Masters of the Universe

[BentonGrey]

Howdy folks.  I finally saw the He-Man movie.  Here's my review for anyone interested.  I'm afraid it turned into something of a book. 

While I went in with fairly low expectations, I was still rather disappointed–not because this was a bad movie, but because it was ALMOST good. Unfortunately, this film managed to fumble the ball pretty much every time it should have had a touchdown. It was a frustrating experience because the film looks almost PERFECT, with a wonderfully colorful, neon-soaked 80s-esque aesthetic that would seem to indicate a reverence for the source material. Everything, down to the smallest details of costuming and design, strongly evokes or outright copies the classic cartoon. And the action scenes are generally great–dynamic, fun, and creative. Most of them FEEL right. As one of the friends who saw it with me said, it looked like what we all imagined as kids when we smashed our action figures into one another and dreamed of fantastical fights.

So, with all of that going for it, why is it disappointing? The simple answer is, because it can't decide what kind of movie it wants to be; it can't decide if He-Man is awesome and epic or silly and stupid. The film suffers from constant tonal switches between these two extremes. The first act is played almost entirely straight, with an epic beginning and a decent set of emotional beats (though, the film rarely manages to stick the landing on even the best of those). Then, it swerves pretty hard into parody, and it continues to vacillate between the two, awesome or awkward, throughout the rest of the movie. The moments the film takes its premise and world halfway seriously, it mostly works. Unfortunately, the rest of the time, everything is treated like a (really lazy) joke.

This inability of the film to commit to a direction or to find a good balance between the two extremes also means that it often feels hollow and shallow, as it generally doesn't manage to develop its world or characters, even to the fairly simplistic degree that the classic cartoon (or even more so, the 2002 revival) did. This results in a world and cast of characters that feel half-hearted and empty outside of Adam and Man-At-Arms. Even when there are perfect opportunities for world-building, the film is too busy making cheap jokes to be bothered. There are some clever ideas here, like the concept that the silly names of the heroes and villains are mostly the creations of a 10-year-old Prince Adam, trying to remember his home, rather than the real names of the characters. However, while they are busy having one character protest, "Fisto isn't my name!" (and let's face it, that one, above all, is pretty fair) it apparently never occurred to them to give the characters ACTUAL names, or any sense of identity beyond the joke of the moment.

This also means that the film suffers from a common Hollywood problem, as events have a tendency to happen "because plot," when the writers can't be bothered to maintain any real logic or consistency between scenes. For example, why do the heroes angrily reject Adam's childhood names for them in one scene, then excitedly cheer those same silly names a few minutes later? Because somebody thought it would be funny, apparently, and they needed to get the heroes on the same page.

This same preference for the cheap joke over actual storytelling is particularly noticeable in the movie's version of the main character, Prince Adam–who is only called He-Man at the very end, another opportunity for a good laugh at how silly their concept is. For some reason, the filmmakers decided to repeat one of the chief sins of the justly-maligned 80s film, and tie their story to our world, presumably because they didn't trust their audience to invest in a fantasy world without a perspective character. It's hard to believe in the age of Marvel films they still had that little faith in their audience, but here we are.

This version of Adam is exiled to Earth at a young age and grows up in our world, and many of the attempts at humor in the movie come from the "fish-out-of-water" premise of an earthly, 21st-century, touchy-feely guy trying to adapt to the sword-and-laser gun world of Eternia. The end result is a rather buffoonish hero rather than a relatable protagonist. There are times it works, but I'm afraid they are the minority.

Despite these failures, and rather maddeningly, there are a great many things that the film ALMOST gets right. Apparently, the creators were smart enough to recognize what their main themes should be...they just couldn't or wouldn't actually nail their development. For example, a key element in the characterization of He-Man was always that Adam, like Superman, the prototypical superhero he emulated in many ways, used his power (THE Power in the setting) virtuously, selflessly, wielding it with compassion and restraint. And, just as importantly, he also put it down when there was not a reason to wield it on behalf of someone else. That's one of the true measures of heroism, not just the power to act, even act benevolently, but the selflessness not to use power for your own benefit, to live without it when it is not needed.
This film gestured to that truth at the end, with a speech from The Sorceress, Eternia's mystical guardian, telling Adam that his compassion and selflessness were the reason he had been chosen to wield the Power, but like with pretty much all of the other big moments and themes, it's just lip service, as the concept gets essentially no set-up or development throughout the film. Instead, pretty much all of Adam's attempts at exercising understanding and compassion are just played for laughs, as he awkwardly spouts modern, corporate HR jargon at uncomprehending and antagonistic audiences. Unfortunately, this same pattern is repeated with the bulk of the film's themes. The idea is there, but the execution is lacking.

Yet, the film hits enough of the right notes and moves at a fast enough pace that you can get swept along for the ride if you don't think about it too much. Every time a line of dialogue lands like a pile of bricks and you find yourself thinking, "wait, that makes no sense," the movie is already hurrying along to the next gag or, at best, action scene. And, honestly, it's a decently fun ride. The overall plot, despite the lack of internal coherence at times, works reasonably well, and there are a lot of elements that achieve a similar, if equally limited, success, like Man-At-Arms' arc, which more or less hits the right notes, even if rarely in the right key.

Unbelievably, the one unmitigated success, the very best part of the movie (and trust me, I realize how insane this sounds) is Jared Leto's Skeletor. He's the only one in the entire cast who seems to have understood the assignment. He plays the character with a perfect balance of humor and menace, like Mark Hamill's Joker from Batman: The Animated Series. He's over-the-top, scenery-chewing villainy personified, insecure and yet dangerous, delightfully snarky, yet with real presence. He emobides the balance between humor and epic that the rest of the film lacks. In fact, he's so pitch-perfect that it often feels like he's in a completely different movie than everyone around him, especially Alison Brie, who plays Evil-Lyn (I told you the names were silly, didn't I?). She seems to think she's back on Community and engaged in the parody of the week, which sadly makes even many of Skeletor's scenes rather jarring.

At its best, as with Leto's Skeletor scenes and the big action beats, the film is evocative of the cult classic 80s Flash Gordon movie, campy and over-the-top, but playing straight and enjoying the ridiculous awesomeness of its premise. In such moments, there are winks aplenty, but rarely any sneers. To choose a more recent example, and one that is clearly a major influence for this film, at its best, it reminds one of the Guardians of the Galaxy films. However, like most of the movies influenced by those unusual sci-fi flicks, this one takes the wrong lessons from them and can't or won't achieve the same balance (and it is a really difficult target to hit) between its absurdity and its awesomeness.

This movie apes the humor without mastering the humanity and the world-building of the Guardians films, creating a shiny but empty reflection of the original show, something that looks right, but that lacks its heart. And, believe it or not, the original really did have some heart.

The original He-Man cartoon could certainly be silly and corny (once again, they unironically named a character Fisto), and a movie that was entirely self-serious would have had a hard time working with such source material. Yet, there's a reason that cartoon and its successors resonated with kids and still live rent-free in the memories and imaginations of an entire generation. There was more to it than the goofy names, stilted animation, and hackneyed plots. The show presented kids with an imaginative world, rich with possibilities, stalked by monsters and haunted by dangers of all types, but also full of wonder and magic. This was a world inhabited by mighty heroes who taught the young audience that most important of lessons, according to G.K. Chesterton, not just that monsters exist, but that they can be defeated.

In other words, for all of its silliness and '30-minute toy-commercial' origins, He-Man touched the shores of Faerie, the reaches of the fantastic that fire the imagination and stir the soul. It did this in its simple, clumsy way, but also with a purity and a forcefulness that account for the fact that there are many among us who still remember the feeling of joy and boundless possibility we experienced when He-Man held aloft his sword and shouted the words, "I have the power!"

The show, like many of those that filled the Saturday mornings of my youth, was more than its cynical origins or the sum of its goofy parts.
It tapped into archetypal ideas about heroism and the true purpose of power. It was not just a power fantasy for young boys, but a colorful and accessible lesson on how one should use such power. And this is one of the oldest and most important lessons that we have taught ourselves through Story, from Gilgamesh to Aeneas, from Beowulf to King Arthur, and from Superman to He-Man.

And ultimately, that is what this movie version lacks: the heart and imagination of its source. The movie is so busy laughing at itself that it forgets to enjoy the qualities that lie behind the foibles it mocks. Even so, perhaps it could have succeeded just as parody if it wasn't so lazily executed. As it is, the movie's humor often falls flat, though there are some real laughs to be had.

Overall, while it's clumsy and uneven, it does move briskly and provides some pretty good action to keep the audience engaged. It's entertaining and fun, a passable big, dumb action movie. Nonetheless, it's disappointing, because it could have been great.