What’s It About
Fleeing a devastating civil war, ten-year-old Crown Prince Adam Glenn is spirited away to his mother’s home planet, Earth, separating him from his ancestor’s Power Sword. Twenty years later, a now-adult Adam must return to the planet of Eternia and rediscover his lost birthright, becoming He-Man: the most powerful man in the universe and leading the few remaining warriors of Eternia against the evil forces of Skeletor.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
When they first announced this movie, I was all but dead set against it. Jared Leto as Skeletor? I set my expectations on the ground & stomped on them not once but twice, but somehow that still felt high. Leto has had a fair number of big-budget movies that he has successfully crossed the finish line with, but most of those came in broken. The Little Things, Morbius, Tron: Ares; each one is another reminder that just having charisma does not save you from making a poor choice. So when Amazon MGM Studios threw out the name of Leto in relation to a franchise revival (that nobody was exactly lined up outside to see), I couldn’t hit the panic button quick enough. However, here I am eating a little bit of crow as Masters of the Universe is something almost nobody guessed it would be; a film that is worthy of continuing itself. This is not a perfect film. It is not even close. But in a summer movie season full of projects that take themselves far too seriously, Masters of the Universe has the rare self-awareness to understand exactly what it is and lean into it with both arms extended. If you’re not really familiar with how this started, here’s some quick background on the He-Man franchise. Originally a group of brightly colored and cartoonish action figures called Masters Of The Universe produced by Mattel in early 1980s America, the following year there was a He-Man animated series that eventually produced over 130 episodes through the mid-’80s. Because of some unfortunate decisions made during production, this movie cannot possibly compete with the animation that preceded it. Imagine taking the entire world of Eternia and interpreting massive fantasy landscapes via cardboard cutouts atop fabrications from New York City! Not only did that create serious budget constraints, but it completely ruined the credibility of the franchise for many years thereafter. Nearly forty years later, director Travis Knight, the same filmmaker responsible for the animated marvel Kubo and the Two Strings and the quietly impressive Bumblebee, steps into Eternia with a screenplay he co-wrote alongside Aaron and Adam Nee and David Callaham. The story follows young Prince Adam, who escapes the fall of his home kingdom when the villainous Skeletor launches an assault on Castle Grayskull, capturing Adam’s father, King Randor. Adam flees through a portal to Earth, lands in suburban anonymity, loses his Sword of Power somewhere between galaxies, and spends the next fifteen years working in human resources, living with a roommate obsessed with romantic comedies, and quietly telling himself he will one day find a way back home. Here is where the film earns its keep. Rather than playing that fish-out-of-water premise for cheap embarrassment, Knight and his writers use it to build something genuinely funny. The screenplay explains all those famously ridiculous character names, Fisto, Ram-Man, Mekaneck, Goat Man, by revealing that young Adam coined each one during childhood. When he returns to Eternia as an adult, he has no replacement vocabulary. Those nicknames are all he has ever known, and the film wrings considerable humor from watching a group of powerful warriors accept titles assigned to them by a five-year-old. It is a sharper idea than this property deserves, and it works. Nicholas Galitzine is the one guy who’s basically carrying the weight of this whole movie on his back, and wow- he does a great job! Not only does he need to look different physically for the part he plays, but also act funny, be believable on an emotional level, plus have good physical presence in the fight scenes. There’s a lot of actors out there with tons more experience than Nick that would struggle with being able to do all that together. Nick excels at everything! Nick makes a perfect Adam when he’s playing the guy who works in HR; he’s awkward and really cute. Then, when he plays He-Man, he brings a physicality that feels earned instead of acted out like actors sometimes do. The character itself has obvious similarities to Thor and Star-Lord; this movie would not exist without them, so there can be no doubt about that! But Nick puts enough fun and warmth into Adam to make it impossible to think of him as anything other than Adam! As well, Nick gets better at his timing as the story goes; by the end of the story, you’ll actually find yourself cheering for him in a way that surprises you! You gotta check out the people who support these actors. Idris Elba is playing Duncan (aka Man-at-Arms), Teela’s dad and Adam’s mentor, and you won’t get any better authority or groundedness in these performances than from him to hold together a crazy storyline. Camila Mendes brought a ton of spirit into Teela, but the material just wasn’t there to shine through. Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson consistently steals scenes as Fisto and gets a bunch of laughs from his character. Alison Brie does an awesome job bringing energy to Evil-Lyn, but the relationship dynamic between Evil-Lyn and Skeletor (who’s portrayed as a woman in an emotionally abusive relationship) is highly uncomfortable in a family-oriented flick. The script also exhibits numerous tonal inconsistencies. So, let’s talk about Jared Leto. The funny thing is that throughout the movie, there’s no time he shows his face or puts his body on screen; the only thing we really get is Jared Leto’s voice, and it’s one of the most enjoyable parts of this movie, partially because of how creepy it is, theatrical menace, a lot of overacting, and his delivery are perfect for the role. Essentially, he channels Ian McKellen in his most over-the-top performance with a Monty Python villain convinced he really is who he thinks he is, so I can’t say how often this works for me, but he is such a crazy good actor, I don’t care how often it works. My biggest problem with Skeletor is that we never really get any backstory or anything about who he is or where he came from, and it makes it hard to connect with him as a character. The absence of backstory is an injury the film will never heal properly because Skeletor is such a major part of the whole He-Man franchise. Masters of the Universe can’t be truly great until they stop spending so much of the movie on Earth and develop Eternia into an actual place you care about. Because it doesn’t make you care about Eternia early on, the last act doesn’t feel like it has an emotional payoff. The film runs at approximately two hours and twenty minutes, but that is about forty minutes longer than it needs to be to tell its story; tighter editing would have made every positive quality of the film that much stronger. And yet, impossibly, the contradictions survive. This is a clumsy, crowded, overstuffed production that somehow manages to be genuinely entertaining from beginning to end. When the end-credit teases arrived, I sat there mildly surprised to find myself curious about where the franchise might go next. Masters of the Universe is not a good film by strict measure. But it is a surprisingly good time, and sometimes, especially with material this inherently ridiculous, that is the harder achievement.
OUR RATING – AN UNPOLISHED 6