Review of Masters of the Universe

I never watched the animated series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe or read the comic books. But one reviewer said this movie was not as bad as some people thought it would be, so I took a chance and went to see it.

We are immediately plunged into Eternia, a world of vaguely high Medieval architecture and modern-looking body armor. The young of the aristocracy are ruthlessly trained to be warriors. Adam, the son of the king, is the smallest of them and quite hapless. A girl named Teela tries to encourage him, though she could knock him down.

The kingdom is invaded by Skeletor, who pretty much looks like his name. His forces use an odd combination of weapons: high-tech devices what never run out of ammo, and traditional bladed weapons. The power of Eternia is contained in the Sword of Power, so Adam and the Sword are sent through a portal to our world. Alas, the force of the portal rips the Sword from his hands.

We skip fifteen years to find Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) stuck in a dead-end job in human resources. He is subject to tortuous sessions on communication and de-escalation. But he spends every spare minute on endless online searches for the Sword. Will he find it?

Not to spoil anything, but the rest of the movie would be realllly boring if he never did.

Masters of the Universe is a fun combination of over the top action and wry self deprecation. The action involves extremely complex CGI, sometimes too fast for the eye to follow. The best example of the humor is when Adam grasps the Sword in Eternia and calls the overwhelming power into him. Teela (Camila Mendes), who is now grown up and devastatingly lovely, cries out, “We are saved!” The next moment, the sword is knocked from his hand. Teela says, “We are screwed.”

Adam is no reluctant hero. He yearns to be one, but is anything but a hero in our world. Even in Eternia, when he has the sword, he is often bumbling around. But the stakes are high. Skeletor has killed thousands of people. When Adam asks Teela why Skeletor is so evil, she replies, “His face is a skull.” Enough said.

What could be a moral to the story comes from sensitivity training smashing into ultimate evil. Adam uses his human resources training to try to communicate and to de-escalate situations, and he always fails. Duncan (Idris Elba), a worn-out warrior, tells him that muscles are needed. Although not denying that attempts to communicate are important, we see that sometimes evil must be destroyed by a muscular hero (in this case, one swinging a sword.)

So Masters of the Universe is not the politically correct superhero movie some dreaded. It is more of a partial sendup of sensitivity training, using a he-man kind of character.

One disadvantage of the movie is long emotional one-on-one scenes, even while battles are going on? There are a few cases of foul language and swearing, which are not only inappropriate, but do not match the tone of the movie.

Overall, this was a successful transformation of a comic-booky story into a movie that does not take itself too seriously.