I, for one, think it's high time the gay community had a cartoon-based live-action motion picture to call it's own:
Fox 2000 has selected John Woo to direct and produce "He-Man," a live-action pic based on the characters in Mattel's "Masters of the Universe" line of action figures. Adam Rifkin ("Zoom's Academy") will adapt the screenplay according to Variety.
The characters of this universe are best known in the early 80's synidcated cartoon series which was successful enough to lead to a spin-off entitled "She-Ra" (I kinda preferred her show as well myself). The property previously was done in live action in the 1987 movie "Masters of the Universe" with Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor.
According to "Masters of the Universe" lore, He-Man began life as Prince Adam, the hybrid of an Earthling and an Eternian. At the age of 18, he was taken to Castle Grayskull, where Adam received super powers. He-Man has a sidekick in the form of a tiger, Battle Cat, and a deadly enemy, Skeletor.
Fox decided the proposed alternative, Girlie-Man (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rupert Everett), probably wouldn't have the same drawing power.
And that's pretty shoddy "lore." He was taken to Castle Grayskull and "received" superpowers? I thought what happened was Mattel started creating a line of Conan the Barbarian action figures, then either decided Conan the Cimmerian wasn't be best role model for kids or ran into rights issues (I've heard both), and so converted the toy line into the "Masters of the Universe." In what was truly a prescient movie, Mattel got together with Filmation to create a cartoon based on the existing toy line. Using a handful of voice actors and the same 12 Rotoscoped shots for every character, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ran for an inexplicable 130 episodes, in addition to spawning the aforementioned spin-off series and live-action movie.
In case I was too obtuse, I never really cared for He-Man. Everything about the show rubbed me the wrong way (even as I was watching things like The Transformers and Galaxy Rangers): the ridiculous physiques, the stupid character names, the endlessly recycled footage, and the fact that Prince Adam didn't wear a goddamned mask to even attempt to hide the fact he was He-Man. Kids forgive a lot, but you've got to throw them a bone and put some spectacles on the guy or something. It works for Clark Kent.
The saddest part of all this is the final realization that John Woo isn't going to be the big American action director of the future, as was heralded around the time lousy films like Hard Target and Broken Arrow were putting domestic audiences to sleep. Maybe the guy really does needs Chow-Yun Fat and/or Tony Leung in every film.
And even they wouldn't have helped Windtalkers or Paycheck.
My 19 year old son adored He-Man. He never missed an episode when he was 4-6 years old. I bought him a plastic sword that looked like He Man's sword and I bought him a padded shirt that made him look muscular. He'd walk around in that shirt and lift the sword above his head saying, "By the power of grayskull!" Ah, memories. I still have that shirt tucked away in case He Man cartoons are running when my son has a little boy.
It's too bad MATTEL let filmation monkey with the original concept. The first bit of He-Man lore (people seem to forget that the toys came B4 the cartoon)was the mini comic that came with the original He-Man figure.
He-Man was just a Conan styled member of a mighty jungle race. None of that Prince Adam crap! He meets a green skinned Sorceress (the Teela figure in armor) who gives him his magical suit (the Maltese Cross Bra) and weapons. He also gets half of the Power Sword and a teleporting Battle Ram. The sorceress informs him that he must stop Skeletor, an inter-dimensional Demon, from getting the other half of the sword. If Skeletor ever unites the two halves, he will enter Castle Greyskull and have enough power to bring his army to Eternia and destroy it...thus the adventure begins...
I much preffered Skeletor as a dimension hopping demon whose only goal was to destory the planet, not enslave it. This version of Skeletor had destroyed myriads of Universe already, thus having his title of Evil Lord of Destruction actually make sense.
Too bad filmation turned him into a bunny faced, inept, and fey sorcerer...
Though hard core fanboys rue the old live action films departure from the Filmation cartoon storyline, it was actually a much better representation of the initial lore.
Wow, I am a geek!
Don't hold your breath on them ever replaying the old cartoons. Hallmark owns the entire Filmation library and the only property of any value is He-Man, so Hallmark is requiring that whoever wants to by He-Man must buy the entire library. When Cartoon Network first came out they tried to buy it and Hallmark asked for some outrageous number like 300 million. Granted the Filmation library is extremely extensive, it still has no value after He-man is gone, so why they would ask that much is beyond me.
Have you seen the new He-Man cartoon? I never cared much for the old one (though the toys were pretty cool), but the new one is absolutely gorgeous and takes a pretty shoddy concept about as far as it can possibly be taken.