Movies / TV
DVD Review: HE-MAN
By Jay Spree
Feb 10, 2004, 19:12

DVD Review: HE-MAN VOLUME 1 & 2

Studio: Filmation
Distributor: Contender




Note: The DVDs featured in this review are Region 2 PAL-encoded, which means that you will need both a multi-region/region-free DVD player and a television capable of displaying a PAL signal. Most multi-region/region-free players automatically convert the PAL signal to NTSC, but double-check before purchasing.




THE DOPE

Advertoons (advertisement + cartoon = advertoon) are strange. While properties like TransFormers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and He-Man are some of the most popular and enduring children’s franchises ever created, they are undeniably cyclical in nature and, while they light the sky when they’re hot, they very nearly burn themselves out in the process.

Mattel’s Masters Of The Universe toy line was selling well in the early Eighties, bolstered by a series of animated commercials by famed studio Filmation. Following deregulation by the FCC, Mattel approached Filmation to produce a full 65-episode animated series to promote the toy line. Debuting in 1983, the newly re-christened He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe was a monster hit. While it was discontinued after a second 65-episode season (in order for Filmation to produce a less-successful advertoon series for Mattel’s new property, She-Ra: Princess Of Power), it did spawn two made-for-TV specials, a series of guest appearances on She-Ra: POP including the theatrically-released animated feature The Secret Of The Sword, and a live-action feature film starring Dolph Lundgren (and a young Courtney Cox).


^{_{Ever the tactician, Skeletor plays Rubick's Cube while taking a dump.}}


However, with the fizzling out of the animated series and toy lines at the hands of the failed She-Ra experiment, and with lukewarm reaction to the live-action feature, the franchise was rapidly fading. In an attempt to revitalise the property, Mattel removed He-Man from its Conan The Barbarian roots and placed the characters in a futuristic, technology-driven sci-fi setting. In 1989, with Filmation out of business, Mattel approached Jetlag Productions to produce an animated series for the updated He-Man entitled The New Adventures Of He-Man. The response was apathetic enough that the series and new toy lines soon fizzled out and, for the better part of a decade, the franchise seemed pretty much dead and buried.


^{_{He-Man and Trap Jaw share an intimate moment.}}


However, in the naughty nought-ies all that is old is new again, and the sour taste of the New Adventures debacle was a long forgotten (or heavily repressed) bad memory. The six-year-olds of the 80s were now 26-year-olds with disposable income and memories foggy with nostalgia – the time was right to reintroduce the original property. In 2002, a toy line based on the franchise’s original fantasy sensibilites found its way to store shelves, promoted as ever by an animated series, this time from Mike Young Productions. Combining nostalgic charm with modern animé influences, He-Man finally reclaimed its place atop the most profitable and popular children’s properties.

So, almost 20 years after the property debuted, how does the original series hold up?



THE KNOWLEDGE

Like just about anything more than ten years old, the show has held up remarkably well in some respects, but aged terribly in others.

Since it’s an animated series, it’s probably best to start with the animation. Mildly ironic, as the animation isn’t the best. Even on its first run the show was never lauded for the quality or fluidity of its animation and, unfortunately, the ravages of time have been even crueler to this birth defect. The show never had a huge budget to begin with and, since it was conceived as little more than a promotional vehicle to drive toy sales, little of that budget found its way into the animation. While it’s not particularly jerky, it’s very limited and largely static with many, MANY animation cycles and elements being used and reused repeatedly over the course of a single episode, and more and more as the series wears on. Teela’s laugh animation is reused frame-for-frame to animate Evil-Lyn, He-Man, and Skeletor as well; similarly, animation cycles such as running, standing and walking are simply re-traced to animate every character, giving the show a clunky, rotoscoped feel. Other basic animation elements are used again and again and again, often simply mirrored or with a different background plate, and other times just using the exact same shots seens moments before.


^{_{Now now, Duncan, you'll get ten years for that.}}


Now, of course, this is par for the course for any animated series, and it would be unfeasibly time-consuming and cost-prohibitive to produce new animation for essentially the same thing over and over. However, when an episode starts to feel like 22 minutes of the infamous "reusing animation" gag from The Simpsons, the wonderfully endearing and nostalgic low production values soon wear very thin indeed. Of course, the show was never intended to be watched 20 years after its creation by know-it-all internet geeks who expect everything to look like Akira. That said, the art direction itself holds up remarkably well; while the look is unquestionably dated, thanks to the more precise musculature and less exaggerated animation (though this was more by necessity than design), the show's look is still perfectly acceptable by today’s standards, and is in many ways wonderfully refreshing in the context of CG-infused, animé-influenced direction of modern animation.

While the writing has traditionally been seen as one of the series’ greatest strengths (given its lean animation budget), bear in mind that this was a series conceived as little more than 65 extended toy commercials. Yes, the shows are generally well-written and the characters are certainly charming and enjoyable but, in comparison to today’s sophisticated, sharp, story-driven animations, they just can’t hold up. Of course, we aren’t supposed to judge retro products by any scale other than nostalgia, and if you were in any way a fan of the show during its initial run, you can’t help but be drawn by the prosaic, two-dimensional characters and the generally callow storylines. However, for anyone other than genuine, hardcore, puroresu-esque fans of the series, I would have to say that the nostalgia soon heaves under the pressure of the low production values, brazen reuse of animation cycles and elements, and the all-round crudeness of the episodes. To be perfectly and brutally honest, the 2002 remake of the series is a much better fix of nostalgia – character design and art direction faithful enough so as not to betray your memories of the original, but without the inescapable faults inherent in any 20 year-old animated series.


^{_{"Have you read this horse shit? They wrote me out of the movie! Gwildor my ass!"}}


I’m stuck on how to rate this – I mean, on the one hand, it’s HE-MAN. When I watch these episodes, I distinctly remember being eight years old and running around the house in my underwear brandishing a plastic sword, and that’s a priceless feeling. After watching three or four episodes, though, I quickly stop caring about eight year-olds in underpants and can’t escape the fact that the show, dear as it is to me, is creaky and old and I would rather watch the remake. So it all depends on how you feel about the show, or retro popcorn entertainment in general – perhaps, like Alien, you can watch it today and be just as captivated and enchanted as you were 20 years ago. Or perhaps, like Commando, you sit back ready to be blown away but end up cringing at the awful dialogue, appalling storytelling, and general laughability of it all.



THE DISC

Each volume comes in a standard Amaray case with no insert. While I don’t usually comment on the packaging and box/discart unless the DVD features special or collectible packaging, I feel that I should mention the coverart because it seems to have dramatically polarised buyers. Rather than using official images or promotional art from Filmation, Contender has commissioned fan artist Eamon O’Donoghue to produce artwork for the releases, and his pieces feature on both the DVD covers as well as the Fan Art gallery on the first disc.


^{_{Teela: Eternia's bike.}}


While O’Donoghue is undoubtedly a talented illustrator, unfortunately his artwork looks inescapably like the fan art that it is; while this isn’t a problem when it is showcased in the Fan Art gallery, it serves to make the DVDs appear quite amateurish when it is the featured cover artwork. What seems strange is the fact that at least one other artist featured in the Fan Art gallery, Matt Stryker, has a much more striking and dramatic Jim Lee style, and would have been a more appropriate choice. You will have to decide for yourself, and indeed some people really love the artwork, but I personally feel that it does a great disservice to the overall presentation.

The navigation and interactive menus on both discs are simple but very well executed, featuring snippets of animation and imagery from the show with the familiar theme tune humming away in the background. Particularly cool, and guaranteed to bring a smile to your face every time you see it, when you select an episode from the menu He-Man pops up and punches directly into the camera lens, just as he does in the show’s intro – the very definition of marking out. The picture quality is incredible for a 20-year-old animated show – the print is absolutely pristine and, thanks to the digital medium, is actually better than broadcast quality. Likewise, the audio is crystal clear and has never sounded better, although anyone expecting a thumping 5.1 workout for their home cinema system will obviously be out of luck.


^{_{Skeletor's feeble gesturing cost Team Eternia the Masters Of The Universe Charades Competition.}}


Running about 130 minutes each, Volume One features episodes 1-6 and Volume Two episodes 7-12 in production order, which is the recognised standard for the series. While over two hours of episodes is good, when you consider that another three episodes would quite comfortably fit on each disc and that there are 130 episodes in total, it soon begins to look like a sneaky marketing move to shift more Volumes. The good news, however, is that the episodes are fully restored and the missing scenes that were cut from original broadcasts have been reintegrated (most notably “The Curse Of The Spellstone”, which was dramatically cut on its first airing).



DVDeal

While on the surface the extras look great, unfortunately they are almost all dramatically underwhelming.

Volume 1

• Episodes 1-7:
  
  • The Cosmic Comet
    
  • The Shaping Staff
    
  • Disappearing Act
    
  • Diamond Ray Of Disappearance
    
  • She-Demon Of Phantos
    
  • Teela’s Quest
    
• Commentaries on "Diamond Ray Of Disappearance" and "Teela’s Quest"
  
• Character profile: He-Man
  
• Fan Art gallery
  
• Production gallery
  
• DVD-ROM content: Series Bible
  
  

^{_{After one too many Ned Flanders jokes, Duncan goes postal.}}


Volume 2

• Episodes:
  
  • The Curse Of The Spellstone
    
  • The Time Corridor
    
  • The Dragon Invasion
    
  • A Friend In Need
    
  • Masks Of Power
    
  • Evil-Lyn’s Plot
    
• Commentaries on The Dragon Invasion and Evil-Lyn’s Plot
  
• Character Profile: Skeletor
  
• Series guide gallery
  
• Production gallery
  
  

^{_{"So what do you think, Cringer?" "You look ridiculous."}}


Rather than inviting cast members, animators, directors or anyone else directly involved with the show, the commentaries on both sets are handled by a pair of He-Man fans, James Eatock (very active on the He-Man fan scene as "Busta Toons" on the He-Man.org website) and Dave Newman. Although the pair undeniably know a lot about the franchise, and the original series in particular, this is another aspect of the DVDs that feels just a little bit second-rate. Obviously, the biggest issue is that neither of the men had any direct involvement with the series (although Eatock is something of an authority within He-Man collectors’ circles, and provided supplemental material and fan art for the disc). While they occasionally impart interesting information such as discussing alternate animation and abandoned concepts or voice work, more often than not they fall into the trap of making comments like "the dragon is very detailed" and "look at that". Thankfully, though, there are barely any moments of silence and the tracks are chatty throughout, even though a lot of the time it feels more like two fans chatting and reminiscing than actually commentating on the show in a constructive way. Oh, BTW, you Yanks might find the mild Sarf Lahndon and Yiawksher accents a little tough to follow.

And that, at the end of the day, is the biggest problem: it is just two fans chatting and reminiscing. And, while the commentaries never drift into Comic Book Guy-levels of self-righteous obnoxiousness, there is something inherently smug and grating about smart fans discussing their favourite pastime. Just imagine Scott Keith commentating on a wrestling match and you get the idea. Still, I enjoyed the commentaries, and there are quite a few interesting nuggets buried in there, but it is disappointing that only two of the seven episodes on each DVD feature a commentary track – in fact, it’s downright infuriating. I mean, they’re fan commentaries for Heaven’s sake – surely any fan would be delighted to sit and record commentaries for every episode, and that might even go some way to excusing the relative brevity of the discs. As it is, though, just as the pair start to really get rolling, the rug is pulled out from under them, and it’s a real shame. Sadly, the rest of the extras are much like the commentaries – they’re good while they last, but they’re just too brief to really amount to anything.


^{_{Planet Stasiak.}}


Volume One features a Production Gallery and a Fan Art Gallery, with the Series Bible as a DVD-ROM extra. Unfortunately, the production galleries were a real missed opportunity on both discs – on the first Volume, it’s merely a VERY brief and basic summary of the animation process, a few frames of layout art for Cringer’s Battle Cat transformation from "Diamond Ray Of Destruction", and a breakdown of the art layering for "Teela's Quest". Storyboards – the most obvious production element and something that is actually covered in the previous summary – are not included. The Fan Art Gallery is interesting for what it is, although there are plenty of places to look at fan art online and, in fairness, there are better examples of it, too. Alas, my DVD-ROM isn’t working at the moment so I couldn’t check out the Series Bible. While this would probably be interesting to examine (Series Bibles are the rules and guidelines that govern how the fictional world functions), like all DVD-ROM content it is unlikely to be bothered with by most people and isn’t a reason in itself to pick up the disc.

The additional extras on Volume Two, however, are far more impressive. While the Production Gallery is again pretty laughable (featuring a couple of pieces of layout art from "The Dragon Invasion" and an animation cycle from "Evil Lyn's Plot"), the Series Guide Gallery is the original Filmation presskit from 1980 used to pitch the show to potential networks. It features conceptual character art, early character names, proposed character profiles/histories, potential plot synopsis for a few episodes and a neat summary of Filmation’s history (Fat Albert, The Archies, Star Trek etc.). This presskit truly is fascinating, giving genuine insight into both the development of the He-Man universe as well as the mechanics of pitching an animated series to television networks. To hardcore He-Man fans this is probably worth the price of admission alone, and it’s a shame that the other extras aren’t of the same calibre.


^{_{GORE~! GORE~! GORE~!}}


The problem with all of the extras on the discs is essentially the same thing: since there has been absolutely zero input from any “official” He-Man party – be it Mattel, Filmation archivists, or directors or animators from the show – the DVDs are relying entirely on the input of fans and collectors to produce supplemental material. The commentaries are provided by fans, the galleries are sourced from fan collections… it feels amateruish because, essentially, it’s been put together by amateurs – fans of the show, not anyone directly involved with its production. In that respect, James Eatock has done a fantastic job in creating additional content largely from his own personal collection and knowledge. However, that only makes the lack of commentaries and curtness of the other extras even more pronounced. And, benevolent though it is for fans to go to the effort of writing profiles for He-Man and Skeletor, they should REALLY proof-read their stuff, because they are just riddles with spelling and grammatical errors - again, just making the package feel sloppy.



OVERALL

I want to love these DVDs, I really, really do. At the end of the day, all any fan of the show really wants is to have the episodes on DVD, and not only do these Volumes provide that, but the audio and visual quality is absolutely outstanding. That said, the shortage of extras is just crippling to the releases, because there is so much promise and potential either half-realised or entirely unfulfilled. As stated, this is really not the fault of the folks who assembled the content, but ultimately if Mattel had provided even rudimentary content – creator interviews, more conceptual art, storyboards, original Masters Of The Universe bumpers and commercials – these DVDs would have been absolutely unmissable. As it is, I can only recommend these discs to absolute He-Man fanatics who have been clamouring for the episodes on DVD and are happy just to have that. To casual fans who really only have a passing interest in the series, or just want to relive a couple of childhood moments, this is a dramatically missed opportunity. I would recommend picking up Volume Two over the first instalment because, while the other extras are pretty lacklustre, the Filmation presskit is truly fascinating.

The DVDs are only £9.99 or so (about $18) from e-tailers such as Play.com, and Amazon UK were running a promotion where you could pick up both Volumes for £14.93 (about $27). Volume Three is due to drop on April 12th, and I can only hope that Contender beef up the extras, because the series really deserves better.

Feature: ** or ***** (depending on your nostalgia factor)
Extras: **
Overall: **



Jay $pree

Read my archives, biatch.