It is 2026. I’m reviewing Masters of the Universe.
*checks notes*
Are we sure this isn’t 1987? Did we travel back in time? Wait, they did that in the 1987 one.
It’s a movie based on a cartoon that was created to sell toys after Mattel couldn’t get the rights to Conan the Barbarian, and they had a bunch of toys they rebranded, repackaged, and made bank.
Oh, and the 2026 movies is good. Like, legitimately good. Better than anyone could rightfully expect.
It’s a headscratcher. Really. Here’s my non-spoilerly take (spoilers will be below).
This movie has a combination of genuine love and enthusiasm for the franchise and story, a willingness to play into the genre, a main character who is optimistic and enthusiastic and *good* in a way that too many current movies miss in their big dumb hero movies.
The side characters are capable, but not perfect. The villain is over-the-top and evil, without some “the Aeternians destroyed my village and are colonizers” background. Skeletor is just straight up evil and loving it, pretty much a perfect casting for Jared Leto (which is a sentence I never thought I’d use in my entire life).
The movie isn’t perfect. There’s far too many spots where it stops and does the self-referential humor. There’s a couple other “big emotion” spots where they’re literally live-or-die situations and they stop to have a chat, and it sort of breaks the flow.
Those are relatively minor nitpicks. They treated the lore and setting with more respect than a certain studio treated a billion dollar franchise. They didn’t beat you over the head with how you’re a bad person and should feel guilty. Humans aren’t portrayed as evil or horrible (though Earth is rather depressing in comparison to Aeternia).
The rest of the review follows below the pic, and includes spoilers. Continue only if you are prepared to have some big plot and story spoilers talked.
Some spoiler nitpicks:
Okay, first off, the plot was… well, it felt rather like they took Thor and Thor: Ragnorok and filed off the edges a little. It turns out the real treasure was inside him all along. It was a twist, though I can’t say how true it is to the comics/cartoons, I can say it felt off, as basically the only things I remembered about He-Man was he did the sword and saved the day. It was fine, he came through and figured it all out, but it just felt meh.
Second, those awkward humor sequences were… a bit much. Him wrestling with the statue of the barbarian for the sword… that went on way too long. The speech with the references and the plans no one understood, same. Them all coughing and gagging coming through the smoke… just why? Give the audience a cool looking moment without having to slap awkward humor and fart jokes in the middle of it. This isn’t Deadpool and Marvel, just make a movie and tell a story, don’t wink at the audience every time you do something over the top. It especially subtracted from the end of the movie where they just had to poke fun at the original cartoon, I guess? It is something that I think will detract from rewatchability. Let the people watching the movie see their heroes be heroes, not be mocked.
Third: the plot with his dad being an asshole to him and then being happy to see him at the end… it just felt flat. It needed some sequences at the beginning showing that the King really did care, but he was terrified that his son had too great a burden to carry or something like that. For how long they spent with the touching final scene with his dad, I can’t imagine Skeletor and his four million goons would have sat there through it.
Fourth: Seriously, there were way too many sex jokes in a movie supposed to be for kids. Raunchy stuff, too. I get it, some of the names have double entendres. Let the audience just enjoy the movie without inserting humor in the middle of plot and/or action which actively distracts.
On the plus side, I can’t think any of the actors were badly cast. All of them rocked their roles. I mean, I cannot understate the shock I feel when I can even say that about Jared Leto.
That brings me back to the main good points: the special effects were bang-on. There wasn’t the cheap crappy SFX that I’ve come to hate with big-blockbuster movies. The actors felt grounded, mostly. Physics still mostly applied, magic and scifi tech mostly worked consistently. The action was over the top in a good way.
There wasn’t any preachy moments or heavy-handed messaging (besides a general, don’t be an asshole sort of theme, which is fine). Even in the midst of occupation, Aeternia has scenes of beauty and wonder. Adam sees it all with the joy of someone who’s been stuck on Earth working in HR for years, which is about as soul-sucking as it can get.
This has gone on a bit longer than planned. The TLDR of it is, it was worth a watch and I’ll be buying a copy. Because it’s a fun movie that m, and I want to reward that kind of thing.
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