Masters of the Trollyverse!

I am not the target audience for this new Masters of the Universe series helmed by Kevin Smith.  The series came out in ’83, by which point I was already trading in my action figures for RPG minis.  And it was late coming out in my town; by the time MotU and Transformers replaced Tom & Jerry and Bugs Bunny in the afterschool cartoon lineup, I was in 8^th grade.  At that point, I’d fully replaced going “pew-pew” through the imaginary jungles of my back yard to swimming in real lakes and hiking in real wilderness and shooting real guns and bows-and-arrows with the Boy Scouts.  We had a computer at home as well, an Apple IIe.  When I wasn’t out-of-doors, I was likely discovering new (to me) fantasy and sci-fi authors like Barbara Hambly and Steven Brust, or traveling through space-and-time in Ultima or kitting out my ship in Elite. 

 

So I never owned any of the MotU toys.  I was aware of them, but that was mostly thanks to the cartoon.  And the cartoon was fascinating to me because it was this insane world where science and sorcery lived and fought side-by-side.  The world of Eternia drew me in because it was so bizarre and alien, with its strange peoples and iconic locations (Snake Mountain being high on that list with its river of lava being vomited from the mouth of a giant snake statue).  Where GI Joe couldn’t hold a candle to movies like Zulu and Tora, Tora, Tora, and the Transformers real-world setting failed to inspire, Masters of the Universe was this bonkers, no-holds-barred candyland of inspiration seeds. 

 

But I can kinda see where Smith is coming from.  A full-on assault on Castle Greyskull wasn’t something that happened in the cartoon, but I’ll bet it happened a lot in backyards and den floors across the country in the mid-‘80s.  So I can totally see this as a wonderful nostalgia trip for those who are not quite yet staring down the barrel of their 50^th birthday.

 

The non-spoiler TL;DR: overall entertaining and a fun binge on a night where I wasn’t feeling energetic enough to do anything much more than plop in front of some passive entertainment.  Individual bits disappoint by being cliché and/or rushed, but there’s some fun inspiration, especially with stuff that’s glossed over with a hackneyed brush but could be really fun if you dug into it.

 

Spoilers below!

 

The only voice I recognized was Mark Hamill hamming it up delightfully as Skeletor.  Skeletor manages to both be in on the joke and an even scarier threat than he ever was in the original cartoon.  So far, he’s not called anyone a boob, which makes me sad.

 

Teela and her engineer bud (whose name I will never remember and who I keep wanting to call Fannie after a materials engineer I knew when I was a kid) are clearly embarrassed to find themselves in a MotU cartoon.  They’re self-aware with that ironic distance that is sooo Gen X.  But then, Kevin Smith, so I guess we should feel ourselves lucky it’s mostly relegated to two characters. 

 

Orco’s got a nice tragic thread going, Evil Lynn is fun (especially as a not-very-trustworthy ally), and of course Beastman has a crush on her.  (Did he in the ‘80’s cartoon?  I don’t recall.  In one of my worlds, he’d have a crush on the shape-shifting Sorceress, but that would be a bit too creepy for a children’s cartoon, no?)  But the real break-out is Duncan (no longer Man-at-Arms because that’s some sort of general/super engineer-nerd position in the royal court) who finally gets to be the total bad-ass we always knew he was.

 

Skeletor and He-man get sidelined in the first episode, which gives enough space for all these great secondary characters room to take the spotlight.  It’s like they took all those single-episode stories that focused on a secondary character and expanded them into a full series, which is a lot of fun.  And the slow-motion cataclysm the provides the urgency not only forces heroes and villains to unite (always fun), but also allows the writers to really shake up the world and do some fun things with it.

 

Cyclops’ Motherboard religion is one of those lame glosses that could really go places with a GM willing to put some time into it.  A merging of goddess myth with a 40k-style machine god?  Yes, please, sign me up!  The secrets of Greyskull were not as epic as I wish they were, but they were not a complete disappointment, either.  The idea that all magic in the universe emanates from Eternia is an interesting one, and could be used to create a very interesting setting for RPGing in.  Making a crystal sea actually have floating crystals in it is a fun bit of literal “duh” that I look forward to tossing it into a game (but, again, it needs more done with it than just a pretty background for a fight scene). 

 

The only thing that kept me going through the so-been-there-and-done-that face-your-ultimate-fear episode was the interactions between Orco and Lynn.  Otherwise, it felt like the weakest episode of the bunch.  While I thought Orco’s transformation wasn’t really earned, I do look forward to seeing him in his final form as Oracle, ruler of the Land of the Dead. 

 

The cliffhanger was appropriately epic, and they’ve done a good job with actually killing and scaring characters that (some) of the peril feels (kinda) real.  Though I’m sure we’ll see a whole slew of resurrections as we work towards our finale.

 

A Dram of Glam and Duran Duran

This is fun. I'm a bit older then Noisms, but younger than the "dark metal" crowd. I got into D&D with Moldvay/Cook, Christmas of '81. So the musical background to my D&D was 80's pop laced with a dose of glam and disco. It was urbane, smooth, stylish, but also unearthly, inhuman, and fey.

And style was very much part of the substance. David Bowie as the Goblin King, Sting and Billy Idol as Sting and Billy Idol. Madonna doing her thing. There was a smooth, glossy finish to everything; even the percussively blue-collar Phil Collins crooned and powered our revenge fantasies with the slick style of "In the Air Tonight." Michael Jackson, magical and aristocratic in his so-right-for-the-times "Smooth Criminal." Everyone wanted a fedora, aviator sunglasses, and shiny silk suits, but none of us could pull it off, and we all knew we'd look like dorks in costumes.

Historical accuracy took a distant back-seat to style and fashion. We chaffed at the universal need for armor on our characters. The ultimate fighter was Rutger Hauer in his black quilted jerkin, pauldrons, and gauntlets with his too-damned-cool double-barrelled crossbow. The ultimate magic-user was Nicol Williamson as Merlin in Excalibur. The ultimate thief was Indiana Jones, with his quick mind, a friend in every town, and swift whip.

Grunge wasn't a thing yet. Urban decay was an artifact of the Carter years, distant, the stuff of fairy tales. Our Shadowrun characters dressed like punks in black snythleather and spikes chromed with neon shades. Our sci-fi characters wore mandarin-collared suits made from glittering, reflective materials, or futuristic camo in zig-zags and overlapping dots. Everyone had a trenchcoat with a huge collar, bike jacket, or a magic sword with wing-shaped crossguard and a giant gem set in the forte. We cruised through our imaginary metropoli in (air)cars that bore more than a passing resemblance to the DeLorean while listening to the hissing smooth tunes of Duran Duran and Pet Shop Boys.

Nobody was surprised when Kiefer Sutherland played a vampire who looked like a Billy Idol wannabe. And nobody was terribly surprised when '80s pop morphed into goth, and the whole melange birthed Vampire: the Masquerade. Again, style was very much part of the substance.

Grunge came as a surprise, though it was a perfectly predictable backlash to the all-synth, all-neon, all-chrome of 80's pop. I ignored it. The '90s were an era of retrenchment for me. I had no interest in Green Day, Nirvana, or Lilith Fair. I was getting into Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails.

But before that, the music was glossy, smooth, upbeat, and aristocratic. It was sharp suits, hot cars, tight skirts, stiletto heels, and dark glasses. It was impossible hair, neon jewelry, and highly chromed. Win or lose, the important thing was to look good while you were doing it.