Joel on Film

One could argue that, for a fantasy-filled action-adventure endeavor like Masters of the Universe, it all comes down to the hero-villain dynamic, and although director Travis Knight’s film ultimately tests that argument, there’s no doubt this movie has nailed that dynamic. The hero, of course, is He-Man, that all-muscles warrior of legend whose power derives from a particularly gigantic sword, but he’s not only musclebound and prepared for war in this movie. The villain, just as obviously, is Skeletor, still after the very sword that belongs to his quarry, but he’s not at all complicated about his villainy or his motivation.

After so many years of the hero-villain dynamic being slightly complicated by the bad guy being a differently engineered version of the hero by slight gradations, it’s sort of refreshing to get a relationship like this one, where we absolutely know who is good, who is bad and, because of our certainty, who will triumph (a slight strength of the 1987 Dolph Lundgren vehicle, too, though that movie was quite poor and dull). Yes, the screenplay for this movie might joke about that very thing, such as in a late moment when the hero—who has spent part of the last 15 years working in the human resources department of a major corporation—tries to psychoanalyze his foe. It’s just a throwaway joke, though, because, as another character puts it when trying to clarify how we’re supposed to know if Skeletor is bad, the guy’s got a skull for a face.

It definitely helps to have Nicholas Galitzine, as the hero who will become He-Man, and Jared Leto, as Skeletor, in these roles respectively. The former brings all the fish-out-of-water charm to the man who will ultimately wield the Sword of Power but, currently, comes across as a little awkward and a whole lot nerdy. Leto, meanwhile, digs deliciously into the role of the villain as if he’s an impetuous child parted from his desired plaything and willing to do anything, to kill anyone and to dominate any planet or realm to make that happen.

The film is almost certainly at its best when we’re these two and quite distinctly not as good when the action moves away from either of them, to include a lot of the members of the supporting cast, none of whom are as interesting as the leads. He-Man, whose name is actually Prince Adam and who does not take on the other name until almost the film’s very last scene, begins the story as a boy, learning to fight under the tutelage of Duncan (Idris Elba), the king’s man-at-arms. As the honorific suggests, Adam’s father is that very same king, Randor (James Purefoy), and his mother is Queen Marlena (Charlotte Riley).

Adam stands to inherit everything, including the power of the Sword, which Skeletor obviously covets and kidnaps the king as a way of trying to get it. Unfortunately for him, the royal couple banishes their son to Earth, not knowing he’ll be separated from the sword along the way. Fifteen years later, he finds the sword on display in a toy shop, and it calls to be returned to its rightful home.

That involves a mission to rescue Adam, executed by childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes), but those whom he had inadvertently abandoned in the kingdom of Eternia, such as the bionic-armed Malcolm (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), are not quite as overjoyed to see him. By the way, his adventures in Eternia having been so long ago, he’s now afforded new names to his old heroes, so that Malcolm becomes “Fisto,” a man with a mechanical neck becomes “Mekaneck,” a guy donning ultra-hard armor becomes “Ram-Man,” and so forth. They’re here for the action set pieces, which come fast and often and present the first problem with this slightly confused movie.

The action itself is decently staged, but the movie’s ambition to be as funny as possible rather backfires for a simple reason: It’s just not very funny. Galitzine and Leto are, to be sure, but the rest of the affair is so devoted to awkward humor and dismissive sarcasm that it alienates nearly every other character upon the moment of meeting them. On the other side of that coin, Skeletor’s henchmen, led by the sorceress Evil-Lyn (an unfortunate Alison Brie), are about as dull as bad-guy henchmen get, which might at least contribute to part of the reason Leto goes for broke as insanely as he does.

There’s also no denying that this movie is all about the repetitive cycle of Skeletor scheming to steal the sword and Adam and his friends thwarting him at every turn. No matter how solid that central dynamic between good and bad, personified by the two doing battle with each other, truly is, it doesn’t quite make up for the tonal imbalance and the generic action-movie ambitions (complete with a mid-credits sequence that promises a sibling is out there somewhere) of Masters of the Universe.

Rating: **½ (out of ****)