Kevin Smith's new Masters Of The Universe trailer has the power of looking pretty kickass
The new He-Man series features the voices of Mark Hamill, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Stephen Root, and more
TV News Masters of the Universe
We first got a glimpse of Kevin Smith’s new Masters Of The Universe series, Revelation, back in June, when Netflix released a teaser trailer for the show—which picks up several years after the original ’80s cartoon, in a world where Teela (Sarah Michelle Gellar) has to get the band back together after a climactic battle between He-Man (Chris Wood) and Skeletor (Mark Hamill) came very close to blowing up Eternia for good. From that teaser, we could confirm that, yes, He-Man is still looking buff, cars that look like sharks still kick ass, and no one can resist the effects of a Bonnie Tyler/Jim Steinman power ballad.
Now, though, the streamer has released a more full trailer for the series, which is set to debut its first five episodes on Friday, July 23. And honestly? It looks pretty cool, full of well-drawn designs for familiar characters, and an environmentalism theme that certainly has some potent hooks. (Plus, the Buffy fans in us can’t help but respond to Gellar playing a warrior burnt out by a lifetime of fighting.)
Also, the cast on this thing is patently ridiculous—yes, that’s Stephen Root you’re hearing as Prince Adam’s cowardly tiger buddy Cringer. (Also, we don’t know if this was coincidental, but the series has two Batmans and two Jokers apiece, with Animated Series legend Kevin Conroy as Mer-Man and Diedrich Bader from The Brave And The Bold as King Randor / Trap Jaw, and Hamill as Skeletor and The Batman’s Kevin Michael Richardson as Beast-Man. We can’t imagine this is interesting to anyone besides us, but, well, there you go.) That’s in addition to voice acting royalty like Cree Summer, Phil LaMarr, and Alan Oppenheimer (the original Skeletor, now playing Moss-Man.) Oh, and Jason Mewes is in there, too.
74 Comments
Fuck yeah.
Those two fish guys seem to be trying their best to pleasure He-Man. You’d think the least he could do would be smile and pretend to enjoy it.
Also, we don’t know if this was coincidental, but the series has two Batmans and two Jokers apiece.Considering Smith named his daughter after Harley Quinn, I think it’s a safe bet to say he likes Batman cartoons…
That’s going to be awkward when she becomes a criminal psychiatrist and falls for one of her patients.
*perfect
I’m not sure if I’m sold on Hamill as Skeletor, but holy crap I’ll take it over War For Cybertron getting some guy who can do a terrible Peter Cullen impression.
Yeah, I hate to say it, but I’m starting to get a little worn on Hamill’s villain voice.
Yes, he’s a great voice actor, just not an especially versatile one. I remember being annoyed as a kid that his Hobgoblin was the same as his Joker.
I think the larger problem is that they cast him to do the Joker, basically. Dude can do a perfectly menacing villain like Ozai without going into clown register but people don’t want that from him.
But Skeletor is the archetypal sneering, cackling villain. Way before Joker.And hard disagree on Ozai. Worst characted in Avatar; about as nuanced a bad guy as 1980s Starscream (and sounded more than a little like him).
This, like Castlevania, looks like extremely stupid fun that might actually have some moments of actual art in it despite everything in the corporate synergy world forcing its existence.
It might not, but I’m getting similar “This knows exactly what it is” vibes.
And you can jerk off to it!
Eh, knowing exactly what it wants to be hasn’t been an issue Netflix’s adult animation. The problem is it mostly wants to be Ninja Scroll.
I’m really getting burnt out on very stylish tributes to anime of yore that don’t try and push creatively in any way. Smith’s a decent writer so maybe he wont get bogged down in that, but I’m worried.
*YES*. And, to me, though they may be stylish, they always still feel a bit stiff or something compared to the originals anyway… And yet anime itself, continues to move on.
Does Castlevania have curry skeletons, cow summoning shields and mothman yet? I wanted to love it, but I bounced off the anime tropes and generic demons (where’s the monster zoo Castlevania so adroitly delivers?!)
It’s mostly vampires, sure, but the freakier animalistic and Biblical-inspired stuff does start appearing in the 3rd and 4th seasons, especially in Isaac’s storyline, which I suppose actually does have a fairly close analogue to Mothman in a couple important character moments. But if you want Mothman to start tearing stuff apart, you may be disappointed. If you want him to have some fairly cool conversations about the nature of sin, memory, and purpose next to OTHER things tearing stuff apart, well, that’s what you’ll get.
Yeah, this isn’t for me, and I’d be fine with it if it was called anything other than “Castlevania” aka, “the game where you throw chicken dinners out of your brightly coloured cape while skeletons called “Yorrick” chase their own head around.” The goofy/creepy tone isn’t for everyone either, I guess, but it’s a shame that the show was a little po-faced and self-serious.
Never thought I’d be interested in watching a He-Man reboot but here we are.
Series looks cool, though I am not sold on Adam’s design. It’s a little too “hobo bishonen” for me.
Hooo boy, a friend just linked me a 16 minute “reaction” video about the new trailer that’s all cowardly whinging about HEMAN SIDELINED TEELA HAS A MAN HAIR HOO BOY You will be shocked to hear they have videos with titles with CAPITAL LETTERS are very upset by things that are “woke sjw.” Shocked I say. Who the fuck makes a 16 minute video crying about this trailer. Jfc
Who the fuck posts about bullshit youtube drama here?
Dismissed, bootlicker.
Dismissed, crybaby.
At least they get paid for making their video. What do you get for whining about them on a random website??Seriously, whining about other people whining is fairly pathetic…
People who make money from Youtube advertising revenue because they have large enough of a viewer base – and hence been able to monetise their channel (or someone hoping to become that), that’s who makes videos like this, I’m guessing.
Its worse that there is such a big audience for these comicsgate-esque gatekeeping bigots.
That’s funny because I saw some SJW-esque reactions to the teaser complaining that it wasn’t deconstructing/reimagining enough and obviously just catering to the drooling fanboys who liked the original.The lesson, as always, is that politics ruins everything.
But does this new He-Man pray? Oh my God, does he pray?
Uhm.. This time I’m less convinced.. I hope we will not get a 5 episodes arc with the recovery of the sword and He-Man appearing only in the final part. Cheers
He’ll be Sean Connery’s King Richard in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
I’ll give this a shot. I don’t like that they went for the Snake Mountain playset design over the original animated series one as it is actually better. Snake Mountain was a cool toy, but it wasn’t as cool and foreboding as the cartoon version.
What’s with all these magical lands losing their magic? Equestria has lost magic in the new MLP reboot, and now Eternia?
Art imitating life.
Peak Oil Magic.
Magic land losing/having lost their magic is the most tired fantasy trope going. But this is so ridiculous I’ll give them a pass.
BY THE POWER OF BRONIES…!
Grumpy Skeletor will not be impressed
Gardening Skeletor isn’t going to like it either.
He’s trying to turn his gnomes into an army to do his bidding.
Yo, for $20 extra, she let me give her a ‘Grumpy Skeletor’!
I think we’re at that point in the process of scraping the intellectual property bucket for ideas where we’re getting back more bucket than IP.
This is gonna be so heterosexual
I’m not quite sure of that. Did you watch the trailer, Buffy’s Teela isn’t coming across as a damsel in distress.
More like a dom who I can simp.
Episode six is where she is going to step on Skeletor’s balls and it will break the internet
Well, now I’m *excited*
Fist hard, my Robot, fist HARD!
I mean it’s Kevin Smith though
What?! You don’t want to hear Prince Adam say how Teela’s clit/brown/taint-area still pOwns his dick.
As hetero as the original
Remember when the series literally started with an episode about He-Man helping gay comets hook up? 37 years later and I’m still not over it.
That animation looks awful
That would be in keeping with the original series. I had a few action figures growing up but even at age 10 I wondered why they kept reusing the same animation sequences in the show. I’m a bit mystified that there appears to be a sizeable contingent of fans waiting for something like this, it’s the near the bottom of my “please reboot this” list.
So basically they took He-man from looking cartoonishly roided-out to being ludicrously roided out.
ExtREEEEEEME
Still bummed this won’t ever cross with She-Ra. That show was so great.
It’s probably the tightest show I’ve seen since the best parts of Last Airbender/Korra.
Hopefully by putting this out into the ether someone else will do this and I won’t have to, but having He-Man do Mewe’s Clit Commander bit would be perfect. Thanks in advance.
Well, at least Prince Adam looks notably different from He-Man this time. It’s not just the tan anymore!
2002 series also did that.
This is probably just a personal opinion, but why do all of these obviously anime inspired “Western” cartoons coming up always have such visual… blandness in terms of design and how the characters move.
Computers
So will there be a special moral tacked on to the end of every episode?Just asking.
Needs more Orko
Yeah, Orko is the bacon of Eternia.
I’ve only ever been somewhat aware of he-man my entire life and I’ve never seen the cartoon, but, that trailer was fantastic and gave me goose bumps. I’m jealous of longtime He-Man fans right now. Well done.
Also, Mark Hamill has to have vocal nods by now doing that sorta wheezy villain voice this often.
Look, I love “Holding Out for a Hero” as much as the next guy, but could we give a break for a few years? I just googled to see why I feel so burned out on it and realized it was used in this trailer, the Guardians of the Galaxy video game trailer, and a Loki trailer ALL IN THE LAST MONTH. Plus it was in the Detective Pikachu trailer a year or two back, and I feel like I have heard in some other movies or shows recently also.
Yeah, at this point it’s obvious that we don’t need another hero.
Very inappropriate using it for video games when Bonnie Tyler is working so hard to prevent the expansion of the skate park across the road from her house in the Mumbles.
There were storylines in the original series??I watched it as a kid because He-Man & crew defeated Skeletor & crew every week. Never knew (or don’t remember) that there were actual storylines – just dumb fun like many other dumb cartoons in the 80’s.However, I would’ve said similar about Voltron from the 80’s, but their 7-season Netflix run was waaayyy better than it should’ve been (with actual storylines that made sense). So, I’ll watch in hope that this He-Man goes a similar route – & given that He-Man never actually stuck his sword into anyone, ever, hopefully at least that will have changed:-)
This is cool but a trashy, campy hella gay He-Man done by John Waters would be the best thing ever.
I just want to say that Mark Hamill’s laugh, regardless of character, because he does -kinda- change it up, is classic. That he seems to love his voice work is evidence that there are second careers in Hollywood. Especially since he seems to be all over the place. High demand is not a bad thing.
By the power of Greyteeth, Kevin can go F**K himself!