Kevin Smith isn’t reinventing the wheel, neither is he reinventing Castle Grayskull. The director of Netflix’s upcoming Masters of the Universe sequel sequence was lifeless set on preserving Revelation true to the campy, innocuous cartoon of the Nineteen Eighties, whereas nonetheless satisfying these grown-up He-Man followers who’ve longed for an equally grown-up incarnation of the sequence. In io9’s interview with the creator, Smith explains how he walked a really, very tremendous line certainly.

This interview has been edited for readability and to keep away from spoilers. 

Rob Bricken, io9: I’m an enormous Masters of the Universe fan, so I may speak to you for hours, however I’m simply going to get to—

Kevin Smith: [interrupting excitedly] A He-Man fan! You had been who we made this for. You had been the individual we had been at all times eager about, and double-checking our math, as a result of our manifest [for Revelation] was, “This is a sequel for anyone who knew and loved the classic, original series.” We didn’t know what you regarded like, however we had been at all times like, “What is he going to say? What is he going to think?” So, what do you suppose and what do it’s important to say?

io9: I loved it! I by no means knew the place it was going to go subsequent, which was very thrilling. But what was your ethos for what to maintain from the unique, kid-friendly He-Man cartoon, and what to replace for grownup followers?

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Smith: Such an incredible query. My factor was we maintain it all. We disregard nothing, we depart nothing off. There are characters with toys we didn’t get to play with in our story, however nothing was left off as a result of they had been [deemed] too foolish. Everything was in play. The thought was, particularly should you grew up watching the unique, we wished the expertise for the viewer to be like your toys are precisely the place you left them. [But] you’re now sufficiently old and so they’re sufficiently old to inform a narrative with stakes.

For years, we watched them do somersaults and by no means cross swords within the authentic present. [In Revelation], we maintain all of the characters, all of the motivations are the identical, all of the relationships, the identical areas, who they’re. We didn’t contact any of that. Rather than shrink back from it or attempting to reinvent it, we embraced it wholeheartedly. However, [the characters] are going to take care of issues that they’ve by no means handled earlier than: Losing a cherished one. Betrayal. Abuse. Trauma. Like big-ticket, grownup points. However, the entire time we had been making this present, we referred to it as grownup animation. Then I noticed [Amazon Prime’s] Invincible and I used to be like, “We are not adult animation. We are a kids show.”

io9: So how do you stroll that line between giving these hardcore followers what they’ve at all times wished to see with out sacrificing the story? Nerds are exhausting to please, as you nicely know.

Smith: They are, man, however I’m a kind of nerds, proper? I’m a man who’s usually within the viewers with opinions and stuff, so I simply stole from one of the best. When doubtful, steal a system. And the great people at Marvel [Studios] have been doing what we did. Basically, I mentioned, “Let’s just do what Marvel does every time I go to one of those Marvel movies. I get my childhood served to me in the most appetizing fashion.” These are tales I do know by coronary heart, and nonetheless, they provide me a brand new model of it, and so they don’t disavow something that occurred [in the comics]. They don’t make enjoyable of it or downplay it. It’s all in play. It’s all actual.

So I used to be like, “Let’s do that. Let’s just make this for a Masters of the Universe fan coming into it, like everything is exactly as they remembered it. Every character [in Revelation] plays the same kind of way [they used to]. … We don’t change the costumes. Everybody looks like they should. Every character behaves like they should. But. How would they behave or change or react if you removed an element—you know, if you killed somebody off, something they never really had to deal with before?

io9: Despite how much it honors the original cartoon, Revelation also takes a lot of big swings that I was not expecting. My jaw literally dropped in episode five.

Smith: When we in the writers’ room, all five of us were sitting around going, “They’re either going to love us or hate us by the end of five.” Because it’s an actual page-turner! “How dare you not put up episode six, because you can’t stop like that!” Yeah, that’s an enormous swing, however we felt it’s earned. … so long as all the things honored the supply materials.

We received very fortunate, I’ll be sincere with you, in as a lot as we had two execs on our challenge who love this shit greater than most individuals on this planet. [The first is Director of the Original Series] Ted Biaselli at Netflix. Masters of the Universe is his faith, he’s received each determine. He was the one which made all this occur. By having him and having [VP, Content—Creative] Rob David at Mattel Television who’s truly written Masters of the Universe comics for DC, we had two great lodestars by which we may by no means derail.

Ted’s childhood enthusiasm allowed us to take these massive swings, however I assure you if there was ever a swing too massive, he would have reigned us in. He was form of like the usual instance of who we had been making the present for—I imply, we actually had been making the present for Ted—however as lengthy Ted was cool with it, we knew that followers can be cool as a result of he wouldn’t have let it not be Masters of the Universe.

The first 5 episodes of Masters of the Universe: Revelation premieres on Netflix on July 23. Stay tuned to io9 for extra protection within the coming weeks.

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