Unbalanced Camp
'Masters of the Universe' (Film Club #15)
I never thought I’d watch Masters of the Universe before I got around to watching The Odyssey, but I did. It dropped on Prime Video last weekend. In an attempt to watch quite literally anything other than the oodles of YouTube Gamer Slop that Prime loves to repackage into ‘shows’ for kids, I sat down and watched it with the kiddos.
I was more of a Thundercats kid growing up, but I did have a Cringer action figure. (I still do, somewhere, I think.) I definitely remember the cartoon (and its sister show in the same universe, She-Ra Princess of Power), so the characters are familiar to me (Man-At-Arms, Teela, Evil-Lyn, Fisto, Cringer, The Sorceress, etc.), and I had a general idea of what to expect. What I’ve always been curious about is the setting itself. Now, don’t get me wrong: I know it was the 80s and most cartoons (if not the overwhelming majority of cartoons) were designed to sell toys to children, but it’s really fascinating when you sit down and think about it.
Eternia (and Etheria, for that matter) both seem to exist in this hybrid world of science fiction and fantasy where magic meets straight-up technology. It’s one of the few examples I can think of where the two are blended effectively and honestly, without much in the way of comment. While She-Ra tended to be more colorful, I remember He-Man being… dark and not having much in the way of anything beyond the castle fleshed out or developed in the world beyond.
Again, I get it. I’m probably asking too much of an 80s cartoon— but I was curious to see what the live-action movie would be like.
And the answer is: it’s pretty good.
The movie opens in Eternos, the capital city of Eternia, where young Prince Adam (Artie Wilkinson-Hunt) and his friend Teela (Eire Farrell) are being trained in the art of battle by Duncan, the king’s Man-At-Arms (Idris Elba). The forces of Skeletor attack the city, and the royal family attempts to flee to the security of Castle Grayskull, but along the way, Duncan is gravely injured by Trap Jaw. King Randor (James Purefoy) stays behind to give Queen Marlena (Charlotte Riley) and Adam time to make it to the fortress. Once there, she asks The Sorceress (Morena Baccarin) to send Adam to a place no one will ever find him, namely her homeworld, Earth.
That last part is something of a wild reveal that slides right by. Queen Marlena is from Earth? How did she get to Eternia? I have questions!
Adam flees through the portal with the Sword of Power, but being a kid and the sword being so big, he loses his grip on the sword, and it goes one way, and he goes another and winds up on Earth.
Fifteen years later, an adult Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) works in HR and lives in Oklahoma City with his friend Hussein, and he’s obsessed with tracking down the sword. He tries dating and doing the real-world things you would expect adults would be interested in, but his tendency to overshare and tell the truth about his origins means he doesn’t get many second dates. Finally, someone sends him a message saying that they have found the sword, and it turns out to be correct. Adam reclaims the sword at a comic store, and the next day is arrested for stealing it.
In transit to the police station (in quite literally the most unrealistic cop car I’ve ever seen. There would definitely be a cage in the back), Beast Man, Skeletor’s henchman, shows up to get the sword, and shortly after, he’s rescued by a now adult Teela. (Camila Mendes).
I have questions! There’s a completely different and potentially much more interesting movie here, because what happened to Adam during those fifteen years? Who raised him? How did he grow up? How is he not heavily medicated and potentially in psychiatric care?
Anyway: Teela finds him and gets him safely back to her ship and Eternia. Things haven’t been great since he left. Skeletor rules Eternia and the warriors are in hiding, resisting his rule the best they can. Adam fails to convince them of who he is, mainly thanks to his terrible childhood nicknames for all of them (Fisto, Ram-Man, etc), and he gets locked up with Teela and Duncan, who is now a drunk.
When Skeletor’s forces track them down, the four flee and rally the others, and Adam successfully summons the power of Grayskull, transforming into He-Man and defeating Trap Jaw to allow them to escape. Unfortunately, the others are captured, and after Skeletor executes Moss-Man, Fisto admits that Adam has the sword.
Skeletor then reveals to He-Man that his parents are alive, and the heroes head for Snake Mountain for what they think is a final battle. Adam defeats his personal guard and faces Skeletor, but King Randor is mortally wounded. Knocked unconscious, he reverts to his mortal form and is imprisoned with the others- including Queen Marlena and Cringer.
The Sword of Power won’t work for Skeletor, and Evil-Lynn suggests a ritual at Castle Grayskull to steal the power once and for all, and it’s here where the final confrontation takes place. The Sword is shattered, and all is seemingly lost, but the Sorceress appears to Adam and tells him that the power resides within him, so he can reforge the sword himself and defeat Skeletor once and for all.
Six months later, everything is happy again. Queen Marlena rules over Eternos. Prince Adam welcomes his roommate from Oklahoma City to prove that everything is real, and when a report of a disturbance comes in, He-Man and a newly armored Battle Cat leap into action.
(Post-credit scenes include Orko showing up to deliver the moral of the story and a tease about Queen Marlena reuniting both of her children, which cuts to Princess Adora leading a battle on Etheria. Evil-Lynn (of course, because this is He-Man) goes to retrieve Skeletor’s skull, and as she does so, evil laughter is heard.
Okay, let’s unpack this movie, shall we?
The Good is simple here: this is just so much fun. It’s not overly complicated; there’s lots of fan service and sly, ‘almost but not quite breaking the 4th wall’ nods to the camera that clearly demonstrate that this movie is not taking itself too seriously and it’s trying to be fun. And that’s awesome— the music alone is almost worth watching it for— a nice piano motif of The Cure’s ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ cuts to the actual song. Queen’s ‘Princes of the Universe’ also makes a perfectly timed appearance, and there’s an 80s flavor (synth, etc) to the music that I enjoyed greatly.
The Ambivalent Stuff is more complicated. I don’t think making a dark and gritty super serious He-Man movie would have been the right move. People already complain about how dark movies and streaming seem these days, and color is bleaching its way out of the design landscape, so I think it would have fallen flat. But I almost feel like they got the balance wrong here: you want to honor the cartoon source material, but also infuse something fresh into it, and they almost got there, but they also left too many unanswered questions on the table.
Queen Marlena is from Earth. What if Adam has grandparents? What if there’s like a Harry Potter situation where they try to convince him that he’s not He-Man? What if (and if this is a reference too far for you, my apologies) you have an Amy Pond from Doctor Who-like situation where he’s waiting and waiting for someone to come rescue him, but no one ever does? There’s a glaring fifteen-year period that they just glide right over, and I get why they did it. It’s a He-Man movie— you want to get to the fun stuff like the fighting and defeating Skeletor, but I do think mining this just a little bit more— like, don’t get lost in these weeds, man— would have made this a far more robust and interesting movie.
The Not-So-Good Stuff is easy: I’m not convinced Jared Leto was the right choice for Skeletor. I don’t think he quite has the comedic timing and the camp necessary to pull it off. He can do evil really, really well— like when he gets pissed at Evil-Lynn and grabs her arm? Evil shit. But everything else? It falls flat a lot of the time, and with a character like Skeletor being so central to the story, you can’t really afford not to hit a home run with the casting. Alison Brie was so good and so perfect as Evil-Lynn, because she balanced the villainy with just the right amount of camp. Skeletor needed that balance, and it just wasn’t there. (I don’t know if Jack Black would have done it, but that’s the kind of comedic villain energy you need for Skeletor, and although Jared Leto is really good in some roles, he didn’t quite have what was needed here.)
Overall, this has ‘cult-classic’ written all over it, and I think it might wind up being sneakily seen as genuinely good in a few years. I am bummed that it did not make the box office necessary to justify a sequel, as that obvious tease of She-Ra was trying to set up, but you never know. In the meantime, this was just plain fun. And sometimes, that’s exactly what you need. My Grade: *** out of ****
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