Review - MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (2026) #mastersoftheuniverse

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]He's a little skinny, right? Like it it feels weird to say and like maybe second round, oh, it's body shaming. I just feel like He-Man should probably be a bigger dude. I don't know. I don't necessarily think that that's only an artifact of me feeling weird about my own mortality knowing that I myself am older than the guy playing He-Man.

[00:00:31]Okay, short version. Great aesthetics and pretty good fight scenes between people dressed up in pretty good He-Man costumes. Regrettably pulled down by what might be the worst screenplay for a movie of this size since Batman and Robin back in 1997, which come to think of it, also had pretty good fight scenes, set designs, and costumeuming as its big redeeming quality. In fact, I don't actually mind that movie either.

[00:00:54]It's It's fine as Batman stuff goes. All right. So, with the obligatory reference to please everyone, visit the Patreon and the Kofi because that's the only way these things continue to get made, etc., etc. Let's get these caveats out of the way before I dive right in. I know a bunch of you are going to be champing at the bit to give me [ __ ] about this and I want to save you some time, which also feels somehow generous because if you're leaving angry comments on YouTube or really anywhere on the internet, how valuable could your time possibly be?

[00:01:26]Honestly. But yeah, I'm about to give this a lower score, which I feel like we've already talked about the arbitrary nature of anyway and a less positive review than that last Star Wars movie.

[00:01:37]And I know that's going to bring out a certain number of people who should know better but can't help themselves. But to ask, "But Bob, you spent a lot of that review saying the movie was just fine and a good time because it was all laser fights and muppets and action figure battles, so you had a good time with it.

[00:01:53]And this looks like basically more of that. So how can they not get the same review?" when ah you know like everyone else who does any kind of face forward performance programming on the internet I feel like at least 20% of my job is spent explaining the principles of comedy and another 25% agonizing over whether or not it's even worth attempting to do that in the first place. But y'all understand that describing hundred million dollar movies as just lasers and muppets as a positive summation is meant to be humorous and not a literal quantification. Right?

[00:02:27]Like we're doing entertainment, criticism, opinion, journalism here.

[00:02:30]Yes. But we're also doing a show, you know, like I didn't play with Godzilla toys during the Godzilla reviews because that was the only way to review that movie. It was because I thought it would be entertaining for the audience as well. And more to the point, the ability of any movie to feel like you're getting swept along on a roller coaster ride of childlike whimsy or, yeah, sure, a fireworks display with lasers, action figure fights, and puppets generally means or should imply that the story, the characterization, the tone, the vibe, the narrative of the piece is flowing so consistency that you're not getting jarred out of those good positive vibes. Airgo, it should be taken to mean that it's also so well-made. well written, has good characterization, direction, production, etc. It's like that Futurama joke about gods. If they do something well, it looks like they haven't done anything because almost every joke about God in narrative fiction is actually a joke about the writers of narrative fiction because writers are rampaging egoomaniacs. Point is, you absolutely can make a movie that's primarily cool guys, fight scenes, crazy aesthetics, big action, and just vibes and have it work. So long as it's got some consistency, structure, characters you can get a handle on and a story to follow. It can be a simple story with very basic characters, but so long as there's no narrative equivalent to the ride making you go, "Okay, wait. What's going on? Who now? Why?

[00:03:57]>> That was just confusing. I've seen plenty of good movies on those lines before. I expect to see plenty of perfectly good movies on those lines again. The director of this movie made a perfectly good one on those lines also out of8s action figures when he did Bumblebee. That was terrific. And there's a lot to recommend in this that was also true enough there in Bumblebee.

[00:04:15]Travis Knight started his producing and directing career in animation. And whatever you can say for his eye for story structure, I don't think he was entirely to blame here, but we'll circle back to that. He knows what an action scene should look like. And there are a lot of big Bronny action scenes in this.

[00:04:28]And when Masters of the Universe is working, it's when he and his second unit crew and stunt team and actors are staging guy I had a toy of versus guy I also had a toy of beatd downs that all look pretty damn great. Heck, there's even that one guy who's always bad and stuff that everyone, including me, assumed would be terrible in this, and he's not exactly terrible in this. Like, he's not great, but he's not terrible.

[00:04:49]The costumes are good. They've assembled a pretty interesting cast, some of whom sometimes even look like they know who they are and what they're supposed to be. They've got great production design.

[00:04:59]The cinematography is interesting.

[00:05:01]There's a lot of strange things happening with the editing, focus, color correction, all of which scream whatever this looked like before post-production got involved. It was different, but choices were definitely made. Actually, that's kind of a recurring issue through the whole thing, right down to a score that's pretty memorable, but also only seems to sometimes by accident align meaningfully with the events on screen.

[00:05:19]Sometimes it looks very expensive and other times it looks not expensive to a degree where you have to wonder if not was a deliberate choice. Did they do that bad on purpose to be funny or was it just bad bad? And if it was meant to be funny, why isn't the whole movie funny in that way? It's kind of a sinking feeling I got pretty early on that I was dealing with a Duke Nukem Forever situation, which uh for the uninitiated was this video game that took decades to actually get finished and come out. And by the time it did, it had bounced between so many developers and studios. Not only was it bad, but if you played it, you could chart the recent history of what other currently trendy games it was trying to emulate.

[00:05:56]Like, oh, that's where Quake was the thing. Here's where they were trying to be Halo. Here's where they told them to make it more like GTA or Call of Duty or try to be a cover shooter, etc. And this feels a lot like that, except instead of playing through 20 years of video game evolution, it's more like watching 15 years of studio notes asking, "Okay, what was the most recent Thor movie like? And how did people feel about it?"

[00:06:17]Like, this has been in development for a long time at a dozen different studios, some of which don't even exist anymore.

[00:06:23]Everybody from John Woo to John Chu, John Stevenson, Mike Cahill, Jeff Wadlow, Howard Zavat, Chris McKay, Joe Cornish, Ryan Johnson, Andre Machete, Kirk Demo, Chris Sanders, Lorden Miller, David Goyer, Mick G, and the Knee brothers, and who knows who else has circled to direct this at some point.

[00:06:39]The final version that we've got here has five credited screenwriters, four story by credits and just shy of 20 additional material credits covering everybody from all the previous attempts and I think at least one or two people from the 87 movie because they use some concepts from that. And look, none of that is itself innately a problem unless it feels like it. And unfortunately, Masters of the Universe constantly feels like it. I want to stress this. I was really looking forward to this one, guys. I was so huge into He-Man when I was a kid. you have no idea. So, I deliberately cut myself off from most of the development stories on this one cuz I just wanted to go in and watch the movie on its own. And when I was and I realized, oh, this just isn't doing it for me, the first thing I thought was, oh no, this feels like they must have had a really long development, never really cracked their script and figured out that they would just find the movie in the edit and then they never really did. And then after sleeping on it, which is why you're getting this in the afternoon or evening after the embargo instead of in the morning, and then doing the research, I feel like that must be what happened. They just can't figure out what their story is, who the main character even is, what the movie's even about, or what their driving action should be. It's an origin story, except it's not about a guy who has to figure out who he is, except he already knows who he is the whole time. Ostensibly, the newish gimmick to the otherwise familiar filmation cartoon version of the He-Man story setup that they're using here is that Skeletor shows up and conquers Planet Eternia at the start of things while Prince Adam is still a kid.

[00:08:09]And so to keep him and the magic sword that's one day going to let him turn into He-Man safe, they portal both of them away to Earth. Uh because that's where He-Man's mother comes from in this version of continuity. Except the sword and the kid both get separated. So Adam grows up into just a regular guy who everyone has always assumed is crazy because he's apparently spent 15 years telling people he's an alien prince looking for his magic sword. So he's been I mean you'd think like institutionalized or studied or something. It's it's not actually clear why this isn't an amnesia or mindwipe story other than they wanted him to seem more sympathetic or proactive, but it mostly seems like mildly bullied or looked a scance at since he's got a job and friends and is a functioning adult.

[00:08:49]So, this isn't exactly King Arthur, Neo, Harry Potter stuff, but also they want it to be by way of visual reference and texture. So, you think about those slightly better or more well-known movies. And also, he doesn't seem to have looked that hard for the sword cuz it kind of turns out to be really close by and accessible, and there isn't like a trick to activating it. Or maybe there is. It's not terribly clear. And I know this is a goofy ass fantasy movie, so I not supposed to ask these questions. But the problem is the movie asks these questions as part of the story and seemingly the development of the main character and then forgets to adequately deal with them. It doesn't really end up figuring meaningfully into his character or his development, especially since he was already a scrawny kid who people doubted could be a leader like his cool, tough dad, the king, on his own planet.

[00:09:40]So why do we need this diversion to a whole other planet for act one? There doesn't seem to be a better reason other than dissatisfied office drones who find out their secretly action hero Jesus is uniquely appealing to depressed Gen X dads and that's the main possibly only audience for a He-Man movie in 2026. And also maybe slightly more likely whoever was assigned to rewrite this circa 2011 watched the first Thor and said, "Oh, the hammer that kind of works like He-Man's sword if you squint. I bet that would save money on act one." And also being on Earth for a bit lets them kill a bad guy with an Amazon delivery truck.

[00:10:14]That's a that's a real thing that happens. No, I'm I'm not kidding. That's uh that's really in the movie.

[00:10:22]Yeah. It's not that this is necessarily a bad twist on the material, but it feels superfluous and clunky and it never ends up meaning anything for the story. There's no consistency to Adam's character. If he's an alien on Earth who's now home, why does he sometimes act like a serious man of action who knows what he has to do? And other times like a whiny, confused guy who only just got here, why does his motivation and understanding in relation to various characters change from scene to scene, sometimes within the same scene? It's not because sometimes he's He-Man and sometimes he's not. That actually doesn't seem to matter. But that's a whole other problem. The answer, much like with the script and a lot of the otherwise impressively stage action and effect sequences, genuinely seems to be that they shot a lot of coverage for a lot of different tones and takes and ultimately didn't settle on a consistent thread for the whole thing. Just solid individual pieces and sequences. And so it feels like you're flipping back and forth between different versions of the movie. Some of which are played serious, some of which are all for laugh, and none of which actually line up together.

[00:11:21]Like, you remember that gag from early 2000 superhero movies where they'd only use people's silly code names once and then joke about them being silly and stupid? Well, I hope you like that because this movie thinks that's funny enough to do it for every single character. You enjoy popular memes about He-Man, specifically from like 10 years ago. This movie sure does. Remember that gag people complained the Marvel movies overused? So even they kind of pulled back from it where you undercut dramatic moments with a laugh so everything stays super light the whole time. Yeah, this movie doesn't pull back on that at all ever. You can even see this visually in some of the action. I'm actually glad to see there's a lot more physical practical suits and costumes and creature makeup than it looked like there'd be in the fight scenes. I always am. But part of the reason you can tell that is that a couple of them end up looking shot and lit or more likely color corrected in post-production in ways they were very clearly not sculpted or painted or designed to have been originally. And once again that's something that just shouts from offscreen. We tried to find a completely different movie in the edit and we didn't get there. And this becomes really apparent during the big hero villain showdown with Skeletor where we get a big digression into some torment the hero with self-doubts about the nature of his reality business which is visually kind of interesting but just reads hollow because they feel like allegorical mad libs that might have been interesting but the point of the movie goes here empty space hasn't been filled in with anything. And there's a running gag about how Skeletor not only has no apparent motivation for his actions and is only a villain and how that should be obvious because he has a skull for a face, which yeah, all right, everybody liked that gag when they did it in the Puss and Boots movie, but that movie was a comedy. And this is only sometimes sort of a comedy. Other times it's a surprisingly, but again, very inconsistently violent PG-13 action movie. And if your good guy isn't going to have a story line, your villain maybe should. Also, nobody seems to actually dispute that Skeletor is bad. There's no reason to. So, the fact that it keeps coming up just seems like another leftover thread from a different version of the script that they didn't stick with. In this case, maybe one where Adam's Earth job as an HR consultant actually becomes a meaningful plot point or even a joke with an actual punchline, neither of which ever really coales.

[00:13:37]This is frustrating. I was really looking forward to this. Okay. And it's not even a terrible movie. It's not even really bad. that it's just not very good. Whenever anyone isn't talking and it's just a big choreographed battle with good action geography, I can just go, "Oh, wow. It's Trap Jaw. Cool. Oh, look. I think that's Merman back there."

[00:13:57]Like, I was there for that, man. But every time I'd almost be settling into a good Just enjoy the ride groove, the track would stutter and skip and I'd have to go, "Ah, wait, no, that that doesn't make any sense." And I shouldn't have to notice that that doesn't make sense in this kind of a movie. I mean, let me be clear about this. It is true Skeletor, the blue man with a skeleton face, does not require complex character motivation, but the rest of your characters should at least be interesting enough that I wouldn't be thinking that it would be nice if he'd try. Allison Brie is walking around dressed like evil Lynn. the rest of your movie should not have so many narrative problems that the fact of that is not sufficiently distracting for me. I am just so bummed about this. I mean like I I feel like again the numbers don't really [ __ ] matter. I feel like uh like I I should give this like a six just for looking pretty and trying. But on the other hand, that thing with the truck really pissed me off. So just for that five out of 10, [ __ ] off, Jeff.

[00:15:02]Heat.

[00:15:15]Heat.