I remember watching She-Ra on ITV on sunday mornings. I knew she was the female counterpart of He-Man, and never had a problem with a female lead in an action cartoon. I watched He-Man, I watched She-Ra, I treated them both equally.
I never saw this movie though until the early part of this decade, and it was quite an eye-opener. For one thing, unlike He-Man, She-Ra has a proper establishing story! This by itself is already a major point for saying that She-Ra might be the better of the two shows, as it enables continuity to be kept better and characters to be developed more.
I never thought of the Star Wars parallel Wilycub but you’re right. So too with the fact that Adora is initially presented as being on the side of the villains. I suppose the initial idea is to make us think Glimmer might be the one He-Man is looking for. Actually, framing it initially as He-Man’s quest to find the owner of this second sword is a good way of establishing character relations. By starting with He-Man going into Etheria, we get to meet all these characters whose introductions we are immediately given. Useful.
The question Mark raises of whether Adam needed to keep transforming can be answered simply enough in that Adam is a lot less conspicuous, and also like with the Sword Of Omens, the writers wanted/were ordered to crowbar in the sword catchphrase every chance they could get.
One interesting word on the transformation sequence here is the She-Ra’s is way better because we see a visual effect changing her from head to toe. Mind you, once again they made the mistake of using Castle Grayskull as the backdrop for it which makes even less sense here because it’s not even in the same world! But that’s Filmation for you. The other point that bugged me here is that it’s more apparent than ever here with their lazy animation - the female characters in particular don’t look very different in age. The Sorceress is ageless yet doesn’t look very much older than Teela, her daughter, and here we have Glimmer and her mother looking like they could pass for sisters.
Hordak v Skeletor as villains, tough to say as I haven’t seen any regular She-Ra episodes in probably three decades. But certainly Hordak looks to be the more organised, after all, he’s already largely in charge on Etheria with the good guys as the rebels, while Skeletor is always plotting to take control.
On the whole, I liked it. A lot more than I liked He-Man.
