Roast Gooble Dinner - Episode 002 Discussion!

[JVS3]

Let's hug it out, gents.

...uh.. not aggressive, wind-depleting hugs,
but friendly hugs.

[Mr. Shokoti]

Let's hug it out, gents.

...uh.. not aggressive, wind-depleting hugs,
but friendly hugs.

Sorry.


I'm gonna be like Fonzie here.

And what's Fonzie like? Come on, what's Fonzie like?

Cool?

What?

He's cool.

Correctamundo. And that's what I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be cool.

[SAMURAI36]

Mr. Shokoti, I'm trying to take this back on-topic, but I guess you don't want to?

Regardless of whether the Nolanverse was successful or ill-advised by attempting more realism than is typically seen in the genre, the point is that MotU is not realistic, or even trying to be.

Therefore the approaches are going to be totally different.

Not to try to defend Shokoti's position, but that's not really applicable, unless a man who dresses up like a bat is "realistic". For that matter, no piece of fiction, no matter the genre, is trying to be realistic.

Oh, and sorry SAMURAI, only just now saw your post, I wasn't trying to ignore you.

No worries.

Not that Beast Man is necessarily an ancillary character, but that information such as his real name is ancillary and unnecessary to the main story.

It's not to say that his name would need to be mentioned during each and every episode. However, Duncan's name isn't mentioned everytime either, but that doesn't stop us from knowing it.

Why did they even bother telling us MAA's name? How does it service the story, in any way?

You can't very well tell the story of MotU without discussing Prince Adam, who is destined to become He-Man and fight for the safety of Eternia. But you can easily do it without showing us Ram Man's brother.

That's fine if Ram Man has a brother, but if you're wasting such precious little time discussing him, there'd better be a really good reason why. And if there's such a good reason to show Ram Man's brother, then why aren't we focusing on HIM, and ignoring Ram Man altogether?

Sure, but why did Filmation make a whole episode about Mecka-Neck's son. Philip, I believe his name was? This seems to defy your logic.

This is just basic storytelling, in that you have protagonists and the characters you choose to focus on for a reason.

That doesn't mean that you don't/can't give any background on other characters, and it doesn't mean that it will be great storytelling either. "Basic" storytelling is very correct.

It's a good distinction, about "mystery characters".

But IMO there just isn't much need to have many MotU characters be believable.

The problem is that MotU is generally plot and action-driven, and with very few exceptions, it's not character-driven.

Why is MOTU the exception? Therein lies the problem for me, in that MOTU during the 80's lagged behind other cartoons during its time. TF's, GI JOE, Thundercats, and others gave background about their characters, and took the time to focus on even the more ancillary ones. MOTU did as well, from time to time, but not nearly enough to make everyone interesting.

With TF's, they made attempts to push the story forward over the decades. A Prime died, and a new one was born. Same with the Trons. They left earth, and went back to Cyberton.

Based on your logic, they'd have still been living in the Ark, on the side of a mountain.

Star Trek has pushed forward. From Captains Kirk, to Picard, to Sisko, to Janeway (who's an admiral now). Now they are revinventing the franchise altogether. It's called growth, and growth is what MOTU sorely needs.

Besides, lets not kid ourselves, it was in fact a toon to sell toys. If people didn't know enough about the character, why were they gonna buy the toy?

So anything--yes, even on a MOTUC bio--that "wastes time" going into many character details (especially some who never had, and apparently never needed, any specific characterization before) can be seen as going off on a tangent.

Giving someone's real name is "going off on a tangent"?

My point there was that because of Mattel's handling of MotU it hasn't been around. It hasn't had the opportunity that many other franchises have had to tell as many stories, so there's no way the "we ran out of stories, so the only thing left to do is explain so-and-so's past" excuse can be applied to MotU the way that it might be argued for doing it to Wolverine.

Buy no part of MOTU was supposed to be a mystery, as was the case with Wolverine. Mattel wasn't violating any "Wolverine" laws here. The reality is, MOTU during the 80's was simply not handled very well. All the villains were hokey, because they had very little characterization

(This is the same reason why I disagreed with MVC's stance a bit when they wanted to open things up to all-new mythos elements when they could've done more issues that were using the characters already available, that IMO really had never been satisfactorily used.)

We definitely disagree with this. Expanding the mythos was one of the best things that MVC and MYP could have done for this franchise. There have been numerous comics (including the mini's) over the years, and they have basically just retold the same stories with the same characters.

MVC and MYP made the attempt to expand the universe, character wise and mythos wise. It's what got me back into MOTU, after spurning it decades ago.

I'm not entirely opposed to characterization of MotU, but only when it's natural, and only when there's the appropriate amount of time alloted to the crucial elements of MotU's story, which IMO has never been the case.

What, in your view, would an example of what's appropriate?

Same thing with new characters. Not opposed at all on principle, but when there were dozens of available characters that were already beloved by so many, to introduce new ones such as Dekker seemed to me a bit premature, and reflective of MYP wanting to make it their own a little more than I wanted to see.

Why? Dekker furthered the story, by giving pertinent historical info. Who trained Duncan, and filled the position of MAA before he did? We saw the passing of Kingship of Miro to Randor, but why should it be assumed that MAA was a brand new position?

Even Filmation showed us a list of kings prior to Randor and Miro. There's a thread around here somewhere about that. Is that TMI for you as well?

Now, I'm not saying that Dekker (who is truly an ancillary character, Beast Man is not) should have an entire episode dedicated to him, however, if Beast man was in every (other) ep, then the least we can know about him, is what his real name is.

I wasn't trying to champion Filmation with that comment, merely commenting that for all the attempts to be more serious and grandiose, MYP at the end of the day was still something of a run-of-the-mill toy ad toon.

You can't address one without the other though. And I definitely disagree with that statement about MYP. They gave me more in the 2 seasons that they had, than all the years that Filmation was around, in terms of characterization.

Regarding Filmation, remember that was among the first of its kind, that inspired lots of protest from parent and censorship groups.

The first of what kind?

So Filmation had to be very careful to not look like a toy commercial disguised as children's entertainment, hence the moral lessons and all the rest.

But that's what it was. Were people supposed to ignore that there were actual toys for these characters on the shelves? Or that the real commercials for the toys would come on during the commercial breaks of the actual show?

If a TV show has a corresponding toy to be sold, then all the TV show is, is a commercial for the toy. The point is inseparable.

If it hadn't been an issue, you can bet that Filmation would've been just as if not more toy ad-y than MYP was, simply because Mattel isn't and wasn't interested in morals, but in toy sales.

MYP had the same morals too, at least on the DVD version. Not sure why they weren't shown on TV. Filmation differs from MYP in terms of sophistication, because of the difference in the times.

I mean, 80's vs 200X? I would hope to god, that some progress would've been made in 20-some years. If they'd tried to present Filmation all over again, I highly doubt I'd be here right now.

[MegaGearMax]

What, the secondary characters can't have some depth or back story to them?

Unlike MYP's toon, Filmation didn't have episodes written in which the characters changed their outfits only for the purpose of selling new toys. Filmation also turned down the option to use popular characters like Stinkor in their show. Mattel dictated what MYP should feature in their cartoon but that wasn't the case for Filmation.

On the other hand, you have characters like Sy-Klone, who destroys some robots and never says a word. Filmation DID do toy advertising. It was just less blatant than MYP.

[Mr. Shokoti]

Not to try to defend Shokoti's position, but that's not really applicable, unless a man who dresses up like a bat is "realistic". For that matter, no piece of fiction, no matter the genre, is trying to be realistic.

Ah, why ya gotta be that way? Defend my position man. Defend it with all your might!

[Penny Dreadful]

Of course these guys had to come from somewhere, but that's not nearly as interesting as they themselves and coming up with cool ways to demonstrate why Clawful is the one we're supposed to be particularly interested in.

Right, that's just it. I do understand that it makes sense to have these characters come from somewhere, but it takes some of the mystique and uniqueness away to show that for every single character. I remember one episode of the MYP cartoon seemed to focus a lot on Clawful's cousin. It has been awhile since I've seen it, but I remember thinking it was strange at the time. Who cares about Clawful's cousin!

~Pennypunk~

[SAMURAI36]

Ah, why ya gotta be that way? Defend my position man. Defend it with all your might!

Yeah, I guess us IL folks gotta stick together!!

[Ferio]

Being three weeks behind on everything (Just got SheRa and Keldor today), it's no wonder I didn't discover these podcasts before. Thanks for a really great show, it's a good way to make the time it takes to walk to the office go faster.

It's almost midnight here, but I really felt that I needed to throw myself into this discussion.

It's would seem that me and MrShokoti are the only ones that are fine with the DemoMan twist. To be honest, we still don't know where they are going with it. I really hope though, that it won't turn out to be any kind of Anakin Skywalker-story.

The way I figured, Hordak would need a reason to merge Keldor with Demo-man, he wouldn't do it just because he's a nice guy. The merge would definetly make Keldor more powerful. Not necessarily more evil, Keldor has, as has been stated before, issues enough. If the merge would render Keldor more powerful, it wouldn't do so withouth a catch. I think DemoMan is Hordaks way to keep some kind of control over the being he knew would be powerful enough to match himself. I recall Skeletor hearing voices in his head in the MYP-cartoon? Or was it just noise? Well, it could be an interesting twist, Skeletor defeating DemoMan and taking out his revenge on Hordak?

It will be interesting to see where they go with this :3

[Darkspecter]

Okay, now you have me curious.
What is my accent?

It's actually kinda sexy lol

Brian.

The best way I could describe your accent is a valley girl mixed with Brawny or the Green Giant. I'm not trying to be insulting, it's the best way I can think of describing it. I think it has something to do with the way you pronounce certain words like: you, so, know, dollars, bios.

I hope you don't take that as an insult. If you do, I'll give you something to laugh about. This one off-the wall guy I went to college with described me as a Catholic school girl crossed with a lumberjack and no fashion sense.

My voice will sound a lot better next week as I now have a far better mic.

That's good! It's pretty hard to hear you in the first few episodes.

Pre-Orders:

I'm against them and Mattel will NEVER do them. Reason? They would sell less figures and some would never make it into the line, namely NA.

How many Flipshots do you think people would order? Probably not many, and then he would have to be cancelled. As a fan of all eras, I would be DEVESTATED to see some of the less popular characters get canned. I love most of the obscure or even hated characters, like Rotar and Twistoid. I think they're AWESOME!

Subscriptions are GUARANTEED sales and it forces people to buy items they normally wouldn't = more profit for Mattel. This, and pre-orders are slightly more complex, is why Mattel will NEVER go for them. Mainly the less profit reason though.

Sell-out times and WSOD is ridiculous. I don't even want to talk about it anymore. It's ripping open a wound from the 15th of every month.

Emiliano: I LOVE your pronunciation of certain words. Very interesting! It's like how North Americans say alluminum compared to the U.K.

NA: ah-loom-in-um
U.K.: al-you-min-ee-um

Eamon: "I tell ya, if I had my way with some re-sellers...there'd be some kickins goin around, I tell ya!"

Agreed.

Eamon and Val's face-punching system...sounds interesting! lol

lol @ Pixel Dan trying to pronounce Beast man's real name...twice! Classic.

Real Names:

TOTALLY agree with Emiliano. Everyone having a codename is crazy and too G.I. Joe. Never thought of that, but that's probably where the idea came from. Real names are okay for some characters.

I'm with Dan: look at the name go "huh" and don't think about it again.

Eamon: about the unpronouncable Beastman name, I think it's supposed to sound like growling when pronounced. You know, the "Rawr!" kind of sound? It sounds kind of cool when you say it like that. lol

*If they do a He-Man movie with all these crazy "real" names, it will be the biggest failure in MOTU history!

Demo-Man:

It's so Mattel can make him into a toy. If it sounds tacked on, it's because it's from some obscure reference in the 80's and they want to make a new toy. lol

MYP did Keldor to Skeletor perfectly. I like Skeletor being a "regular" man first, because it shows Evil-Lyn and Keldor's relationship and it's more believable. Instead of just falling in love with this creepy floating head monster guy. It's kind of sweet that she still loves him after the horrible transformation (and becoming cold and distant). She just plots to kill him every now and then. Typically marriage.

Val: Interesting Keldor became Skeletor because of those interviews you did. Didn't know that. Pretty cool.

I think the "Teela's a clone" and "She-Ra's sword is a clone" and "everything else is a clone" is worse than Demo-Man...but that's just me. lol

I LIKE Keldor and Randor being brothers and Keldor having a deep hatred for his brother for taking the throne and becoming evil and twisted with hatred. LOVE it. I can't wait to learn more about it.

Hatred and jealousy turned him into a monster emotionally and his actions against Randor brought out his inner self (with some help from Hordak).

Keldor is basically Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X. His father, the king of his race (basically tree people) married a human wife and had a child (Seymour). The people hated them both because of the abomination that occured. He outcast his wife and son to a remote island. Because of the hatred and torment Seymour received, he basically goes crazy, turns his mother into a monster and becomes a monster himself.

He later returns and become leader of his people (his father was very well respected and he is the rightful heir). We find out later that he killed his father though.

He even forces the main heroine to marry him (which Skeletor always tried to do with Teela in different mediums). His goal is slightly different though. I'm pretty sure it was world domination, until he is killed. Then he wants to kill everyone.

I LOVE Seymour.

Great episode two all!

[MegaGearMax]

Keldor is basically Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X. His father, the king of his race (basically tree people) married a human wife and had a child (Seymour). The people hated them both because of the abomination that occured. He outcast his wife and son to a remote island. Because of the hatred and torment Seymour received, he basically goes crazy, turns his mother into a monster and becomes a monster himself.

He later returns and become leader of his people (his father was very well respected and he is the rightful heir). We find out later that he killed his father though.

He even forces the main heroine to marry him (which Skeletor always tried to do with Teela in different mediums). His goal is slightly different though. I'm pretty sure it was world domination, until he is killed. Then he wants to kill everyone.

I LOVE Seymour.

Great episode two all!

LOL! I'm currently re-playing FFX, after I played a few rounds of FFXIIII (which reinvents RPGs to the extent that it's not an RPG anymore). I love Spira. The best thing about that game is the voice acting. You even hear witty comments in combat...

And you gotta love Wakka complaining about Al Bhed.

[Lay Ze-Man]

Ha, sorry to respond to this more than two months later, I steered clear from this thread after Val's warning.

Not to try to defend Shokoti's position, but that's not really applicable, unless a man who dresses up like a bat is "realistic". For that matter, no piece of fiction, no matter the genre, is trying to be realistic.

Ah, true!
But reread what I actually wrote: "more realism than is typically seen in the genre".
That's a far cry from "realistic".

But I really don't seen how the Nolanverse is seen as anything but "a more real world take on Batman".
I don't see how that's up for debate at all.

It's not to say that his name would need to be mentioned during each and every episode. However, Duncan's name isn't mentioned everytime either, but that doesn't stop us from knowing it.

Why did they even bother telling us MAA's name? How does it service the story, in any way?

Duncan's "real name" is indeed as ancillary to the main story of MotU as Beast Man's is.

But in that case, I would argue that some of more important subplots in MotU are improved by humanizing the Man-At-Arms character, and calling him Duncan definitely goes in that direction.

Sure, but why did Filmation make a whole episode about Mecka-Neck's son. Philip, I believe his name was? This seems to defy your logic.

Well, it might also defy logic that I'm a huge MotU fan and not really a Filmation guy, so there you go.

But more seriously, I don't think Filmation had a very clear "overall" story they were telling, so with that kind of template, all kinds of ancillary stories become fair game.

That doesn't mean that you don't/can't give any background on other characters, and it doesn't mean that it will be great storytelling either. "Basic" storytelling is very correct.

Why is MOTU the exception? Therein lies the problem for me, in that MOTU during the 80's lagged behind other cartoons during its time. TF's, GI JOE, Thundercats, and others gave background about their characters, and took the time to focus on even the more ancillary ones. MOTU did as well, from time to time, but not nearly enough to make everyone interesting.

MotU is the exception because to be frank, no one at Mattel cared.
And if Joe hadn't had Larry Hama, it would've likely been the same story there.

The sad truth is that the fans cared more about the characters than anyone at Mattel ever considered possible. They were meant to sell toys, fuel kids' imaginations so they'd want to buy more, and that's it. You can tell by the disbelief in Mattel employees' voices that people are still fixated on these characters 30 years later. And, I would argue the same philosophy contributed to MotU's lengthy absence from the public eye.

With TF's, they made attempts to push the story forward over the decades. A Prime died, and a new one was born. Same with the Trons. They left earth, and went back to Cyberton.

Based on your logic, they'd have still been living in the Ark, on the side of a mountain.

Actually, MotU was going to try that kind of thing with both PoG and with He-Ro: Son of He-Man.

NA should also be included in what you're talking about.

But even in TF or ST or SW, no matter how far they push the stories out and expand the universes, there is still the one principle core storyline that most fans agree on is the main storyline.

With MotU, we've never really had that.
So that's why all the business of too many real names and races is very much like putting the cart before the horse IMO.

Besides, lets not kid ourselves, it was in fact a toon to sell toys. If people didn't know enough about the character, why were they gonna buy the toy?

The toys sold themselves!

No offense to Filmation fans but I don't see how many characters outside of He-Man, Skeletor, Teela, Man-At-Arms, etc. were really sold to them from the Filmation show itself.

I would argue that with rare exception everyone else was sold based on the merits of the action figure, and not their depiction in the Filmation show.

Giving someone's real name is "going off on a tangent"?

It is when there's such precious storytelling "real estate" in a franchise which has never enjoyed an actual storyline.

Buy no part of MOTU was supposed to be a mystery, as was the case with Wolverine. Mattel wasn't violating any "Wolverine" laws here.

Agreed, but at least I can see why people at Marvel might think "we ran out of compelling stories for Wolverine", even if I'm not the biggest fan of the James Howlett thing.

But in the case of MotU, I can see NO example where they could claim it.

The reality is, MOTU during the 80's was simply not handled very well. All the villains were hokey, because they had very little characterization.

Agreed. That, coupled with limitations placed on Filmation and children's entertainment in general in that era. These were characters that looked like the embodiment of death, and vicious monsters. Clearly, these were gonna be neutered a bit.

There have been numerous comics (including the mini's) over the years, and they have basically just retold the same stories with the same characters.

I don't really agree here. I don't think ANY of the original MotU characters have been exhausted of their storytelling potential, even if it's just Character A wandering into the woods and fighting Character B. There just hasn't been enough material!

The one thing that I do appreciate about the attempt of the MOTUC bios is that they are melding all the characters together into one storyline.

I might disagree about what characters they're trying to pigeonhole into that storyline, but I do think MotU should be framed in that manner.

King Hiss and the Snake Men, She-Ra and the Horde, these things never had proper and satisfying connections to the He-Man and Skeletor storyline, which itself was very two-dimensional.

MVC and MYP made the attempt to expand the universe, character wise and mythos wise. It's what got me back into MOTU, after spurning it decades ago.

Well, I'm glad you were intrigued by the richer backdrop they were trying to portray, but IMO it was just too soon.

You should have that WITH a solid foundation, and IMO MotU never had that with the characters we already had, so for me creating a ton of new stuff should only be done either simultaneous to that, or after the fact to spice things up after you're already done telling the main story.

Why? Dekker furthered the story, by giving pertinent historical info. Who trained Duncan, and filled the position of MAA before he did? We saw the passing of Kingship of Miro to Randor, but why should it be assumed that MAA was a brand new position?

I'm not at all opposed to history about the various MAA. But Dekker (and other MYP-created characters) in particular felt to me like MYP was more interested in their own characters than in those that already existed.

We didn't need Dekker to get that history, anyway. We could've had Duncan give us the same information in a conversation to Teela, helping her to understand her duties and growing pains into the Captain of the Guard role by his own transition into the MAA title. Easy!

Now, I'm not saying that Dekker (who is truly an ancillary character, Beast Man is not) should have an entire episode dedicated to him, however, if Beast man was in every (other) ep, then the least we can know about him, is what his real name is.

. . . unless he doesn't need a real name at all!

You can't address one without the other though. And I definitely disagree with that statement about MYP. They gave me more in the 2 seasons that they had, than all the years that Filmation was around, in terms of characterization.

They may have given you more characterization, but they also gave you excruciating Spit Bull and Samurai Armor toy ads. Don't get me wrong, I prefer MYP to Filmation by FAR, but that doesn't let them of the hook. Even if it did improve the overall MotU mythos, it still had all of the trappings of the 80's toons in terms of blatant product placement.

The first of what kind?

TV shows which were based on toys, funded by toy companies, etc.
Up until MotU, it was viewed as brainwashing of a sort, if they could be advertising directly to kids.
The morals and lessons were included, as a sort of trade-off.

But even still, any kind of explicit violence was frowned upon, which is why He-Man's sword was pretty useless as a sword in Filmation, and a lot of violence is implied or happens off-screen.

But that's what it was. Were people supposed to ignore that there were actual toys for these characters on the shelves? Or that the real commercials for the toys would come on during the commercial breaks of the actual show?

If a TV show has a corresponding toy to be sold, then all the TV show is, is a commercial for the toy. The point is inseparable.

I'm just telling you how it was.

IMO it was less about what actually was, and more about what people could agree upon, for appearance's sake.

MYP had the same morals too, at least on the DVD version. Not sure why they weren't shown on TV.

Cut for time, I think.
And as far as I know, MYP did them purely as nods to the original show.
Filmation did them because they kind of had to.

Filmation differs from MYP in terms of sophistication, because of the difference in the times.

I mean, 80's vs 200X? I would hope to god, that some progress would've been made in 20-some years. If they'd tried to present Filmation all over again, I highly doubt I'd be here right now.

Oh, I agree with you!
But there are definitely some fans who wouldn't.

[JVS3]

My warning?
What warning?