By Geno McGahee
The He-Man action figure line was started in 1983 and was a big deal. I was 9 at the time, and I wanted to get them, but my mother kept buying me the knockoff cheap ass ones that you find at the grocery store that looked like a person with problems made them. My friends had the power. I had a fucked up piece of shit. The action figures were so popular that it led to the production of MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, a 1987 film that would lose some money and was partly responsible for putting Cannon Films out of business.
With a budget of 22 million, it had some way to go to make it back and would only recover 17 million of it, and there is a big reason why. They checked a lot of boxes, casting ROCKY IV’s Ivan Drago, Dolph Lundgren, as the lead role and did a great job on the look of the film. Frank Langella was cast as Skeletor and that turned out to be the best part of the film, but where they dropped the ball was the lack of attention to the source material. If you had He-Man action figures, you wanted to see some characters in this and they were nowhere to be found. If they did show up, they didn’t look much like the characters you knew and loved.
Skeletor has captured the Sorceress (Christina Pickles) and is holding her, awaiting He-Man’s arrival. Evil Lyn (Meg Foster) is in his corner and they are both very evil and mean. A few weird things immediately stand out for me. Why is He-Man in panties and everyone else is fully dressed? Man-At-Arms is all dressed up and has armor. So does Teela (Chelsea Field). From what I can see, only He-Man is running around in panties, but he does have a cape. Maybe that makes it right.
I’m going to say it. I’m going to tell you why MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE failed more than any other reason. Gwildor (Billy Barty) is the reason this movie failed 100%. I think most people could get over the fact that this film did not take place in Eternia and that He-Man used a gun and wore panties all the time, but that little fucking annoying shit Gwildor sank this movie. Every time I see Gwildor I want to punch him in his ugly face.
He-Man, Teela and Man-At-Arms save Gwildor. He is a locksmith that has made something called “the key” that can open dimensional doors and Evil Lyn got her hands on it. Thankfully, he’s made two of them and He-Man wants to use it to get into Grayskull to save the Sorceress. They get there and things get fucked up. They eventually have to use the key to escape and end up in New Jersey. What a shitty place to land. I have been to that shit hole twice and I would not go back and if Gwildor was now there, I would really hate that fucking state.
In Jersey, Julie (Courteney Cox) works at a fast food joint and is still reeling from her parents dying in a plane crash. She is planning on moving and leaving her boyfriend, Kevin (Robert Duncan McNeill) behind. They find the key and Kevin thinks it’s some instrument and starts fucking with it, which gives Skeletor the coordinates of the key. For such an advanced race, why do they have swords and castles on Eternia? This seems pretty odd all around. If I had a laser gun, why the fuck would I have a sword? Perhaps they are trying to compensate for something.
Evil Lyn gathers a team to go to Jersey on behalf of Skeletor and I have to say that I was wrong. He-Man isn’t the only one wearing panties. I just realized that Beast Man also sports only panties. He’s covered in mostly fur. He probably doesn’t see the fucking point. Hell, he may not have been wearing panties at all. I’m sort of assuming he is. His big furry dong could have been bobbing around for all I know. I don’t have the 4K version. I only have the DVD.
The group of bad guys that Evil Lyn chose is interesting. She picked Beast Man. That made sense. She chose a guy that must’ve been Mer-Man, but he had a different name. I wish he was called “the artist formerly known as Mer-Man.” That would have been righteous if she introduced him as that. The other two guys are strange picks. She picks some weird guy that looks like a sexual deviant named “Blade” and some white-haired fuck face called “Karg.”.
We get some fighting in Jersey with He-man and the good guys against Karg and that group. They team up with Julie and are now looking for the key. Detective Lubic (James Tolkan) is on the case and despite this taking place in Jersey, it started to find its footing, BUT that fucking asshole cocksucker Gwildor is back in it.
The four bad guys return to see Skeletor and he’s not having it. He fucking kills Mer-Man for no reason. The other three are spared, but I don’t know why he singled out Mer-Man. He did his best. Maybe he’s got a thing against lizards. Whatever the case, Skeletor sends the three back to Jersey along with Evil Lyn and a few other troops.
In the meantime, Kevin can’t stop playing with the fucking key and even encourages the detective to play with it. Lubic is remarkably entertained by it. He pushes the buttons, it makes music, and he laughs. It doesn’t take much to amuse him, but he soon starts being a hard ass to Kevin, demanding to know what it is and where he got it. This doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Beast Man is sent to stomp the shit out of Kevin and that was pretty awesome, but Kevin is a total pussy. He throws a Burger King napkin at Beast Man and screams “get out of here!” Beast Man is tough and angry and that napkin isn’t going to do shit. I would have loved to see Beast Man beat Kevin to death, but they let him go.
Seeing the bad guys fly around the suburbs in their ships is pretty cool. This movie had potential to be really good, but there is so much shit going on here that doesn’t make a lot of sense and seems to take away from the overall story.
Skeletor coming to Jersey is rather cool. I wonder why he hates He-Man so much. Skeletor has so much going for him and should not be jealous of anyone. I wonder if he was picked on in school and his name really isn’t “Skeletor.” I bet they called him that because of his face and he eventually adopted it to own it but the bullying still weighs on the poor guy. A guy in panties was probably the bully, which is why he hates He-Man. It’s just a theory.
We get back to Eternia and Skeletor has He-Man and he has taken “the Sword of Grayskull,” which I guess is something great and is why He-Man had it in the first place. Skeletor demands that He-Man get on his knees, but he refuses. He’s not sucking some skull dick to save the universe. That’s for sure. When He-Man refuses, he has Blade whip him, which is not surprising. Blade is a sexual deviant and probably enjoyed every second.
Skeletor turns into a gold guy when he is given the powers of the universe, which would give Ming from Flash Gordon a raging hard on. He loved gold. Gwildor, Man-At-Arms, Teela, Julie and Kevin make it back to Eternia and bring Lubic with them for the final battle.
He-Man gets his sword back and screams “I have the power” and it’s on. In a very quick battle, He-Man kicks the shit out of Skeletor and he falls to his death…slowly. It was quite awesome. This film needed more Skeletor.
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE is a train wreck. As I’ve mentioned (often), Gwildor is one of the worst characters in the history of film and ruins the film every time he is in the scene. I’m not opposed to the He-Man characters coming to earth, but they didn’t do too many cool things with them and the continued focus on Kevin and Lubic was excessive. I’ll give them points for Beast Man. He looked OK, but the other characters were pretty piss poor.
Langella played a great Skeltor, but the film just didn’t really know how to bring it all together. There was potential here, but they were trying to appeal to children with the Gwildor character, but the majority of the audience is going to be young teen and they probably puked in their shoes when they saw Gwildor. I did. There wasn’t much character development and the film seemed to go long. I haven’t seen this film in about 20 years. So, I looked at with new eyes, thinking that I may have a better appreciation for it like I did for FLASH GORDON, but it stunk pretty bad. It’ll be at least 20 years before I watch it again.
I can’t recommend this one. I can see why it flopped. There’s not much here to salvage it, outside of the performance of Langella and when Beast Man tears shit up. Otherwise, I’d avoid it.
