I originally saw these pics posted on the He-man.org forums.
Like many, I’m not sold on them and I think that they deviate too much from the original concept. But, I will go further into my opinions of that in a minute.
I read through what was being said about these pics they are posted on a message board. From all indications, even the artist, himself, wasn’t thrilled with the changes. He basically took the job because he is a huge T-Cats fan and wanted to be involved with the project. Then the executives or whatever kept on saying what they wanted changed and what-not, and he came up with what he could based on what they were requesting, while trying to stay as true to the original material as possible. All in all he didn’t want the changes, but he had no choice, and he just wanted to be involved (and I can understand that).
Mumm-ra needs some work. A headdress would do wonders for making him look more like the 80s counterpart. Part of what I don’t like is that in the description on that other message board, apparently the idea that the people at WB were coming up with was that Mumm-ra could and would occasionally revert to his mummy form, but that the version that we see in the drawing would be his primary form. Now, I can deal with the idea that he doesn’t have any bandages when he is in this more powerful form, but to not have him be in the mummy form very often is just absurd. He is MUMM-RA. He is supposed to be a MUMMY.
I’m not digging the face because he doesn’t look very smart. That combined with the bat-wings make him look like he should be some kind of lacky warrior gargoyle that Mumm-ra commands, rather than being Mumm-ra, himself. Again, I think the headdress would help a bit, but some more work would need to be done.
As far as Lion-O goes, my main beef is his hair. He doesn’t look much like a lion. They really would need to work on his hair to give him more of a lion’s mane. And I would buff him up a bit as well. Even if they want to go with this younger concept for the character, they could still give him some of the muscles that the original version had.
I do like the fact that the ‘cat’ aspect of him is a bit more prominent. In the original series, while they did have their cat features, The more human-like features of the T-Cats seemed to dominate a little more than they should. So, this is one change that I like.
As far as comparing this to 200X MOTU, I still think this could work without deviating too much from the base concept. The reason 200X MOTU didn’t work isn’t so much because they tried to stay true to the characters. While I like it a lot, the new series was kind of dry. It lacked the humor of the original, which I think is a central ingrediant for a kids show. They can still have plenty of actions and serious plots while having humor and NOT making it campy in the process. Such balances do exist. MOTU also almost focused too much on secondary characters. It was nice to see more of those characters than we did in the original 80s MOTU show, but they really didn’t devlop the He-man character enough as a result.
Then aside from the show itself, 200X MOTU suffered from being on cable, having toys that were hard to find, and just having an overall lack of promotion and advertising. If anything, the reason it didn’t succeed isn’t because of the ways it stayed true to the original, but rather it was because of the ways that it deviated. The original toon and toy line had TONS of advertising promotion, and the show had humor and heart. All of these things were almost absent from the new series.
T-Cats could still have a great come back. And they don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel because of it. They just have to promote themselves well and do a good job of maintaining a good balance. Sure, some change is good and not everything should remain 100% the same. But, they shouldn’t go so far from the source material that it practically becomes unrecognizable. If they are going to do that, then they may as well just come up with something completely new and not bother resurrecting Thundercats. If they find a good balance between everything, it will work.