‘Masters of the Universe’ can’t overcome its ugliest images

It begins with a voiceover from an adult He-Man/Prince Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) recalling his childhood in the part medieval, part tech-utopian city of Eternos. His father Randor (James Purefoy) is stern and demanding, while his mother Marlena (Charlotte Riley) has more kindness in her eyes—a dichotomy that doesn’t really come up again, despite the movie referencing exactly this sort of inner conflict. And finally, his mentor Duncan, aka Man-at-Arms (Idris Elba), teaches the scrawny heir (played as a kid by Artie Wilkinson-Hunt) to toughen up in simulated battle. The kingdom is soon attacked by the evil forces of madman Skeletor (Jared Leto), who unleashes an array of cyborgs and man-beasts, only for Randor’s elite fighters—each designed like action figures with neat powers and accessories, like Jon Xue Zhang’s stocky, head-butting Ram-Man—to respond in kind. The problem, however, is that both sides of this battle come dressed in drab colors and are lit just as dimly, making it difficult to discern the who’s who of it all, when it should be fun and fantastical.

These fight scenes stick in the mind of young Adam when the kingdom’s mysterious Sorceress (Morena Baccarin) hands him Eternia’s sleek Sword of Power, and sends him escaping to Earth through a rainbow wormhole (one of many distinctly Thor-like features). However, the saber, meant to imbue him with godlike powers and serve as a beacon home—not unlike a certain Hemsworth’s hammer—gets lost along the way. Fast forward to 15 years later, and the aforementioned voiceover is revealed to be a buff, adult Adam explaining all this fantasy mumbo jumbo to his date in Oklahoma City. She’s quite obviously turned off, but Adam’s quest to find his sword and return home continues, even during his mundane human resources nine-to-five.

This premise is distinctly one of escapism from the drudgery of adult responsibilities and into childhood fantasy. Adam even pins his comic-styled sketches of Eternia’s heroes to his bedroom walls (more colorful than the characters who actually appear), and he regales anyone who’ll listen with the details of his mythology. And yet, there’s a self-effacing quality to his descriptions that never ceases, even once Eternia’s villains briefly invade Earth in search of the sword—and, oddly enough, even after the action returns to Eternia. It’s a big-fight fantasy film with no real sense of awe, or any love for the genre. Every character and concept is introduced with a snarky, “Can you believe it’s actually called that?” quip, as though Knight—a self-professed fan of the franchise—was embarrassed to be seen anywhere near the material, and every single scene was designed to let you know. 

Sure, it’s all a bit silly to begin with, but this Deadpool-ification of the story leads to a barrage of irreverence, which proves relentlessly grating across two hours and 20 minutes. No one, save for Alison Brie’s operatic henchwoman Evil Lyn, seems to want to be there. Even Skeletor’s cackling and scenery chewing stop dead so characters can lampshade it to no end, with a Disney Channel “uhh, awkward!” disposition. Once is enough. Twice is pushing it. The third time, well, the lady doth protest. It’s postmodernism as slapdash apologia, and it would be interminably dull if not for Daniel Pemberton’s appropriately booming, Rock-ballad score.

Despite setting up a journey of Adam earning his return home, the plot yanks him back to the Eternian status quo rather quickly, and without the chance for him to make too many active decisions, rendering him a passive protagonist. More often than not, our hero is saved or given information by someone else: a stranger on the web; his childhood friend and Duncan’s daughter Teela (Camila Mendes); a random Amazon delivery truck that happens to mow down a bad guy (hey, it wouldn’t be He-Man without brand synergy). All the while, the buff-as-a-bodybuilder Galitzine—who tries his best to balance Adam’s sensitive side with the movie’s endless irony—behaves like a scrawny weakling, barely able to run or lift semi-heavy objects. This visual disconnect is made even stranger by the fact that when he finally powers up, close-ups of his engorging muscles are meant to make us believe he’s grown larger, when he maintains the exact same build. (Was the “human” Adam meant to have, at some point, been digitally slimmed down—as in Captain America, or the Netflix cartoon Masters of the Universe: Revelations—so he could Hulk up later, in his “He-Man” form?) There’s suspending disbelief, and there’s giving into lazy, cynical craft, and the movie too often demands the latter.

This is just one of several inconsistencies that make Masters of the Universe feel like the product of too many drafts, and too many cooks in the kitchen. He-Man and Skeletor—whose weapons and physiques have long mirrored each other in the toy lines—never react to one another like they have anything deeper than an incidental connection, despite being at the center of a regal conflict. Lines of dialogue constantly gesture at other character dynamics that just aren’t true, based on what we’ve actually seen, as though conflicting versions of the script had been filmed at once. One punchline even pays off a tale of Adam/He-Man’s dual identity that doesn’t actually exist in this version.

Meanwhile, frequent talk of subverting the male characters’ might-is-right credo ends up mere lip service, in favor of filmmaking that actually backs up the underlying power fantasy of He-Man: a blonde Übermensch taking everyone to task with his fists. The action, for the most part, gets lost behind incomprehensible cutting and obfuscating lighting, but the one fight scene that really works—He-Man taking on Skeletor and his minions at their volcanic hideout—also coincides with a thematic flashpoint about uncontrolled power being a destructive force. The action being framed as a kick-ass power fantasy, in this specific moment, is completely bizarre, and the problem rolls over to the rest of the film. 

It becomes a story of a man whose H.R.-inspired therapy babble (about feelings and such—you know, that stuff) is tinged with condescending humor about modern men going soft, while the images therein draw on He-Man’s raw physical strength. There’s eventually talk of “empathy” and “understanding,” but it’s a limp gesture in the scheme of things, reduced to a single exchange. Granted, you can seldom make an action movie where the action itself isn’t central to the telling, but inserting a tale that can only work through anti-action results in too many crossed wires, rendering Masters of the Universe the saga of a manchild returning to his toys, to live out a fantasy of blinding nostalgia and unencumbered violence. At a moment when American culture has been gripped by exactly these sentiments, it’s hard not to roll your eyes at the movie’s slip-ups.

As a broader political object, perhaps it’s nothing to worry about, despite all this unpleasantness. After all, the film, on some level, wants to be the next Barbie by analyzing its central object’s place in the 21st Century, even though this is limited to throwaway lines in the final act. But as a summer action tentpole, Masters of the Universe can’t help but feel like it’s catering far more to adult men in arrested development—who just want a swole self-insert to swing his sword—than to actual children who might spongily absorb a valuable lesson about their inner worlds (or, god forbid, find some wonderment). Its literal hundreds of repetitive, self-aware jokes are meant to take the air out of the whole affair, as though granting permission for infantile enjoyment, but they suffocate any real meaning or fun in the process.