Director: Travis Knight
Starring: Nicholas Galitzine, Camila Mendes, Alison Brie, James Purefoy, Morena Baccarin, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Kristen Wiig, Jared Leto, and Idris Elba
Movie Length: 2 hours 20 minutes
What Leo thought: Masters of the Universe is a brand new movie directed by Travis Knight and I wonder if the producers chose him because this is a medieval movie and he has the word knight in his name, I joke of course. For those not familiar with his work he directed the Bumblebee movie which was his most financial successful film,
However, if success is measured by critical acclaim and industry awards, his most celebrated work is his feature directorial debut, Kubo and the Two Strings. He is also joined by a trio of talented writers (Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, David Callaham), one of which (Chris Butler) who he also worked with on his directorial debut.
This movie is filmed really well, Travis Knight definitely has a great eye for filmmaking, everything from the soundtrack to the special effects, to the acting was top notch, it looks like the people that made this movie cared about this franchise and wanted to make it successful. It has a lot of action throughout so I think kids and adults of all ages will be entertained.
The standout in this movie has got to be the wardrobe department they really knocked it out of the park, usually when a movie gets adapted to the big screen costumes and outfits from the animated series don’t make it to the big screen cough cough X-Men cough cough.
I felt like the movie didn’t know what it wanted to be because it was serious one moment then goofy next moment. But if video stores still existed, I would put this in the comedy section because it’s more funny than serious.
The movie follows Adam Prince of Eternia from a fictional planet created by Mattel, it follows the story where he is sent on Earth as a child because he’s home is destroyed, similar to Superman’s origin story, but unlike Superman’s origin story we don’t see who raised him, how did he get a job and so on, he is just thrown on the planet then you see him grown up obsessing about going home.
Then he finds a way home to fight Skeletor and win his planet back by the power of Greystone he wields the sword and becomes He-Man. But his foster parents are never mentioned, that was very odd to me because because the movie makes it seem like, he arrived on Earth as a kid and grew into a responsible adult on his own, and I was just sitting there thinking where did he get the money? The movie never addresses that, and we never see his foster parents.
Another thing that the movie never addresses is how do the people on this fictional planet know idioms and how people talk on Earth, if they are in a completely different dimension. I just can’t imagine King Arthur being like give me a high five or drop down and give me 20, or sick burn man, it would make sense if Adam said this since he left on Earth for so many years, but it was jarring seeing characters that were never on Earth saying such slang words.
So in short if you are a fan of the franchise or just like campy fantasy action movies I feel like you will enjoy this movie. I wish Skeletor sounded like Skeletor like in his cartoon from the 80s but they also don’t have the Joker sounding like the Joker in the live action Batman movies so you can’t really be too upset there, it just would have been nice, and speaking of Skeletor another thing I wish was that his mouth moved in synchronization with the words he was saying, it just looks like a toy moving his mouth up and down and not matching the words, again not a major issue just something that bugged me personally.
Leo’s rating: Overall I give this movie a B+ for black magic.
Masters of the Universe is now in theaters.
Are you going to see the movie? Have you already? Feel free to leave a comment below or chat with us on Threads at @theconventioncollective, or Bluesky at @theconcollective.bsky.social
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