Rewind: ‘Masters of the Universe’ Review
“I Have The Power!” was the key to He-Man. He-Man empowered 5-year-old boys like me in the 1980s. You held the sword (which was quite expensive), and suddenly you had the power, not your parents or teacher.
“Doing my research” (watching the Netflix documentary The Toys that Made Us), I was surprised that He-Man was the best-selling toy, but only for a brief few years, before falling off a cliff into obscurity. Mattel’s attempts to bring it back over the years have been met by a collective shrug. It is also worth mentioning that the brilliant Filmation cartoon was a marketing effort to sell toys and merchandise. Unlike the Turtles, which was a weird, dark comic book that was tweaked to turn it into a hit, He-Man was a product of marketing efforts.
The fall of He-Man was abrupt. There seem to be 2 main factors. The first is that Mattel had a quantity-over-quality approach. They shovelled out some absolute rubbish. The other factor was that the 1987 film Masters of the Universe was a disaster and a nail in the coffin of its production company, Cannon Group.
As a 5-year-old, in the cinema, I loved this film. I really could see “He-Man” up there in “real life”, and I thought Skeletor was excellent. The baddies were scary, and the goodies were heroic. Watching as an adult, it is hard to know where to begin, ripping it to pieces.
A far greater inspiration for the film seemed to be Star Wars, rather than the actual source material. I am sure that budget was a factor, but we start somewhat promisingly, but we are almost immediately removed from Eternia and transported to Earth (the setting is completely wrong). Surely what SHOULD have happened is for the production, would be to review the most popular characters and vehicles in the line and make sure what kids are interested in, feature them heavily in the film, and make them actually look and act like the characters the kids love.
Dolph Lundgren, as He-Man, was criticised for his physique, which to me seems completely unfair, as the guy is ripped and the physique of He-Man is anatomically impossible. We can, however, say that Dolph looked the part but lacked charisma in the role. Perhaps this is why He-Man is not the protagonist of the film, but rather two teenage lovers.
The main problem we keep coming back to is that whoever made this film did not give the audience what they wanted; they didn’t give the fans the things about He-Man they truly loved. Frankly, whoever wrote or rewrote the script, whoever made these decisions, deserved to be fired.
Like many films of the time, the plan was to be “the new Star Wars”, but none of these wannabes seem to grasp why people love Star Wars. People love Star Wars because they love the universe, but most importantly, they fall in love with the characters. Good writing is hard, but it also just requires a talented writer and a typewriter. So many of these pretenders to the throne didn’t really pay any attention to why people connect with Star Wars, and thus, they totally deserve to fail.
There are tiny glints of good ideas. The musician, remembering the tune to use the intergalactic key, Evil Lyn briefly using her powers. The standard of acting is not good; however, Courtney Cox stands out. Billy Barty is also fine in a hospital pass of a role, which was supposed to be comic relief, but was always going to annoy viewers. Evil Lyn is played by Meg Foster. She gets a lot of screen time, but they never come close to using her properly.
Frank Langella is decent as Skeletor, and some of the costumes and set design at Castle Greyskull (in our fleeting time there) are interesting and well done. There is almost no attempt at world-building, which could have gone a long way to making this feel more like a believable World. Masters of the Universe makes the unforgivable sin for such a fantasy universe, and somehow makes it boring.
Our final, climactic showdown is much more competent than the one in Hawk the Slayer, however that was at least unintentionally hilarious. Here, Skeletor finally taps into the ultimate power, levels up, and becomes cool and gold. He then has a fight with He-Man and just sort of loses. He-Man didn’t have to work out how to drain his power; he wasn’t saved by the Sorceress. He just did some very perfunctory sword swipes and won anyway. Is the ultimate power of the universe not as powerful as everyone expected? Was Skeletor tricked into a trap? No one who made this film has put as much thought into it as I have.
People took a beloved universe, paying no attention to it, and turned it into Star Wars for the sole aim of making money. He-Man toys were outselling Star Wars toys at the time. The people making this had a golden opportunity, and they melted that gold down to sell it as brass.
