Masters of the Universe

Girls with baggy pants and garishly colored perms, and Michal David were intrinsic to the 1980s, "the decade of weird taste", and this Goddard mess is another one of that era’s unmissable representatives. Mythology as if from the pen of a ten-year-old fantasist, a tragically shallow Dolph Lundgren and shameless rip-offs of everything from Star Wars to Superman – well, yes, there are few worse combinations. But here, more than anywhere else we can say that "it's so stupid it's beautiful". When we send an informative probe to alien civilizations in distant galaxies, this piece should definitely not be missing in the attached chapter "80s movies" :) Pleasant guilty pleasure. (05/15/2007)

The 1980s were full of all the Beastmaster, Conan, Deathstalker, and Dragonslayer films, as well as The Sword and Sorcerer, The Neverending Story, the beautiful Legend or Labyrinth, and Krull and Willow. Female versions included Barbarian Queen, Ladyhawke, and Red Sonja. And if the animated He-Man had ruled television since 1983, it was clear that a feature-length version of his adventures wouldn't be long in coming. Personally, I would have appreciated one more film with She-Ra by his side, but you can't have everything right away. Masters of the Universe features an excellent cast of Frank Langella, Meg Foster, and Courteney Cox. It's all so straightforward and fast-paced that there's no time to get bored, and if the viewer agrees to take part in the subtext between Skeletor and He-Man, it's doubly fun. (02/21/2015)

After many, many years, I rewatched a film I enjoyed in my pre-pubescent years only to realize that the filmmakers didn't really need to use their imagination, because everything had already been thought up by someone before them. The budget clearly wasn’t big, Dolph Lundgren did an excellent job playing Dolph Lundgren, and I almost considered giving a Boo! rating, but the film is so endearingly and naively stupid that I had to give it two stars. (07/19/2017)

Masters of the Universe is pure B-movie brilliance that has ruined many an actor's career and that rips off other films as much as it can. Yet it doesn't stick to its premise for financial reasons. The story begins on the planet Eternia after a big battle that we don't get to see for financial reasons. At the beginning of the film, He-Man and his buddies flee from the megalomaniacal Skeletor and his gang to another, randomly chosen planet, which for financial reasons is Earth. The film has little in common with the source material (He-Man uses a laser pistol instead of his huge sword). The most important attribute of the He-Man action figures was that they had muscles and almost no clothes, the animated series and comics were basically just advertisements for them and didn't bring much depth to their world. The characters in the movie are basically just animated versions of these action figures, but their costumes look extremely ridiculous in live-action form (the actors can often barely move in them). He-Man's identity is purely his musculature (his masculinity is accented twice in his name – “he” and “man” for good measure). And I actually can't think of a more suitable actor for the role than Dolph Lundgren. His eccentric comic-book visage, complete with leather underpants and bondage belts, will forever be etched in your memory. Lundgren wasn't too proud to play He-Man. While his Swedish accent wasn't ultimately dubbed over as originally planned, it's used here at most as a tacky mountain of muscle that occasionally says something. Still, this is the first role in which he utters more than four sentences. The best lines here, however, are delivered by He-Man's adversary Skeletor, whose character as a spoiled brat who must have all the toys to himself is summed up by his memorable line, “I must possess all, or I possess nothing!” So he must have the most epic set piece in the entire film, his throne. Character actor Frank Langella downright relishes the role of the maniacal bad guy, uttering diabolically stupid monologues with Shakespearean earnestness and managing to deliver a solid performance despite the rubber mask that covers most of his facial expressions. (06/25/2016)