While He-Man and the Masters of the Universe franchise, originally created to be Mattel's flagship action figure line, have had constant success in the TV world, with four different shows in 43 years, it never seemed to translate to film in any big way. 1987 was their first feature debut, with Dolph Lundgren taking up the mantle of Prince Adam. However, this movie was received terribly, with critics calling it lifeless and unfaithful to its source material. Fast-forward to 2026, and He-Man is finally returning to the big screen, headed up by Kubo and The Two Strings and Bumblebee director Travis Knight, with Nicholas Galitzine now wielding the Sword of Power.
I could go on about the uninspired cinematography and predictability within this movie, but this is a kids' movie, so most of these things don't need to be at the top of the priorities list. What should be, however, is making an engaging story that keeps you, and any children, interested for a good amount of time. While this movie doesn't completely fail here, I also wouldn't say it succeeds.
First off, this movie plays as if its target audience is young children, with a few adult jokes and a bit of nostalgia for the parents. However, this is a 12A in the UK and PG-13 in the US, so even though it's possible, it's very unlikely that small children will be the ones packing the cinemas, so is this made only for the adults? Well, He-Man holds much less gravitas and pull for modern teenagers than it did 30 years ago. However, this story is deliberately made very simple and childish, with a focus on young children.
Masters of the Universe is written as if the audience has very little literacy whatsoever. They overexplain absolutely everything way more than needed, as if catering towards people who aren't paying full attention - that audience primarily being children. You may say this is a kids' movie, so it doesn't really matter, but children are able to discern quality. There's a reason children enjoyed Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse more than The Emoji Movie, and it isn't just because one of them is about Spider-Man. Children are able to discern quality way more than you, or even they, may think, and believing the opposite can often be harmful to the industry, in terms of how they go about making child-focused media.
There is absolutely no reason for this to be as long as it is. This movie, being 2 hours and 20 minutes, conflicts with its writing in a big way. If this is marketed towards children, as you'd assume, no child wants to sit through a movie that long unless it's based on an already recognisable IP or is animated - even then, it's a push. After just the first 90 minutes, I was already feeling restless because, even as an adult, you can very much feel the runtime - and I could tell many people in my cinema were feeling the same way.
Something that persisted all throughout this movie and constantly ruined my enjoyment was the blatant disrespect of the source material. While some parts of the original may be slightly ridiculous - and the movie has a right to point those things out in a lighthearted and self-aware way - acting as if this movie is better for pointing those things out also disrespects anybody who does enjoy the show, which is presumably the target audience. There is definitely a way to recognise the cheesiness of this concept while still also recognising that it is very beloved and has made a considerable impact on many people's lives.
Unfortunately, the best parts of this movie ended up being those scenes in the real world. Once they enter Eternia, any amount of comedy is just regressed into something that'll bore parents and half of which children won't understand, due to there being way more adult jokes than needed. Not only this, but the movie began to simply feel much less creative than it could have been, also feeling fake in a way. I think this can be partly attributed to the use of soundstages and custom-built sets for the majority. While some scenes, within the cave system, were filmed in Beer Quarry Caves in Devon, almost everything else just didn't feel tangible.
Near the end, this includes a scene that feels almost entirely ripped from Thor: Ragnarok. In this scene, Skeletor has almost killed Adam, at which point The Sorceress tells him, in a vision, that the power has been inside of him all along, rather than in the sword. Does this not sound exactly like the scene near the end of Thor: Ragnarok where Odin tells Thor, in a vision, that he is 'not the God of hammers', after Hela has almost killed him? What makes this scene so incredible, in Thor: Ragnarok, is that after this vision, he rises triumphant and unlocks a power that he'd never seen and neither had the audience after 3 movies, completely without the use of Mjolnir.
While the same sort of thing does happen in Masters of the Universe, it's done much worse. This can't even fully be attributed to this scene itself, but rather the entire movie. This scene would've been just as incredible and triumphant as Thor: Ragnarok did if this were the first time we'd seen Adam fight without the sword. However, aside from the multiple waves of enemies as we were entering the third act, I don't think we saw Adam fight with the sword once. Even if I am wrong about that, this final fight still has no impact because during Adam's first fight as He-Man, against Trap Jaw, his sword was sitting on the floor. Even when Adam did 'recognise his true power', he didn't simply disregard the sword; he first put it back together. This could imply that the power is still held within the sword; it simply needs to be unbroken.
To conclude, while this is a fun action movie at times, it often drags us along a story, trying to make us care about a few uninteresting side characters, and ultimately ends in a generic, derivative way. All I'm asking is, what is this movie's target audience?
No AI was used in writing this article.