Dr.Samurai
2021-12-18, 08:52 PM
I finally got around to seeing where the set up of part 1 was headed, and didn't see a thread already up. It may be of no surprise to many that Part 2 was pretty bad and did not redeem or salvage anything from Part 1.
The episodes were kind of all over the place for me and it all feels a little disjointed as I try to think about what to comment on.
I think, after watching part 2, it is hard to say that this show is about He-Man or not trying to side-line He-Man and Skeletor.
1. Skeletor is not the main villain, and He-Man is not the main hero. You can remove He-Man from the fight scenes and nothing changes, because Evil-Lyn still gets powered up, and the King and Queen and Man at Arms and Andra and Orko are still fighting the forces of evil. In fact, if you remove He-Man, Skeletor is less powerful because He-Man returns Skeletor's champion status to him when he regains the Power Sword.
2. There is a part where a battle is raging on outside of Castle Grayskull and He-Man is fighting Skeletor inside the Castle. Ram Man shows up and hits Skeletor with a bomb and tells He-Man his mom wants him fighting outside. So He-Man literally leaves Skeletor in the castle and goes outside to fight. Skeletor shows up a little later on the battlefield and literally says "I will not be ignored" because in this giant epic battle, He-Man thinks you can just walk away from Skeletor and everything will be okay. By the way, this was Champion Skeletor, with The Power.
3. As He-Man and Skeletor are fighting, it's juxtaposed with Teela trying to talk Evil-Lyn away from being evil. At one point, Skeletor is saying to He-Man how this is how it is supposed to be "Skeletor vs He-Man" and He-Man literally says "It's not about you and me!" and literally throws Skeletor away into the horizon, never to be seen again by the heroes.
4. After the universe is saved and everything is winding down, Prince Adam says to Teela "Well, now that you're the Sorceress and you can leave the Castle, I guess you won't be needing He-Man around anymore" and Teela has to affirm that there is still a place for him beside her, as if letting the audience know "Don't worry, we just switched everything up but we will still let He-Man hang out with us".
Both Teela and Prince Adam are depicted as carrying around a lot of unresolved baggage which, in my opinion, makes them less likable as heroes.
Teela is of course still sour about the secret being kept from her. This never gets resolved. Adam clearly feels bad about it, but it never really gets discussed. There are a couple of lines and Teela reiterates that his secrets "hurt people", as if she's not literally talking about one person; herself. Later on, Teela also gets to whine about her mother leaving her and her father to become the Sorceress. Then Teela, who literally abandoned everyone without a second thought and nursed a grudge even when face to face with the spirit of her best friend in Heaven, gets to educate her mother on what "connections" are and why friends and family make you stronger and blah blah blah. Apparently, the Sorceress had it wrong all along and Teela knew how to truly wield the power of the universe through love and friendship. Because Teela is obviously the paragon of these traits.
Over to Prince Adam, yeah, they took this good, kind-hearted soul and gave him a heaping dose of resentment. So... Adam says something like "You see, the Sword is the conduit, but the spark, that was always me", insinuating that Adam has some power that the Sword helps him channel or something. They literally never revisit this concept after this. But Adam calls down the power without the Sword and transforms into a giant hulking raging Tarzan that goes on a rampage and starts tearing everything apart. He is literally out of control and killing anything in his path. When he hears the King is nearby, his rage is suddenly focused on the King and he tears through Eternian soldiers to get to the King. No one can control him or power him down until the King admits that, as a father, he treated Adam unfairly and didn't give him the proper love and affection he needed. This admission soothes the beast, and the raging hulk reverts back to Prince Adam.
The thing is... Prince Adam acts silly to disguise the fact that he's He-Man. He's considered cowardly because every time something bad happens he vanishes (to transform into He-Man). I don't know why Kevin Smith is taking this and putting it on the King as if he is guilty of a sin here for judging his son. Whereas this was a part of Prince Adam's sacrifice in being He-Man, now it's a source for angsty adolescent rage. So cool...
(BTW, I think this was the "epic" thing Kevin Smith was talking about when people complained that he killed He-Man off twice. The problem for me here is 1. he is a mindless killing machine and 2. IIRC he is killing Eternians. I think Skeletor or Evil-Lyn transforms the people of Eternos into like undead monsters, and He-Man just starts ripping them apart. The animation was cool but I was more feeling "Well... that sucks" as he killed the former citizens of Eternos.)
Evil-Lyn had a lot of potential. I would say that the highlights of the series are Lena Heady and the animation. It would have been interesting to see Evil-Lyn go forward as someone that witnessed the void and became insane from it. But for whatever reason, Evil-Lyn had to be redeemed; her evil was because of Skeletor, as Beast-Man tells us, and Skeletor tells us, and Evil-Lyn, and Teela and Orko. So Evil-Lyn, after literally destroying Heaven, gets to be carried gently down by Teela and reformed.
The power levels were confusing to me. If I missed something, please someone let me know so I can understand.
The Power Sword allows you to call down the power and become a Champion. When Prince Adam regains the Power Sword and becomes He-Man, shouldn't Evil-Lyn have lost the Power? But she remained a champion. She was fighting He-Man and Champion Skeletor. Did He-Man just allow her to keep the Champion powers? Evil-Lyn is still holding her own against He-Man and Champion Skeletor, and this is before the convergence or whatever it was that was happening in the universe to power up Evil-Lyn. So I'm not exactly sure how this was supposed to work. Even after Evil-Lyn gains all of the universe powers, Teela doesn't really seemed challenged by it. Later on, He-Man just clowns Champion Skeletor as well, suggesting that not even the Power can help Skeletor defeat He-Man.
Anyways... this show is bad. I'm assuming most people haven't seen it. I don't recommend you watch it. They set up for a part 3 but I doubt that will happen at this point.
The episodes were kind of all over the place for me and it all feels a little disjointed as I try to think about what to comment on.
I think, after watching part 2, it is hard to say that this show is about He-Man or not trying to side-line He-Man and Skeletor.
1. Skeletor is not the main villain, and He-Man is not the main hero. You can remove He-Man from the fight scenes and nothing changes, because Evil-Lyn still gets powered up, and the King and Queen and Man at Arms and Andra and Orko are still fighting the forces of evil. In fact, if you remove He-Man, Skeletor is less powerful because He-Man returns Skeletor's champion status to him when he regains the Power Sword.
2. There is a part where a battle is raging on outside of Castle Grayskull and He-Man is fighting Skeletor inside the Castle. Ram Man shows up and hits Skeletor with a bomb and tells He-Man his mom wants him fighting outside. So He-Man literally leaves Skeletor in the castle and goes outside to fight. Skeletor shows up a little later on the battlefield and literally says "I will not be ignored" because in this giant epic battle, He-Man thinks you can just walk away from Skeletor and everything will be okay. By the way, this was Champion Skeletor, with The Power.
3. As He-Man and Skeletor are fighting, it's juxtaposed with Teela trying to talk Evil-Lyn away from being evil. At one point, Skeletor is saying to He-Man how this is how it is supposed to be "Skeletor vs He-Man" and He-Man literally says "It's not about you and me!" and literally throws Skeletor away into the horizon, never to be seen again by the heroes.
4. After the universe is saved and everything is winding down, Prince Adam says to Teela "Well, now that you're the Sorceress and you can leave the Castle, I guess you won't be needing He-Man around anymore" and Teela has to affirm that there is still a place for him beside her, as if letting the audience know "Don't worry, we just switched everything up but we will still let He-Man hang out with us".
Both Teela and Prince Adam are depicted as carrying around a lot of unresolved baggage which, in my opinion, makes them less likable as heroes.
Teela is of course still sour about the secret being kept from her. This never gets resolved. Adam clearly feels bad about it, but it never really gets discussed. There are a couple of lines and Teela reiterates that his secrets "hurt people", as if she's not literally talking about one person; herself. Later on, Teela also gets to whine about her mother leaving her and her father to become the Sorceress. Then Teela, who literally abandoned everyone without a second thought and nursed a grudge even when face to face with the spirit of her best friend in Heaven, gets to educate her mother on what "connections" are and why friends and family make you stronger and blah blah blah. Apparently, the Sorceress had it wrong all along and Teela knew how to truly wield the power of the universe through love and friendship. Because Teela is obviously the paragon of these traits.
Over to Prince Adam, yeah, they took this good, kind-hearted soul and gave him a heaping dose of resentment. So... Adam says something like "You see, the Sword is the conduit, but the spark, that was always me", insinuating that Adam has some power that the Sword helps him channel or something. They literally never revisit this concept after this. But Adam calls down the power without the Sword and transforms into a giant hulking raging Tarzan that goes on a rampage and starts tearing everything apart. He is literally out of control and killing anything in his path. When he hears the King is nearby, his rage is suddenly focused on the King and he tears through Eternian soldiers to get to the King. No one can control him or power him down until the King admits that, as a father, he treated Adam unfairly and didn't give him the proper love and affection he needed. This admission soothes the beast, and the raging hulk reverts back to Prince Adam.
The thing is... Prince Adam acts silly to disguise the fact that he's He-Man. He's considered cowardly because every time something bad happens he vanishes (to transform into He-Man). I don't know why Kevin Smith is taking this and putting it on the King as if he is guilty of a sin here for judging his son. Whereas this was a part of Prince Adam's sacrifice in being He-Man, now it's a source for angsty adolescent rage. So cool...
(BTW, I think this was the "epic" thing Kevin Smith was talking about when people complained that he killed He-Man off twice. The problem for me here is 1. he is a mindless killing machine and 2. IIRC he is killing Eternians. I think Skeletor or Evil-Lyn transforms the people of Eternos into like undead monsters, and He-Man just starts ripping them apart. The animation was cool but I was more feeling "Well... that sucks" as he killed the former citizens of Eternos.)
Evil-Lyn had a lot of potential. I would say that the highlights of the series are Lena Heady and the animation. It would have been interesting to see Evil-Lyn go forward as someone that witnessed the void and became insane from it. But for whatever reason, Evil-Lyn had to be redeemed; her evil was because of Skeletor, as Beast-Man tells us, and Skeletor tells us, and Evil-Lyn, and Teela and Orko. So Evil-Lyn, after literally destroying Heaven, gets to be carried gently down by Teela and reformed.
The power levels were confusing to me. If I missed something, please someone let me know so I can understand.
The Power Sword allows you to call down the power and become a Champion. When Prince Adam regains the Power Sword and becomes He-Man, shouldn't Evil-Lyn have lost the Power? But she remained a champion. She was fighting He-Man and Champion Skeletor. Did He-Man just allow her to keep the Champion powers? Evil-Lyn is still holding her own against He-Man and Champion Skeletor, and this is before the convergence or whatever it was that was happening in the universe to power up Evil-Lyn. So I'm not exactly sure how this was supposed to work. Even after Evil-Lyn gains all of the universe powers, Teela doesn't really seemed challenged by it. Later on, He-Man just clowns Champion Skeletor as well, suggesting that not even the Power can help Skeletor defeat He-Man.
Anyways... this show is bad. I'm assuming most people haven't seen it. I don't recommend you watch it. They set up for a part 3 but I doubt that will happen at this point.