Masters of the Universe (2026) | A Flawed Celebration of Absurdity

[00:00:00]After 19 years in development, how a live action Masters of the Universe film has finally [music] graced our screens.

[00:00:06]With a budget estimated to be somewhere in the region of $175 million, the movie is directed by Transformers [music] Bumblebee alum Travis Knight, and it stars Nicholas Galitzine as Prince Adam / He-Man, >> [music] >> Jared Leto as Skeletor, although you'd never know it, Idris Elba as Man-At-Arms, and Camila Mendes as Teela.

[00:00:24]And I just watched it. I watched the full 140-minute runtime [music] of the $200 million remake of Flash Gordon.

[00:00:31]Stay tuned.

[00:00:38]>> [music] >> Straight off the bat, I'll tell you that this video is going to contain a crap ton of spoilers because I don't see any point in discussing the many, many problems with this film if we can't get into the details. And while the movie is problematic, I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either. I also wouldn't really call it bland. It's best described as a confusing cinematic mess with a few highlights here and there, and an obsession with constantly pointing out how dumb the whole concept is in such a way that it'll likely turn off many of the franchise's most dedicated fans. So, let's start with the positives. The action is competently directed, and the performances across the board are very good. The first appearance of Trap Jaw, which happens quite early on in the movie, was actually genuinely frightening, and I thought the film's interpretation of that particular character was truly excellent. His fight against Man-At-Arms during the opening sequence was some of the best action in the whole movie. Now, while Skeletor is a standout and easily the most entertaining character in the entire film, I'm not going to give Jared Leto any credit for this performance because that would be like commending Pedro Pascal for his performance in The Mandalorian. Most of the time we just had stunt doubles walking around in the Beskar armor, and it's the exact same thing here with Skeletor. And there were times when the voice performance felt like it was turning into a weird impersonation of Jack Sparrow.

[00:02:00]>> Only a little.

[00:02:01]>> If a sequel ever gets made, which is highly unlikely, Jared Leto could easily be replaced with another actor and the audience would be none the wiser.

[00:02:09]>> That is the crescendo.

[00:02:12]>> Good note for the future, my lord.

[00:02:14]>> During one scene around midway through the film, Skeletor straight-up murders Moss Man and that was a really ballsy choice, but then it was punctuated by a joke. In fact, this movie is punctuated by jokes almost every 2 minutes. And unfortunately, most of these jokes are self-referential. They constantly poke fun at the whole concept and it's a real problem, but more on that later.

[00:02:37]Nicholas Galitzine does a great job with the material he's given. Yet, if there is a heart to this film, it's the recently knighted Sir Idris Elba's performance as Man-At-Arms, who does a truly excellent job of delivering a sincere performance whilst also tackling a very clunky script.

[00:02:53]>> Big army only means one thing.

[00:02:58]More targets.

[00:02:59]>> And for all the race swap haters out there, you should actually be grateful for the fact that they cast a black actor to play Man-At-Arms because the character in the film is turned into a drunk loser who fails the king of Eternia.

[00:03:09]>> [snorts] >> And I'm betting you'd hate it even more if a white dude had to play the role that way, even if it does turn into the best character arc in the whole movie.

[00:03:17]I also really enjoyed the musical score, but it did become repetitive after a while with the same theme repeated over and over.

[00:03:24]I actually get the feeling that the composition of this score was quite rushed since a key villain like Skeletor was never afforded his own theme. So, the same main score is reused ad nauseam throughout the bum-numbing 140-minute runtime.

[00:03:38]A few of the soundtrack drops were quite cool, while others were clunky and a little too on the nose. Now, let's talk about the problems with this movie and there are many, many issues that really hurt the overall product. The jokes are just [ __ ] relentless and barely any of landed for me. This new Masters of the Universe film takes the Starsky and Hutch and Dukes of Hazzard movie approach, becoming a literal send-up of the source material. Yet, for this film to achieve what it supposedly set out to do, it needed to be sincere. Yet, the whole thing feels disingenuous every time it makes a self-referential joke about how dumb the whole franchise is.

[00:04:13]>> Sometimes you have to go, you know, you have to go through the back door to get to where you want to go. Um >> And if the filmmakers aren't going to take the mythology seriously, I don't know why they should expect the audience to. From the minute the film opened, I was getting strong Flash Gordon vibes thanks to Brian May's brilliant guitar work, but it wasn't just the music that made me feel that way. I was reminded of Flash Gordon several times throughout the movie to the point where I became convinced that the director was making a literal remake of the 1980 cult classic.

[00:04:44]There's one scene in particular where He-Man first battles the evil warriors while the action is being scored by Brian May's epic guitar. And all I could think about was the football scene in Flash Gordon. The vibe and the tone, it was just practically identical.

[00:04:59]So, after a decent opening sequence that sets up the conflict on Eternia, Prince Adam is sent to Earth to hide from Skeletor. And this is where the writing starts to get really lazy. I know we're not supposed to overthink these types of movies, but the Earth scenes opened up so many questions that were never answered. After jumping forward in time around 15 years to a dorky dumb Adam working in a corporate HR department, I was so distracted by questions of who had raised this child on Earth and what happened to the Sword of Power that it immediately took me out of the film.

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[00:05:56]Early on, there is a cameo from the original live-action He-Man, Dolph Lundgren, which I knew was going to happen, but he did turn up in the movie earlier than I was expecting. Initially, I also thought the cameo was quite sincere, and it was good to see Dolph on the big screen again, until the filmmakers ended the cameo with another dumb joke. It ruined the whole moment for me. It's like the director had a severe allergic reaction to anything being even slightly earnest.

[00:06:22]>> Just makes you sound a little very crazy.

[00:06:24]>> Adam's comedy relief roommate is the Temu version of Ned from Spider-Man.

[00:06:31]I didn't find any of his attempts at humor to be even slightly funny, and most of the other jokes in the movie land with the subtlety of Beast Man hitting a delivery truck. This is without a doubt the film's biggest problem. Most of us signed up to a fantasy adventure movie, and ended up watching a [ __ ] comedy, and not a good one at that.

[00:06:49]And I'll never understand why they felt the need to take the story to Earth.

[00:06:52]While you'll be happy to know that we only spend around 15 minutes in this setting, the story would have worked so much better if Prince Adam had gone into exile somewhere else on Eternia. I'll suggest that the reason the story takes a detour to Earth is so the writers had an excuse to include a scene in a collectible toy store. And yet, all the customers of this Forbidden Planet style venue are depicted as socially awkward nerds. Come on, Mattel. The 45- to 55-year-old Mattel enthusiasts are the only guys out there who are actually paying to see your movie, and your first instinct was to portray pop culture fans as total weirdos? It's a smack in the face to the fans of this franchise who truly deserve a sincere story. But, Hollywood is so tone-deaf these days that I'm hardly surprised by any of this. When Adam does return to Eternia and is reunited with the other heroes, we get some of the most sophomoric humor in the whole film, as the Fisto jokes start a plenty. One joke referencing this character's unfortunate name would have been fine, but it quickly becomes evident that the screenwriters only included Fisto into the story so they could triple down on a running gag about fisting. And this is supposed to be a children's film.

[00:07:59]>> Your um >> [clears throat] >> your loincloth is in my Sorry.

[00:08:03]>> Fine.

[00:08:04]>> Each attempt at humor gets more and more vulgar, with Adam even saying Fisto once fisted a goblin. And by the end of the movie, this obsession with sexual innuendo culminates with jokes about Ram Man giving head.

[00:08:16]>> It's Adam, dude.

[00:08:17]>> Hey, put your neck away.

[00:08:19]>> Delivering one of these jokes and hoping it would go over the heads of most of the young audience would have been okay, but there are so many fisting jokes in this movie that it actually started to become quite offensive. And I ain't no prude. I have no issue with foul language, but this certainly isn't the type of humor I would ever expose young children to.

[00:08:37]In the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, Prince Adam pretends to be a bumbling fool to help disguise his real identity as He-Man.

[00:08:45]Yet in this film, Adam is a genuine idiot. And while it's played for laughs, it really hurts the story when he eventually turns into He-Man. Because until the hero's story arc plays out, He-Man also has to be a bumbling idiot.

[00:08:58]And that's not what kids buy into.

[00:09:00]At this point in the movie, most of the heroes of Eternia are kind of in hiding in this underground lair. And Skeletor and his evil warriors are able to track some sort of kind of a signal from the Sword of Power. Don't worry, none of this [ __ ] really makes any sense. But they track them to this underground location and they start attacking them.

[00:09:16]And in that scene, we see Skeletor and Evil-Lyn and Tri-Klops and all of these people kind of rock up at this location.

[00:09:23]And He-Man, Teela, Man-At-Arms, and Roboto are trying to escape using a spacecraft. And they have a confrontation with Trap Jaw and some Skel Knights. And while the action in this scene is kind of cool, it goes on for about 10 minutes. And the whole time I'm thinking, "Where the [ __ ] is everyone else?" We've just seen Skeletor and Tri-Klops and all these other characters turn up to attack this location, but our main heroes only have to deal with Trap Jaw and just a handful of Skull Knights. It's lazy writing which is banking on the audience switching their brain off when they go in. Now, look, I'm not expecting Citizen Kane here, but a little bit of story logic does go a long way. One of the underlying themes of this new Masters of the Universe movie is all about the restraint of power. And I've seen a few other movie reviewers really commend the production for the way they handled this message, saying that it felt really sincere. Well, to me, all of that goes out of the window when He-Man straight up murders Goat Man. He snaps off one of his horns, stabs him in the throat with it, and then uppercuts him off the top of Snake Mountain. So much for your sincere message about the careful restraint of power.

[00:10:33]He-Man also kills Skeletor at the end of the movie, and that is, I think, a big mistake, especially if you are hoping to make some sequels and really turn this movie into a franchise. What they should have done is kind of what Star Wars did with Darth Vader, where the empire was sort of defeated at the end of the first film, but the movie's big bad was not killed. Yet, when Skeletor was killed in this movie, it literally meant nothing cuz I immediately knew that that was what was going to be in one of the post-credit scenes.

[00:11:01]It's He's going to be dead for 5 minutes, and then he's going to make a comeback.

[00:11:05]And speaking of those end credit scene, there is a mid-credit scene introducing She-Ra. And does Mattel not remember what happened the last time they introduced that character?

[00:11:16]It killed the Masters of the Universe franchise stone dead. Literally, as soon as She-Ra dolls started to hit toy store shelves, boys didn't want to play with Masters of the Universe anymore. It confused the whole brand for them, and here they are with, you know, potentially be a second movie, and they want to go straight in with She-Ra.

[00:11:33]It didn't work then, and I don't think it's going to work now. In the third and final end credit scene of Masters of the Universe, Evil-Lyn comes in and collects Skeletor's skull, and you kind of know that they are setting him up for a return in a movie sequel. And I couldn't help but think how similar this end credit scene was to the end of 1980's Flash Gordon, where a mysterious hand picks up Ming's ring, and the words "The End" with a question mark come up on the screen, and you hear laughing. And that's exactly what you get at the end of the Masters of the Universe movie. It ends with Skeletor's laugh.

[00:12:09]>> [laughter] [laughter] >> The similarities between the Masters of the Universe movie and the 1980 Flash Gordon film are almost endless. From the rock opera score to the visuals, to the campiness, to the over-the-top theatrical villain. It's definitely the type of movie that Travis Knight was trying to make. But why on earth would you want to remake Flash Gordon when that movie also bombed at the box office? Now, while it did go on to become a cult classic, I'm certain that won't happen with Masters of the Universe 2026 because this movie lacks one fundamental value that Flash Gordon had in spades.

[00:12:55]>> It is quite heavy, so if you could just >> yeah.

[00:12:58]>> The Flash Gordon movie was sincere, and it had a genuine respect and appreciation for the source material.

[00:13:03]Whereas this new He-Man joint is embarrassed to be itself. I actually feel like I should do a live stream about this movie because there are so many other issues to discuss that I just don't have the time or the inclination to talk about here. From everyone knowing He-Man's secret identity, which makes the whole concept redundant, to Cringer doing more actual fighting in the film than Battle Cat, to the many pacing issues, and the fact that Adam's childhood on Eternia was so traumatic and full of rejection that I could never buy into his desire to return to the planet anyway. The whole thing is a giant cinematic mess. This all culminates at the end of the film when it's explained that the heroes of Eternia are not really called Fisto and Ram Man. Those are the names that were given to them by a young 10-year-old Prince Adam. And it's an excuse that the filmmakers use to get away with some of the silliness of the franchise. But when it culminates in the movie's hero finally admitting that he gave himself the heroic name of He-Man and the entire cast laugh at him, they are laughing at the hardcore fans of this franchise.

[00:14:07]They are embarrassed to own He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

[00:14:12]>> You had a name for yourself, too, didn't you?

[00:14:13]>> No.

[00:14:14]>> Yeah, you did. Come on.

[00:14:16]>> He-Man.

[00:14:18]>> What?

[00:14:20]>> He-Man.

[00:14:21]>> That's worse than I thought it was going to be.

[00:14:22]>> You've never done this.

[00:14:23]>> What does it mean?

[00:14:24]>> It's a slap in the face to the long-time fans of this franchise. [music] And sadly, they're the only ones who turned up to watch this [ __ ] I saw this film two days after it opened, primetime on a Saturday in the biggest theater screen that I could go to. And I was in there with six other people.

[00:14:42]The mental gymnastics that I've seen from some of the hardcore MOTU fans online is [music] literally insane. I've heard people saying that it doesn't matter if this movie doesn't make back its budget cuz it was actually made for streaming and it's going to make it through streaming subscriptions. Movies made just for streaming and not given a $200 million budget. I've also heard them say things like box office doesn't matter because Mattel will make a shitload of money selling the toys.

[00:15:07]Well, from what I've seen, the toys aren't flying off the shelf. But also, that ain't the [ __ ] way it works.

[00:15:13]Mattel's going to make money selling the toys? What about MGM and Amazon Studios?

[00:15:18][ __ ] them, right? Doesn't matter that they sunk $200 million into a and it made no money, as long as Mattel sweeps out over here. That's not how modern-day business works. I know there are many people out there who just want to put their blinkers on and just be grateful that they even got this movie and just try to appreciate what's good about it.

[00:15:37]I just can't get past the fact that the filmmakers did not have the guts to take the source material seriously. And as a result, they responded by insulting the franchise's biggest fans.

[00:15:48]So, does Masters of the Universe 2026 have the power? Yes, it does. It has the power [music] to say a big [ __ ] you to the hardcore fandom. And it also has the power to become the biggest box office bomb of the summer.

[00:16:01]>> From Masters of the Universe, the mighty He-Man, his nemesis Skeletor. Teela [music] joins the fight against Skeletor's army. Beast Man doesn't make it easy. Battle Cat charges towards Skeletor.

[00:16:12]>> I have the power!

[00:16:14]>> Masters of the Universe figures, vehicle, and deluxe power sword sold separately.