The first clip from Netflix’s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series (as always, not to be confused with Kevin Smith’s recent series Masters of the Universe: Revelation, which is middle-aged nerd-targeted) has arrived! It looks fine! It also looks like many, many other modern kids’ cartoons! Which is also fine!
Seriously, if you’re up on your recent CG-animated kids cartoons, such as Lego Ninjago, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Fast & Furious: Spy Racers, Jurassic Park: Camp Cretaceous, etc., He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is clearly going for their tone and style. Based on the clip, I’d say it has fully succeeded.
Now, whether you think He-Man and Battle Cat’s attempt to run squarely in the middle of the pack with all those other series is good or bad, you have to admit two things: 1) those shows are successful because they’re what kids want in 2021, and aping them is a smart move for a franchise dreamed up 40 years ago; and 2) it absolutely doesn’t matter what you think about the series unless you’re an eight-year-old, in which case you probably shouldn’t be reading Gizmodo. We use cusswords sometimes.
Ahem. Watching this clip, it has dawned on me that I have no idea who some of these characters are. Prince Adam and Evil-Lyn are obvious, of course, but the others? I assume the girl with the white hair is Teela, given that in the first trailer she gets a psychic message from the Sorceress (longtime fans know of their connection) and she’s seen holding a staff that looks not unlike the weapon that came with the original Teela action figure back in 1982. As for the green bad guy with Evil-Lyn, I have no idea. He’s clearly some sort of snake man, which would lead me to believe he’s one of the Snake Men, except none of those characters are listed on IMDB. There are two names that appear to be newly created for the series, R’Qazz and General Dolos, that I definitely do not know, so it’s presumably one of them.
All in all, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe looks like a perfectly fine thing to let your kids binge, and it may intrigue them enough to want to know more about the original He-Man. Then you can show them the 1980s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, and hear them beg you to turn it off because it’s so poorly animating and insultingly stupid, even for eight-year-olds.
Which is fine!