watch He-Man as an adult or are you faking it because some retard on YouToob brainwashed you?
I WATCHED HE-MAN AND THE MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE AS A KID...THAT AND TRANSFORMERS WERE AND ARE MY JAM...I AM 39.
shareEven old geezers watch cartoons.
Some cartoons are timeless like Wiley Coyote and The Road Runner.
Tom and Jerry
Personally, I never got into He-Man.
Looney Tunes dates back to 1930 and was shown in theaters. People didn't take their kids until Disney came along.
Even the Flintstones (1960) was targeted at the whole family. Wasn't till the 70s they started targeting pre-teens and removing all the fun violence.
Looney Tunes cartoons were specifically aimed at adults.
He-Man was a kid's show that was created to push action figures for school age kids and preteens. The show was so kiddie that there had to be a moral tacked onto each episode to help kids deal with stuff like adoption and drugs.
What is with toxic WOMANbabies and soyboys trolling the board of a cartoon property they've never watched? And Smith just turned 51, math is hard for you.
shareWe all make mistakes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phypmYcOMzg
Well, some of us do. I was 7-8 years old when MOTU was first run in the early eighties in various countries.
I knew guys who were into Dungeons and Dragons and also He-Man, and D&D is older, so men in their 50's in 2021 makes sense... 60's?... doubtful...
OTOH there's "Wizards" (1977)
How do you know they over 50?
I know for a fact that they're millennials because it's only millennial and Gen Z males on YouTube who've been weaponizing old IPs for clickbait. Also, a lot of these trolls give away that they have virtually no cultural awareness of the show whatsoever. Teela on the original show was literally the textbook definition of the "woke female" that Incels keep ranting about. Every episode she would bitch and moan about how stupid and lazy Adam was while Adam would loaf around and do nothing.
Sorceress and Evil-Lynn were just as much a part of the show, too, precisely because boys wanted eye candy. But I'm to believe that the generation that grew up loving the female characters on He-Man are so threatened by them that they're screaming the show is woke?
Nah. It's like when someone gives away that they've never seen Star Trek or Star Wars by complaining about how they have prominent black or female characters, when these IPs have had them for over 50 years. Gen Xers are not the ones hating this show. No way.
Another reason why I know it's mostly millennials and Gen Zs is that they thrive on spoiling or trashing forms of media or beloved IPs from before their time. For example, when the major networks tried reviving live musical shows, they were all over social media making racist and sexist comments trying to ruin them. Same thing with Harry Potter. Many of them like to mass troll IPs pretending to be racist or sexist to demoralize showrunners.
For example, say someone like Molly Ringwald decides to reboot Jem and the Holograms. Millennial and Gen Zs will then swarm Twitter and social media pretending to be long time fans posting hateful comments, so that Ringwald, as a showrunner, becomes discouraged, wrongly thinking that the fan base for the show was racist or sexist the entire time.
I think that's what's happening here, trolls trying to sabotage He-Man because they have some deep seated hatred against any IP from before their time.
I think the writing in the original series was informed partially by feminism and other leftist politics but the characters' motivates were not essentially about social politics. I'd disagree about the series being "wokist" or "woke" because that would imply sloganism and feudiist attitudes towards gender instead of serious or in-depth analysis of social issues - politics or coercion rather than debate.
So, if we look at Teela in the original show we see her as an assertive, dependable and active individual, but not involved in a struggle with men for respect or a sharing of power. She is not a feminist in her own life - she assumes equality or fair play from at least her allies. She clashes with Adam who appears undisciplined and a bit dismissive of authority and responsibility. Does this mean he is being sexist towards her and Teela must force or confront him regarding that behaviour? No, I think she is treating him as an individual and this is equally true of Adam's attitude to Teela. I think the writers are trying to reveal human behaviour and there will be conflicts but gender is not a basis for dissension because all people could assume capability and respect on the part of both genders - they do in Eternia anyway.
To me, original Teela is a reasonable character and she is also quite human and subject to emotional changes. She's never shown to go on a woke-like rampage even though she can intolerant of others who fall below her expectations, and I think in part it's because Duncan her father is a mentor she can discuss her troubles with. Nothing gets out of hand or political because Adam might be an arsehole occasionally. By the same token, maybe Adam has a right to be an "arsehole" because individual freedom of choice is another moral value a person can hold to as a motivation.
The original show can't be woke because it is based on reality and reason as far character interplay goes. Sadly, not so the Revelation show which is running an agenda.
Thus, as a member of Generation X I might appreciate Teela and other female characters as positive well written characters but I can't say the same for the new series.
What the series has going for it is that it is overall well written and designed. There is humour in the script and some new ideas. This doesn't make it an improvement on the original series, whose artwork was quite good also.
Part I of Revelation implies that He-Man in a fundamental way lost the plot or was getting in the way of Teela. If you go back to before the original series to the original comics we see that He-Man from the beginning had a moral commitment to defending the people and was not impressed by the supposed superiority of the aristocracy or their forces. He becomes their ally because he finds out their goal is the same - to defend Castle Grayskull. So it doesn't make sense that he would fail in that sense now. He doesn't need replacing unless he is now dead.
I was totally obsessed with this franchise as a kid. I had tons of toys and watched the cartoon all the time, but let's be real, it is not a good show. It is beyond childish. There's no depth whatsoever. The characters are named ___ Man or after a skill or trait. It's laughably simplistic and has been mocked for years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VywqcYatd8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNwoAVyu8Uc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KzcE9-5cpU&t=29s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So9vLZbQg7w
The new show still isn't Shakespeare or Schindler's List, but it's not even comparable - there's just so much more depth to it. the voice acting, animation, action are all better. The old show was like watching a bunch of bumbling idiots.The action was simplistic and comedic. I liked getting more Dunca, Teela, Orko, and Evil Lynn. The mythology has been expanded, which I liked, but the complaint about not enough He-Man and Skeletor is valid. This being a "gay" or "woke" show is not.
The cheesiness was part of the appeal of the original series. I would suggest they could have had more seriousness in the plots but it was indeed a show for kids. Revelation doesn't provide a superior version. It offers more circumspection maybe but it's not more entertaining.
share" It offers more circumspection"
LOL, WHAT?! The exact opposite is true. This show is being ripped for taking risks, it's certainly not playing it safe. The old show was the definition of safe. It was childish and simplistic.
What I was getting at was introspective writing and thus conservative choices - a so-called "more mature" approach and psychological realism. The characters examine their motivations question those of others.
The old show was safe in certain ways but it was also creative. No-one was asking for a politic critique or adult themes in a kid's program. And yet...it did touch on subjects like politics, philosophy, psychology, animal welfare, environmentalism, etc.
See these episodes for example:
"The Sleepers Awaken" -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIloMkXmxgw
"The Search" -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUmqc3tIRSE
In "The Sleepers Awaken" episode the king and queen in question were reliant on magic and desirous of totally controlling their environment but they were losing their power or power sources, so they had a long term plan to continue exploiting their environment for their long-term need to maintain their political power. They found they were losing their humanity as a result.
Compare this to the themes of an economic/political/philosophical treatise written in 1982 about how information technology would affect the economy and the lives of people:
"Sleepers, Wake! Technology and the Future of Work is a book written by Barry Jones,[1] originally published in 1982 and reprinted many times. A revised and updated edition was published in 1995.[2]
Based on the premise that technologically advanced nations are currently passing through a post-industrial or information revolution, Jones analyzes the unique threats and opportunities of the sudden rise in information to the field such as manufacturing, service employment, and basic income.
Jones argues that science and technology have changed the quality, length, and direction of life in the past century far more than politics, education, ideology, or religion. Therefore, inventors such as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford have shaped human experience more broadly and enduringly than Lenin and Hitler.
Some of the book's key points, such as the claim that technological innovation is a major component of economic growth, are more widely accepted now than in 1982. But, to quote Barry Jones himself, "The central thesis was that people were going to be living longer, far longer, but it was possible that they would be working a good deal less."[3][4]
[...]
Sleepers, Wake! analyzes the major changes in the workforce and presents the possible political programs to assist the society in profiting from the technological advancements." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepers,_Wake!