The He-Man Movie Wasn't Bad

Trucker Man Watches

We’re in the summer movie season and there’s something big coming out pretty much every week through August. Last week’s offering was Masters of the Universe, a movie that “They” have been trying to get off the ground for a long time. (I remember seeing concept art for it back in 2009, and it popped in and out of the news every few years after that.)

Since movies are stupid expensive now, I divide up my “to-see” list with my wife and kids and we catch matinees as the summer progresses. Today it was Trucker Kid 2’s turn. I figured based on the trailers that this would be up his alley and he liked it. Whatever my tone implies from here on out, I liked it too. I get what they were going for overall, it just had warts on it along the way. Let’s dice it up.

Tough Love and Cold Water

Here’s the thing: He-Man isn’t anyone’s favorite IP from the 80s. We’re all aware of it culturally but it’s nobody’s main thing. The nostalgia factor gives it value to mine, and that’s why it hung out in limbo for so many years.

Overall, the property isn’t that complicated. It’s a second-grade version of Robert E. Howard’s Conan with some sci-fi stuff. Spaceships, guns, etc. There is a good kingdom with The Power and a bad guy who wants The Power so he can do Bad Things. That’s it! The heroes and villains all have extremely basic and sometimes goofy names (more on that in a minute) that appeal to children.

That’s not a knock. It’s just a fact. It’s meant for children. If you want the adult version, there’s still Conan. Once you embrace that, you can get rid of 90% of your hang-ups that you might have with a story like this, and just have fun—because it IS a fun movie.

The Story

Eternia is a world of magic and talking animals and cool weapons and stuff. Everything is beautiful and awesome there. Then one day the evil Skeletor attacks and takes everyone hostage because he wants Eternia’s Power, which is concentrated in a single object (sword) and guarded by a sorceress.

After beating everyone else, Skeletor tries to take the sword, but the sorceress gives it to Eternia’s young prince Adam and yeets him through a teleportation portal to Earth. Adam is kind of a wuss and fails to hold on to the sword; without it he can’t return to Eternia, and he’s stuck in the absolute textbook definition of “beige” that is Oklahoma City. And I can say that, because I live here.

He spends the next fifteen years growing up mediocre in modern America, trying to find the sword, and telling everyone he knows about how he’s really from another world with magic and stuff. This makes his work and dating life difficult. His roommate, who definitely marks “fluid” in several categories on his LinkedIn page, is nice enough to put up with him but obviously thinks that Adam is a head case.

Then one day he finds the sword. On the same day, he’s attacked by a monster and rescued by Teela, a blue-eyed BBL with red hair who exists to remind the male audience for this movie that they are indeed heterosexual. She rescues Adam and takes him back to Eternia, where the rest of the story is a predictable series of events about him Learning How To Use The Power, and then Screwing Up With The Power, and then Getting The Power Back, and finally Saving The Day. The climax is familiar to anyone old enough to remember any part of their childhood in the 80s: a jacked, tan, blond dude beats the s*** out of a villain with his bare hands. The end.

The Moral of the Story

Since we live in the Age of Perpetual Fury, your corner of the internet has probably told you what to hate about this movie and how. One side will say it’s too woke and the other side will say it’s too straight—I don’t know, people read themselves into this stuff and their takes always come out stupid.

There’s a vague and general theme about being brave even if you don’t want to, and then there’s an overt message of talking to bad guys doesn’t work, but beating the s*** out of them does. 10 year-old Adam is a wuss in Eternia and doesn’t have his father’s respect. He doesn’t like to participate in arms training. He gets beat up by a girl.

When he comes to Earth, he ultimately ends up working in conflict resolution with a corporate HR department. What does it look like? Imagine a 2026 HR department: you nailed it. That’s his boss and his co-workers. He has pronouns listed on his placard at work. He’s miserable.

When he gets swept back to Eternia and his allies are under attack by Skeletor’s freakish monster soldiers, Adam tries to apply his HR techniques to resolve the conflict, and it doesn’t work. He gets tuned up. What does he do instead? He takes up the sword and summons The Power and beats the s*** out of the bad guys.

And in the climax, when he squares off against Skeletor, he gives it one last go and tries to talk him down. Skeletor basically says “Uh, no, this doesn’t work, there’s nothing in my backstory to explain me, I’m just the villain.” This mirrors something Teela tells Adam when he asks why Skeletor destroyed Eternia. “Because he’s bad.” It’s just that simple.

Adam exhausted the peaceful option. When it came time to take the gloves off, he stopped pulling his punches and he beat the s*** out of Skeletor.

There’s the moral of the story. 21st Century Corporate HR tactics are built on the idea that you can resolve all conflicts while talking. Real villains are built on the idea that they can kill people and take their stuff and they’ll do it until someone stops them. In essence, Adam represents a complete approach: I’ll try to talk you down, but if you keep doing evil, I will beat the s*** out of you.

How They Adapted The Story

Going back to the “this is for children” bit, you can try to adapt this IP seriously, but you can’t do so with fealty to the source material, because the source material is by definition childish. I was impressed by the early trailers because it looked like they were taking an innately goofy concept and playing it straight, which is the right thing to do; don’t apologize to your audience for the film you’re making (and definitely don’t use the film itself as the method to deliver that apology.)

That said, you have to get around the fact that characters in your story are named Man-At-Arms, Fist-o, Ram-Man, and Mecha-Neck. How did they do this?

With Man-At-Arms, he went by his given name, Duncan, but declared that he was the king’s man-at-arms, which is good enough for me. He had the accurate costume and armor. Might as well acknowledge that the casting was racebent to bring in Idris Elba, which was a good choice, because it’s Idris Elba. The other goofy characters got their names from a Young Adam who drew pictures of them as he grew up on Earth; he didn’t know their real names so he went with nicknames based on their attributes.

Fist-o has a giant metal fist. “You fist people!” was a joke that got too much mileage out of it, for example. (In fact there were numerous d*ck jokes that probably didn’t fly as low under the radar as the writers thought.) Ram-Man and Mecha-Neck get their goofy names the same way. The excuse both in-world and on the meta level is “A ten year-old came up with this.” They just roll with it.

This is also how they eventually work the name “He-Man” into it, and they make fun of that, because it’s kind of hard to play that one straight.

The Cast

Adam is played by Nicholas Galitzine. I’d never seen him in anything else, just stuff I’ve heard of, like one movie where he played the gay Prince of England or something and he was in love with the U.S. President’s gay son, and this other movie where he was basically Harry Styles hunting cougars and bagging Anne Hathaway. He hides his British accent well in this one. If he has one flaw, it’s that he got too yoked in preparation for this role, so the parts of the movie where he’s Regular Guy Adam walking around in a button-down shirt don’t really hide the massive amounts of beef that he packed onto his frame.

Camila Mendes plays Teela. Never seen anything with her in it either, but yeah. She’s there to bring all the boys to the yard and so forth.

Idris Elba, Man-At-Arms. He’s awesome in the beginning, gets his butt kicked, becomes a drunk, then claws his way back to dignity by fighting alongside He-Man. Under the “moral of the story” banner, he also gives an excellent speech to Adam about why you have to fight sometimes, and how it’s not about doing violence to the guy in front of you, it’s about protecting your loved ones. Again, the message of this movie is punch people when you should punch people.

Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn. Dude, I swore this was Elizabeth Olson at first, until the character started to act Hot-Crazy, and then I immediately recognized Annie from Community. Hers is a bit-part, and it’s fine.

Jared Leto as Skeletor. Honestly they could have put anyone in this suit and wrapped him in CGI, I wouldn’t have known who it was, but he did a great job of selling the villain. People seem to be really polarized on Leto as an actor (I see comments online referring to stuff I don’t know) but I ain’t looking all that up, gossip is stupid. He’s a good actor.

Content

Like I said before: a lot of sex jokes that kids aren’t meant to get, but it becomes cringey for the adults. (“Give ‘em head, Ram-Man!”) Come on now. There was a string of A-bombs all in a row early on, a smattering of S-words, some blasphemous exclamations, and one instance of Idris Elba saying “Whatthef[explosion].” Tonally there was a chasm between the obviously childish target audience and the desire to give the adults something to sink their teeth into.

Verdict

It teetered back and forth between “generally fun” and “childishly fun.” It only tried to apologize for itself once, and that was when they said the name “He-Man,” which I assume they were contractually required to say at least once. My son enjoyed it. Plenty of bright colors and explosions and cool heroic moments and—don’t forget—dudes punching other dudes in the face. I thought the story was fine, if reliable and safe (which is all Hollywood is about these days), the moral of the story was strong (even a little refreshing), and the action was great.

So there’s my endorsement. Watch it with your boys. I would have been annoyed with myself if I had seen it alone in my 40s, because it would be like going to see Moana as a grown man. It wasn’t made for me. It was made for my kids, and they knew I’d have to drive them there, so they threw me a bone, and it was a good time.

Drive safe, see you out there.