“Masters of the Universe” attempts to do two different things together, and the result is a rather mixed bag on the whole. While it is sometimes as earnest and serious as its hero, the movie is also deliberately goofy and campy with some self-conscious touches, and I was just mildly amused at times while occasionally appreciating the game efforts from some of its main cast members.

As many of you know, the movie is the second feature film from the media franchise of the same name from Mattel. I still remember well the TV animation series which I often watched during my childhood years during the late 1980s, and I am also familiar with the 1987 feature film, which did not impress me that much when I watched in the early 1990s.  

Compared to many tacky aspects of its predecessor (This was one of many notorious products from the Cannon Group during the 1980s, you know), the movie surely looks better in technical aspects thanks to its much bigger production budget (Around 170-200 million dollars), but it frequently feels jumbled as wildly going back and forth between seriousness and goofiness. The movie surely has some silly fun with its broad archetype characters, but it often stumbles in plot and character development as struggling to establish its overall tone, and we only come to observe the story and characters from the distance with a bit of mild amusement and nostalgia.

Anyway, the story is your typical hero origin tale. Our hero, Adam Glenn / He-Man (Nicholas Galitzine), was a young prince of an alien kingdom named Eternia, but he was sent alone to the Earth when his kingdom was ambushed by a powerful evil warlock named Skeletor (Jared Leto) and his evil cronies, and the early part of the film establishes how he is miserably stuck in the Earth 15 years later. For returning to his kingdom, he needs a certain powerful magic sword, but he happened to lose it when he was swiftly sent to the Earth at that time, and he has desperately been looking for it whenever he is not working in the human resource department of some big company.

On one day, Adam comes across a possible opportunity to retrieve that magic sword. At first, he seems to fail in his mission, but, what do you know, he is later sent back to Eternia thanks to his old childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes), and he soon comes to see how much Eternia has been changed due to the tyranny of Skeletor, who is still looking for that magic sword for becoming, well, the master of universe.  

Adam certainly feels overwhelmed by what he should do as the only hope for his kingdom, but, of course, he soon comes to see how much he can be changed thanks to that magical sword. Once he activates that magical sword, this mild-tempered lad is transformed into your average muscular beefcake not so far from the hero of “Conan the Barbarian” (1982), and this will surely tantalize many gay audiences out there just like the TV animation series aroused numerous gay kids like me. 

Nevertheless, Adam remains soft and gentle behind his new appearance. Nicholas Galitzine, who has been more notable thanks to several recent films including “Red, White & Royal Blue” (2023) and “Bottoms” (2023), brings sweet earnestness to his character, and his good performance clicks well with several supporting performers around him. While Camila Mendes imbues her role with enough feisty quality, Idris Elba, who plays Teela’s father, gives the best performance in the film as deftly balancing his character between humor and gravitas, and Kristen Wiig provides a wry voice performance as a certain robot character in the story.

However, the movie is relatively less fun in case of the villain characters of the film. Jared Leto, who has been criticized for unnecessary overacting more than once during last several years, surely gets a moment when he really needs to go over the top, but his efforts sadly do not reach the memorably fun performance of Frank Langella in the 1987 version. Skeletor in this version is merely sour and snarky without enough menace or amusement for us, and the only real fun during Leto’s scenes mostly come from Alison Brie, who plays Skeletor’s right-hand figure with sly gusto.         

Compared to his previous works “Kubo and the Two Strings” (2016) and “Bumblebee” (2018), director Travis Knight is less successful here in this film. Although several action scenes in the movie are handled with enough competence, they are merely drenched in a lot of CGI without much style or personality, and that is the main reason we become more distant to the story and characters. Furthermore, Eternia in the film is not particularly wondrous or enchanting, while only looking like the second-rate version of what we previously saw from “Thor” (2011) and its several sequels.   

In conclusion, “Masters of the Universe” is not totally without entertainment thanks to its several enjoyable things such as some engaging performances and the effective score by Daniel Pemberton, who recently impressed us with his superlative score for “Project Hail Mary” (2026) and did another good job here as delightfully quoting the main theme from the TV animation series from time to time. Considering what is shown around the end credits, there may come a sequel, but, due to the rather poor box office result of the movie at present, I do not expect that much, and I am already willing to move onto something more entertaining.