It’s been over two weeks since it’s premiere and Masters of the Universe: Revelations is still the talk of the internet, just not for the reasons you think. Most diehard He-Man fans are still sending hate towards Kevin Smith, and the not-so diehard fans, like myself, are not so much as upset as we are disappointed with the show. Let me explain why….
“Bait-and-Switch”
Most fans felt that they were lied to about what the plot of the show really was. When the first trailer for MOTU: Revelations dropped, it mostly contained footage of He-Man and Skeletor battling each other. This lead most of us to believe that this series was going to be about the same old blood feud between the two archenemies(which isn’t bad), but now we see that most of the footage was from episode 1 since both He-Man and Skeletor are absent for most of Part 1, making Teela the new main protagonist.
When people see or hear the title “Masters of the Universe”, they immediately think of He-Man, not Teela. Killing off the face of your brand in the literal first episode of your new series , and replacing them with a not as popular side characters as the new lead is fucking stupid move. That’s like making a new Friends show with Gunther as the main character.
Now what does all of this have to do with the term “bait-and-switch”? This could be explained in two parts; fans were “baited” into watching a new show about He-Man. All the promo posters had his face on them, all the new action figures were He-Man, Skeletor, Man-At-Arms, and Evil Lyn (no Teela figures), and He-Man even got his own fucking cereal to promote the show!
We were all expecting a He-Man centric show, but then the “switch” happened in episode one. Prince Adam’s/He-Man’s death moved Teela into main character territory, giving the audience a feeling that this show has used a cheap tactic to forcefully promote female empowerment. Teela’s character has been altered to fit the new, “feminist”, female-lead medium that believes that the only way a woman can be a badass is by being an asshole, and that’s a fucking dick move. You have Wonder Woman being a strong female lead who isn’t an asshole, and people love her! I will admit that Teela was pretty annoying throughout Part 1, and I will even go so far to say that I didn’t even like her character that much. For fucksake, I found Roboto to be a more compelling character than Teela! I haven’t seen people this uspet over a bait-and-switch since The Last of Us 2 release, and that hate was also justified.
*SPOILER TERRITORY FOR ANYONE WHO HASN’T PLAYED LAST OF US 2 YET*
All the cinematic trailers for Last of Us 2 showed the main character of the game, Ellie, talking with a much older Joel, and this caused fans to believe that Joel would play an important role in the game. For the people who played the game, we all know that was a load of bullshit when we saw Joel get killed in the prologue portion of the game, and all the scenes from the trailers where we saw Ellie talking to an older Joel was actually revealed to be a flashback sequence with a young Ellie talking to a young Joel. Naughty Dogs, the game’s developers, made this huge lie just introduce the now mildly-hated Abby, and the topic of lies brings us to our next topic.
Lies
The “blunt” lies from the Bluntman himself, Kevin Smith, which has many fans pissed off. This all started a year before the release of Revelations, when a YouTube channel called “Clownfish TV” tweeted plot details about the shows, and they were accurate as hell. They got the details from an inside source, and they talked about how Teela was going to be the main character and that she was going to be getting a girlfriend (I believe they were referring to Andra). Kevin Smith later tweeted in response to Clownfish TV:
A few months later he tweeted this:
Both of these tweets contradict what we would later see in Part 1, and Kevin Smith went on to admit during his podcast “Fatman Beyond ” that he did lie in those tweets because he hated how the plot was leaked. The fact that he admits to lying is what caused him to burn a lot of bridges between himself and his fanbase, and this might affect how well Masters of the Universe: Revelations Part 2 will do when it premieres.
Now I’m an optimistic guy, and I have faith that Part 2 will be good. Unfortunately this looks like it’s going to be another Solo situation, and I’m referring to how Solo: A Star Wars Story did poorly in the box office and reviews because it came out a few months after the very hated Last Jedi movie. Solo was a great Star Wars movie, but people were still riding the hate train when it came out.
Final Thoughts
I hope that the rest of Revelations is good, but I am still disappointed with Kevin Smith for adding in “woke” politics into the He-Man mythos. Kevin Smith is normally known for making crude and edgy jokes in his movies and comic books, but now I don’t even recognize him in his new work. Part of me believes that he may be trying to act “woke” because people are uspet of his past friendship with that bag of dicks, Harvey Weinstein, and another part of me thinks he’s just trying to make a quick cash-grab by appeasing the toxic Twitter folk. Whatever his reasoning is, he’s being a fucking idiot.
If you all are still curious about the Kevin Smith “betrayal”, I’ll link two articles at the end for you all to check out.
Now I’m off to watch the new Suicide Squad movie, and hopefully it will help me forget about all of this fucking drama. Until next time, this is your cosplayer for fun signing off.
What is ‘Fan Blaming’ and Why Are ‘He-Man’ Fans Mad at Kevin Smith https://www.vice.com/en/article/akgaab/what-is-fan-blaming-and-why-are-he-man-fans-mad-at-kevin-smith
HE-MAN FANS REJECT KEVIN SMITH AND ‘MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: REVELATION’ https://cosmicbook.news/he-man-fans-reject-kevin-smith-masters-universe-revelation
Hall of Mercs 