That universe isn't going to master itself...
dir: Travis Knight
2026
You can’t mock me: I’m going to mock me first!
This may work as a self-defence strategy from some insecure person wanting to avoid scrutiny, or, dare I say it, mockery, but I would also dare say with my decades of film experience, that it rarely results in box office success.
It probably changed nothing and moved no needle in the scheme of things, but I just find it baffling when movies practically apologise for their own existences within their opening minutes with a deeply ill-considered voiceover.
Continuing my vast tradition of writing reviews where I mostly talk about other films instead, once of the most baffling cringe-inducing intros I’ve ever heard in my life was a very obviously after-the-fact voiceover introduction that came at the start of a flick called The Invention of Lying. It starred Ricky Gervais in that brief, strange time period when Americans thought he was the bee’s knees, and it conjured up an alternate reality where the world was pretty much the same as the one we lived in, except people, to this point in time, couldn’t lie, for whatever reason.
It’s not that difficult to understand, pretty tame as far as alternate realities go, and yet the studio execs behind the film were so worried audiences would be too fucking stupid to grasp the premise that they had Ricky Gervais record a statement as himself, not as the character, explaining the premise as the opening credits rolled.
What followed was a mildly amusing movie that did a few things with its what if? premise. A few gags, a few giggles, whatever. I was already tired of Ricky Gervais by the time that flick came out but I watched it anyway like the loyal cinema-peasant that I am. It always struck me as humiliating for Gervais and cowardly of the studio that they resorted to such an embarrassing admission that they thought their film was too complicated for the slovenly masses.
These days they just wouldn’t make the film, or, if it was made for Netflix, they’d re-state the premise every fifteen minutes so that the people watching something else on their phones won’t get too confused and switch off.
This flick, based either on the cartoon from the 1980s or the toys themselves, pretty much has a similar voiceover at the beginning, showing how little confidence the makers had in what they were making. If something as generically fantasy-ish as this needs explanatory voiceover in order to get across to the masses, then of course cinemas should die because AI has robbed people of the ability to comprehend anything not served up to them in bite-sized pre-digested chunks.
Why was this film made: because Barbie was such a massive success, that Mattel, the owner and producer of Barbies and the movie, thought they could make movies of all the toy lines they’ve ever had.
Why they shouldn’t have made this film: because Barbie was such a good movie and such a massive success.
Barbie’s long history but lack of specific backstory meant Greta Gerwig et al could conjure up whatever story operating on however many levels they wanted, and they did. As outlandish as it might seem, they never apologised for it or had to explain to the audience with hand-holding passages of voiceover as to how it was that the denizens of Barbie’s world were sentient and capable of thought and (eventually) democratic action, in tandem with a story about a ‘real’ person in the real world struggling to be taken seriously in Mattel’s corporate offices because she’s a woman who routinely thinks about death.
Now that I’ve written all of that out, that film’s success seems even more strange, more one-of-a-kind, more berserk in these bizarre times that we live in. You may be simultaneously relieved and disappointed that they clearly never aspired to those same lofty heights with this flick. This flick’s main claim to fame would be that it severely comes across as a flick saying “me too” not for the cartoon itself or its recent reiterations, nor the film from 1986, but for the bandwagon filled with the Trash n Treasure flea market kinds of motifs and references that were cannibalised so successfully by James Gunn for the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and Taika Waititi in some of his Marvel flicks to much success.
It was already dated stuff that borrowed heavily from Flash Gordon, and this time? Well, those not kindly disposed will just see it as a lame ripoff of lame ripoffs that ripped off other stuff that was already derivative.
Instead of leaning in to the ridiculousness (all fantasy / science fiction mashups are inherently ridiculous, whether it’s called Star Trek or Star Wars or Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, be honest), this flick kinda seems embarrassed by itself, and definitely doesn’t embrace it wholeheartedly.
It gives the movie a bit of a schizophrenic feel. It wishes it was making ironic comments about notions of masculinity, and the expectations placed on men, and the increasingly unattainable physical expectations looksmaxxing bullshit exploited by the manosphere to drag the vulnerable into the cult (so they can sell them crap they don’t need), but it doesn’t have the balls to really engage with it. It goes out of its way to tell us, the viewers, that it knows the original characters and the underpinning ideas of what make Adam / He-Man idealised and absurdist are meant to appeal to an eight-year old boy’s imagination, but then it doesn’t say anything beyond that beyond underlining it.
Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) is fine as a lead. Seriously, he’s fine. At no stage does he try to be charming or in any way charismatic, and that works fine for this character. We’re meant to see him, regardless of how large his eventual muscular physique is (which they hide, most of the time, with over-sized pink shirts, just like I do in real life), as an eight-year-old boy trapped in a man’s body, someone whose outdated and comically over-sized idea of what a ‘real’ man should be is what you’d get from a case of severely arrested development.
And it’s not his fault. It’s Skeletor’s fault for overthrowing Adam’s parents, the rulers of Eternia, which resulted in Adam randomly turning up on Earth and living here for fifteen or so years, searching for a sword. Adam goes on a date and tells the poor woman all about where he comes from and all the mystical, magical things that happen in Eternia, eternally oblivious to the looks of incredulity and pity that appear on people’s faces when he talks.
That’s not entirely true: he is self-aware enough to know people think he’s crazy, but he’s not self-aware enough to not alienate people and make himself sound crazy by talking about this nonsense.
And yet he has the excitement and enthusiasm of an eight-year-old boy talking about how he plays with his space ships and his dinosaurs and all the adventures they go on across the universe.
It still seems a little bonkers. Somehow, despite all this nonsense about sorceresses and guys with metal heads who ram things and guys with oversized metal fists and his giant green, cowardly cat, he has finished school and works in Human Resources at some company, but he spends all day looking up swords on his work computer.
Big no-no. Sure, swords are probably Safe for Work, but that’s a clear misuse of company resources, Adam. Not to mention that it distracts you from your other actual duties, Adam (working in HR means he does everything in his power to protect the company from its employees, and not vice verse).
In something as not really thought out or creatively engaged, sure, somewhere on this planet is that sword, and if Adam touches the sword, then something something will happen. And of course he gets a tip that the sword has turned up in some store catering to nerds, because why not.
And then he touches the sword, and something happens? The ring of a bell echoes through the cosmos? One clear note penetrates through all the veils that shroud true reality from us? O, and there’s his childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes) come to save him from Beast Man, just in the nick of time, who is also after said sword?
And then Teela does nothing of note for the rest of the film, other than throw eye daggers at her disappointing alcoholic dad Duncan / Man-at-Arms (Idris Elba) whenever he’s talking and making excuses about what a drunken fuckup he is. It is funny (in that it is slightly depressing) that the younger teenaged Teela had more to do in the flick that the adult one, but whatever. Her dad really must have done a number on her.
There, there, Duncan, it’s not your fault, it’s the demon drink’s fault, isn’t it, oh, and Skeletor, too.
Idris Elba, huh? He’ll really appear in anything. Whatever they paid him, they should have tripled it. Idris, I don’t think, has turned anything down, ever. They even showed him what a terrible looking costume with an absurd moon-shaped helmet he was going to wear for most of the film, and he was still like “fuck it I’m still in”.
You’re amazing, Idris, don’t go changing. He gives his all, like he does in everything, no matter how paper-thin the character is written, no matter how cobbled together in clichés his dialogue is, he gives it three hundred percent and fools you into thinking he gives a shit about any of these other people.
He couldn’t possibly. I still hope it was an enjoyable month or so of his life.
As for Skeletor, I’m not going to go there. I’m not going to name the actor who voices Skeletor, or maybe appeared on set and was eventually swamped with digital effects. By a strange coincidence / convergence a documentary came out yesterday which has been picked up by all the news services about at least 10 (now) women who’ve come forward to say he’s a piece of shit abuser, and I have to say, it’s often the ones you most suspect.
I’m not going to say his name. I’ve disliked him for years even if he gave some decent performances in his youth. I just don’t care anymore and hopefully won’t be seeing him in anything new going forward. His performance here I guess is okay, but he plays this character like a sadistic but insecure narcissist, which, yeah, on paper is potentially interesting, but at the moment we have an American president rampaging across the planet who’s acting like that for real, and so in the immortal words of The Smiths, That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore .
For all the sarcasm and disdain that might be dripping through in my remarks, the absurd thing is I actually enjoyed this flick a lot. If its plot and setting and ideas are terrible, they’re terrible in the way that all these things sound like they’ve been done a million times before and at least a thousand times better. The thing is, though, for a goofy flick about goodies and baddies fighting against each other and trying to rule some mystical place, this looked fantastic. I don’t usually expend a lot of energy or keystrokes praising digital effects and CGI, because what a weird thing to simp about, but the various elements look phenomenal.
I am always happy to see Alison Brie in anything and she was pretty okay as Evil-Lyn here (I just wish she had more to do other than vamp, but she vamps fine). And Kristen Wiig as the voice of Roboto was really funny, funnier than anyone else? Idris is always good / solid, and, a couple of other people rolled their eyes whenever Adam talked? That was cool, too. And those scenes with Skeletor and Adam back in the office gave me a chuckle, borrowing as they did, bizarrely, from Being John Malkovich, still enjoyed it.
It’s well directed trash, is what I’m saying, you know, like some Chanel commercials or episodes of Euphoria or particularly goofy film clips of gods and monsters battling and everything in between. It is, regardless of the pontificating, really no worse than most of the Marvel movies, and I realise that saying such a thing sets the bar real low, like hellishly low. I can find the fun in movies like this, and I did. I just wish the script had been a bit funnier. It lacked a wicked sense of humour that really would have sealed the deal. Instead it trades in weird workplace comedy awkwardness vibes and people undercutting themselves and each other just in case we get the impression that anyone takes any of this nonsense seriously.
I enjoyed it. I had the toys when I was a kid. I loved my Cringer / Battle-Cat. Saw all the cartoons. Saw the reboots. Even saw the terrible, no good, very appallingly bad movie from 1986 starring Dolph Lundgren. I can’t see how audiences, young ‘uns or not, could possibly connect to this flick now as it is, but gods love ‘em for trying.
It’s a missed opportunity, which is a shame, but it wasn’t an opportunity completely squandered; that is my consolation prize.
6 times this flick will never get a sequel, because it bombed, but if it did they were going to bring in She-Ra! out of 10
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“In today's story, we saw that muscles don't necessarily make a man, and that having a skull for a face pretty much guarantees you're the bad guy! Until next time!” – there will be no next time - Masters of the Universe
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