Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing. Take the adapting of Masters Of The Universe for example, the epic, 80s toy line that not only blossomed into a beloved cartoon, a spin-off, and an under-appreciated movie starring Dolph Lundgren, it also generated countless memes over numerous decades that offered up everything including franchise villain Skeletor offering sage advise while lounging around seductively. For a property that means different things to different generations it creates a unique problem: how do you approach something so unquestionably silly?
As a hard-core fan from back in the day, He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe was everything to me (at least, it was until Transformers came along), but while numerous revival series have sprung up in the years since that’s tried different approaches to justify a truly bizarre cast of characters (A bee man named Buzz-Off? A triple visaged dude called Man-E-Faces? The questionable presence of Fisto?), has a lavish, long-awaited movie version simply taken too long to arrive from the faraway world of Eternia?
Adam Glenn isn’t like other guys. For a start, aside from the fact he’s rather meek and works for a human resources company, he continually obsesses about his past, which he claims started on the distant planet of Eternia. There, he was Prince Adam, the rather small son of King Randor and Queen Marlena; but in this lush world of talking green tigers and multicoloured forests, an evil was growing that wanted to dominate the kingdom and obtain the mysterious power that was said to reside in Castle Grayskull. That evil was the skull-faced conqueror known as Skeletor, and after a daring attack on the capital city of Eternos, the Sorceress sent Adam away through a portal to keep the fabled Sword Of Power out of the villain’s clawed mitts.
That was fifteen years ago and after losing hold of the sword as he tumbled through the portal, Adam has been living a fairly standard, unremarkable life in Oklahoma City. But despite the fact that he tells everyone about his outlandish past (including first dates) and he’s seen as something of a weirdo, he’s never stopped searching for the sword that can finally send him back home. However, after finally locating it as part of a display in a comic shop, it sets off a whole chain of events that sees him rescued by childhood friend/crush Teela and brought back to Eternia.
However, after fifteen years of rule by a skull-headed despot, Eternos is only a burnt-out shell of what it once was, and worse yet, none of the resistance seem to believe that this bumbling youth is the fabled lost Prince Adam anyway. But when Skeletor’s misshapen forces come to collect the sword, Adam, Teela, a service mech named Roboto and Duncan, Teela’s drunken father and the former Man-At-Arms of Eternos have to go on the run. Can Adam find the courage to hold aloft that magic sword and utter the words that could save Eternia?
You can adore the original toy line and animated series all you want, but you have to admit that even for an 80s property, Masters Of The Universe was completely off of it’s meds. With names like He-Man, Ram Man and Trap Jaw, and featuring a sweeping range of elaborately designed characters, it’s no wonder that the 1987 Dolph Lundgren version had to ditch virtually all of those flamboyant side-characters as some were simply too extreme to realise. However, director Travis Knight has something of a track record of realising 80s toy lines into modern blockbusters thanks to wrestling the Transformers movies away from the bombast of Michael Bay with the heartfelt Bumblebee – so a jaunt in Eternia should be a walk in the park, right? Well, that depends on what you think a Masters Of The Universe movie should be in 2026.
Some will immediately be disgruntled that it’s gone the same colourful, goofy route as Guardians Of The Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok, which blends acres of CGI shenanigans alongside a lot of goofy humour; however, while Knight isn’t able to quite match James Gunn or Taika Watiti at their best for rainbow-coloured slapstick, the fact that both of those movies felt like living 80s cartoons anyway means that He-Man is probably on the right track. But there will be those who still think there’s a gritty, darker, more mature version of this property that demands to be told and for those people I say this: you’re shit out of luck. Fittingly, for a film entitled Masters Of The Universe, everything about is big. Big visuals, big score, lengthy runtime, HUGE needle drops – but possibly the biggest things about it is that sense of humour that fullu recognises that there’s been over 40 years worth of jokes made at the expense of the show and feels the need to address them all.
Virtually everything is undercut with a joke – the constant referring to Fisto as someone who fists people; the fact that all the childish names of all the characters are ret-conned into a running joke about them being names a 10 year-old Adam made up; Adam’s job on earth being in HR; the movie refuses to take almost anything seriously and many times the film veers dangerously between the genius of Thor: Ragnarok and the irritation factor of Thor: Love & Thunder. However, if you can stomach the frivolities, there’s a lot of good stuff to be found.
For a start, this IS Masters Of The Universe through and through, and my 10 year-old self would have lost his fucking mind to see such trippy characters as Trap Jaw, Tri-Klops, and Mekaneck faithfully recreated on film with all their powers intact (the fact we’ve got a toy-accurate rendition of Ram Man on screen is nothing short of a goddamn miracle). Secondly, while he’s required to play the dufus a bit too many times, Nicholas Galitzine’s Adam/He-Man proves to be a fun guy to hang out with and anyone raging that the character has gone “woke” due to his HR credentials, remember this: literally every single episode of the TV show ended with the characters giving you advice how to be a better person, so why wouldn’t this movie version do the same? However, while the rest of a cast – which contains Idris Elba claiming yet another franchise and a somewhat underused Alison Brie – all give a good showing, everyone is subsequently blown clean out of the water by Jared Leto’s Skeletor, who may walk away with villain of the year when it’s all said and done. Nestling his performance somewhere between the nasal camp of Alan Oppenheimer and the Shakespearian bluster of Frank Langella, Leto milks every line within an inch of its life, rolls his Rs like his life depends on it, minces from one scene to the next and minimises any potential damage that his controversial presence may cause by being utterly unrecognisable for the entirety of his screen time.
And this is where that old, reliable friend, nostalgia steps in. Whenever Masters Of The Universe is in danger of getting too ridiculous or the presence of Leto is too troubling, the film will nail you with something right out of your childhood (or mine, anyway) that makes everything all right again. All the in-jokes, meme references, easter eggs and illusion-breaking self-owns are all washed away when the figure you owned decades ago shows up large as life in front of you. Am I biased? Does Beast Man shit in the woods? However, even the unregulated nostalgia dump didn’t blind me to the fact that even after all these years, He-Man is still the man.
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