It was allll the way back in February of 2020 (pre-pandemic!) when we heard about the stellar cast that Netflix and Kevin Smith had put together for their reboot of Masters Of The Universe (a.k.a. the cartoon that He-Man was on), and now the streaming service has released some preview images that show Masters Of The Universe: Revelation in action—well, not “in action” because they’re still images, but you know what we mean. In the photos below, you can see Skeletor (Mark Hamill), Evil-Lyn (Lena Headey), Teela (Sara Michelle Gellar), Orko (Griffin Newman), Prince Adam (Chris Wood), and, of course, He-Man (also Chris Wood, not to spoil anyone’s secret identity). The rest of the cast includes Liam Cunningham, Stephen Root, Diedrich Bader, Henry Rollins, original Skeletor actor Alan Oppenheimer, Alicia Silverstone, Phil LaMarr, Tony Todd, Jason Mewes (how’d Kevin Smith land him?!), Justin Long, and Kevin Conroy (playing a Mer-Man instead of a Bat-Man).
In a press release that accompanied these photos, Smith (who is serving as showrunner and executive produced) explained that the series will be a “continuation” of the story from the original animated show in the ‘80s, saying, “we’re playing with the original mythology and characters” and “revisiting and digging deeper into some of the unresolved storylines.” He also notes that they wanted to “lean into” the aesthetics of the original Mattel toy line, since the company owns an “entire vast library” of artwork from the old show already anyway. This new one obviously looks significantly better than the old show, which really milked the fact that everybody looks kind of similar and it’s easy to reuse animation frames because of that, but it is nice to hear that they’re making an effort to maintain some aesthetic ties to the original. The new Masters Of The Universe premieres on Netflix on July 23.
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Go and get’em grassman.
That’s Moss-Man damn it!
Remember Stinkor? The skunk dude? Fucking toy reeked. On The Toys that Made Us, they said the entire factory staff making it had to get sent home sick.
I do! Apparently Moss-Man was scented too with a smell reminiscent of a pine tree car freshener.
I had Moss-Man but I don’t recall his being scented. Stinkor stank up my toy box for years though.
From what I’ve heard, they mixed patchouli oil in the plastic to give it that smell.
Ugh. There’s no such thing as a modest amount of patchouli.
Round them up and vanish them all. I couldn’t agree more.
Jason Mewes is playing Stinkor in this series
My mother bought me that figure. She regretted it very soon after.
The 2002 series actually made Stinkor a real threat. His stink was so bad that Skeletor gave him equipment to weaponize it, and he almost caused all of the good guys to suffocate and die from asphyixsiation.
Considering that Skeletor was kind of a proto-Joker already, Mark Hamill is really a perfect fit:Also, it will never not be strange to me that Henry Rollins is a talented voice artist.
Finally! This is the animated reboot the super toxic, 50 year old gate-keepers have been waiting for! I hope it sucks!
I hope it’s awesome, and super non-toxic, thus pissing off said gatekeepers.
The more it sucks, the more they’ll defend it.
The funny thing is, while Incels and SJW’s are at each other’s throats on social media, Hollywood is laughing all the way to the bank, cleverly using social, gender and racial appropriation of old properties as a means of lazily and cheaply rebooting them without having to come up with anything original, all the while the producers, writers and directors are patting themselves on the back for bringing awareness and change to outdated social structures when all they’re doing is co-opting for large media corporations.
I am a few years younger than 50 and I was too old for the He-Man show (although I did catch the occasional episode.)Here’s hoping those toxic gatekeepers are at least age-appropriate in the 43-47 age range.
Eh the art style is kinda generic and uninspired. Backgrounds look nice though and hopefully it’s well animated
Lena Headey’s really leaning into her evil femme leader vibe!
I actually liked the 2002 reboot, which I’m sure everyone’s forgotten about by now.
I bought those on DVD. The fight choreography was actually excellent, and the scripts were okay.
It was good. Definitely better than the originals. I’m actually surprised by how violent there were considering how nerfed the original was.
One of my roommates was big into that, so when the reboot came out, and she got one of the figures, it came with a VHS (yes really) of the original cartoon, and MAN that was rough.
It still pisses me off that the show got cancelled before introducing She-Ra and Hordak.
So is there any chance whatsoever that She-Ra & company show up?
They were clear during development that this doesn’t share a universe with She-Ra & The Princesses of Power, which makes my like it slightly less.
I would definitely be a lot more excited for a continuation of that universe.
Booo!
BOOOO!
Somewhere along the way the rights to the two properties were split off to different companies.I’ve spent the last few years disappointed that He-Man would never show up on She-Ra, and now I’m gonna spend the next few years disappointed she-Ra will never show up on He-Man.
No, Mattel still owns both properties. They just despise the Netflix cartoon.
They do?
In regards to the Netflix cartoon, yes. Whenever Mattel went over their properties with shareholders, they rarely mentioned She-Ra, and the few times they did it was mostly at the end in fine print. When the demand for toys reached its peak, Mattel did the bare minimum. There was a single Comic-Con exclusive, a single wave of limited articulation figures and a role play sword exclusive to Target, and a tie-in with Sonic Drive-In.
Well, Mattel got what they wanted: money.
It’s definitely possible A She-Ra shows up, since both properties are still owned by Mattel. However, Mattel wants absolutely nothing to do with the recent Netflix series, so if she does show up, she and her cast will be based on the original show.
BOOOOO!
It has potential but it’s gonna be hard for me not to compare it to the She-Ra reboot and how good that was.
Netflix has sadly been doing away with theme songs, but I hope this has a kick-ass theme song, at least.
She-Ra had a pretty kickass one, albeit it weirdly just suddenly cuts off at what seems like it should just be halfway through a verse.
I grew up on the toys first and lived in a market that didn’t have the cartoon, which introduced the whole idea of Prince Adam, orko, by the power of greyskull, etc. So when I finally saw it, it threw me for a loop and I always kind of resented that angle. I always wanted a cartoon that followed the OG version given in the comics that came with each figure, where He-Man was basically a caveman who wandered around beating the shit out of dinosaurs, and Eternia was this war-ravaged world of the future that had literally bombed itself back into the stone age.
Same syndrome with Transformers here. Sentient robots, wtf ?
The toys were already out at least one year before the cartoon debuted. I’m sure plenty of kids were thrown for a loop by the cartoon additions. I know I thought it was stupid.
The original comics were cool, but there was very little in actual continuity. I was disappointed that nowhere in the cartoon did He-Man have a shield and battle axe.
It’s not that plot, but the 2002 cartoon was actually really good.
I totally forgot about those little comics. Thanks for that. I was also die hard for the toys from day one which i suppose came out a few years before the cartoon premiered. I was able to watch the cartoon in real time and was always a little confused about most of the changes you mentioned. Orko was trash.
Like Thundarr the Barbarian?
What about that movie they were casting for a few years ago? The dude they cast as He-Man was laughable, but I still want to see it! Six-year-old me wants one of my favourite toys to actually have a decent film version unlike Transformers and G.I. Joe (which actually wasn’t terrible).
You want laughable? You should see the 1987 live action feature film. That was a train that crashed and burned before it even left the station.
But it had Frank fucking Langella as Skeletor! Not quite as misusing the overqualified as the Transformer film that had Orson Welles as Unicron, but close.
Or even G.I.Joe-The Movie with Burgess Meridith as Golobulous.
You want laughable? You should see the 1987 live action feature film. That was a train that crashed and burned before it even left the station.
Oh believe me, I’ve seen it… what an absolute train wreck, you’re right. The Toys that Made Us had a hilarious take on it.
Hey that film gave us Tom Paris and Monica Geller together.
By the power of Greyskull, I had no idea that Courtney Cox was in Masters of the Universe.
I will not have you besmirch one of the best “so bad it’s good” movies of the 1980’s. Masters of the Universe is amazing, and if there is one tragedy in the whole thing, it’s the fact that we now know, thanks to him chewing two planet’s worth of scenery as Skeletor, that Frank Langella would be the perfect Doctor Doom if he hadn’t aged out.
It’s still great in my book for landing Frank Langella as Skeletor, featuring an S&M whipping scene with an near-naked Dolph Lundgren.but I digress
That guy just left the project a few weeks ago.
I think a live action movie is still in the works but I read not too long ago the guy they cast as the lead bailed on it.
He was a terrible choice but that doesn’t bode well for the project.
Yeah, DJ Qualls was an odd choice.
don’t really give a hoot about he-man but this is a nice looking show.
This looks awesome, and the cast is great.
And I can already hear 40~50 year old fans complaining about the women having muscles, as if they were, you know, warriors or something, and small breasts, and how real women don’t look like that. Which just makes this reboot even more awesome.
All I ask is that it be as massively, unapologetically gay as the new She-Ra. It really doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
This cast is fucking incredible. I never really wanted a He-man reboot/sequel (made by Kevin Smith no less), but I’d love to hear this cast work together. Mark Hamill, Stephen Root! Lena Heady, Diedrich Bader, and Kevin Conroy! I’ll be very disappointed if all these great actors are in a terrible show (but it’s Kevin Smith, so I’m girding myself for the blow).
Hamill is great and all, but if Alan Oppenheimer is still around to voice Skeletor, then Goddamnit you hire Alan Oppenheimer to voice Skeletor.
Absolutely ready for Hot Orko Summer.
This new one obviously looks significantly better than the old show, which really milked the fact that everybody looks kind of similar and it’s easy to reuse animation frames because of that…It isn’t just about reusing animation. The main difference between the action figures were the colors and accessories. Many of them used the same buck to save money on production costs.
Buck: A generic body type used as a base for many different characters. Often seen in superhero toys; most famously used by Mattel in their 1980s Masters of the Universe line.
“Often seen in superhero toys; most famously used by Mattel in their 1980s Masters of the Universe line.”Truth be told, this was the standard procedure for Filmation, which originally produced He-Man and She-Ra. They did it throughout all of their shows. In 1977, they were called out for an episode of Tarzan, which was made of clips from episodes from the first season.
So Prince Adam isn’t just He-Man-but-in-a-dorkier-outfit in this one?
I’ve never had a problem with people not noticing that Clark Kent was Superman, but even as a kid I felt like everyone on Eternia had to be absolute morons not to recognize that Adam was He-man with shirt and pants minus the spray-on tan.
It not only allowed them to cut animation costs by using the body type for character models but also use the same mold for all the action figures.
The 2002 series did it first. Adam was lean and athletic, though he wore a red jacket rather than pink. He-Man was, well, He-Man.
…where’s Gwildor?
SHADOWS! SHADING! VISUAL DEPTH! Oh, how I have missed thee.I know it’s her original series hairstyle, but I wish Teela had her ponytail from the 2002 show. She just looks weird to me without it.
At a blistering 6 FPS no doubt 😛
Odds that this will be anywhere close to as good as the new She-Ra was?
If I don’t hear Mark Hammill as Skeletor call Beastman a ‘Nincompoop!’ at least once, I’ll be sorely disappointed.
I’m torn on this one. On the one hand that is an amazing cast. But on the other hand the only thing I have liked of Kevin Smith’s since Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was his multi-part blog entry detailing Jason Mewes’s heroin addiction. But then again if this is on some weird mystical planet he can’t fill it with star Wars and other pop culture references (at least not directly). But that just means that dick, fart and gay jokes are still on the table.
“their reboot of Masters Of The Universe (a.k.a. the cartoon that He-Man was on”Well, actually, the full title of the TV series was “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.”
My most vivid memory of the original is that I programed a Zork-like He-Man text adventure game (rather badly except for the kick-ass splash title page as I was good at drawing stuff but not much else) on my Apple IIe in Basic and it taking forever programing the theme song to play on that stupid Beeper.
My response to this is pretty much what I felt about it in the 80’s.
How is a major entertainment IP even in existence when the creators couldn’t be bothered to think of names less generic than “He-Man” for the characters? It’s like they couldn’t even be bothered to order out for coke before brainstorming this crap in the boardroom!
Was “Muscle-Guy” already under copyright or something?
“OK team, we need a name for the bad guy. The one with the skeleton face. Go!”
“Are we breaking for lunch soon? I dunno. Skullface? Skeletor?”
“Sure, whatever. Let’s get sandwiches.”
I mean… I liked this show as a kid, but lets not pretend that it had some deeply developed mythos or that it really cared that much about continuity or season-spanning plot lines. If Kevin Smith wants to do those things with the property and make it more adult-friendly, then great. But let’s be honest about the original. It was a cheaply animated and rote plotted cartoon that existed almost solely to sell toys to kids. I will say this however… now that all these Skeletor clips show up on Youtube, I must admit that far more creativity went into that character than my childhood memory retained.
Masters of the Universe, where all the dudes were buff, and all the women were sexy hawt. Also, talking tigers and skull-themed castles.The best part was that He-Man didnt care that much about hiding his identity. He just put on a pink and white vest, claimed he was Prince Adam, and everyone around him all believed his shit.