He-Watch: Masters of the Universe (2026)

Watched:  07/23/2026

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Travis Knight

Well.  

That was sure a He-Man movie.  

I'm not particularly a fan of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, the cartoon nor the toy line.  In fact, when this movie was pitched, I wrote a whole long post about how weird I thought it was that a movie studio went all in on what I thought was probably a far niche-ier market for this movie than they were probably aware, and I wasn't particularly looking to spend my paycheck on watching the movie in theaters.

But as the movie approached, I thought "well, maybe I'll take the niece and nephew", but neither of them showed the slightest interest - and they'd seen the trailer.  Something came up around the release date, and I thought "well, I'll go in like two weeks".  But the reviews hit and were unkind, the audience stayed away in droves, and the movie was gone.  And I was back to Plan A, which was to watch it streaming.

Meanwhile, my social media was ablaze with the "it's actually really good" assurances, and "all of you will say 'why didn't anyone tell me to see it in the theater?'"  

So, I don't know what I was expecting, but at about the fifty-two minute mark Jamie fully tapped out and I put it on pause until after she'd gone to bed.

Pretty clearly, Mattel saw the billion dollars they made with Barbie and wanted a repeat.  To get there, they wrote down key-words about Barbie and decided, if it works with Barbie - we can do it again!  You can almost imagine the white board in the Mattel offices where they made a word cloud.  "Self-aware", "funny", "doesn't take self-seriously", "nostalgia", "doesn't match expectations", "turns common conception upside down", "tries to make a point".  

The result is a movie that is very self-consciously meta and desperately wants to be funny, but feels like a kid who saw someone else get laughs with a joke and tries to deliver the same joke, but flubs the timing and forgets part of the punchline.  

I'd also argue that the conceit of the touchy-feely Adam just (a) never works as much as they think it does and (b) kinda undercuts itself completely with He-Man beating Skeletor to death with his bare hands by the end of the movie.  Kind of like Supergirl, it's having its cake and eating it, too, with the finale.  And from what I can tell, people would rather have their familiar-narrative buttons punched than see a narrative that comes to a coherent point.

Look, I'm just not nostalgic for the characters, but I do remember some of them (but clearly not enough of them).  I just think the take was weird - for me.  It wasn't camp, though I am sure people will apply the word (while being wrong online).  Like Barbie, the movie acknowledges the absurdities of He-Man concepts - I mean, Mekaneck, fercrissake - and the cartoon, while also demanding the audience point and say "I got that reference".  Which I assume many people between the ages of 49 and 53 might be able to do.  This is a feature, not a bug.

me for the two hours of this movie

I just didn't think there was much more there.  As a comedy, which the movie most assuredly is, I didn't find it very funny.  The same jokes keep happening whether they're funny or not.  In the end, the best part of the movie is probably (sigh) Jared Leto as Skeletor.  But even that's odd because the goings-on at Snake Mountain were already pretty fucking funny back in the cartoon, and they just do that.

The guy who plays He-Man does great with what he's given - I guess he's Nicholas Galitzine who was very good in Sheep Detectives.  But he can't save a role that starts feeling very tedious by the hour mark.  Idris Elba is clearly enjoying himself.  Camila Mendes has the thankless part of humorless girl warrior, which was always Teela.  Alison Brie is actually doing a solid Evil Lyn from the cartoon, so no shade.  I just wish they let her do more than be hot the girl who fights the other girl.  

One also can't help but note the music, and...  I dunno.  Brian May was directly involved, and I wanted to love it.  It just all felt so on the nose.  Like, I get you're doing Flash Gordon, but I've seen Flash Gordon.  And I'm the person who really, really wished they'd had May score John Carter.  But it all felt very would-be-James Gunn-needle-drop but too obvious?  Playing "Boys Don't Cry" when Adam is being sad about Eternia on Earth?  Like...  isn't that lazy?  Isn't "Princes of the Universe" too much?  As in - don't make me think of movies I like in your less good movie.  (I should also mention there's also a complete rip-off of a James Gunn single-shot-group-fight-scene).  But it just made me want to tell film-makers that maybe it's time we stop with needle-drops for a minute until we get better at this.

I'm going to wrap it up.  I guess if we want to talk about the movie more in the comments, we can.  I guess I was just underwhelmed by the whole thing.  So, no, I am not saying "boy, why didn't anyone tell me this was so good?"  I think it kind of landed where it needed to - a streamer I didn't pay extra for on a Thursday night.

Also, where the fuck was Stinkor?