Masters of the Universe

Masters of the Universe; fantasy, USA, 1987; D: Gary Goddard, S: Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langella, Courteney Cox, Billy Barty, Robert Duncan McNeill, Jon Cypher, Chelsea Field, Meg Foster, James Tolkan

Evil Skeletor, a man with a skull instead of a face, conquered the prestigious castle Greyskull on planet Eternia and captured the Sorceress with his army. He-Man, the fighter for good and justice, manages to infiltrate Greyskull with Duncan, Teela and the dwarf scientist Gwildor, but they get attacked by Skeletor's army and have to escape with Gwildor's dimension portal key to a different planet—Earth. The key is found by the teenage girl Julie, whose parents died in a plane crash, and her boyfriend Kevin. Skeletor's army goes to Earth to take the key away from her, but she joins He-Man. He manages to kill Skeletor and awards Julie by letting her go back in time to day before her parents went to the plane and stop it.

"Masters of the Universe" unfortunately isn't "The Secret of the Sword"—the former is only a modest fantasy action flick based on "He-Man", the popular cartoon show that was a real gold mine back in the 80s, whereas the latter stands as the coveted ideal He-Man (animated) film adaptation. One has to give credit to the Golan-Globus Cannon group for at least having the audacity to try such a live-action project, but as with most Hollywood films, the screenwriters did not stay faithful to the canon and went on to do their own version of the original concept. Several changes made compared to the show: there He-Man also had a secret personality as prince Adam, here he is always He-Man; there the legendary Skeletor had a very cynical sense of humor, here he is a too serious bad guy (albeit a charismatic one); Orko and Battle Cat were eliminated. A deviation from the canon does not always necessarily have to be something bad, but the new elements added in the story do not have that many redeeming features that justify such changes.

The sole storyline is so banal that anyone could have written it on autopilot—Skeletor attacks, He-Man and his friends flee, regroup and strike back—but where is the inspiration, the creativity, the spice that would make this standard outline more versatile? Skeletor works thanks to Frank Langella’s acting talent ("Tell me about the loneliness of good, He-Man. Is it equal to the loneliness of evil?")—yet the main hero He-Man didn't get a single line or moment to shine, and was reduced to a one-dimensional extra. Even Teela has at least one moment where she becomes charming: while barricaded in the store, Teela settles near Man-At-Arms, stands up and randomly shoots four evil soldiers, then ducks back under the counter to slyly joke: "Woman-At-Arms". As a whole the film lacks that nostalgic humor, melancholy or inspiration from the "He-Man" world, thus turning just into a cult "guilty pleasure" more thanks to the bravery of the premise than to the extraordinary execution of it. The story has almost no plot holes, no extreme mistakes or pretentious outbursts, but that all still does not amount to much—one of the rare examples of spirit is the scene where Gwildor steals some fast food from the back of a car of a kissing couple, upon which we, surprisingly, learn that our heroes are vegetarians, or when Kevin assumes Gwildor’s dimensional travel key is a modern synthesizer, but the rest is just stiff routine. Among the rare sparkling virtues is Courteney Cox’s role of a sad teenage girl Julie, who almost "steals" the whole story to herself. However, when all is said and done, you just have to give credit to Gary Goddard: if anything, till date, he is the only man who ever directed a live action He-Man film, something not even Spielberg managed to do.

Grade:+