REVIEW: Masters of the Universe

I have very little context for anything He-Man. But that shouldn't count against Mattel's new Masters of the Universe film. I had very little context for the first "Thor" movie, and even less for Guardians of the Galaxy. But those faced no trouble becoming, and remaining, major pillars of pop culture for me.

With Masters of the Universe, there are pieces here that are vaguely (and occasionally not-so-vaguely) reminiscent of both of these properties. But these are surface connections. In the short time since those movies entered the arena, Hollywood has already forgotten why we even fell in love with these epic adventures in the first place.

Adam is the crown prince of the mythical Eternia, a universe that was razed by the evil Skeletor the same day the king and queen sent Adam off to earth to protect him from Skeletor's rage. In the fifteen years since, Adam has thought of nothing else (and also talked of nothing else, we find out) but finding the magical sword that will allow him to return home. After one of his searches randomly strikes gold, he reclaims said magical sword, thus opening the gates for him to return and cleanse his homeland.

It's a solid enough starting point, but the movie actively punishes you for having any expectations, or even wanting to take it any part seriously. The script wilts under the constant lampshade. The character undercut one another with a rapacity that would feel excessive in a 90s sitcom. Incredible. The movie drowns itself in jokes and gags, and not a one of them winds up feeling surprising or edgy.

More frustrating is the particular salve of regression in which this movie lathers itself, in a way that runs a lot deeper than just the reanimation of 1980s franchises. The movie's exploration of masculinity or heroism plays like a retreat into the 1980s image of manhood in which it was safe to dump things like diversity training as bureaucratic hindrances toward a man self-actualizing. And I would probably feel this way even if the movie hadn't literally built entire jokes on the roasting of Adam's HR boss on earth.

Somebody at Mattel must have overheard someone saying "the muscle doesn't make the man" and thought it sounded cute, so they shoved it in the screenplay without bothering to ask what in Eternia that actually meant--or the kind of hero about which you would say these kinds of things. (Heck, let's throw in Disney's Hercules as another flick this vampire of a movie feeds on.)

With Adam, it's not even so much that he's a vessel of toxic masculinity so much as he lacks any kind of characterization. In that way, I guess you could say he props up a regressive definition of He-manhood in that he reaffirms this idea that all a male character has to do is be a protagonist and that will entitle him to the full spoils of the hero's journey, including the attention of a girl who is way more competent than him.

Nothing in his actions signal bravery, compassion, or good judgment. And this is consistent across the entire playing board: not a single development--narrative-wise or character-wise--was earned by anything anyone actually did or said. And so the movie's lectures wind up feeling terribly condescending. This is a movie that plays with words it doesn't understand.

Every lime-green tiger, every burgundy-colored tree that they CGId onto the screen just made me wish someone had allotted this budget to another Dungeons & Dragons movie.

--The Professor

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