Why the CGI He-man and the Masters of the Universe series is under-rated

It took story elements from Revelation and did them better

Yeah, I said it. I'm about to put Kevin Smith on BLAST here in a moment so hold onto your butts:

It's crazy how the CGI He-man reboot that took MANY creative liberties with the source material made for kids is smarter, funnier, more emotional, and has way better writing than Kevin's divisive pseudo-continuation of the 1980s original aimed at theoretical adults. what's even crazier is that the CGI series shares a lot of the same plot points as that OTHER show, such as: the sword getting broken, Skeletor seemingly being destroyed only for him to cheat death by way of attaching his essence onto a magical artifact and coming back in a new more powerful form, He-man going berserk for an episode or two, Teela going through an arc of discovering the truth of her parentage and becoming the new sorceress of Grayskull, even ending with a tease of Hordak as the next big bad after Skeletor. but the difference here is all in the execution, as the CG series took those plot points and executed them BETTER than in revelation. "how so?" you may ask, well let me explain:

For starters, He-Man himself is actually the main character in the CGI series and isn't dead for half the episodes. no bait-and-switch here. Second, CGI Teela (in spite of being a very different interpretation of the character) is a much more likable female lead than Revelation Teela who was a selfish, insufferable b*tch who whined about Adam keeping his identity a secret in front of grieving parents who just lost their son (seriously, how dumb do you have to be to not figure out that Prince Adam and He-man are one and the same already? they look nearly identical except one's buffer and dressed like a male stripper in a furry loincloth). It probably helps that the CGI show pretty much does away with the whole "secret identity" thing (at least at the beginning) thus avoiding the possibility of such needless conflicts altogether. not only that, but CGI also did the whole "savage he-man" plotline better. unlike Revelation where Adam becomes He-Hulk because "guess I'll try summoning the power without the sword and see what happens" for some... reason. meanwhile the CGI version has Adam turn evil by being literally drowned in liquid Havoc (same stuff that gave Skeletor's crew their power) after falling into the belly of a giant serpent made from all the snakemen combined together, bursting out of the beast's stomach now as a Havoc-possessed version of He-Man (Havoc-man?) corrupted by being exposed to raw Havoc energy. not only that, they have He-Man act like a stereotypical dudebro while under the influence of Havoc which is pretty hilarious.

Then there's Skeletor, who in the CGI series is played excellently by veteran voice actor Ben Diskin (AKA Numbuh 1 from Codename: Kids Next Door, Eddie Brock from The Spectacular Spider-Man, Haida from Aggretsuko, Kaneo Takarada from Kill la Kill, Joseph Joestar from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, among others) and is pretty much the best part of the whole series, a villain that walks the fine line between scary and silly being able to act as both a legitimate threat and a large ham at the same time along with being unapologetically evil at the same time without a single sympathetic bone in his body while chewing the scenery with every scene he's in. I mean no offense to Mark Hamill, he's an excellent actor, but he was miscast as Skeletor because when he voiced ol' skull boi in Revelation he was pretty much doing his Joker voice. seriously, he's not even trying to change the voice up not even a little bit. also having Skeletor being so easily tricked into giving up the sword by Evil-lyn by offering to ride his "bone" so to speak just makes your main villain look like a gullible idiot. meanwhile Chad CGI Skeletor managed to steal the throne from Randor and conquer Eternos, kicked Evelyn off his team after she only attempted to double-cross him once, died and came back as a ghost to manipulate Krass into turning to the dark side and made her raise an army of undead snake soldiers, forged himself a new body from King Grayskull's bones, became a god, and nearly remade the universe in his own image and would have succeeded if He-man and friends didn't show up to defeat him and de-power him back into Keldor.

Not only that, but the CGI series better utilized both Alan Oppenheimer and Kevin Conroy by casting them in far more meaningful roles than what little Revelation gave them. Oppenheimer as King Grayskull was a stroke of genius with this incarnation of the character being like a precursor to both He-Man and Skeletor at the same time, with Oppenheimer cleverly using his classic Skeletor voice (and iconic cackle) after Grayskull's fall to darkness when becomes possessed by the power of Havoc. And even though Conroy's Hordak only appeared for a few seconds as the stinger at the end of season 3 of the CGI series, hearing his voice still gave me goosebumps.