Again in 2010, when Cartoon Community first introduced its plan to reboot the beloved 1985 animated TV sequence Thundercats, the primary thought that went by my thoughts was, “That’s nice! Do Blackstar subsequent!” In 2014, when Boat Rocker Media introduced its reboot of 1981’s Hazard Mouse, similar factor: “Huh, attention-grabbing, however do Blackstar subsequent.” 2016’s Disney reveal about its reboot of 1987’s Duck Tales? “Rad. However… Blackstar?”
And so it went, 12 months after 12 months, with the bulletins about 2018’s Netflix reboot of She-Ra: Princess of Energy, 2021’s He-Man reboot Masters of the Universe: Revelation, the CG model of Inspector Gadget, the American Voltron replace Voltron: Legendary Defender, half a dozen new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers initiatives, a little-loved second Thundercats sequence, and each single Smurfs film. I get it — the youngsters of the ’80s are producers and writers and showrunners now, with sufficient clout to get their childhood reminiscences become new exhibits. However apparently none of them watched Blackstar, simply one of many coolest animated sequence of the Eighties, constructed across the coolest sword. There’s a direct genetic line between the success of 1977’s Star Wars and the wave of space-set, fantasy-themed Saturday morning cartoons that carefully adopted. Star Wars beget ABC’s in style Thundarr the Barbarian, a post-apocalyptic dystopian-future fantasy a couple of muscular hero who fought oppressive magical villains whereas sporting a fur skirt, hanging out with a leotard-clad sorceress, and kind of carrying a lightsaber and touring with a Wookiee. Thundarr helped encourage Blackstar, CBS’ equal present, a couple of muscular hero who fought oppressive magical villains whereas sporting a fur skirt, hanging out with a leotard-clad sorceress, and carrying his personal type of laser sword. (No Wookiee, although — as an alternative, sequence hero Blackstar obtained to experience a dragon.)
Each exhibits have been on the vanguard of the post-Star Wars darkish fantasy wave, which included films like Excalibur, Conan the Barbarian, and Dragonslayer. However in contrast to most of these ’80s fantasies — Flash Gordon apart — Thundarr and Blackstar saved a foot in Star Wars’ science fiction roots, hanging onto the concept of worlds the place know-how and mysticism met and clashed. Thundarr was extra in style, however Blackstar was extra compelling: a weirder, darker, richer world with much more happening, and a way more imaginative sword that wasn’t only a frivolously reskinned lightsaber. Although the present solely managed a single season and 13 episodes (in contrast with Thundarr’s two-year, 21-episode stint), Blackstar’s potential nonetheless sticks with me many years later. The story briefly: An astronaut from a future Earth, John Blackstar, enters a black gap in his experimental timeship, and winds up trapped on an historic alien world, stuffed with magic and monsters. (It’s primarily an isekai sequence, many years earlier than isekai was the most well liked development in anime and manga.) The native Sauron equal, the Overlord, dominates the planet Sagar with an artifact referred to as the Powerstar, an enormous two-handed crystalline power sword. By some means, the Powerstar will get damaged into equivalent halves, producing two badass weapons: the Energy Sword, which the Overlord nonetheless holds, and the Star Sword, which falls into Blackstar’s palms. Blackstar winds up because the figurehead in a rising revolt towards the Overlord’s tyranny. In the meantime, the Overlord needs not simply to squash this budding revolt, however to reclaim the Star Sword and take up the Powerstar once more.
Picture: Filmation
In a sequence of interviews for Blackstar’s 2006 DVD launch, the creators and writers cop to a few of their influences in writing the present: The protagonist is somewhat bit John Carter of Mars (the unique Edgar Rice Burroughs model, not the 2012 fantasy-movie model) and somewhat bit Flash Gordon, although he additionally carefully resembles the protagonist of the 1979 live-action sequence Buck Rogers within the twenty fifth Century. The Trobbits — tiny comedy-relief individuals who discover and rescue Blackstar after his timeship crashes — take somewhat inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien’s hobbits, and much more from Disney’s seven dwarfs, full with the “one character trait apiece” dynamic, and a youngest member who by no means speaks. (There are additionally seven of them.) The Overlord is someplace between Darth Vader and Ming the Cruel, whereas Blackstar’s sorceress companion, Mara, is principally only a reskin of Thundarr’s Princess Ariel, with very comparable powers, the same elegant, educated character and position as social gathering historian, and comparable apparent crush on the oblivious hero. Though these characters not often really feel distinctive, the mythology and setting of Blackstar’s world very a lot do, and the central plot machine of the Powerstar is exclusive in fantasy animation. The symmetry of the central villain and hero every having half of the world’s most legendary weapon — which is to say, half of the ability left in a world struggling to outline itself — is a intelligent riff on the concept heroes and villains ought to mirror one another for optimum thematic affect. Their connection by the sundered Powerstar provides the protagonist and antagonist an intimate private connection, a motive to conflict repeatedly.
Picture: Filmation
It additionally helps outline their characters, and what they do with energy. It’s no coincidence that within the Overlord’s palms, the Energy Sword is all blunt pressure, used solely to blast or slash, whereas Blackstar makes use of the Star Sword as a finesse weapon with versatile magical talents. (Too versatile, actually: Its magic is ill-defined, and the present’s writers invented new Star Sword powers in almost each episode.) The concept of those two swords as yin and yang, excellent halves that assemble right into a better entire, is unusually elegant for an ’80s cartoon — and one of many sequence’ many concepts that was by no means actually explored to full benefit. For contemporary viewers, Blackstar is pretty near unwatchable. Its manufacturing firm, Filmation, emerged from a sequence of business jobs within the Sixties, however by the Eighties, it specialised in budget-priced tv animated fully in America, moderately than in cheaper abroad manufacturing homes. That necessitated a number of cost-saving units, like recycling the identical hand-drawn sequences many instances over, usually throughout the similar episode, and utilizing a hilariously restricted library of sound results. Blackstar’s sound design is garish and repetitive, with vocal work that feels like nearly everyone seems to be shouting. The scripts are clunky: Blackstar is conceived as a quippy hero who peppers his foes with snarky one-liners, however his jokes are cataclysmically stiff. About the very best he can muster is a jaunty “Placing on somewhat weight, aren’t you, Rocko?” when hefting one rock elemental to toss it onto one other throughout a battle. And the sequence is designed for the syndication of the period, which means that episodes would possibly re-air in any order. So there’s no story improvement, no character arcs, not even a gap episode to ascertain Blackstar’s origins. Continuity glitches, inconsistent design and storytelling, and budget-saving sluggish pans throughout work abound.
Picture: Filmation
However the world it’s set in is fascinating. There are hints right here and there of historic applied sciences and centuries-old civilizations buried underneath what’s turn out to be a verdant forest, centered on the magic of the big central Sagar tree, a mystic font of energy the Trobbits dwell in and have a tendency to. Sagar is a world stuffed with bizarre creatures that appear both like evolutions of acquainted animals, or like magical constructs — shark-bats and frog-rabbits and monkey-birds, lengthy earlier than Avatar: The Final Airbender made these sorts of amalgams a operating joke. These slow-pan, cash-saving portray backgrounds are wealthy, elaborate, and colourful, suggesting a world with the darkness and element of Jim Henson’s The Darkish Crystal. Whereas a lot of Eighties animation was concerning the clear line between good and evil, there’s a way all through Blackstar that many of the world of Sagar isn’t aspected in such a black-and-white manner. It’s only a chaotic smash, the place hungry monsters, prim however weary civilizations, and barbaric enclaves all exist aspect by aspect, divided by deadly geography. Each scattered outpost and wandering monster is equally harmful to Blackstar and the Overlord, however ripe for both of them to use for a bonus of their ongoing struggle. There are even hints at a nuanced system for magic, the place the psychological energy of sorcery and the basic energy of nature magic are various things that work in numerous methods. After Blackstar’s single season ended, Filmation instantly adopted it with the Mattel-backed and much better funded He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a sequence primarily based on an present toy line, however simply as clearly primarily based on components borrowed from Blackstar. As soon as once more, there’s a muscular hero in a fur skirt with a magic sword, battling a sorcerous villain in a chaotic techno-fantasy world full of environmental hazards and bizarre, wildly various humanoids.
Picture: Filmation
Filmation common Alan Oppenheimer voiced each Blackstar’s Overlord and He-Man’s Skeletor; equally, Linda Gary voiced Blackstar’s main woman Mara and He-Man’s Teela. Filmation employees author Tom Ruegger developed the sequence bible for each exhibits, and it exhibits, in all the pieces from the same heroes’ and rogues’ galleries to the sprawling high-and-low-tech world the place magic and robots co-exist. One He-Man episode, “The Treatment,” even reused a number of Blackstar sequences, reintroducing Blackstar’s dragon-horse Warlock as a beast He-Man saves from an enormous spider, then rides round. Whereas He-Man had lots of the similar budgetary and aesthetic limitations as Blackstar — regularly recycled animation, obnoxious sound design, goofy and infrequently ineffectual comedy reduction — He-Man was instantly extra in style. So in style, in actual fact, that toy maker Galoob tried to nab a few of Mattel’s gross sales success by placing out a weirdly modeled toy line for Blackstar, two full years after the present was canceled. (These toys didn’t do effectively.) Now, we’re in an period the place He-Man will get reboot after reboot — an all-ages animated model, a CG model for youths, a brand new live-action film scheduled for 2026 — whereas Blackstar is all however forgotten. And I discover that so unusual. The bid to reboot and replace each hit cartoon of the Eighties looks as if a pure sufficient development for an period of media fueled by nostalgia, however I’ve by no means understood why there isn’t extra of it for Blackstar, a sequence that was extra imaginative and impressive than both the predecessor it was attempting to outdo or the follower that obtained all of the glory.
Picture: Filmation
In the best way of so many different ’80s cartoons, my curiosity in a reboot is way much less about re-creating an usually janky, restricted, cheaply made TV sequence, and far more about realizing the potential these characters and this world couldn’t benefit from within the Eighties. A contemporary model with up-to-date animation might give John Blackstar a correct backstory, and really make some sense of the most important hero/villain themes the ’80s model frivolously touched on. It might benefit from the retro-future magic setting and the sprawling authentic world of Sagar in methods Filmation by no means dreamed of.
And most significantly, a correct trendy replace might lastly dig into the occasion that break up the Powerstar and turned its two halves into thematic weapons. There are such a lot of story potentialities for that specific cool sword, simply ready to be found by a brand new era.
