Before I dig into former Laika<\/a> front man Travis Knight\u2019s take on the Prince of Eternia, I think the most interesting thing this movie represents doesn\u2019t have much to do with the movie at all. There\u2019s an interesting conversation that flairs up every now and then, and I think we\u2019re in the middle of it again at the moment. It\u2019s the \u201cit\u2019s a bad movie, but\u2026\u201d conversation and it goes one of two ways. \u201cIt\u2019s a bad movie, but\u2026 it\u2019s fun and i love it\u201d or \u201cit\u2019s a bad movie, but\u2026 but nothing, it\u2019s just bad.\u201d Masters of the Universe is landing at a time when we seem to be having that conversation a lot.<\/p>\n It\u2019s happened a handful of times now in rapid succession. There was The Super Mario Galaxy Movie<\/a>, my own review included, then it was Mortal Kombat II<\/a> and The Mandalorian and Grogu<\/a> after that. These are movies with established brands and identities and fan bases that go back decades. Also, they are by no means great movies, but\u2026<\/p>\n It\u2019s kind of a coin flip as to whether you like them in spite of a relative lack of quality. It\u2019s a quirk of fate, an intangible quality that has nothing to do with the actual movie at all. Maybe you’re a hardcore Nintendo fan and so long as all the characters from the games show up on screen, that\u2019s a blast and we\u2019re good. Or maybe you were the only kid at your school that had a Sega and you\u2019re ride or die Team Sonic. Then you don\u2019t have time for Mario or his Galaxy and the movie just seems bad. The point is, \u201cit\u2019s a bad movie, but\u2026\u201d has nothing to do with the movie. If it did, then it would just be a bad movie.<\/p>\n There\u2019s something interesting about this particular batch of movies too, Mario, Mortal Kombat, Mando, and now Masters of the Universe — in addition to being alliterative, which I just noticed — have all been around for a long time. It\u2019s interesting to have The Mandalorian, coming from a franchise famous for creating characters that make good toys<\/a>, in such close proximity to Masters of the Universe, a franchise famous for spinning off from a successful toy line. We’re in a wave of fan service that\u2019s more tsunami-ish than usual.<\/p>\n Masters of the Universe Movie Images The term “fan service” gets thrown around a lot like it’s a bad thing, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s always fair. If there\u2019s an established fan base for something, by all means, give them what they want. The real challenge is making it something anybody outside of that fan base will give a damn about. But that\u2019s one area where Masters of the Universe actually succeeds admirably, because director Travis Knight and every other creative in front of and behind the camera seems to simultaneously love He-Man and realize how stupid the whole thing is.<\/p>\n And while I continue putting off really talking about Masters of the Universe in this Masters of the Universe review, here\u2019s a quick aside to say I\u2019m very aware that not every movie has to be The Godfather, not every movie should be, nor should every movie be compared to every other movie on the same scale, least of all The Godfather. The big takeaway here is that we all bring our whole selves to the movie, even those of us who are lucky enough to review them for a living. Me and He-Man? We go way back. If my gray doesn\u2019t give me away, I was inseparable from my He-Man toys<\/a> back when he was still just on the TV after school. Dolph Lundgren\u2019s run at the character in ’87 was probably my first experience with \u201cit\u2019s a bad movie, but\u2026\u201d I was a He-Man kid and that makes me a He-Man guy to this day and that colors my reaction to this\u2026 I\u2019ll say it now\u2026 very not bad movie.<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t expecting much; none of the trailers were terribly inspiring. But I did hold out some hope specifically because of Travis Knight. His work with Laika, like Kubo and the Two Strings, is incredible<\/a> — some of my favorite stuff, in fact. Bumblebee was a lot better than I expected it to be because he imbued that lovable yellow robot alien with some humanity, which is a thing the director honed in all those years of doing stop-motion. And one of my favorite things about this movie is that if it were animated, like most of Knight\u2019s other work, it would\u2019ve been the same movie.<\/p>\n I was a He-Man kid and that makes me a He-Man guy to this day and that colors my reaction to this\u2026 I\u2019ll say it now\u2026 very not bad movie.\u201c<\/p>\n The action and physicality throughout the movie is solid. The fight scenes are vibrant and interesting. They don\u2019t reinvent any wheels but they are just different-looking enough from the rest of action cinema’s latest offerings to make things fun. A few sequences get overly CG and start to feel a little empty, but by and large every time anybody kicks ass on screen, they really do it.<\/p>\n Idris Elba, in particular, as Duncan\/Man-At-Arms is a character built around his fighting. It feeds into his entire arc. He\u2019s a guy who has strongly held ideas of what it means to be a big strong man, ideas that are put to the test throughout the movie. What\u2019s great about Duncan as well is that he\u2019s really the one who gets to grow and change. Nicholas Galitzine as Prince Adam doesn\u2019t have nearly as far to travel, and actually gets to be the catalyst for others to change more often than he\u2019s developing himself. Adam is more of an avatar for the themes of the film — that strength and manhood isn\u2019t about muscles as much as listening and empathy. <\/p>\n Adam, in his time on Earth, found his way to a career in human resources, which is a remarkably on-the-nose alter ego for this version of He-Man, but it works more than it doesn\u2019t. He\u2019s portrayed as a kid who hasn\u2019t grown up at all, living in a room with walls still papered with drawings from his childhood. That\u2019s the world he\u2019s stuck in, which is a perfect, and frankly ballsy, metaphor for the audience movies like this are targeting.<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the cast, Camila Mendes as Teela doesn\u2019t get as much to do in the action department, but she\u2019s definitely got her moments. The rest of the heroes of Eternia each have their own action figure speciality that keep the action choreography spicy, but their real purpose is the comedy.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a grinning self-awareness to this movie that is, as I said before, its biggest strength. Take the way the character names, pulled from a 50-year-old toy line, feel like a first draft. Ram-Man and Fisto and Mekaneck, Evil-Lyn — whose name is just a phonetic way to mispronounce Evelyn — they\u2019re all, quite frankly, pretty dumb. He-Man included. But instead of making the mistake of trying to have a guy named Ram-Man earnestly talk to another guy named He-Man, Masters of the Universe takes none of it seriously. And they don\u2019t stop there, nor should they have. Travis Knight and company make the savvy choice to not take anything else seriously either.<\/p>\n Travis Knight and company make the savvy choice to not take anything seriously.\u201c<\/p>\n There are synths and Brian May\u2019s shredding electric guitar in the score. Alison Brie is hilarious as Evil-Lyn while Kristen Wiig voices an angry battle droid that\u2019s been downgraded to a maid. There are sex jokes made at the expense of both Fisto and Ram-Man. Based on their names, you can imagine what low-hanging fruit those are, but the sheer joy and innocence with which they\u2019re delivered make them the only jokes that could possibly work in those moments. It all adds up to a film that\u2019s just this side of a proper spoof. In the way that Hot Shots loves Top Gun<\/a> as much as it is making fun of it, as Spaceballs is to Star Wars<\/a>, that\u2019s what Masters of the Universe is doing to\u2026 Masters of the Universe. It\u2019s why it\u2019s got a leg up on every other entry in decades-old-IP that we\u2019ve gotten this year. There\u2019s an understanding of the source material at play with Masters of the Universe that\u2019s as obvious as a sword-wielding barbarian in a fur loin cloth, and it\u2019s most obvious when they\u2019re talking about how silly Masters of the Universe is. It\u2019s a magic trick to pull that off as legibly as Travis Knight does here.<\/p>\n But weirdly enough, and this is the thing that surprised me more than anything else in this movie that I very much enjoyed, the most unhinged and terrific part of the film is Jared Leto as Skeletor. The Morbius actor hasn’t had the best run in recent years — it was most likely Blade Runner 2049<\/a> when Leto was featured this prominently in a movie that wasn\u2019t awful — but this version of Skeletor is fantastic. He\u2019s a swaggering weirdo with near limitless power that\u2019s only matched by his fear of losing it. There\u2019s a sass to him as well, an almost Deadpool-like meta layer, and if he had actual eyes and we could tell where he was looking, we might have caught him looking straight into the lens. There\u2019s even a joke about what could motivate him to do such terrible things and the answer we get is… he\u2019s just bad. He\u2019s got a skull for a face, so he\u2019s bad. There\u2019s really nothing more to it than that.<\/p>\n Again, like some of the low-hanging fruit in the film\u2019s humor, there\u2019s no new trails blazed by Skeletor\u2019s Staff of Havoc. It’s like the scene where he laughs maniacally for too long and has to tell Evil-Lyn that he\u2019s done and they can move on now. Instead of telling the same old jokes, they point out how these jokes are the same, and old, and manage to make that approach entertaining for the whole runtime. But peppered in the middle of that are bits that put Skeletor in new and modern situations to very funny effect. It\u2019s a strangely fascinating way to go about it, one that keeps the pace of the film sprinting all the way to the end.<\/p>\n I started this by writing (probably too much) preamble about the handful of \u201cit\u2019s a bad movie, but\u2026\u201d entries to iconic franchises we\u2019ve gotten lately. I would\u2019ve guessed Masters of the Universe was going to be another one, but I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong about that. This is a movie that knows exactly what it is and Travis Knight pulled it off. So no, it’s not The Godfather, it\u2019s not Super Mario Galaxy either, but for what it is, and considering my relationship to the franchise, I think it\u2019s pretty great.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/a>Idris Elba as Man-At-Arms<\/p>\n