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Meit’s not that He-Man himself is from the 80s that gives Masters of the Universe 2026 so much appeal. It’s just that trying to assemble a movie around a toy story and polish an IP that few people care about feels like something Hollywood has been slow to do, especially on a scale like this.
This year, the songs depended on things that the audience liked (Scream, Michael Jackson, Mario, The Devil Wears Prada) or, more broadly, original ideas (Emotion, Backrooms, Goats, Hoppers). We didn’t wait for the Underworld sequel or the Tarzan reboot from 2016, the Terminator movie from 2019, the Dolittle reboot from 2020 or the GI Joe spin-off from 2021. Mattel may have struck gold with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie in 2023, but it was inconsistent, but it was inconsistent, but it was inconsistent. millions were still buying all the time (the year before it was released, the brand made more than $1.4bn). Various directors, from John Woo to Jon M Chu, have been closely associated with the film He-Man for many years and various studios, from Sony to Netflix, have tried (the latter spent $ 30m after a failed attempt) but, as was the case with many projects that have been happening in Hollywood, those involved forgot to remember Jeff Goldblum so as not to bother with Jeff Goldblum. he didn’t stop to think if he deserved it. “
It seems they shouldn’t have it. Amazon’s $200m budget breakdown fails to explain why so much time, money and effort has been wasted on a movie based on a toy that kids no longer play with. Even for those who liked it (I count myself among them), there is nothing here that is clever or funny or interesting to explain why the amber light turned green. The story about He-Man was always obvious to make and sell a lot of action people and the film, from the director of Bumblebee Travis Knight, wants to laugh at his stupidity for a while while thinking about it seriously, and that’s the problem here – every line, action and story changes in the wrong way. There’s also not enough irony to make it sane (it’s also surprisingly unfunny), or enough emotion to make it interesting. It’s often like the movie four writers are deliberately working against each other, as if each new draft is worse than the last.
It makes for a difficult and incomplete viewing but a little bit of fun, seeing the world being created for a franchise we’ll never return to, and an early follow-up showing that this is going to be one of the biggest things of the summer. Spread it alongside Universal’s Dark Universe or the big screen Golden Compass or, more recently, directed by Chris Pine. Dungeons and Dragonsa good little example of what this movie should be aiming for.
It is also suitable for the oddity of the director Nicholas Galitzine, famous for his romantic director in the Idea of You and Red, White and Royal Blue, who played Adam AKA He-Man, who was removed from the magical world of Eternia as a child when he was kidnapped by the evil Skeletor (Jared Leto, trying to do a good Ian McKe). On Earth, he worked as a humanitarian, his childhood trained in the use of war to resolve conflicts faced by an adult where he must resolve situations through his words. When his sword is recovered, he is brought back home by his old friend Teela (Camila Mendes) and must save the land he once loved from evil forces.
Although the original film was beloved at the time, the 80s attempt to drag it to the big screen was a terrible disaster, stopping the franchise (the original He-Man Dolph Lundgren makes a thankless cameo here), it was criticized as one of the cheap attempts to test the magic of Star Wars. There’s more here too, plus another Superman and a big helping of James Gunn’s Guardians trilogy, but nothing that can be called a stand-alone. The writers like to tell us that things are “getting weird” and “a little crazy”, but they’re not weird or crazy enough and proudly telling us this around just makes it look that much better. You can feel the strain trying to cram anything into it and even if you burst through the unforgivable 143 minutes, it’s busy and empty. There are vague, thinly veiled lessons about masculinity and the importance of balancing brains and brawn, “who cares” romance between two leads with zero chemistry, lazy support from two actors who should have been better (Idris Elba’s drunken man happily collects a lot of money and a strange voice Kristen Wiig as a robot), an Amazon delivery van cameo (!) and a carefully edited scene that confuses maximalism with joy (for a movie that costs so much money, it often looks surprisingly cheap – check your editorial, Hollywood!).
There’s too much confusion here – from Galitzine’s uncertain performance to the flurry of competing terms to the question of who should be – to drive us as we expect and expect. You’ll sit sadly in your seat, confused as to why you can’t see something.
