Source material gets no respect..
Something is definitely wrong, when multi-million budget, full-length movies with all the tech wizardry at the makers fingertips are always so much worse and less imaginative than the cheaply printed and cheaply sold comic books and twenty-minute (or so) TV shows.
I can't understand this trend. They take a name, and disregard everything else, and then haphazardly cook up or steal some "seen a billion times", tired storyline from some awful, clichéd movie, and then take visual influences from other popular movies, and then wonder why audiences didn't like the end result.
You can see this in pretty much everything. Turtles-movies are a good example. There was plenty of interesting stuff in the source material, from samurai rabbits to odd creatures to choose from - and they go with something incredibly generic. I am surprised they even bothered to have Shredder in there.
But this movie takes the cake. It loses the name 'He-Man' from the original's title, and after that, things only get worse.
I have only watched this less than fifteen minutes, and noticed these things completely wrong with it:
- Skeletor looks RIDICULOUS, and has two sets of teeth. He doesn't look menacing at all.
- Skeletor is just a 'generic villain', instead of the scheming, evil monster with a
personality that we see in the show - and also, Skeletor's henchmen do not look
anything like they should
- Skeletor's voice is ALL WRONG
- Orko, the most interesting character, doesn't exist
- He-Man just 'is' He-Man, as if Prince Adam doesn't suddenly exist.
The whole point of the transformation is suddenly eliminated
- The world is just generic scenery or generic hollyweird crap, doesn't resemble
the original's other-worldly sceneries at all
- Way too many Star Wars-influences, from the music to the outfits and the 'Luke deflects laser blasts with his light saber'-rip-offs
- Cliché 'gadget-inventor-goblin'-character
- The sorceress, who used to look good, is played by some old harpy that doesn't
fit the role whatsoever
- The sorceress doesn't look -anything- like she's supposed to look like
- Who the heck is Meg Foster supposed to be? I can't remember that kind of a hag
from the show
- The 'power' is ruined by the intro, by saying WHAT KIND of power it is, and
defining it and re-defining it ad nauseam. It was more mystical, when Prince Adam
just yells: "I have the power!" - and -what- the power is, is conjured as a mystical
image in your imagination. Here, it's painstakingly DECLARED, what kind of power
it is.. "power to this, power to that". BORING! And destroying imagination.
- Queen and King are missing, just like Prince Adam is
- He-Man wears CAPE? NO.. just.. no.
- He-Man's outfit is completely wrong
- The movie starts boringly, and keeps the boredom at high levels
- So far, no sign of Cringer / Battle Cat
- Dolph may have the chest muscles for the job, but not the face or voice (or speaking
style)
- The THEME music is missing
This one needs to be talked about a bit. Anyone, who have watched enough AVGN episodes, knows that he has remarked and wondered about the frustrating 'missing theme' phenomenon, when it comes to video games, as well. I had no idea it also went the other way - now MOVIES can't use the original theme, either?
Why can't Back to the Future game use the Back to the Future theme? Why can't a The Terminator game use The Terminator theme music?
And _WHY_, for the love of anything, can't a MOVIE use the theme from the original
cartoon? _WHY_?!
It's an epic theme, and very movielike, and would fit a movie nicely, if done right.
What happened here (again)? No respect for the source material on any level. Just take the name, one or two 'main' characters from each side, and then make up everything else - the kids won't know the difference, right?
Think what kind of movies we would have, if source material was always respected? Think, if they tried to make the movies AS MUCH like the source material as possible, right down to how costumes should look like, etc...
Instead of 'reimagined' visuals, costumes, etc., we'd have ACCURATE depictions of what things look like. Wow, can you imagine correct-looking Galactus? (And even silver surfer is supposed to look really bright and white, not really dim and dark)
Can you imagine X-Men with COLORFUL clothes?
Can you imagine Avengers that wear clothes that actually look identical to how they should look in the comic books?
Can you imagine GOOD-looking Doctor Victor Von Doom? (I mean the facial mask, of course - even in the earlier comics, it looks much, MUCH better than in any of the movies)
Hollyweird thinks everything from the side of money. Nothing else is important to them. They don't think about the experience of having to sit through one (or more) of their lousy fabrications, they only think of profit and costs.
The stupidest thing is that the masses lap it up, they don't care, they haven't read the comics or watched the original shows, they don't care.
I am watching a random "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe"-episode, and as corny as it is, it's 900 times more entertaining, energetic, better-paced, and visually pleasing than this awful movie crap that I could endure almost 15 minutes before having to express my grievances.
Anyone praising this movie should try watching the show first, and then trying to praise the movie after that.. if they still find the movie good, they have absolutely no sense of what's good and what's lousy. Even young kids should be able to make the distinction easily.