Thanks in part to filmmakers like James Gunn, whose superhero movies often strike a balance between the skewed and the sincere, moviegoers are enjoying, or at least living through, the age of the self-aware corporate blockbuster. The settings and characters of “Masters of the Universe” are certainly silly and campy enough to not just warrant such a treatment, but to possibly flourish under it.
Indeed, the new movie, directed by Travis Knight from a script concocted by four writers, leads off with an acknowledgment of the inherent goofiness of “He-Man.” This is the second live-action, feature-length film to showcase the characters and settings that originated with a Mattel toy line in the early 1980s. Its opening scene is narrated by our hero, Adam, a.k.a. He-Man (Nicholas Galitzine), telling of the noble beauties of his homeland, Eternia, his origins as its young prince, his early possession of the Sword of Power, and his ultimate trans dimensional exile to … Oklahoma City, where we see the handsome adult Adam telling all this to a date, who walks out on him.
On earth, Adam is a salaryman at a firm specializing in interpersonal relations, but he himself is obsessed with what everyone else believes is a fantasy. This state persists even after Adam has purchased what he believes to be the Sword of Power at a fanboy shop. Three hundred dollars! But so worth it, because soon he’s stuck in a traffic jam, and there’s a huge hairy not-of-this-earth monster stomping all over cars, and suddenly there’s the adult version of his Eternia childhood friend Teela (an appealing Camila Mendes), who’s got a nifty trans-dimensional spaceship. She doesn’t say to Adam, “Get in, loser,” but she might as well.
Even after the movie gets to Eternia, we have to wait for Adam’s transformation. First we are obliged to share in his wonder as he recognizes the heroes he drew and got mocked for as a kid on earth. When explaining his origins to his date, Adam mentions the Sword of Power and shruggingly says, “that’s what they went with.” As we’re getting to know the dastardly, skull-faced villain Skeletor, played by an obviously unrecognizable Jared Leto, the baddie frequently overdoes his diabolical laugh, and then lets it trickle off with something resembling embarrassment. When Adam, now transformed into the impressively muscle-sculpted He-Man, prepares to ride on the back of his childhood pet, an iridescent green and yellow talking tiger named Cringer (who the movie could have used more of), the cat doesn’t just cringe, he rolls his eyes. As do the various heroes of Eternia when Adam refers to them by names he gave them in his childhood reveries: “Ram-Man,” “Fisto” and more. As Duncan, Prince Adam’s mentor on Eternia, Idris Elba observes all this and beams with pleasure.
But the self-mockery is good-natured rather than disdainful, a joke even the most earnest fans of the old cartoon can appreciate. (One hopes.) In the role of He-Man, Galitzine, who recently amused in “The Sheep Detectives,” wears the character’s mild goofiness loosely, the better to shake it off when the impressive action sequences start. In these raucous but bloodless scenes, he’s all business, and he delivers.
Masters of the Universe Rated PG-13 for violence, some salty language. Running time: 2 hours 12 minutes. In theaters.
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