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Available at Amazon.com |
You know the setup by now if you’re reading this. Wimpy Prince Adam of Eternia receives a magic sword in the mysterious Castle Greyskull and turns into the super-powerful He-Man, hero to all. But now without the constraints of the earlier generation of TV censorship, the characters take on a much more two-dimensional aspect, rather than the cardboard cutouts that they were on the original show. Whereas Adam and He-Man used to have a Clark Kent/Superman relationship, where you’d look at the pair and wonder who in their right mind couldn’t figure out what was going on, now the creators have instead used a much more appropriate dynamic — Billy Batson and Captain Marvel. This version of the show appeals directly to the wish fulfillment of younger viewers by presenting Adam as a teenage boy and then turning him into the insanely overpowered He-Man, something that every whiny and hormonal tweener kid is going to identify with. And that’s the first thing that I really loved about this vision of the character: When I say He-Man is insanely overpowered, I mean it. Now he effortlessly lifts mountains to stop meteor showers, jumps miles into the air, and plows through enemies like a hot knife through butter. It just makes the problems faced by ordinary guy Prince Adam all the more painful for him because he has no way to compete with his own alter-ego. That’s PATHOS, baby. Sure, Teela is now a feisty Gen-X extreme babe, but at least she has a real personality in this incarnation. Ditto Skeletor, who now has an actual origin story to kick off the new series, showing how his face got melted down to the bone and why he hates King Randor so much because of it. Good stuff, all. I also really enjoyed the snappy, snarky dialogue fired off by the villains, as Skeletor now seems to be channelling Mark Hamill’s Joker from the Batman cartoons in a lot of ways instead of his more generic snarling delivery from the original series.
On the bad side, and this is a really huge gripe for some people like myself, the show skews a bit too young by going into the silly Dragonball Z-styled animation for the fights, with people leaping into the air with speed trails behind them and yelling a lot. Unfortunately a lot of the “epic” fight scenes just end up coming across as filler in a show that’s only 22 minutes to begin with and if you’re an old fogie like me that might be a pretty big negative against your potential enjoyment here. Really though, that complaint is minimal, and the rest of the way it’s a good old-fashioned action-packed beat-em-up with good guys and bad guys and all the classic characters from our youths.
Unfortunately neither the relatively-expensive show nor the toy line was the breakout hit that the originals were, and it only went for 39 episodes total over two seasons. More’s the pity, because it had tremendous potential as a cult favourite among fans of the original show and featured some heavy hitters of comics and cartoons as writers and producers.
This set, volume 1 of 3, contains the first 13 episodes of the first season, as follows:
Disc One: The Beginning (Parts 1, 2 and 3), The Courage of Adam, Sky War, The Deep End
Disc Two: Lessons, Siren’s Song, The Ties That Bind, Dragon’s Brood, Turnabout, Mekaneck’s Lament, Night of the Shadowbeasts
Presented for the first time in anamorphic widescreen, this looks as good as anything on TV today, which is no surprise considering the care that BCI gives to the He-Man properties they release on DVD. Everything is color-perfect and I didn’t see any artifacting errors. A beautiful transfer.
The audio is a little bit disappointing in that this is just the original stereo soundtrack rather than a remixed 5.1 version that this show was begging for, but it sounds nice and voices are clear. There’s no subtitles for some reason, which bugs me on sets as commentary-heavy as this one is.
Again, BCI takes good care of He-Man and packs this sucker with bonus features, including:
– Audio commentaries from writers and producers on 5 of the episodes.
– Bonus video commentaries on 3 of the episodes from the same people, expanding on the original commentaries.
– An extra episode, which is basically a clip show sent out to hype the upcoming series.
– Animatics for the first three episodes.
– Biographies and fact sheets for heroes on the show.
– All 13 scripts in DVD-ROM format.
And of course you can’t talk about He-Man on DVD without mentioning the awesome packaging from BCI, as they include artwork from comic book artists Ben Templesmith and Dustin Nguyen in the form of collector cards as well as great looking gatefold artwork from the backgrounds on the series.
One of the few times that the newer, “hipper” interpretation of a classic property actually exceeds the original, this new version of He-Man is well worth checking out for fans of the classic series who are curious what a modern take on the show would look like. It’s exciting, well-written and best of all doesn’t patronize the viewer or try to sell toys. And maybe that was its downfall, I dunno.
Highly recommended.
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The Ratings
The Show: ****
The Video: *****
The Audio: ***
The Extras: ****
Navarre Corporation presents He-Man and the Masters of the Universe – Volume One. Running time: 268 minutes. Not rated. Released on DVD: February 16, 2008. Available at Amazon.com
About Scott Keith
