2026 - MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, a very strange film

This is not a good film, in fact it's a very stupid film.  Mattel owns the rights to the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe characters. They were looking for a studio to make a live action version of their cheesy syndicated cartoon series. Mattel managed to get MGM/Amazon to sign on to create a feature film.  And what brought this on?  Well one word Barbie.  Barbie another Mattel character made so much money that all these corporate interests thought they had a potential money source converting plastic toy doll characters into actual films. 

Unfortunately nobody seemed to understand the success of Barbie.  The film had an excellent screenplay, good direction and casting.  Barbie also pitched a message of female empowerment and you can rest assured Masters of the Universe really had no such message just a cowardly tiger called Cringer and a floating magic guy called Orko.

As poorly as this film turned out there was the gem of a decent idea in it.  Add the usual action and fantasy stuff but also stick in lots of self deprecating humor with a wink to the audience that all this sword and sorcery stuff is actually mighty silly.

Half the time the actors look like they can barely contain the smirk on their faces while playing these silly characters.  The action scenes are the usual bunch of overblown computer graphic animations. After a while it just looks so outrageous it ceases to be remotely believable even for a fantasy world.  But maybe that was the point. 

The director Travis Knight had primarily been associated with animated cartoons. I suppose he was considered to be a safe choice for what is essentially a live action animated cartoon.  But in the end the whole thing just came off as another  flop that ended up on streaming almost immediately after it was released.  If you are for some reason interested in the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe world I would recommend watching the Dolph Lundgren version.  Released in 1987 by the Cannon Group who at least recognized this was B-Movie junk instead of the wasted $170 million dollar budget that this film spent.

 The film went through a lot of screenwriters but only four got credit.  Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee and David Callaham.  The running time is 140 minutes for a film that is an updated toy commercial,