Masters of the Universe Review

Hailing from an era defined by kids’ cartoons designed purely to sell toys, Masters of the Universe was one of the cheesiest and most ridiculous, especially amongst the few still broadly recognizable this deep into the twenty-first century. It wielded a then-popular blend of high-fantasy and futuristic, space-based sci-fi easily at home on the side of any cargo van screaming power metal from the speakers. As the children of the 80s are in their prime moviemaking years, we’ve seen the subgenre make the jump to movie theaters a fair number of times over the past decade and a half, from John Carter to Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets to Thor: Ragnarok. That said, most successful examples have been part of larger franchises, casting doubt on its stand-alone draw, despite their success on the small screen in Steven Universe, Sailor Moon, and others. As such, the subgenre remains in the shadows, influencing writers without giving them the confidence to wholly embrace it.

Part of the issue is that cultural sensibilities have largely moved on. Their target audience of teen and pre-teen boys incentivized clear tales of good and evil, right and wrong, with little room for nuance and scant interest in long-running stories. The broader monoculture was not yet so heavily invested in a post-modern deconstruction of every piece of media, allowing earnest, simple storytelling to make an impact. The 2018 incarnation of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power wonderfully navigated this challenge by mixing modern storytelling conventions with an embrace of the goofy lore and an updated animation style, and its popularity with critics and general audiences alike no doubt helped jostle this feature film out of development hell.

So why did director Travis Knight and writer Chris Butler (building off earlier drafts by Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, and David Callaham) lean so hard into rolling their eyes at every single detail of Eternia?

It begins in the opening narration delivered by Adam (Nicholas Galitzine), a flashback of his childhood during which he stops every thirty seconds or so to let you know that he knows this is all silly. Ten-year-old Adam (Artie Wilkinson-Hunt) has no interest in learning to be a warrior, introducing endless opportunities for tired, bland humor at his expense, and feints at the drama of disappointing his father, King Randor (James Purefoy). As Skeletor (Jared Leto, whose voice and motion capture animate this primarily CGI character) takes over Castle Grayskull, he gives an uncomfortably long laugh à la Dr. Evil, but with so little commitment that it doesn’t even land amongst his lackeys. The story ends by revealing modern-day Adam has been monologuing at his date, having not learned after fifteen years that it freaks people out. It turns out the cringe-worthy line from the trailer, in which Adam’s Earth-roommate Hussein (Christian Vunipola) says “That story makes you sound a little, very crazy.” is not an awkward edit, but a “joke”.

The dialog only gets worse from there, making heavy use of MCU-style quips and poorly rendered “fish out of water” plot beats as childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes) helps bring him back to his home planet. But not before placing Adam in an office environment awash in corporate gibberish that’s ostensibly meant to set him up as a hero who uses his words as well as his strength, despite never paying that off. Generally, when a movie is so front-loaded in laughing at you for daring to get invested in its fantasy world, at least you can count on it settling down in the final chunk as the heroes take stock of their failures and redouble their resolve to defeat the villain. Not so here: there is neither a letting up, nor meaningful character development. Yes, Adam’s outlook changes a few times, but it never results from anything happening on screen, reducing it to “because the script needed it” rather than any natural progression of the characters or plot.

Not that the plot gave me any reason for optimism. As soon as that opening offer concludes, the template has been set. The only deviations are omissions of steps on the hero’s journey, necessitated by the overly long setup, making the story feel incomplete despite clocking in at well over two hours. Very little of the prologue turns out to matter, and some of the most impactful moments are rescinded soon soon after Adam returns to Eternia. The team he assembles has little rapport, but it does have a hulking murderbot (Kristen Wiig), conveniently left with them by Skeletor’s goons because it’s been programmed not to fight – until Duncan (Idris Elba) conveniently remembers he has a flash drive that will reset her. Adam’s journey involves no refusal of the call or wandering in the wilderness nor learning what it will take to become the leader Eternia needs. Knight seems to think becoming He-Man more-or-less solves all of their problems, torpedoing dramatic tension in favor of muscles.

The movie is at its best when committing to the audacious action sequences. The variety of characters in the Royal Guard make for dynamic, varied fighting styles, as does the idiosyncratic character designs of good guys and bad guys alike. And the first sequence in which Adam transforms into He-Man is freaking awesome (never mind the moments that surround it). Unfortunately, it would appear that despite its monstrous $200 million budget, the bulk of its visual effects allotment went into Skeletor. He looks incredible, aided by a great performance from Leto, but everything else is simply dreadful. Lighting and blocking issues make it impossible to ignore the extensive use of LED walls, the CGI is especially rubbery during action scenes, and the whole thing looks cheap and gaudy, flattening out the richly designed alien planet. Why are you going to plop our heroes in the middle of a colorful, textured forest, just to wash out every background with impenetrable blur comparable to the Quantum Realm?

The most representative problem with this slopfest comes when the unmistakable “What’s Up?” plays during an otherwise unmemorable fight scene. Why needle drop a song that doesn’t feel like it has any business scoring action? Because that’s the primary reason 90s and 00s kids grew up knowing who He-Man was, courtesy of the combination of the two in one of the internet’s early viral videos. But again, Knight’s lack of commitment sunk an otherwise fine idea. Simply playing the song is already jarring, its tone off-putting if you’re unaware of the connection. So why not go all in and incorporate the most famous moments of the meme? It would be no less creatively compromised than the rest of the movie.

For a Masters of the Universe film to work in 2026, Knight and co. needed to lean hard into earnestness. That’s the magic of media from the 80s, and porting it into the 2020s is a bold move that would allow its fun to emerge more organically than the focus grouped mediocrity of most modern, franchise-driven blockbusters. By desperately winking at us that he’s in on the joke, going so far as to mock the name “He-Man” as meaningless, Knight has made it clear that nothing could be further from the truth.