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POWER OF GRAYSKULL: THE DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE – Review – We Are Movie Geeks

DVD Review

POWER OF GRAYSKULL: THE DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE – Review

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Review by Mark Longden

If you’re a generation X kid (mid 30s to late 40s?) you will have encountered He-Man at some point. Whether it was the ubiquitous TV show or the even more ubiquitous figures, he was everywhere in the 80s. I loved the TV show, but was never a big toy guy, so it’s been interesting in recent years to listen to friends of mine who became collectors, talking about the various directions of the toys and TV shows over the years.

That’s why I was really pleased to discover the existence of this documentary, made by Randall Lobb and Robert McCallum, who’ve also made a bunch of other nerdy documentaries (about Nintendo games, and computer game box art, and, er, the Lingerie Football League). Can it keep the interest of an at-best distant fan such as I?

Before I start: if I suddenly sound a lot smarter, that’ll be thanks to the input of my friend Alex, a lifelong fan of He-Man, a former moderator on the he-man.org boards and a very nice chap. He’s already seen the movie and helped me out a few times.

The 6 Million Dollar Man was something of a watershed in the toy industry, according to the Mattel executives and designers that were interviewed for this excellent documentary. This showed that a modern TV show could have a decent toy line attached to it, with quality figures and plenty of accessories. But I’d suggest the biggest thing (which the documentary also mentioned) was the removal of a law by President Reagan, which used to prevent toy companies from producing shows to advertise to children. The market, rather than Government, should decide what children watch – my opinion on which shall be left for if you’re next to me in a bar one evening. We’re talking He-Man!

Did you know that Mattel toys passed on Star Wars? They didn’t have the time to produce a line before Christmas and thought it would be a disaster, so off it went to another company (spoiler: it wasn’t a disaster).

Mattel decided they wanted a toy line which could appeal mostly to boys, a mixture of an ass-kicker and Sir Galahad. And here’s where things, naturally, get interesting. They interview a number of current and former Mattel executives and designers, who all give their take on the invention of the character – three of the most prominent are Mark Taylor, Mark Ellis and Paul Cleveland. One name who isn’t mentioned is Roger Sweet, who refused to take part unless he was given what he feels to be his just due as the creator of He-Man – he came up with the name, apparently, and made the pitch to Mattel’s top brass.

What it does, implicitly at first and then explicitly by the end, is show how some corporate creations can’t really be called the product of one person, but are the result of dozens of different creative decisions. I’m sure Roger Sweet had a hand in the creation of the character, but He-Man started as a vague rip-off of Conan, inspired by some doodles a Mattel designer was making. Battlecat (He-Man’s trusted steed) was invented because they’d run out of money for modelling so just borrowed a tiger from a different set, painted it green and put a saddle on it. The people who wrote the TV show came up with other ideas which are now part of the “canon”. And so on, and so on. A thousand hands have been on this, and it made a really entertaining whole.

The movie is roughly in three parts. First up is the origin, rise and fall of He-Man, from sketches and ideas to global phenomenon and back to nothing. Last up is the wilderness years, as they try new ideas, new designs and partner with indie toy companies to varying degrees of success (sadly, this documentary was made before the new “She-Ra” show, which is a big hit and would have made a nice capper to this long strange trip). When they talk about the original She-Ra, they’re also very honest about how it was almost impossible to make thanks to the misogyny of everyone at both the toy company and the TV studio.

The middle part, my favourite, discusses the TV show and especially the movie, and they succeeded and failed. Several famous sci-fi authors like Barbara Hambly and J. Michael Stracyzinski wrote for the show, and their tales are fascinating. But the movie gets interviews with Dolph Lundgren (He-Man), Frank Langella (Skeletor) and Anthony DeLonghis (Blade, plus, he was the swordfighting expert on set). Langella’s remarkably interesting, being honest about the diminishing scale of the production as budgetary problems happened, and also being generous about it, saying how much he wished it could have been better and how hard he tried to make his performance as good as possible. Really interesting stuff. A lot of both TV and movie were hampered in their storytelling by Mattel’s insistence on their being no deaths, so all Skeletor’s soldiers are robots, for example.

I think you’ll need at least a passing interest in He-Man to get something out of this, but if you do, you’ll have a great time with it. It’s lovingly made, different sides of every “debate” are aired, lots of fascinating information given, and lots of people interviewed with a fun story to tell. Absolutely worth paying a few $$$ for on the streaming service of your choice, or buying on DVD.