Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

This being summer and all, I thought it’d be fun to do an activity unique to the season: camping. When I was a kid, camping meant living in a magical woods, going on endless adventures among the fireflies beneath the stars. It was campfires and song, lake swims and long hikes through an endless forest. On this blog, though, we’re taking a different road with camp.

campy

adjective

ˈkam-pē 

campier; campiest

: in the style of camp : absurdly exaggerated, artificial, or affected in a usually humorous way

Or, we can use this definition by my daughter Blondie:

“It’s so campy, you could roast marshmallows on it.” -Blondie

Last summer, we camped in multiple genres with Flash Gordon, Death Becomes Her, and Dungeons and Dragons. This year, I’ve got a fresh list of possible camping sites for us to visit. For this month’s trip, I had to travel someplace special, someplace I knew long, long ago…

No, not the animated Eternia, though I owe that show a lot. I wouldn’t have She-Ra without He-Man, after all!

In 1987, kids like me were stoked to see The REAL Eternia, see the hero we admired transform from a 2-D animation into a real-life gladiator able to fight an army single-handed, sword in hand.

But did the movie truly transport us to Eternia?

Weeeeeeeeeell….for a bit, yes. If you watched the trailer, you already know what I mean.

The opening “shot” (aka, matte painting) of Castle Greyskull is a nice update compared to the towers and skull from the cartoon. But the forests and swamps and other landscapes we saw in the cartoon are traded for a single barren, rocky landscape where He-Man and his comrades, Man-At-Arms and Teela, are already defeated by Skeletor’s forces and hide out with the inventor Gwildor, plotting a way to get back into the castle.

Right off the bat, Kid Me is wondering how He-Man could be the loser in the first five minutes of his own movie. Skeletor already possesses Greyskull, the victorious villain happy to crow over the captured Sorceress and suck her powers dry.

But I did dig that throne room for Greyskull. Check out all the crazy marble-ish platforms and bottomless pits built in the castle for…reasons? Whatever. It looked cool then, and Adult Me loves the fantastical absurdity of this setup now.

“Why didn’t they just give Skeletor a skull mask?” asks Bash as he peeps in to see what I’m watching.

“Because that wouldn’t have looked nearly as good,” I say, and it’s true. It definitely looks like a skull, but not so grotesque as to cause a little one my kid brother’s age to flee the theater screaming. Plus, actor Frank Langella sells that makeup, costume, the whole package. I once read that Langella accepted the role because his grandson loved the cartoon, and you can feel that love in how he takes this role. This is NOT a man phoning it in: he is chewing scenery and thudding his staff and laughing menacingly every chance he gets. What kid wouldn’t love to boo at a guy like that?

And come on—who BUT Dolph Lundgren could have played He-Man at the time? He reminds Adult Me of a Spartan out of The 300–forever fearless and undaunted, strong inside and out.

Really, the cast is solid, right down to the grumpy bald police detective Tubic (played by James Tolkan) who gets caught up chasing the human teens Kevin and Julie caught in the Eternia showdown (more on that in a second).

And through all of this, the score is GORGEOUS. No one writes heroic themes like they did in the 80s. It would have been cheap’n’easy to count on a bunch of synthesizers, or utilize an unknown rock band because the teen boy Kevin has a school band. But they don’t. The score is rich and epic and always ready for action.

So after all this, why share this film on a trip to camp?

Well.

The site Retro Review provides a thorough overview of the situation and movie here, but the gist of it is this:

Cannon films was known for its kick-busting Chuck Norris movies, but they were determined to spread their hold in the industry, blowing a ton of money on actors like Sylvestor Stallone in a movie about arm wrestling while also trying to go big budget when they had no such big budget for films like Superman 4 and this, Masters of the Universe. But Cannon wasn’t exactly known for its budgets, and it shows.

For one thing, several characters were left behind with the colorful Eternia we loved. No floating magician Orco to help He-Man. Now they have a little actor done up like an alien dwarf named Gwildor. Henchmen like Roboto or Tri-Klops no longer serve Skeletor. They do have Beastman and Evil-Lyn, but others are essentially chainmail and monster make-up.

Gwildor is…okay. They make him an inventor rather than a magician, and he works as the comedy relief just as Orco often did. Gwildor’s Cosmic Key is the reason Skeletor was able to take over Eternia, but his backup Cosmic Key is the reason He-Man and Co. manage to escape to another planet…hmmm, wonder which one….

He-Man and company end up in a very green, wet setting, a huge contrast to the rocky desert of Eternia. They’ve lost the backup Cosmic Key.

They meet a cow.

Bring on the camp!

If it wasn’t clear we weren’t on earth, we shift from He-Man to a drive-in to meet Kevin and Julie, a high school couple struggling because Julie’s at an emotional crossroads since her parents died in a plane crash.

They find the backup Cosmic Key in the cemetery. Being a musician, Kevin thinks the Cosmic Key is a “Japanese synthesizer” and treats it like a musical instrument. Considering the tones it makes, it works…enough.

What doesn’t work is watching Skeletor’s henchmen attack Julie decimate a school dance set in a gym on their hunt for the backup Cosmic Key. Nor is it all that thrilling to see He-Man in his cape wandering Anytown USA and fighting galactic henchmen in an urban storage area.

Adult Me gets it: Earth is a far cheaper setpiece than an alien planet. But Kid Me–and let’s face it, Adult Me, too–yearned for Eternia, NOT laser battles among cardboard boxes. We weren’t looking for goofy theft of fast food, disguises in lady clothes, or souping up a rundown car.

And Cannon seemed to try, here and there. Skeletor’s henchmen certainly weren’t going to bother driving beaters and donning women’s furs. So there are a couple of Eternian ships that come to earth, and some aerial fighters on tiny surfboard things that He-Man tackles as Skeletor comes for the backup Cosmic Key. And it all looks…well, a bit silly, yeah. But Kid Me didn’t care, because they were ships and flyers, NOT CARS. Even the gadgets, which are lights, silver paint, and random bits of motorized plastic, were fine. Maybe because I grew up with my father’s Dr. Who, which had even less of a budget, but they were fine, because they showed a bit more imagination. They made the gadgets alien enough with what they bought at the hardware store. And perhaps I forgive them on this front because the Cosmic Key looked really otherworldly compared to everything else. All those buttons and sounds and lights looked magical on the big screen, and the teens’ reaction helped build that sense of wonder.

The climax of the film is a slice of camp, too. Not right away, mind you. He-Man is captured, and it SUCKS to watch your hero whipped with a laser. Skeletor goes god-mode, and all seems lost.

But if you see at the 4:00 mark in that video, the foul-mouthed cop Lubic, Kevin and Julie, and our other Eternians transport themselves and a chunk of Earth into Greyskull for the final showdown.

And at the 7:15 mark, we FINALLY get that which we’ve waited the whole movie to hear: the real-life He-Man holds up his sword and cries, “I HAVE THE POWER!” Composer Bill Conti’s theme swells, and we kids are cheering at the screen for He-Man’s comeback.

Of course, Skeletor is defeated. The Sorceress and all of Eternia are rescued. And though the cop remains on Eternia to enjoy his own chainmail babe, Julie and Kevin return to Earth. For some reason Gwildor knew to transport them back far enough so Julie’s parents can be saved. For some reason Julie wakes up in bed, but Kevin runs to meet her in his clothes. But we do end with a great close-up of Julie and Kevin holding their gift from Eternia, a vision of Greyskull and He-Man, sword high, cape flowing in the wind.

So what’s a writer to get out of this camping trip?

1. Fantasy MUST mean fantasy. Yes, this movie’s ambitions were crippled by its budget, so writing the story to use Earth reads like an easy answer. But this is the kind of story where the audience isn’t looking for Earth. As a writer, I’m not going to promise a steampunk adventure only to spend the majority of the book on relationship romance with a few gizmos thrown in.
2. Don’t give the audience pacing whiplash. The moments where comedy is shoehorned in with the help of Gwildor (see the aforementioned cow, costume, etc.) are a painful transition. The stakes were high with escaping Eternia. The stakes were high in freeing Kevin. The stakes were high OH LOOK GWILDOR IS BEING GOOFY. There’s nothing wrong with comedic relief in a story, but there’s got to be a smoother rise and fall in the narrative for the smiles to fit.
3. Give your hero time to shine with his true gifts. The story starts with He-Man as a loser. The dialogue infers He-Man and Skeletor are equals, but the establishing scenes don’t reflect that at all (likely to get the story on Earth ASAP). Plus, He-Man uses a blaster way more than his sword. Kid Me didn’t get it, and Adult Me doesn’t, either. If your hero’s known for super-strength and wielding his sword, put those to use! Lundgren looks AMAZING as He-Man. He’ll always be He-Man. I just wish he had more chances to fight like the He-Man we loved on Saturday mornings.

Now, nearly forty years later, there’s a new He-Man, a new Skeletor, a new Eternia. I’m hopeful to see Eternia, the colorful, fantastic Eternia I knew as a girl. I don’t need to see battles in music stores (yes, that happens), conversations with cows, or goofy costumes to drive in junky cars. I need to see more like the finale of this 1987 cult classic: a castle under siege and a hero undaunted by a villain’s might, no matter how tipped the scales may be.

May you find that kind of hero in your stories this summer—even on your next camping trip.

Coming up, I’ve get yet another interview, highlight from Story Empire, and more. Stay tuned!

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!