The Reverse Gatekeeping of The She-Ra Reboot
Screengrab from Netflix series She-ra
She-Ra’s reboot was poorly received by old fans. The new He-Man series, the second animated reboot after the early ‘00s one I grew up with, is being insanely well-received by longtime fans. Nue-Ra (what detractors call that reboot) fans are upset. Kevin Smith is doing it. These shows were or are both on Netflix. It’s weird.
He-Man figures are also selling really well right now. Mattel brought back the chunky ‘80s wrestler-style figures with modern articulation. They’re dope. I own two of them with the intention to eBay more. He-Man and Skeletor are the only ones to still be in stock at MSRP anywhere, unfortunately. At least in my area.
And that’s about it. Not a lot to say honestly. It’s just hilarious gatekeeping but in reverse.
OK, I’ll expand on that…
Nue-Ra fans have no power because that show got cancelled because basically every old fan hated it. And then the idiot always-online brigade engaged the GamerGate playbook and claimed the show was being cancelled before it had found its footing and the creators were being unduly harassed for making a terrible product; they claimed, on the contrary, against all available evidence, that this show was actually better than the original show, because the original show was sexist. Because it showed She-Ra to be both powerful and feminine. On a show for preschool aged girls. See? Stupid. The problem with modern American animation, like modern American comics (the entire American comics market is being outsold right now by one manga series, Demon Slayer) is that people have stopped showing up to all the lazily-made reboots. They reboot these shows for adults instead of children. Why would a fan of the old show, even if they like the reboot, show it to their children? Exactly. The new He-Man show looks designed to sell toys. Which means, GASP, it is targeted at actual children. But He-Man is now problematic for the horrendously bad “male power fantasy.” That’s bad? Even though every trashy romance novel has a shirtless and/or Fabio hair-type dude on the cover. Totally can’t be ripped and attract women without it being men’s fault. Of course.
We saw this with the last two movies in the Sequel Trilogy, particularly The Last Jedi, because film critics are terrible. When you’re reviewing a movie or show targeted to kids but made for all ages, you are not important to the world at large. You’re talking about something made to sell toys and put some multinational corporation’s executives’ kids through college. Go away.
If you want buy-in from the old fans (and a lot of these idiots claim they don’t because old fans are dead like the dinosaurs,) follow the Nintendo model: Make it filled with deep cut references the old fans will get but target it to children. The Force Awakens, and I will die on this hill, was a great movie, perhaps the best in the series. The follow through wasn’t there, but of course, that’s always been JJ’s problem. You made the first movie in a planned trilogy, filled with mysteries, without answering what those mysteries actually are?
How did you Lost Star Wars? If you’re Kathleen Kennedy, it’s apparently super easy, barely an inconvenience.
There is nothing wrong with saying “we don’t want to market to our old fanbase, we want to market to a new fanbase!”
You just had better do a very, very good job appealing to the target audience you’d prefer. Preferably get more new fans than you lose, but just staying even should be okay if your new target audience is composed of better evangelists than your old fanbase.
If you’re trading your old fanbase for approval from people who like the idea of what you’re doing (but don’t buy the product), you might have a moral victory but, when it comes to the bottom line, it presents identically to “we used to have some people like our stuff enough to buy it, but now we don’t have anybody who likes our product enough to buy it”.Report
She-Ra on Netflix had 50 some odd episodes. If you can’t find your footing across 5 seasons and 50 episodes, you aren’t going to.Report
From what I remember, the complaint against the new She-Ra was that they basically de-babed her. Theo original and new She-Ra was always meant for girls but the older one from when I was kid drew all the women in a much more fan service for men friendly fashion because anime and women had less influence on US animation. The new She-Ra was drawn in a non-fan service manner and the predictable people complained bitterly.Report
They did worse than complain bitterly about it.
They refused to consume the product.Report
I haven’t seen the show, but in the image above, her face looks distinctively male to me, and I can’t figure out why. What makes a cartoon face look male or female?Report
It’s the jaw. Feminine faces are triangular, masculine faces are pentagons.Report
This is a baffling take.
The Netflix She Ra show ran 52 episodes, over five seasons, in what was clearly a planned arc that ended in a series finale. Netflix doesn’t release it’s viewer numbers, but there’s no reason to think it was anything less than a success with audiences–it was certainly well received by critics.
Oscar, above, says that if a show can’t find your footing after 50 episodes, it’s not going to. The truth is, if a show can’t find its footing, it doesn’t make it to fifty episodes.
The new Masters of the Universe show, of which we’ve only seen one (appropriately epic) trailer, is being produced specifically for adult audiences, as a direct sequel to the 80s version. Another He man series, one with child audiences in mind, is also in production.
I hope both are successful. The adult series looks like it’s going to do a great job of bringing 21st century production values to a classic property with lots of nostalgia value. We haven’t seen any details on the kid-focused series, but I hope it brings the same sharp design and solid characterization that the SheRa reboot did.Report
This.
Also if you talk to teenage kids (I have two), the idea that She-Ra isn’t well received doesn’t seem to match their respective social media universes. Not that those are necessarily representative, but I think She-Ra did fine.
There is merch in all of the stores the kids buy stuff at nowadays.Report
Maybe adults should not care so much about cartoons and read or watch something more challenging instead. There is something deeply off about a society where grown-ass men in middle age spend countless hours complaining about a cartoon reboot.
Also as Alan Scott points out, the show apparently ran 52 episodes. There is a lot of assuming facts not in evidence here.Report
+1Report
I loved the She Ra reboot and have watched it through multiple times. Likewise, it’s quite popular in my extended social circle. As far as the “existing fans” — well the stereotype was of adult men who want anime tiddies, so whatever. Plenty of media targets them. It was nice to find media that targets me.Report
That’s why I don’t get complaints that it was cancelled too early and what not. I thought they had told the story they wanted to tell, and that was it.Report
What’s annoying is the “go woke, go broke” crowd will probably believe this uncritically, as it matches their preconceptions. Anyway, I have no idea what happened at Netflix, nor what the creators planned. I do know the show had a solid five seasons. It was well paced. The story reached a narratively satisfying conclusion (like I was laughing and crying in equal measure). There were no major arcs left unfinished. In other words, it didn’t feel like a cancelled show.
I’ve seen shows with a rushed final season. I’ve also seen arcs cut short. This didn’t feel like that.
That said, I suspect the creators probably hoped the show would take off more. After all, why wouldn’t they? I don’t think it ever reached Stephen Universe level of popularity, which targeted a similar demographic. But that’s fine. A modest success is still a success, and comparison is the theif of joy.Report
I thought they did it well enough (the woke part). It was there, but not totally in your face, and they were working on telling a story, not a sermon.
I haven’t finished watching it, but I think Bug watched it all and enjoyed it. He’s more the target demographic than me, so there’s that…
And I don’t think anything is going to topple Steven.Report
Yeah, this wasnt’ “go woke, go broke,” this was “go woke, get the 5 season run you probably planned on when pitching the show because cartoons that aren’t The Simpsons or Family Guy don’t run forever.”Report
Which raises the question: why does this post even exist? Why did the OP try to convince us it was a failure? Was this based on anything factual?Report
Agree, something that gets 50+ episodes is not a failure, and being able to wrap up plot and story lines does not suggest cancellation. It came to an end.
Would the producers and fans have preferred it kept going? Probably. But, Netflix has shown that it really does not like letting shows go on until they jump the shark, or otherwise go stale. If a show gets 2 or 3 seasons on Netflix, that’s awesome! She-Ra got 5, clearly they were doing something right.
Contrast that with Jupiter’s Legacy, which got 1 season, and ended on a cliffhanger because it got cancelled.Report
I can only speak for myself, but I’m glad it ended. It went out on a high note, and its latter seasons were strong.
Would I like to see more with the same characters? Hmmm, maybe, but only if the creators really felt as if they have a new story to tell. Perhaps they do, but while some narrative forms are kind of built to keep going — think detective fiction, for example — this story isn’t like that.Report