masters of the universe – Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

Or, “In which I choose violence at 8:52 AM”

I will die on this hill: that’s Battle Cat. I was not aware that I had strong, nay, immutable opinions about something as ridiculous as He-Man until the other day, when I said something about Battle Cat being in the trailer and my wife, who, for the record, was not a boy in the 1980s, tried to tell me that was Cringer.

Her argument? Battle Cat wears armor. Cringer does not. That cat is not wearing armor, therefore it is not Battle Cat. Quod erat motherfuckin’ demonstrandum.

The intellectual in me wants to make this post about ontology and how we construct identity and how we construct our categories and definitions. The ‘80s kid in me started screaming bullshit right away, and now that I’ve seen other people spreading this nonsense it’s time to fight about it.

It is true that that cat is not wearing armor. It is also true that that cat is holding his head high and his tail straight, and while he is standing behind the people in the image, I’d argue that that’s an issue of shot composition and not hiding. His bearing and stature conveys nobility. That is not Cringer.

A similar shot, from just a couple of moments later. Again, look at his eyes. This cat isn’t afraid of Goddamned anything. Also worth pointing out— he’s huge. Cringer grows during his transformation. That cat is absolutely big enough to ride, saddle or not.

And the coup de grâce:

Cringer ain’t never had that look on his face not once in his whole life. I don’t care about a helmet. That is Battle Cat, and if you think otherwise you are wrong and he’s going to bite your face off if you try and tell him otherwise.

That is all.

First, let us be clear about a couple of of things: I could not be more squarely in the demographic this show was aimed at if I tried. I am a geeky male, born in 1976, who was seven years old when Masters of the Universe premiered in 1983. My brother and I were both hugely into the show, so much so in fact that we refused to share our toys and you therefore need to check the bottoms of their feet to see which ones my mother colored in with a black Sharpie, which indicates that they belonged to me. I still have the vast majority of them; my son played with a bunch of them while he was growing up, too.

The second thing to be clear on is that there is literally nothing you could do to or with the He-Man franchise that would anger me. Yes, these toys were a big part of my childhood; yes, there are still plenty of things that were part of my childhood that I may have Opinions on(*); He-Man is simply not one of them. I will resent the Cubs for the rest of my life for the way their baseball games used to pre-empt my He-Man cartoons but there’s not a damn thing anyone can do with the franchise now that’s going to get me sucking my teeth and muttering at them. It’s just not possible.

(It’s also worth pointing out that Netflix has already surprised me by making me a huge fan of their She-Ra series, so I would have been remiss if I skipped out on this one. The huge success of She-Ra meant that trying out Revelation was practically mandatory.)

That said: this is about as good as I could have expected a Masters of the Universe continuation to be, I think, and having watched the five-episode Part One, I find that I’m still in for Part Two. It’s hard to write in depth about this without spoiling some things, but in general, folks die, and the show in general is a hell of a lot bleaker than I remember the cartoon ever being, but for the most part it’s all still there, right down to Evil-Lyn actually continuing to insist on being called Evil-Lyn for a good chunk of her screen time. There are fanboys yammering about how the female characters, particularly Teela, Lyn and another named Andra who was supposedly in a couple of episodes but who I don’t remember, are in the show too much; those are bad people and their opinions are to be disregarded with swiftness and prejudice. My biggest complaint? Sarah Michelle Gellar voices Teela, and while I was a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and am firmly used to thinking of Sarah as a badass, her voice doesn’t fit her character. Teela’s drawn big, and should have a deeper, brassier voice than Sarah’s. The performance is fine with my eyes closed, but it just didn’t fit the character for me, particularly since I know Sarah’s voice so well and she’s not really trying to mask how she sounds.

Everything else? Good stuff, or at least as much as it can be given that this is Masters of the Universe we’re talking about. Tri-Klops is the main villain, as the leader of a technology … church … thing that … worships? something called Motherboard? And there’s a Holy Sprocket, because … that’s a tech word? I guess?

It’s completely fucking ridiculous, but again: MotU, so … whatever, and I did find it interesting that it set up a bit of a split between the characters who are mostly tech-focused and the magic wielders. This has always been a series where anything goes, basically, so it was kind of cool that when Eternia’s magic starts draining away the tech-focused characters step up and try to take over.

Also, I liked Orko, for the first time … ever? And I can’t believe that I’m actually typing this, but there are some character bits between him and Evil-Lyn that were actually really interesting.

Don’t pay for Netflix for this or anything, but if there was any chance you were going to watch it, follow through on that impulse.

(*) I tossed this question out on Twitter earlier today, tagging my wife: what is the most ridiculous thing that I have strong opinions about? Like, they can do whatever they want to He-Man, and I think the last decade or so has fairly adequately displayed my flexibility regarding comic books and Star Wars. Is it the DC movies? Is the murderverse the thing I get the most fanboy-irrational about? Maybe. Any other possible contenders?