This year marks the 30th Anniversary to the New Adventures of He-Man. I never cared for the show as a child. It was just too different: different themes, different characterizations, different characters, different voices, different settings, etc. It was just too much change to accept. I did like the action figures. I still remember when my brother and I found He-man and Skeletor at a Kay Bees. We loved them and even bought a Flipshot because we thought it was Man at Arms.
As the years went on, it really bugged me that I didn't care for the show. I mean, what is not to like? You've got He-man... fighting Skeletor... in space... with a lightsaber. I was a big Silverhawks fan so this screamed awesome to me. The DVD sets were released in the early 2000s so I decided to give it another try. Unfortunately, I still didn't care for it.
With this being the 30th Anniversary of the line, I made the firm decision to actually sit down, watch the show, and withhold my biases. The series actually had a lot of good qualities. There was some really nice animation, especially with fluid movements, that reminded me of DIC shows like G.I. Joe and M.A.S.K. I liked that the stories were built upon each other, something that Netflix has cashed in on these days, and even had recaps. There were also some really cool original ideas thrown in here like a group people crystalizing themselves so that they could use their mental energy to protect an entire planet! Doesn't get much more gnarly and sci-fi than that. One last really cool thing was the world building. The entire Tri Solar System seems really thought out and almost gives the show a Flash Gordon vibe, which is a huge plus for me.
So how can I take all of these really cool things and make them enjoyable? The easiest and best solution for me was to remove the audio. I just cannot handle the very uninspiring soundtrack. None of the voices ever worked for me either, so it was the smartest of solutions. I then decided to dub in themes from the Filmation series, which made a tremendous difference. Now I couldn't dub in new voice acting and there haven't been any subtitles released for the show, so I decided to make my own subtitles. Doing this worked out better than I thought because I was able to remove a lot of the sillier dialogue and focus the show on its own strengths.
I'm pretty happy with my finished product. If I did my job correctly, you should walk away thinking that this show really did have something to offer. I want to close by thank Jack Olesker. He was the main writer for the series and he really did do a nice job creating this expansion to an already great universe.
Happy 30th Anniversary, New Adventures of He-Man and Good Journey!
Want to buy the series?
Via Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/New-Adventures-He-Man-Vol/dp/B000JLTS76
Via Ebay - https://www.ebay.com/p/The-New-Adventures-of-He-Man-Vol-1-DVD-2006-6-Disc-Set/55986931?iid=123687901800&chn=ps
Comments
Post a Comment