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Post by elchevalier on Jul 30, 2011 13:26:49 GMT -5
He-Man
This is such an easy target, but it seems to get still plenty of "awww, that was a good show" comments here and there. No, it wasn't, if you had to pick one cartoon from the 80s this will had to be on the bottom of the list. The abysmal animation, the abysmal stories, not to mention the whole concept of prince Adam is just stupid in any way, shape or form. The 1987 film has plenty of cheesy 80s-action fun, but aside from that the rest of the franchise is one giant bore.
Feel free to add your picks to this list.
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Post by ECM on Jul 30, 2011 13:40:03 GMT -5
Wait, what?
I kinda agree that it's not very good, nowadays (Thundercats, tho, has aged remarkably well), but the Prince Adam thing is dumb how? It's not any different than any other superhero w/ an alter-ego, be it Clark Kent and Superman, Peter Parker and Spiderman, and Eric Mylonas and ECM.
Unless you wanted (in hindsight, of course!) He-Man to be a Conan clone, it always struck me as well-done, since the idea of Prince Adam (and most alter-egos) is to give the reader/viewer a frame of reference so they can identiy better w/ the God-like beings they become when they slip on the mask/pull the sword/write on message boards.
(Yes, I am aware, having grown up w/ shit-tons of He-Man toys, that the cartoon was a complete departure from the world introduced in the mini-comics w/ each figure, but I didn't care then, and I most certainly don't care now.)
The funny thing about He-Man, tho, is the guy that lived down the street from me when I was watching He-Man was in his 30s and watched the show and loved it, so I'm not sure what that says about him. (No, he wasn't a pedophile, before anyone decides to take a saunter down that lane.)
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Post by elchevalier on Jul 30, 2011 14:43:22 GMT -5
Unless it's done as a satire/comedy of sorts, i find the "changes clothes/glasses and it's another identity" thing silly. Be Superman, prince Adam or anyone else.
Also, i had He-Man bed sheets, toys and what not as a kid. It's just a show that i can't go back at all, of course i was also into G I Joe, Thundercats among others, but from all the bunch i find He Man to be the less appealing of all. I guess the concept could be done right, but it will require a very different approach.
BTW, this reminds me that a new Thundercats show began airing recently.
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Post by ECM on Jul 30, 2011 14:52:56 GMT -5
So you don't like any superheroes?? They *all* have alter-egos! (Or virtually all, before you start in w/ the pedantry!)
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Post by elchevalier on Jul 30, 2011 15:11:50 GMT -5
No no, i mean superheroes that "hide" their identities by just changing their glasses, or something along those lines. Spider-Man wears a mask that covers his entire face, not exactly the same thing.
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Post by ECM on Jul 30, 2011 15:20:05 GMT -5
If we ever meet, I'm going to beat your ass...w/ glasses on. (Note: I don't wear glasses.)
ECM<--SUPERMAN FAN FROM HELL
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Post by elchevalier on Jul 30, 2011 16:12:38 GMT -5
Sorry, that's just how i roll.
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Post by ECM on Jul 30, 2011 16:15:47 GMT -5
Oh, you're going to roll alright--your head, anyway.
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AllenSmithee
Stripling
Compulsive Pedant
dead men don't have dog days
Posts: 92
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Post by AllenSmithee on Jul 30, 2011 18:51:42 GMT -5
So you don't like any superheroes?? They *all* have alter-egos! (Or virtually all, before you start in w/ the pedantry!) Fantastic 4. *Ahem* Anyway, I have a belief that any super hero can be good, if the story is good. And there is a good story to be told about every superhero. Anyway, Thundercats is great because it is Rankin/Bass -- I can go to the old Transformers out of nostalgia, and the movie is legitimately great. |
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Post by ECM on Jul 30, 2011 19:37:50 GMT -5
Yes, like I said: pedantry. (But don't let that stop you, Smithee.)
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Post by elchevalier on Jul 30, 2011 21:38:50 GMT -5
The F4 are not hidding their identities as far as i remember.
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AllenSmithee
Stripling
Compulsive Pedant
dead men don't have dog days
Posts: 92
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Post by AllenSmithee on Jul 31, 2011 9:22:07 GMT -5
Yes, like I said: pedantry. (But don't let that stop you, Smithee.) Hence the "*Ahem*".  Make my member title "Compulsive Pedant", please. |
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AllenSmithee
Stripling
Compulsive Pedant
dead men don't have dog days
Posts: 92
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Post by AllenSmithee on Jul 31, 2011 9:22:52 GMT -5
The F4 are not hidding their identities as far as i remember. That was exactly my point, El Chevalier. |
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Post by ECM on Jul 31, 2011 12:31:46 GMT -5
The F4 are not hidding their identities as far as i remember. Methinks thou dost need to look-up the definition of the word "pedantry". |
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Post by runinruder on Jul 31, 2011 12:32:09 GMT -5
I watched the He-Man cartoon when I was a little kid, but only for a short time. Giant robot cartoons were much cooler, so I quickly moved on to those. I didn't spend much time collecting He-Man toys, either. I bought a few of the figures, mainly the kinda-interesting ones, like the guy with a lot of faces, or the cyclops guy whose eyes would spin around his head. But then I lent one of them, "Ram-man" or something, to this bum in my class, and he ended up losing it, so in disgust I abandoned the realm of He-Man trinkets.
What I did like, though, were the Masters of the Universe 8x8 books and some of those ones that came with records you could read along with. They tended to have cooler combat scenes and more-dire situations than the cartoon. I mean, every "fight" in the show was the same: bad guy charges at He-Man and is simply tossed aside, no harm done to either party but the villain essentially disposed of. The books, on the other hand, had some cool stuff like Mer-Man putting a blade to He-Man's throat.
I seemed to like it when "literature" went in a different, darker direction than its animated counterpart. The Transformers Marvel comics were the ultimate example of this. And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics were much cooler than the show. He-Man books weren't quite as extreme as those two examples, but they held that sort of allure for me.
A friend of mine had some old He-Man episodes recorded, so I watched one of them and, predictably enough, found it to be horrible. But I'm not particularly nostalgic about the show, anyway. It'd be more interesting for me to find out if I could still find anything cool about those old books I liked. Then again, it might be better just to leave the memories alone.
In keeping with the cartoons/nostalgia theme but approaching it from a bit of a different angle, it saddens me a bit that folks who have no back-in-the-day connection with Robotech almost never seem to enjoy it very much at this point. Not that Robotech is still appealing to its fans only because of nostalgia--I maintain that its story and characters are quite rich--but it definitely doesn't hurt that it meant something to us fans when we were younger and that we have an appreciation for everything that was significant and atypical about it back when it was new. Unfortunately, the scripting errors, goofy interjections, and bad singing that are endearing to us just come off as, well, dumb to folks new to the show.
This isn't exactly a Robotech-exclusive phenomenon. It'd be tough to find an old eighties cartoon that somehow blows away an adult in this day and age just as it impressed children when it was new. But crap like He-Man and Voltron was always devoid of the kind of depth that Robotech contains, so it's a little disappointing when someone gets pretty much nothing out of RT.
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