ABANDONED POST: Masters of the Universe: Revelation (2021)

MotU: Revelation (2021)

Dirs. Adam Conarroe / Patrick Stannard | Episodes: 5, approx 25 mins each.

When the news broke that a new Masters of the Universe animated series was on the way, I was intrigued. When it emerged that it wasn't another 'fashionable' reboot, but a direct continuation of the original Filmation 1980s He-Man and the MotU television series, I was genuinely taken aback.

But then I learned it was a Netflix series being overseen by Kevin Smith, so I adjusted expectations accordingly; i.e., I feared the absolute worst. I've not liked Smith's film work and have mixed feelings about his comic work, which tends to be mostly drivel with one or two really great scenes in each issue, at best.

Even though Smith didn't write all of the episodes alone, the new MotU is much the same - mostly drivel with a single great scene in each one. And like the previous Netflix animated series that I watched, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, it's only half a story.

Most of the key art that I'd seen prior to watching the series had He-Man front and centre, but it turns out that he's hardly in it. It should really be named Teela's Story: Empowered, because she's the primary character, the focus of the fellowship that forms in the wake of a great tragedy on Eternia, which leaves the world almost completely without magic. The situation can be seen as a kind of unplanned commentary on the series itself, which arguably has lost its own magic.

I'd like to balance the negative observations with just as many positive ones, because I want there to be more good MotU media to praise, but there simply isn't enough of the latter in my heart to do so. Ultimately, Revelations isn't something that I enjoyed much of, because for every good intention by the makers, there's twice as many bad decisions.

The introduction, for example, which ought to set an establishing tone for what follows, is worryingly flash animation-esque. Snake Mountain's design is interesting, resembling its classic era toy playset, with the weird drooping face, but the buildings and vehicles in the series proper are often CGI that's more detailed than the characters, which draws too much attention, and they look stupid. There's an odd parallax scroll, which can happen in computer animation.

Liam Cunningham is great as Duncan / Man-At-Arms, but he's one of the few exceptions in a frankly poorly-chosen voice cast. Mark Hamill — the definitive, unsurpassed onscreen Joker in the Batman franchise — just isn't suited to the Skeletor persona, imo. (On that note, original Skeletor voice actor Alan Oppenheimer gets a small role, but as a different character.) The main character, Teela, is voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar, which speaks for itself, really. She sucks.

Scripts are more contemporaneously dramatic than Filmation's were, as one might expect, but it gets the balance wrong, more concerned with delivering a snarky butthurt attitude than conveying the life-changing wisdom that should accompany its characters' individual struggles.

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It was at that point that I gave up on the post. I knew I wasn't going to waste time watching the next part of the series, so I figured I shouldn't waste more time on any related review, either.