By John Corrado
How much fun you have with the new He-Man movie Masters of the Universe will all depend on how much nostalgia you have for the IP itself.
Directed by Travis Knight, the film serves as a reboot of the franchise that spans from Mattel action figures, a 1980s cartoon series, and the live-action movie from 1987 that starred Dolph Lundgren in the leading role.
Knight is no stranger to 1980s nostalgia, having already played around in that playground with the surprisingly good Transformers prequel Bumblebee, and his He-Man movie fully embraces the campy, cheesy nature of it all.
But there is also a nagging feeling while watching Masters of the Universe that it doesn’t quite know what audience it is aiming for; the fans who grew up with it four decades ago, or a new audience of kids? The trouble is that, without much attachment to the IP itself, the film doesn’t offer the same level of engagement. It’s a pretty good time for the fans, but will new audiences show up?
Nicholas Galitzine stars in the film as Adam Glenn, a man of alien origin who has been stranded on Earth since childhood, searching for the magical Sword of Power that will allow him to return home to his planet of Eternia. A prolonged prologue shows his childhood on Eternia, before it was taken over by the evil Skeletor (Jared Leto) and his henchwoman Evil-Lyn (Allison Brie).
Fifteen years later, Adam returns to Eternia, and teams up with childhood friend turned warrior goddess Teela (Camila Mendes) and her father Duncan (Idris Elba), who used to train him as a kid, to fight Skeletor. The look of Skeletor’s skeleton face is admittedly pretty cool, and Leto is having a good deal of fun with the role, playing him as a diva villain of ambiguous sexual orientation pining after He-Man’s mighty “sword.” It’s a scene-stealing performance from an unrecognizable Leto.
Knight knows what sort of movie he is trying to make, even if the balance doesn’t always work, and it can feel too much like a copy of the Taika Waititi Thor movies. This is a mix between po-faced He-Man movie that respects the IP while also having a streak of sarcastic Marvel-style humour to let us know that tongue is planted firmly in cheek. But some of the jokes fall flat, and the themes about non-toxic masculinity feel annoyingly stuck in the 2010s. Tonally, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves also already did this whole jokey fantasy that still takes its lore seriously thing a lot better.
But the biggest downside to Masters of the Universe is its length and tendency to drag between predictable plot points. It’s enjoyable enough for a while, and is certainly a bright and colourful visual affair with some fun action set-pieces, buoyed along by Galitzine doing a decent job with the whole “himbo” routine. But the 141 minute running time is also heavily felt throughout. There is little reason why this movie needed to be a whopping two hours and twenty minutes long, when something more fleet-footed and shorter would seem more in line with the cartoony material.
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