We still don’t know a lot about this new live-action Masters Of The Universe movie beyond it not being animated, probably not being for kids given current trends, and that at least part of it will be set on Earth. The original live-action movie was set primarily on Earth, spending about as much time on Eternia as it takes to make a hamburger on a barbecue grill. And of course none of them had Orko. Even the animated movie, Secret Of The Sword, spent little time on He-Man’s homeworld, but at least there were reasons for it that made sense to me.
By making sense I mean I don’t understand why setting a He-Man movie on Eternia is so hard. The comics did it. The cartoons did it. Video games did it. Budget? Does it really cost less to build Earth sets than it does the handful of locations that you would need? I’d even buy that from Canon Films as “cheap” was one of their self-celebrations. “Yeah, the sets looks like we recorded down the street, the director had to sneak people into the set to finish the climactic battle, and in a few decades regular people will be blowing us out of the water long after we crashed and burned, but we did it on the cheap and boy does it show. Wait….” This new one? I don’t understand the reasoning for putting Adam’s origin as a boy raised on Earth called back to Eternia like Amethyst, princess of Gemworld to take up superpowers and save everybody with the type of training you can only get from a cheap VR rig and high school gym class.
Look, I like Earth. Everybody I know is on and (as far as I know) from Earth. Adam/He-Man has ancestors on Earth. He doesn’t belong there.
“Do you have something in a larger size?”
Come to think of it, Earth was originally not even part of He-Man’s backstory. When the first minicomic (well, illustrated booklet) came out, He-Man wasn’t the alter ego of the crown prince of Eternia. For the first two sets of comics there was no Prince Adam. It was just He-Man, some guy from a village who got up one morning and said “I’m going to go protect Castle Grayskull”, left his village behind to never be mentioned in the franchise, met a green snake goddess who he saved and was rewarded with magical goodies to help find the two halves of the Power Sword before Skeletor. Said sword, when combined, could open the doors to the castle, a gimmick used in the toys themselves in case you wondered why the action figures were like that.
It was DC Comics, popularized by Filmation because they did the split sword bit in Blackstar where one half was called the “Power Sword” and used by the villain, that introduced the queen as being from Earth and the prince being half-Earthling and turning into He-Man. The old comics never really bothered with the planet outside of two visits from Superman and a more recent crossover with the New 52 version of the DC Universe. In the cartoons he saw the outside of Earth for five minutes because saving it meant throwing a thing at a thing, while two Earth children were brought to Eternia to import Christmas. Otherwise, He-Man made the occasional visit to other dimensions, one planet, and in the 1990s went to protect Primus for a few months, and that was it.
Then you have the movies, and they can’t keep him on his home planet for long. The original live-action movie used a “cosmic key” to send everyone to Earth, where over half the movie takes place. The animated movie had to drop him on Etheria for a while to sell the spinoff show and toyline, but things still happened of importance on Eternia. Then again, that was a movie formed from a combination of the first five episodes of She-Ra: Princess Of Power, cut a couple of scenes like explaining why Orko isn’t here, either, and adding an admittedly great theme song that was used in the closing credits of She-Ra’s show.
Look, it’s rare for Filmation to have a GOOD song in a show not about a band. (Groovie Goolies and the Archies had an out, but there’s a reason Josie And The Pussycats went with Hanna-Barbera and others went to Sid & Marty Krofft.) I’m going to give credit where it’s due.
So animation gets a pass, but why can’t we get a live-action movie, not that we need one for this property so long as Netflix isn’t making it, set entirely on Eternia? Why does Adam have to be raised on Earth? Every other adaptation raised him on Eternia. If the kid is to survive Planet Deathtrap with or without powers, he’s have to have grown up there, even protected in the royal palace. We didn’t need a tie to Earth to get into the world of Eternia. I don’t even know why it was added back in the 1980s because it’s not like it ever mattered. Christmas and the occasional storybook she brought with her on her spaceflight for some reason were the only reference she was involved in. The Christmas kids, Superman, that baddie who brought Hannibal to Eternia in a new outfit, and a ninja running around later because it was the 80s were the only references to our little home. That’s more than any of the other series that came out since. I like Earth, but nothing about the place really matters to the adventures of Eternia, and not having grown up with her mother, Adora didn’t bring any of it to Etheria. Earth is kind of pointless in the Masters Of The Universe…universe.
Between this, Amazon’s reputation with adaptations (hello, Tolkien fans versus The Lord Of The Rings fan) as of late, and even the new DC and Netflix takes, I already have low expectations as an adaptation, if not as a story. So this is one He-Man liking Earthling who isn’t interested in this movie. I’ve seen fanfilms set entirely on Eternia without the budget of Amazon’s MGM with no problem. I’ll stick with those and the old stuff where Eternia is the only backdrop they needed to draw me into the world. A fictional world in a fiction? The heck you say!
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