Masters of the Universe on Netflix: They did a lot of things wrong

I already spoke about the things that they did "right" in my last blog entry and that was actually kind of difficult to write because I was really struggling to think of anything to say that was nice about the whole fiasco.

I realize that a lot of this is subjective but the only opinions I have inside my head are my own so we'll just have to run with that. I went into this expecting great things because it was being directed or produced by Kevin Smith who you might know as "Silent Bob" from some pretty epic films from the 90's. He is no PC crusader or at least wasn't back in the day. It was actually the fact that he was brash and the opposite of being PC that saw him rise to the top. This is one of the things that I found so surprising and disappointing about Masters of the Universe: Revelation that recently dropped on Netflix.

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Things they did wrong

I'll try to focus on broad issues I had with the entire thing rather than nitpick every little thing about it just so that I can keep this under 1000 words or so, but trust me when I say that my list is going to be truncated and I actually have much more to say about it than this.... I'll do so in the comments if there is enough interest.

It has very little to do with He-Man or Skeletor

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So when you think of Masters of the Universe in a general sense who comes to mind? Well the two guys above, obviously. If you were a huge fan like me you probably remember a few of the other major characters like Merman, Beast Man, Cyclops, Moss Man, Battle Cat and what not but for the most part these two guys are at the center of MOTU's entire existence. These two are barely even in the entire series thus far. For the most part their appearances are limited to flashbacks and this simply doesn't make sense to me.

It's fine if they are going to get to that eventually and drag this thing out for as long as possible - which would be what they kind of do with a lot of series on Netflix and elsewhere, but we were sold this in the trailers as being He-Man and Skeletor centric. Hell, they went really out of their way to let us know that Mark Hamill voices Skeletor yet he spends about as much time on screen as he did in The Force Awakens.

It's a "girl power" series now

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Call me a misogynist if you want to, but I am dead tired of Netflix having some sort of agenda to make women the brains and brawn behind just about anything they produce. Teela, who was a somewhat important character in the original Masters of the Universe cartoon and comic books, is basically the main character now. Evil-Lyn is also a master of all things big and small and I don't even know who the other girl is. In fact, other than brief appearances from Man at Arms, there are no male protagonists in the series at all. The ones that are on screen are all fantasy males like Merman and Beast Man... which brings me to my next point

Everyone is on the good side?

The He-Man cartoons of the 80's were for kids, and for the most part so is this series. However, there was always a stark and easy to identify divide between who the "good guys" were and who the "bad guys" were. In Revelation, everyone is on the same team fighting against an enemy that hasn't really been defined yet. The struggle between the usual suspects doesn't really exist anymore and the only thing we have is randomly appearing canon-fodder enemies that are lead by Cyclops... who is presented as a religious fanatic. Great job Netflix, you had to plant religion in there as well...

Orko as a main character?

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I don't think anyone actually liked Orko in the cartoon days and while his collectibles may have sold decently because they sold the absolute hell out of all the toys, He was merely comic relief in the shows way back when. In Revelation he plays a major role and is also very poorly voiced by someone named Griffin Newman, whoever that is. Also, he is a majorly powerful mage which just goes against everything that his character was ever all about. I realize that this is very subjective, but I would have preferred if he had just stayed back in the castle and only said a few things here and there rather than be in on the action at all times.

Tons and tons of dialogue

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You know what people watch action anime stuff for? Lots of emotion-filled talking about just whatever of course right? That should be obvious sarcasm because of course people don't watch it for that. There are 5, around 40 minute episodes and that adds up to 200 minutes. I didn't run a stopwatch or anything but I don't think that I would be too off the mark if i were to suggest that 160 minutes of it is really long and drawn out dialogue much of which doesn't really even have anything to do with what is going on at the time. I expect filler in a series that is obligated by a TV network to produce 22 episodes a year, but this project's length was kind of left up to Kevin In a cartoon man! Why are we spending 80% of each episode doing a bunch of talking?

I found myself walking around my apartment and making food or staring at my phone for a great deal of it because I simply didn't care what they were talking about.

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The new Masters of the Universe series is exactly what I had hoped it definitely wouldn't be: A watered down, PC reflection of the current state of woke-ism primarily in the United States. Because of this, professional critics are probably terrified to say anything nasty about it out of fear of being labeled a bigot, an anti-feminist, or racist somehow.

The general public has no such hangup though and I think that a vast majority of the people that have watched this feel the same way that I do: Kevin Smith and his team have done a massive disservice to my childhood memories here. Of course the media was quick to call the 1 star scores a "review-bomb" in an attempt to discredit the fact that viewers generally speaking are very upset with what has been done with this.

I don't recommend that you watch this if you were alive and a fan of the original cartoon, because it is likely just going to make you mad. I certainly hope there are plans in the 2nd half of this series that is yet to be released to repair the damage that has been done but unless they are going to refilm all of them, I don't really see that happening.

1200 words and I could have gone on for another 1200. Did you see this series? What did you think of it?