For the honour of Grayskull – and modern children who have access to the internet – Netflix and DreamWorks are rebooting the 1980s classic She-Ra for a small-screen series in 2018. Unlike the multiple-reboot failure He-Man, this will be the Princess of Power’s first outing since her original cartoon and toy line back in 1985. Her return has fans of Etheria’s finest swinging their Swords of Protection and body-slamming robo-hoards with excitement. Or today’s equivalent: tweeting about it and getting the toys out of the loft.
Look around at the trash-fire world we’re living in. What more proof of our troubled times do you need than where Skeletor, the evil overlord himself, has ended up. No longer trying to break into Castle Grayskull for access to ultimate power over the universe, he’s now grinding to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack on the Moneysupermarket adverts. After all, who’d want to preside over a universe in this much of a mess?
As we’re faced with Skeletor’s sad face during every ad break, Netflix’s announcement of She-Ra’s return as “a warrior princess tailor-made for today” has been seized upon with anticipation. Phrases like “girl power icon” and “female friendship and empowerment” in the press release don’t hurt, either. Not in these times where a strong female character like Wonder Woman can make a lot of money for Warner Bros in a solo movie outing in June, and yet be reduced to the status of token whiny female in Justice League by November.
How the mighty (women) fall – predictable, perhaps, in an entertainment industry with pitifully few female directors helming big blockbusters, and so little dialogue given to actresses. This is also an industry dominated by Marvel’s superheroes – 17 films so far, none of them with a central female protagonist. We need a She-Ra reboot. We deserve a She-Ra reboot.
Television is still the perfect place for She-Ra (and not just because He-Man’s big-screen outing Masters of the Universe was so bad). Mainstream TV is a more reliable source than film for decent portrayals of women and girls these days – there’s Stranger Things (Eleven’s tiresome hostility-for-another-female in the second season aside, Joyce Byers remains wonderful), The Handmaid’s Tale (queer representation! Women of colour!), Transparent, The Deuce, Big Little Lies, The Leftovers.
It’s a good time to be turning on your TV or streaming a series; better than chancing the big screen and getting something casually misogynistic. Remember, cinema in 2017 gave us Kingsman: The Golden Circle. It has been a difficult year.
The 30 to 40-year-olds, who probably remember She-Ra the fondest, have a lot to look forward to with Netflix’s new version, especially as the world of Etheria is yet to be ransacked by pop culture like He-Man’s Eternia. The motivation behind She-Ra and her rebellion always more far-reaching and serious than brother’s, anyway: they fought for freedom.
Early in She-Ra’s original run, she explained her sword-waving with the line: “If we all work together, we can change things.” As she said about three times per episode, she was fighting for honour, not power.
OK, that was just a cartoon in the 80s, mainly created to push gender-stereotyped toys (that never really looked like the characters in the show) to girls in the way He-Man did to boys. Also, the character lineup was distractingly white. And yes, the reboot isn’t being made for sad-sack adults with a nostalgia fetish – it’s for their kids.
But with the queer writer and cartoonist Noelle Stevenson signed up as showrunner, and coming at a time where we really need a character like this, it’s exciting to have She-Ra back. Because if we all work together, we can change things. And each time we prove that female-led stories are welcome and wanted on the screen – big and small – we can change those things for the better.