Fantasy is one of my favorite genres, and I am a sucker for a merchandise-driven franchise. He-Man, Masters of the Universe, and She-Ra predates me, and yet that has never been a reason for me to believe that it should dictate a person’s interest. Scooby-Doo and Star Wars predate me, too, but they are also major franchises that have drawn my eye over the years.
The difference, I suppose, is that I was never invested in Masters of the Universe so much as I was aware of its existence. Regardless, I was there for the opening weekend of the most recent adaptation, and it was spectacular.
Franchises are always being mined for new adaptations. Ones that have decades worth of material to draw from are in an interesting place. They have established characters, storylines, and history that can build a sustained plot. But that is usually the problem, too. The more material you have to work with, the more difficult it can become to craft something cohesive but not overstuffed. While the throughline is the war between Adam Glenn, AKA He-Man (Nicholas Galitzine and Artie Wilkinson-Hunt), and Skeletor (Jared Leto), over Eternia’s fate, countless iterations of these characters have been built over the years, gaining more depth with each continuation and adaptation. The soul of them, I feel, came through in Masters of the Universe.
The story begins during the last day of peace in Eternia, when Prince Adam is still figuring out his place in the world he has been born to. A world where heroes have long since protected the kingdom and its citizenry, but Adam feels like he does not actually fit into it. His father, King Randor (James Purefoy), is presented as a warrior through and through, who has amassed respect from his people at the cost of a close relationship with his son. Randor wishes for his son to be strong and capable because he was forged in battle, but Adam was not. Queen Marlena (Charlotte Riley), an ex-astronaut from Earth who sees Adam’s true heart, even if his father can not yet see it himself, comes off as the more diplomatic side of the ruling couple, but no less capable.
The world is built on a heroic story that, when they are under threat, a hero will rise up with the Sword of Power, guarded by the Sorceress (Morena Baccarin), the guardian of Castle Grayskull. When Skeletor and Evil-Lyn (Alison Brie) launch their coup in Eternos, the capital of Eternia, they meet much resistance that proves incapable of doing anything. The coup succeeds through its sheer scale, and they have caught Eternos off guard. Even Duncan, the King’s Man-At-Arms (Idris Elba), is incapable of stopping the ferocity of the attack, though he does manage to get the royal family on their way to safety, before taking on and clashing with one of Skeletor’s chief enforcers, Trap Jaw (Sam C. Wilson), who defeats him in battle, shattering his confidence.
Teela (Camila Mendes and Eire Farrell) is the adoptive daughter of Duncan, and while Adam clearly has feelings for her, the film spends its time reinforcing her as a fighter – not a damsel waiting to be saved. Camila Mendes actually dropped out of I Know What You Did Last Summer in order to star in this film, leading to Chase Sui Wonders being cast in her role. Teela is not overly strong in the same way that He-Man is when wielding the Sword of Power, but her competence and combat acumen are never called into question. As a character, she is never reduced to the fact that Adam has a crush on her that may or may not be one-sided. Perhaps this is one of the few times in a narrative where I find the designated girl fight is played interestingly. Evil–Lyn might be “weaker” than Skeletor, but both villains are leagues stronger than Teela. She is able to hold Evil-Lyn back and fight through the woman’s paralysis spell.
This is generally a trope that I detest because it is annoying in its execution more often than it is not. Films, books, and television shows already underrepresent women in their stories, and for them to then double down and have the only two women in the story fight feels overly contrived.
Look no further than the first crossover between Power Rangers Dino Thunder and Ninja Storm, a season where the Rangers’ colors are the same, the number is the same, and yet they still had to have the Blue Wind Ranger fight the Yellow Dino Thunder Ranger. Teela might not get to fight Trap Jaw or Skeletor, but that was clearly never the point of her character.
Evil-Lyn is continually presented as the sole reason that Skeletor’s plans have any chance of succeeding, and why she works under him when she could abandon him is carefully threaded into the narrative. The threat that Skeletor poses to her doesn’t stop her from acting in his interests, even if, at times, it feels like it probably should.
Whether she has an arc depends on how one views her choices and the actions that she takes. But it is easy to see that Evil-Lyn has agency. The same holds true for Teela. Teela does build Adam’s confidence up, but she also spends much of the time ensuring that the resistance in Eternia does not give up before they might be able to win the war. Teela does not solely exist to progress Adam’s character growth, which is the defining trait of the “sole woman” in most stories.
One other convention in stories like this centers on the character from a fantastic world being forced to accept that their life story is not real. Adam spends more of his life on Earth, where his mother is from, than in Eternia, and as a child, it could have been passed off as a delusion that had metastasized into something troubling. We meet Adam as an adult while he is on a date with a woman, honestly answering the “where are you from” question, leading to her abandoning it halfway through. His roommate Hussein (Christian Vunipola) doesn’t believe him, but he doesn’t belittle him for his seeming delusion. Hussein just happens to entertain them while still reminding Adam that the rent is due on the first. Suzie (Sasheer Zamata), Adam’s boss, is a fun presence. She is constantly smiling, leads the HR department for a corporate blob I cannot even remember if we were given the name of, and is supportive, to a point, of Adam. Suzie’s really only in about two scenes, one of which is a literal delusion meant to break Adam’s spirit, and yet she was hilariously memorable.
What makes children’s franchises require a deft hand in adaptation is what you should take seriously versus what should be played precisely as it was created. The names of the characters were designed around selling toys, a concept more than a full-fledged story, to kids. And so, we have characters like Fisto (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), Ram-Man (Jon Xue Zahng), Trap Jaw, and Mekaneck (James Wilkinson), whose names are taken straight from the source material. Aside from Trap Jaw, Tri-Klops (Kojo Attah), and Spikor (Stephen Adentan), who serve Skeletor, the names of Eternia’s greatest heroes are all bewildered when they learn about the names that Adam gave them so that he could always remember them, but by the final fight, they’ve embraced them.
Masters of the Universe is a fun film. It built itself off of an earlier version starring Dolph Lundgren, and a franchise that has been growing for over forty years. Whether it gets a sequel is entirely dependent on Amazon, which seems incredibly happy with its performance even if, by the standard Hollywood metric, it was not a financial success. Whether that was because the film could not reach the audience it was intended to or the audience that it could have reached was not in the mood for it, I have my fingers crossed that it will receive its just due in time.
We need more films like this in our lives.
Lloydd Marshall Books 