Masters of the Universe returns to theaters for the first time since 1987. While this new film does a great job of bringing the world’s look and the characters’ designs to life in live action, it’s overshadowed by constant, mostly cringeworthy humor that undermines the other elements of the film.
Nicholas Galitzine stars as Prince Adam, aka He-Man, the prince of Eternia. When his homeworld is attacked by the evil forces of Skeletor (Jared Leto), he’s sent away for safety, along with the Sword of Power, to Earth. Separated from the sword while teleporting to Earth, Adam spends 15 years searching for the sword while working a corporate job in HR. Finally finding the sword, he’s reunited with his childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes), but finds that Skeletor has ravaged Eternia, and a small resistance force is all that’s left trying to stop him. The idea that Adam knows he’s from Eternia is an interesting twist on the sort of Superman setup the movie has, and the opening flashback to Adam’s childhood and Skeletor’s conquest of Eternia is well done, but shortly into the movie, the movie’s real tone takes over. This movie reminded me of Thor: Love and Thunder, and not in a good way. There are constant attempts at jokes and humor, which, for me, fell incredibly flat and were cringeworthy. It doesn’t allow anything, plotwise or characterwise, to exist without a character snarkily commenting on it or sucking any emotion or drama out of the scene. The original cartoon is obviously incredibly goofy, but the movie does seem to try to have some serious moments, like Man-at-Arms (Idris Elba) wallowing in his failure and becoming a drunk. Still, something will inevitably pop in to ruin those moments with comedy. Even the movie’s main thesis about toxic masculinity and the need for emotions as well as muscles is not taken seriously, as most of Adam’s attempts to use ideas like sensitivity training are played for laughs until the movie decides it actually wants you to take it seriously. It’s been a while since I saw Travis Knight’s Bumblebee, but I feel like that movie did a much better job of blending serious moments with humor while staying true to what fans would want from the Transformers (including the excellent but too-brief G1 flashback sequence). There were a few clever bits, like playing 4 Non Blondes on a car’s radio, but pretty much all the attempts at humor did not work for me at all.
Where the movie does work, though, is in the character designs and world-building. While the 1987 movie took liberties and didn’t include many existing characters, this movie is loaded with fan favorites who all look exactly like their animated and/or action-figure versions. Standouts are definitely Trap Jaw (Sam C. Wilson), Mekaneck (James Wilkinson), and Skeletor himself, as far as how impressively accurate they are in live-action. Various vehicles and locales are perfectly recreated, but the humor rears its head again: despite the slavish devotion to recreating the look of the characters and the world, a “this is also stupid” tone permeates the movie. The action sequences are mostly well done, and there are some solid fight scenes when Adam transforms into He-Man and takes on hordes of bad guys, with cool camera movements and sweeping shots that, along with the visuals, are the better parts of the movie.
Acting-wise, Galitzine is mostly tasked with being awkward and clumsy, even after he’s made his transformation into He-Man. There’s a hero’s journey arc in which Adam has to learn what it truly means to wield power and become He-Man, but he becomes a capable, brave warrior only extremely late in the film. A fun dynamic that could have leaned into the comedy is if, when Adam becomes He-Man, he is opposite, personality-wise and skill-wise, but then returns to his fumbling normal personality. He at least looks the part, having gotten impressively bulked up to play the muscle-bound warrior. Shockingly, Jared Leto is actually a really great Skeletor, landing somewhere between the monologing Frank Langella version and the sassy animated version. I would have preferred it if they let him stay intimidating and evil throughout the movie, but he also gets caught up in the movie’s snarky, meta humor very early on. The person who nails the perfect tone is Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn, with the perfect mix of actual menace and just enough self-awareness that she is funny when called on and a vamping villainess at other times. The rest of the cast is fine, although Camila Mendes is not particularly interesting or engaging as Teela.
While it nails the look of the world and its characters and has some fun action sequences, the exhausting, constant humor drags the movie down and ultimately makes it a miss for me. If you’re a massive MotU fan, the visuals may be enough to make it worth seeing, but this is one you can wait and check out on Prime Video later this year if you’re curious.
