If Kevin Smith‘s “brand” of filmmaking is anything, it’s about snappy dialogue and pop culture references. The filmmaker has packed every movie he has ever directed full of them, except Cop Out, where he didn’t have a hand in the writing. The writer/director took over showrunning duties for Netflix’s Masters of the Universe: Revelation, the first half of which was released earlier this week. And while the world of Eternia is pretty far out of range for most pop culture jokes, Smith did manage to pull a few things in — including a line that turned heads: “No glove, no love.”
In context, it can at least kind of fit into a PG-level animated show like the one Smith was making. Obviously for people who get the joke, it’s a little more coarse than you’re used to hearing tossed around Castle Grayskull, but there you have it.
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Smith took to Twitter to, as Dante Hicks would suggest, give credit where credit’s due.
Credit where credit’s due: I stole that line from fellow 80’s classic THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP! (But Fisto has a line in Part 2 that beats it!) @MastersOfficial Revelation is on @netflix, and y’all kept it in the Global Top 10 and in the Top 5 in lotsa countries all weekend!❤️ https://t.co/jA7ugD2DO4
— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) July 26, 2021
The World According to Garp is a 1982 movie, directed by George Roy Hill and starring Robin Williams in the title role. Written by Steve Tesich, the film is based on the 1978 novel The World According to Garp by John Irving. John Lithgow and Glenn Close both got supporting actor/actress nominations for their work on the film.
The risque reference comes from the second episode of Masters of the Universe: Revelation, titled “The Poisoned Chalice.” In the episode, Teela and Andra are tasked with a recovering a magical artifact called the Glove of Globolah, which was supposedly a source of great power, and given how well we know mystical objects work in this universe, that means everyone was vying to get their hands on it.
Like so many things in Masters of the Universe: Revelation, the Glove of Globolah might sound like it was made up for the Smith series, but instead was just an obscure piece of Masters of the Universe apocrypha — in this case, something that had appeared in a single issue of a British comic book in 1986. Other such additions to the official mythology include characters who previously existed only as toys, like Scare Glow and the heroes of Preternia, as well as the hoverboard-like flying discs from the live-action Masters of the Universe movie, making their first animated appearance to date.
