by Chris Bakker, Contributing Writer
It’s probably best to start this piece by saying that the original Masters of the Universe animated series aired before my time, and even beyond that I have no real memory of it airing in my country in any significant way. Instead, children of my age were treated to the finest animation Dutch television could afford to air in shows like King Arthur and the Knights of Justice. Suffice it to say that while I am aware of many of the tropes of the franchise through osmosis, I had no foundation upon which to build my expectations for the 2026 Masters of the Universe.
Fortunately, it strikes me as if I didn’t need any foundations, because this new film starring Nicholas Galitzine as the iconic He-Man feels exactly like a Saturday morning cartoon ripped from the 1980s and shoved into a 2020s cultural zeitgeist. It creates a movie that is somewhat at odds with itself, but in a way that I found to be relentlessly charming.
From placing He-Man – or Adam – in a modern-day workplace where he works in an HR department and learns to handle any and all issues with communication while his father tried to raise him to be a strong warrior, to him meeting old acquaintances by calling them by names he gave them when he was a young child, the movie acknowledges the inherent silliness the franchise put in front of children in the 80s and moves past it. “You’re ‘Fisto,’ because you fist people,” is likely the exact amount of thought the people at Mattel put into the character’s name upon his inception, but it’s entirely unlikely everyone in this universe should adhere to that extreme level of nominative determinism. The movie winks at these things because even today’s children have learned to expect more from their entertainment, but it knows better than to try to rectify these things by giving all these characters proper names instead.
It’s that level of acknowledgement that the movie gives to just about everything, as well, and that’s where your mileage may vary. If you’re looking for a movie that takes the lore of its setting seriously, you may come out feeling like the movie’s making fun of you for liking the setting as-is. However, if you’re in the market for something that contextualizes the somewhat childish things about its setting as the way a literal child thinks of his world and uses that for comedic value, you’re in the right place.
Because that’s what Masters of the Universe might be first and foremost; a comedy. It features plenty of action sequences that are at times delightfully inventive, but mostly in the way that a Guardians of the Galaxy movie does, and there’s a lot of similarities you can draw between James Gunn’s Guardians films and Masters of the Universe in general. Its vibrant color palette, its ragtag band of heroes, and its ability to shift between somewhat serious and deeply unserious as needed, aligns itself very well with that particular comic book franchise.
But Masters of the Universe takes it one step further, and this step is courtesy of Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn, and especially Jared Leto as Skeletor. As someone who has developed a deep disdain for Jared Leto as a person, I found myself growing increasingly annoyed at how much he was making me enjoy his performance. He and Brie provide a tag-team of villains that are as ludicrous and unserious as the heroes, but in a way that doesn’t diminish their position as the villains of the movie. It’s a little bit of a magic trick they’re able to pull off where they succeed in being menacing and evil when they really need to be but have no problem turning around and providing some of the best jokes the movie has to offer.
At the end of the day, the tone we expect from a movie based on a cartoon from the 1980s might be different for all of us, and this tone specifically really worked for me as someone who went into the screening not knowing what to expect. It’s clear the phrase “Let’s have fun with it” was used at least several times in putting Masters of the Universe together, and in the spaces in between, some time was found to touch on a few evergreen themes about what it means to stand up for the people you care about. Director Travis Knight’s previous work may have meant more to me than this, and it’s not on the level of the Guardians movies or Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves; but it looks striking, it’s filled with actors who know exactly what movie they’re in, and I got a good handful of solid laughs out of it. From a Masters of the Universe movie, I’d be foolish to want more than that.
Rating: Liked It
Masters of the Universe is currently playing in theaters
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