Aug 19, 2019

How to do MOTU right: a rant

Since it's the 10th anniversary of the House of rants I thought I'd make a revisit of an early rant... the top 10 do's and don'ts for a Masters of the Universe movie rant. Let's let's start with something simple: respect the source material. I know that The Source material is there to sell toys. But it also has spawned 3 animated series multiple comic book series not to mention that Amalgamated storyline was made for the recent collectors line... you know the one that's written by that marketing guy that hates my guts.

So there is some backbone that you can pull stuff from and create something new... and respectful of what came before... I mean let's talk about the intro to pretty much every Masters of the Universe Cartoon:

 I am Adam, Prince of Eternia; defender of the secrets of Castle Grayskull!
It's basically telling you that the main character is Prince Adam and that he has to Defend the secrets of this place called Castle Grayskull. I'm aware that the early mini-comics that predated the Filmation cartoon had a He-Man as this Barbarian Warrior.
And I had a crazy idea stewing for some time: how about Adam being both the prince of Eternia Defender Of Secrets of Castle Grayskull and the young barbarian from a jungle tribe.
Taking into consideration the possibility of having She-Ra and the kidnapping of the twins that's the way that we can get both Adams into place.

When  Keldor or Skeletor kidnap the twins for Hordak we could have him lose one of the kids, in this case Adam, and Adora's taken to Hordak. While Adora is raised by The Horde Adam is raised as a member  of a jungle tribe.
Perhaps Man-at-Arms was a member of this tribe that moved into the city of Eternos and still has contact with the tribe. I'm taking his adopted daughter Teela to train with the tribal Warriors. Which has a demand for us childhood friends but without the whole pressure from the palace life. The Young Adam can still meet cringer, Orko, etc. but not be raised in the palace.

By his coming of age day Adam is forced to leave the village for a trial in order to reach adulthood. While doing this trial he discovers the truth about himself and it his legacy to defend Grayskull.

Adam's Reckless and irresponsible Behavior can now be justified as he is ignorant of the Court ways due to his living with the tribe. As he gains knowledge and power from the elders his transformation into He-Man Adam keeps his facade of being Reckless and irresponsible to protect the secrets of Grayskull.

While not a perfect solution it's something reasonable that can connect with most of their Masters of the Universe fans because it keeps the pre formation lore and post filmation lore at the same time.

Well shoot! I kinda covered the
This is cringer my Fearless friend fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held Aloft my magic sword and said by the power of Grayskull!

Skeletor on the other hand is a bit more difficult to to do because you have two different Origins for him:
Well technically three because you have the demon from Infinita origin you have that Keldor origin and then you have that Keldor being merged with a demon origin.

The random demon from Infinita origin has no real connection to Adam so he's basically random evil Overlord.

The evil Uncle Keldor origin is a bit too Star Warsy but I kind of like the idea that he's just an evil guy who was deformed and wants revenge. The classics toyline origin that has the merging of the demon with Keldor is a bit lame because it allows for his Redemption.
And being brutally honest it's a bit hard for me to choose an origin for Skeletor.  And I kind of want to make a homage to all that came before him.

So here's my idea Keldor kidnapped at twins lost Adam, got badly badly hurt maybe a slash on his face kind of disfigured his face a lot, but he brought Adora to The Horde. As he was dying, Hordak tosses Keldor through the gate to Infinita, where the Arcane Magics of the demon dimension restore Hordak's Apprentice while warping his mind and giving him the Demonic appearance of Skeletor.

Overloaded by evil Skeletor overtakes his master and throws him and his followers into another dimension. Now what's the most powerful being on Eternia he wants to overthrow the rule of his half-brother randor and become master of the universe.

Again it's not perfect but it takes elements from Lore and kind of makes it work. It also functions as I dark mirrored version of Adam's story... kind of like a Simba/Scar thing.

On one hand you have a guy who is being put on the pressure so he can become a ruler but he doesn't want the role. On the other one you have a guy who's desire for ruling shows why he shouldn't be a ruler.

So on and so forth until you have all the key players in the story figured out.

The Next Step would be building the world of Eternia which we have stated is a sort of Dungeons & Dragons styled Middle Ages crossed with a little bit of Star Wars sci-fi names buy more steampunk in some ways.  I would say it's a 75/25 ratio of barbaric fantasy vs sci-fi. If you go to Hi-Tech it stops being Masters of the Universe and becomes something else.

Like I said in my 2009 rant: music it must be all score none of these artists making their own musical "contributions"  (aside Capitán Memo for the Latin American dub) and we don't need a He-Man rap...

Choosing the core characters is important and once you have them you must showcase them for example if you use let's say Tri-Klops then he needs to do the spinning visor thing, weird Vision ability, optic blasts that kind of thing. For trap-jaw it would be the modular weapons and his metal jaw chewing through swords.
For ramen would be basically hey I'm running into multiple enemies whether it's a run or jump are free. Matter if they have say Mekaneck  then he must stretch his neck and use that ability in and outside of combat.
Here you have to think like X-Men where you have to be showing character you must show their powers because it's pointless to have a say Jubilee standing around and not firiing fireworks or having Kitty Pryde not phasing through walls.

I know the movie was looking to shoot in places like say Prague because of the ancient architecture there. I do like the idea but I'm worried that due to budget reasons the world would look too earth like. Eternia needs to look like an alien world something like say Pandora ladies and gentlemen.

Looking back at all the tidbits about the movie that have been released, you can tell that my faith on it succeeding is very little. This may well be He-Man's last hurrah, and I don't want it to suck...

The old rant holds up and is more concise than this wordy tirade of mine. But I wanted to celebrate 10 years of the House of Rants so I went a bit overboard there! I know it's not the longest rant but but It's  Year 10 now!

No comments:

Post a Comment