\n\t\t\t\t\t\t | Published 11 hours ago\t\t<\/p>\n
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Like most dudes born in the early \u201880s, I really love He-Man; in fact, I love him so much that my home office is a shrine to the Masters of the Universe, and I\u2019m counting down the days until I can play the recently announced retro brawler (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Dragon Pearl of Destruction). Accordingly, I am cautiously optimistic about the upcoming He-Man movie, but some recent casting news has me worried. Comedian Kristen Wiig has been cast to play Roboto, and you don\u2019t have to be the Sorceress to know this is going to anger huge chunks of the He-Man fandom.<\/p>\n
In the original action figure comic, the 2002 reboot, and the two Netflix Filmation sequel shows, Roboto is an artificial creature built by Man-At-Arms. Historically, the character has been voiced entirely by men, starting with Alan Oppenheimer<\/a> (who also voiced Skeletor) in the character\u2019s one episode from the 1983 cartoon show. He was later voiced by Michael Donovan in the 2002 reboot show and voiced by Justin Long<\/a> in Kevin Smith\u2019s 2021 series Masters of the Universe: Revelation.<\/p>\n On paper, it doesn\u2019t really matter who voices Roboto because the artificial character has no real gender. But because men have always voiced the character, Kristen Wiig playing the character in the upcoming live-action film will disrupt many older fans of the franchise. That\u2019s because, to put it mildly, those fans are men, and most men (according to recent polling) have more conservative views and often generally don\u2019t like changes to pre-established lore.<\/p>\n For example, when Revelation came out, far too many fans in various online forums were annoyed by what they saw as a bait-and-switch: He-Man<\/a> died in episode one and came back to life in episode five. Netflix<\/a> only released five episodes at first, so for about four months, female sidekick Teela was the main character. Some fans were annoyed by this, seeing her increased prominence and the addition of Teela\u2019s own female sidekick (Andra, a race-swapped version of a forgotten \u201880s comic character) as indications that Smith had made the traditionally male-dominated world of He-Man too woke.<\/p>\n Personally, I had no problem with these aspects of Revelation because Teela (voiced by Buffy legend Sarah Michelle Gellar<\/a>) did a great job and, thanks to flashbacks, there were still plenty of He-Man appearances even after he died. However, my opinion doesn\u2019t change that these decisions spawned a legion of angry YouTube<\/a> videos that threatened to overshadow what ultimately turned out to be a great cartoon. Now, the live-action movie, which has Kristen Wiig voice a male-presenting, traditionally male-voiced character, threatens to reignite all these old woke\/anti-woke debates yet again.<\/p>\n Wiig may still voice Roboto as a male; in animation, nobody usually blinks an eye when women voice popular male characters, like Nancy Cartwright voicing Bart Simpson or Pamela Adlon voicing Bobby Hill. But even if that happens, Kristen Wiig was presumably cast because of her skills as a veteran comedian, and that means Roboto\u2013traditionally a very serious character\u2013may suddenly become the movie\u2019s comic relief.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s a role traditionally filled by Orko, the floating imp with wonky magical powers. Considering Orko hasn\u2019t been announced for the movie, the idea that the film may completely change one character to replace a more popular character\u2019s role is likely to further ruffle fan feathers.<\/p>\n This is one of those cases where I\u2019d love to be wrong: I want this He-Man movie to succeed and give this franchise the mainstream revival it deserves. But casting Kristen Wiig (an actor whom I love, by the way) to play a genderbent version of an iconic character intended to replace another, much more popular character is a recipe for disaster. If the movie bombs, this casting choice might do to He-Man what even Skeletor couldn\u2019t do: destroy him for good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Chris Snellgrove | Published 11 hours ago Like most dudes born in the early \u201880s, I really…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1840,64,63,134,595,63586,63587,63588,63589,45020,63590,344],"class_list":["post-84461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-animation","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-fantasy","tag-he-man","tag-he-man-and-the-masters-of-the-universe","tag-justin-long","tag-kevin-smith","tag-kristen-wiig","tag-masters-of-the-universe","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/image-313-900x506.png\")
Roboto in the 1983 Masters of the Universe cartoon<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/image-314-900x506.png\")
Actress Kristen Wiig<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/image-312-900x506.png\")
Roboto in Masters of the Universe: Revelation<\/p>\n