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Update: July 30, 2021
Dragonlord’s Review of MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: REVELATION – PART 1 (Spoilers)
Bottom Line: Similar to what The Last Jedi did to Star Wars, Masters of the Universe: Revelation - Part 1 subverts expectations but does so in a negative way that gives the middle finger to longtime fans.
Fans were excited when Kevin Smith announced in 2019 that he was going to make a more adult-oriented He-Man series for Netflix and that this was going to be sequel to the original Filmation series. When the action-packed first trailer dropped featuring the 80s song “Holding Out for a Hero”, fans were even more pumped. Unfortunately it was all a bait-and-switch scheme by Smith and Netflix.
He-Man is killed off in the first half of episode one and it clearly became apparent that this revival was going to be centered on the character Teela. There are two major failures that Smith did. The first major failure is he should have just been upfront that this was going to be the Teela show months prior to the trailer’s release. There would still have been blowback but it would not have been as catastrophic as it is currently right now in the nerd community. The second biggest failure was making the new star of the show – Teela – an unlikable bitch.
Episode One – “The Power of Grayskull"
Episode one started off well with a prologue utilizing some cool promotional artwork from the 80s. The royal palace is celebrating Teela’s promotion as the new Man-at-Arms. We are re-introduced to the cast of characters and everybody is faithfully depicted like how they were back in the 80s. So far so good. But it doesn’t take long for something idiotic to happen. Skeletor and his crew manage to infiltrate Castle Grayskull by disguising themselves and fooling the all-wise Sorceress. The Sorceress sees through Skeletor’s deception but couldn’t discern Evil-Lyn and fake He-Man’s disguises?? Worst of all, she needlessly opened the castle’s gates just to greet them. This scene is just stupidly written and not well thought-out.
He-Man and the gang arrive at Castle Grayskull to stop Skeletor. We see some vintage action of the good guys versus the bad guys. Then the show gets dark (which is a good thing) as Skeletor kills Moss Man by incinerating him to ashes. He-Man uncharacteristically impales Skeletor with a sword. This is so out of character for He-Man. It would be at least understandable for He-Man driven to kill if his parents or Teela died. But for fucking Moss Man??
Skeletor goes into a monologue about how Castle Grayskull is just an illusion for the Hall of Wisdom and how all the magic in Eternia are contained in a mystical orb. Skeletor smashes the orb while He-Man, who is just a few feet away from Skeletor, is too dumbstruck to act for the longest time. This is another poorly thought-out scene. Sorceress stops time to tell the heroes that energy released from the orb will destroy the entire universe. Skeletor seems to know everything there is to know about the secrets of Castle Grayskull but doesn’t know cracking the orb will also destroy everything as well??
To save the world, He-Man sacrifices himself by containing the energy blast with his Sword of Power. He-Man reverts back to Prince Adam as Teela finally learns the truth of He-Man’s secret identity. He-Man and Skeletor are seemingly killed in the small energy explosion. King Randor angrily banishes Man-at-Arms from the palace when he learns that Duncan didn’t tell him about Prince Adam’s double life. I’m kinda 50/50 with Randor’s emotional outburst. On one side, it seemed too extreme to banish your most loyal servant. On the flip side, I can understand at the King feeling betrayed from his most trusted servant. The subject’s loyalty to their king should be top priority over others.
While everyone is grieving, out of nowhere, Teela makes a dramatic scene by saying screw you to everybody and angrily declaring she quits the palace because she is so butthurt that nobody told her that Adam was He-Man. As I mentioned earlier, this was one of the biggest mistakes Kevin Smith made as it made viewers instantly dislike Teela. This is just pure CW trash when characters annoyingly go emo and just cry over their entitled feelings. I feel that The CW had a negative influence on Smith who directed several episodes of The Flash and Supergirl from 2016 to 2018 and caught some bad habits along the way. There are several ways to still move the plot point of Teela quitting the royal guard and becoming a mercenary in the future without making her into a detestable character but Smith just went with the CW crap route.
Episode Two – “The Poisoned Chalice”
After a time jump, Teela is re-introduced working as a mercenary, sporting a side-shaved hair, looking very buffed and accompanied with a black woman named Andra whom she exhibits multiple displays of public affection. Despite Smith denying this, it’s clear Teela is now a lesbian and Andra is her lover. Teela also has an absurd staff that can literally transform into anything from a sword, a grappling hook, a shovel and to anything what the scene requires it to be.
Evil-Lyn, disguising herself as an old woman, hires Teela to retrieve a magical goblet from Snake Mountain which is now the home base for Tri-Klops who leads a techno cult. After retrieving the goblet, Teela agrees to accompany disguised Evil-Lyn to Castle Grayskull. In another stupid moment, Teela knew all along that it was Evil-Lyn underneath the disguise but allows Evil-Lyn to stand so close to the Sorceress while Teela is like 10-20 yards away. Like daughter, like mother.
The Sorceress reveals that she is working with Evil-Lyn (who looks like she failed multiple USADA testing) to bring back magic to Eternia because the entire universe is going to be destroyed without that magic and they need to retrieve the two halves of the Sword of Power, one is in Subternia and one is in Preternia. Knowing that the entire world is going to be destroyed, Teela refuses to help due to her feelings being hurt. Teela is just the shittiest character. After some persuading from the not-so-scared Cringer, Teela agrees to help. They go to the former Man-at-Arms Duncan asking his help to forge the two swords back into one.
Episode Three – “The Most Dangerous Man in Eternia”
The heroes find Duncan and stupidity seems to be contagious as Duncan refuses to help save the universe citing that he needs to be take care of his newfound family consisting of Orko and Roboto, not once thinking if the world dies so does his family. The dying Orko volunteers to join the party, hoping for one last adventure. Roboto, who shares the same memories as Duncan, steps up to forge the Sword of Power. Later on, Duncan redeems himself by being a bad-ass and saves the party singlehandedly from the forces of Mer-Man.
I’m tired and so will be skipping the rest of the breakdown for the other episodes. But I will take note that there are some irritating moments whenever the Sorceress or Duncan tries to tell Teela a big secret (that she is the Sorceress’ daughter) but the writers find some lame excuses not to reveal it. There’s another dumb moment in Subternia when Scareglow shows Teela’s her innermost fear and what she fears the most is that… she might be more extraordinary than what she is. Oh wow. Lastly, Orko and Roboto's noble deaths were done very well.
In Summary
The voice talent is impressive with a lot of recognizable stars assembled. Mark Hamill as Skeletor was just sublime. The voice acting from the cast was terrific but Sarah Michelle Gellar was a terrible choice as the voice of Teela. Her voice does not fit with the character. In the first episode when she yells the war charge, “For Eternia!,” it was so cringey. On the flip side, Lena Headey as Evil-Lyn was my favorite. She’s just born to play the character. It also helped that Evil-Lyn was written very well and had a lot of great scenes.
The animation, from Powerhouse Studios, looks gorgeous to look at with its utilization of vibrant colors. But being an animation connoisseur for many decades, Revelation’s animation is far from top tier even for television standards. Revelation has the usual American clunkiness in the action, lack of fluidity, bad frame rates and poor character poses. Studio Mir (Legend of Korra, Voltron: Legendary Defender, Dota: Dragon's Blood) still holds the title of greatest current animation studio for U.S. animated shows.
The story is pretty good in all honestly. If they just didn’t make Teela into a whiny spoiled brat, this would have been more enjoyable for me. The script just needed a few tweaking. Removing the CW emo drama crap, remove the dumb character actions and it would have been all good. There are a lot of Easter eggs that I liked and how the series utilized a lot of He-Man lore from the toys, comic books and even the previous reboot series. The score from Bear McCreary is excellent.
So what’s In store for Revelation – Part 2? I think they’re setting up Teela to be the new Sorceress, Andra will be the new Man-at-Arms, Evil-Lyn will turn against Skeletor and Prince Adam will still be He-Man at the end. I also believe that Orko is not dead dead. Despite hate-watching most of the first half of Revelation, I’m intrigued with how it will all play out. But the better reboot still remains 2002's He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
RATING: 4/10
[For those that felt burned and betrayed by Masters of the Universe: Revelation – Part 1, I’d like to take time to introduce to you another sword and sorcery animated series that will rinse off the bad taste in your mouth. I recommend watching RISING OF THE SHIELD HERO. It’s a great anime series with great animation, a terrific story and an underdog main character that you can’t help but root for. The whole season one is available and just in time because season 2 is coming in October 2021.]
Dragonlord’s Review of MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: REVELATION – PART 1 (Spoilers)
Bottom Line: Similar to what The Last Jedi did to Star Wars, Masters of the Universe: Revelation - Part 1 subverts expectations but does so in a negative way that gives the middle finger to longtime fans.
Fans were excited when Kevin Smith announced in 2019 that he was going to make a more adult-oriented He-Man series for Netflix and that this was going to be sequel to the original Filmation series. When the action-packed first trailer dropped featuring the 80s song “Holding Out for a Hero”, fans were even more pumped. Unfortunately it was all a bait-and-switch scheme by Smith and Netflix.
He-Man is killed off in the first half of episode one and it clearly became apparent that this revival was going to be centered on the character Teela. There are two major failures that Smith did. The first major failure is he should have just been upfront that this was going to be the Teela show months prior to the trailer’s release. There would still have been blowback but it would not have been as catastrophic as it is currently right now in the nerd community. The second biggest failure was making the new star of the show – Teela – an unlikable bitch.
Episode One – “The Power of Grayskull"
Episode one started off well with a prologue utilizing some cool promotional artwork from the 80s. The royal palace is celebrating Teela’s promotion as the new Man-at-Arms. We are re-introduced to the cast of characters and everybody is faithfully depicted like how they were back in the 80s. So far so good. But it doesn’t take long for something idiotic to happen. Skeletor and his crew manage to infiltrate Castle Grayskull by disguising themselves and fooling the all-wise Sorceress. The Sorceress sees through Skeletor’s deception but couldn’t discern Evil-Lyn and fake He-Man’s disguises?? Worst of all, she needlessly opened the castle’s gates just to greet them. This scene is just stupidly written and not well thought-out.
He-Man and the gang arrive at Castle Grayskull to stop Skeletor. We see some vintage action of the good guys versus the bad guys. Then the show gets dark (which is a good thing) as Skeletor kills Moss Man by incinerating him to ashes. He-Man uncharacteristically impales Skeletor with a sword. This is so out of character for He-Man. It would be at least understandable for He-Man driven to kill if his parents or Teela died. But for fucking Moss Man??
Skeletor goes into a monologue about how Castle Grayskull is just an illusion for the Hall of Wisdom and how all the magic in Eternia are contained in a mystical orb. Skeletor smashes the orb while He-Man, who is just a few feet away from Skeletor, is too dumbstruck to act for the longest time. This is another poorly thought-out scene. Sorceress stops time to tell the heroes that energy released from the orb will destroy the entire universe. Skeletor seems to know everything there is to know about the secrets of Castle Grayskull but doesn’t know cracking the orb will also destroy everything as well??
To save the world, He-Man sacrifices himself by containing the energy blast with his Sword of Power. He-Man reverts back to Prince Adam as Teela finally learns the truth of He-Man’s secret identity. He-Man and Skeletor are seemingly killed in the small energy explosion. King Randor angrily banishes Man-at-Arms from the palace when he learns that Duncan didn’t tell him about Prince Adam’s double life. I’m kinda 50/50 with Randor’s emotional outburst. On one side, it seemed too extreme to banish your most loyal servant. On the flip side, I can understand at the King feeling betrayed from his most trusted servant. The subject’s loyalty to their king should be top priority over others.
While everyone is grieving, out of nowhere, Teela makes a dramatic scene by saying screw you to everybody and angrily declaring she quits the palace because she is so butthurt that nobody told her that Adam was He-Man. As I mentioned earlier, this was one of the biggest mistakes Kevin Smith made as it made viewers instantly dislike Teela. This is just pure CW trash when characters annoyingly go emo and just cry over their entitled feelings. I feel that The CW had a negative influence on Smith who directed several episodes of The Flash and Supergirl from 2016 to 2018 and caught some bad habits along the way. There are several ways to still move the plot point of Teela quitting the royal guard and becoming a mercenary in the future without making her into a detestable character but Smith just went with the CW crap route.
Episode Two – “The Poisoned Chalice”
After a time jump, Teela is re-introduced working as a mercenary, sporting a side-shaved hair, looking very buffed and accompanied with a black woman named Andra whom she exhibits multiple displays of public affection. Despite Smith denying this, it’s clear Teela is now a lesbian and Andra is her lover. Teela also has an absurd staff that can literally transform into anything from a sword, a grappling hook, a shovel and to anything what the scene requires it to be.
Evil-Lyn, disguising herself as an old woman, hires Teela to retrieve a magical goblet from Snake Mountain which is now the home base for Tri-Klops who leads a techno cult. After retrieving the goblet, Teela agrees to accompany disguised Evil-Lyn to Castle Grayskull. In another stupid moment, Teela knew all along that it was Evil-Lyn underneath the disguise but allows Evil-Lyn to stand so close to the Sorceress while Teela is like 10-20 yards away. Like daughter, like mother.
The Sorceress reveals that she is working with Evil-Lyn (who looks like she failed multiple USADA testing) to bring back magic to Eternia because the entire universe is going to be destroyed without that magic and they need to retrieve the two halves of the Sword of Power, one is in Subternia and one is in Preternia. Knowing that the entire world is going to be destroyed, Teela refuses to help due to her feelings being hurt. Teela is just the shittiest character. After some persuading from the not-so-scared Cringer, Teela agrees to help. They go to the former Man-at-Arms Duncan asking his help to forge the two swords back into one.
Episode Three – “The Most Dangerous Man in Eternia”
The heroes find Duncan and stupidity seems to be contagious as Duncan refuses to help save the universe citing that he needs to be take care of his newfound family consisting of Orko and Roboto, not once thinking if the world dies so does his family. The dying Orko volunteers to join the party, hoping for one last adventure. Roboto, who shares the same memories as Duncan, steps up to forge the Sword of Power. Later on, Duncan redeems himself by being a bad-ass and saves the party singlehandedly from the forces of Mer-Man.
I’m tired and so will be skipping the rest of the breakdown for the other episodes. But I will take note that there are some irritating moments whenever the Sorceress or Duncan tries to tell Teela a big secret (that she is the Sorceress’ daughter) but the writers find some lame excuses not to reveal it. There’s another dumb moment in Subternia when Scareglow shows Teela’s her innermost fear and what she fears the most is that… she might be more extraordinary than what she is. Oh wow. Lastly, Orko and Roboto's noble deaths were done very well.
In Summary
The voice talent is impressive with a lot of recognizable stars assembled. Mark Hamill as Skeletor was just sublime. The voice acting from the cast was terrific but Sarah Michelle Gellar was a terrible choice as the voice of Teela. Her voice does not fit with the character. In the first episode when she yells the war charge, “For Eternia!,” it was so cringey. On the flip side, Lena Headey as Evil-Lyn was my favorite. She’s just born to play the character. It also helped that Evil-Lyn was written very well and had a lot of great scenes.
The animation, from Powerhouse Studios, looks gorgeous to look at with its utilization of vibrant colors. But being an animation connoisseur for many decades, Revelation’s animation is far from top tier even for television standards. Revelation has the usual American clunkiness in the action, lack of fluidity, bad frame rates and poor character poses. Studio Mir (Legend of Korra, Voltron: Legendary Defender, Dota: Dragon's Blood) still holds the title of greatest current animation studio for U.S. animated shows.
The story is pretty good in all honestly. If they just didn’t make Teela into a whiny spoiled brat, this would have been more enjoyable for me. The script just needed a few tweaking. Removing the CW emo drama crap, remove the dumb character actions and it would have been all good. There are a lot of Easter eggs that I liked and how the series utilized a lot of He-Man lore from the toys, comic books and even the previous reboot series. The score from Bear McCreary is excellent.
So what’s In store for Revelation – Part 2? I think they’re setting up Teela to be the new Sorceress, Andra will be the new Man-at-Arms, Evil-Lyn will turn against Skeletor and Prince Adam will still be He-Man at the end. I also believe that Orko is not dead dead. Despite hate-watching most of the first half of Revelation, I’m intrigued with how it will all play out. But the better reboot still remains 2002's He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
RATING: 4/10
[For those that felt burned and betrayed by Masters of the Universe: Revelation – Part 1, I’d like to take time to introduce to you another sword and sorcery animated series that will rinse off the bad taste in your mouth. I recommend watching RISING OF THE SHIELD HERO. It’s a great anime series with great animation, a terrific story and an underdog main character that you can’t help but root for. The whole season one is available and just in time because season 2 is coming in October 2021.]