Usually on the show, I cover weighty topics like the future of the global economy or how political philosophy influences how we make moral decisions but not today - throw out all your pre-conceived notion of what the show is because we’re talking about The Masters of the Universe movie, baby!
I saw the movie last weekend and was mostly disappointed. Not thrilled. Not mad but let down and wanted to use today’s episode to examine what I think went right (but mostly wrong) with this movie.
I will be spoiling the movie so if you are bothered by spoilers this is a warning to tune out.
In honor of He-Man’s profession in the movie, I will be offering a compliment sandwich; To begin, I thought the CGI was quite good, I thought the action scenes were well choreographed and gave me the feels of little kids banging action figures together, which I was here for, and I thought the acting was strong. Overall, it was well directed.
I thought the budget for the film, while high, was on the screen. I’ll talk about another movie later that, in comparison, I still don’t understand how it cost as much as it did.
Now for the middle of the compliment sandwich – the humor in this movie did not work for me. And there’s a lot of it. Not only was it aimed at a younger audience, it felt very juvenile and forced. There are four credited screenwriters, with nearly as many story-by credits. It seems that this movie was a Frankenstein’s monster of an effort, with each subsequent pass at the script, not completely erasing what came before it, so, like a re-Xeroed copy of anything, the bleed through was distracting. It was like a studio exec saw the money that Superman and the Marvel movies was making and said, “what really works in these movies is the mix of humor and action. We need to make it funnier. And appeal to kids!”. Admittedly, humor is very subjective and what I think is funny others don’t and vice versa, so maybe the humor worked for others. Just not for me.
The other major issue with the script was that it was lazy. There’s a throughline in the movie that Prince Adam / He-Man is chosen to be the wielder of the Sword of Power because he is a sensitive, caring person. I actually have no problem with that idea – there’s a long history in fantasy of swords choosing their wielders based on characteristics of that person. However, for that to work in this movie, the movie has to set that up before satisfyingly paying it off. There’s an attempt at this through some scenes of Adam as an HR person (why?) at the beginning but they don’t work and the attempt isn’t really tried again until the end of the movie. This theme is undercut because, in the end, the sword seems mostly to be there to make him an effective fighter against Skeletor. 
The parts of the movie that padded the runtime for me were almost all on Earth. When the action takes place on Eternia, there was enough fun settings and / or fight scenes to keep my attention. If you needed to have He-Man on Earth, I feel like this time could have been better utilized by giving him character moments in his search for the sword instead of filling the time with the HR and comic book shop scenes.
The dialogue was not great but it was probably on par with most Hollywood blockbusters that have a really straightforward plot and theme. Also, Kristen Wiig was completely wasted in this movie.
To close the metaphor (and the sandwich), the music was fine. Not great but it captured the feel that the filmmaker was going for and was, at worst, inoffensive. You’re not going to ever want to listen to it again but it fit the movie well. 
Before we move on, a word from our sponsor.
While there are those who would say that Amazon (the new owners of MGM!) knew what they were doing when they greenlit this movie – ie. they know that it would be a loss leader, I don’t buy that. Given the high price tag, they were hoping for, at worse, breaking even. This is very, very unlikely at this point.
So what was the root cause of the movie’s failure? Ultimately, the movie didn’t know who it was for and, thus, tried to be for everyone. Right now, the global box office, per Wikipedia, is around 86M USD. Let’s be charitable and say that the movie gets to $150M – this would have been, on paper, a loss of 50M, as the budget is reported to be 200M. Now, because the split with the theaters is roughly 50/50, the movie would have to gross $400M to break-even. In short, this is likely to be one of the biggest flops in movies this year, if not all time.
To give a sense of scale, losing $150M is a John Carter or Heaven’s Gate level flop.
Let’s assume that my predictions on the box office come true. What went wrong?
There is probably a universe where hardcore fans of the series, though relatively few in number, went and saw this movie multiple times, ala the Avengers or Avatar. In order for that to have happened, they would have to be the audience that the movie most catered to. I don’t think this would have been a winning strategy but, probably, would have made them more money, at least at the box office. This audience almost assuredly would have been hardcore fans who grew up with the property – Male Gen Xers and Older Millennials (like me!), who are now in their 40s or 50s. 
Let’s break down the demo here a bit – the original cartoon started running in the early 1980s. If you were born in 1977, you are now 49 years old. If you had your first child at 27, that child is now 22 – probably a bit too old to want to watch a movie with dad due to his nostalgia.  
According to John Campea’s YouTube channel, only 11% of the audience was under 18, so clearly Gen Z was not interested in this movie and Gen X and Gen Y either couldn’t convince them to go or didn’t have kids to take.
Of the critics online who are my age, they seem to also have had a problem with the movie’s humor – it didn’t work for them and they felt it was too try hard. This group of people, even if they had a generally favorable opinion of the movie, didn’t seem to be so amazed by it that they are recommending it to others.
There are a couple of comps that I want to bring up because I feel they illustrate what could have been. The Superman movie from last year had a lot of the same challenges that this movie has – it had to reboot a franchise that many people had stopped caring about and launch a new universe, while also telling a compelling story to a broad audience, despite the possible complaints from hardcore fans. It also cost a ton of money – and, unlike Masters of the Universe, the sets and CGI, in my opinion, were quite bad. I have a sinking suspicion that, unlike Travis Knight, James Gunn took home a healthy chunk of that movie’s budget.
That being said, Superman succeeded. Despite a lot of flaws (I think Superman is a worse movie than Masters of the Universe by the way), James Gunn was able to center Superman in the story and tell a clear (if corny) message about the power of hope and faith in a difficult world, with Superman being the literal embodiment of kindness. This message resonated with a lot of people and while it didn’t reach the heights of many of the Marvel movies, enough people saw it (and resaw it) to make it a solid financial hit. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Superman is a much more well-known IP than He-Man. 
The other comp is the Dungeons and Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves. The movie grossed around $200M and, while not being a box office hit, it has grown in esteem over the past few years and has consistently been one of the top streaming movies on Pluto. I don’t see this being repeated for the Masters of the Universe movie. The early reviews from fans were positive and has continued to grow for years – Masters of the Universe is starting from a much more mixed place.
Where Dungeons and Dragons succeeded was that the world was both true to the IP it was building on but not so self-reverential and deprecating to insult the fans of that thing. Yes, there are inside jokes that are a wink and a nod to longtime fans of the property but the movie doesn’t stop every 10 minutes to tell you how ridiculous its premise is. While both movies use humor, D & D didn’t overdo it.
What are some ways I would have changed in the movie? 
I thought the cast was one of the best parts – other than not understanding the relationship between Skeletor and Evil-Lyn, I thought it was a really well-put together ensemble. Jared Leto as Skeletor was fun, if perhaps too one note. No changes to the cast.
A little bit more variety in the music would have been nice. I would have liked maybe a song or two from like Power Glove or someone similar to give a slightly more atmospheric moody feel to some of the soundtrack – which, while fun, was a little one note.
Most of the issues with the movie came down to pacing and tone.  
The HR stuff didn’t work for me. The comic book shop stuff didn’t work for me.
I would take the runtime and try to see if I could introduce Kristen Wiig’s robot earlier into the movie. I would also try to find a way to get more Queen Marlena – she has almost nothing to do in the movie. Maybe they go through the portal together and the next 15 years is them trying to survive while looking for the sword – maybe Marlena is working as a waitress and saving money while Adam and Roboto are tracking down the sword. You can also use these scenes to introduce the character beats if you want to have Adam’s kindness be the thing that differentiates him from everyone else. For all the talk about Hollywood’s obsession with Save the Cat, Adam doesn’t really do so during his time in HR, a real missed opportunity.
If I can shave 5-10 minutes off this section, it wouldn’t be the worst thing either.
The rest of the changes would be tone – I would try to cut like 50%-60% of the jokes. The barometer would be the Notebook scene in this movie – do you think it’s funny that a man pretends not to be watching the Notebook, in the year of our lord 2026? If you wanted to punch up the joke, not that it would be good either way, but if you had at least made the roommate character a gym bro, who was swole, there’s slightly more there. The movie doesn’t even do that. That would be the dividing line – if it’s funnier than this weak joke, it can stay in the movie. 
Side note – there are several sexual innuendos in the movie. If the movie was trying to bring in both adults and their kids, I feel like this may have been a bad strategy to do this.
All this, of course, is in the past. Travis Knight did a solid job with what I thought was a disappointing script. The movie is likely to lose a lot of money and any sequels, at least on the big screen, will probably be shelved.
Back to my earlier point, you probably could have gotten to say, 300M just having that core audience watch and re-watch the movie but A). you still would have lost $50M (though maybe you would have gotten that back through Blu-Rays and toy sales) and B). What they are clearly trying to do with this movie is to kickstart a universe with future stories. You have to have a way to bring new audience members into the fold. Doing that by using humor clearly didn’t work. I think a more sincere version of this story could have been great, which is part of the disappointment.
So, where does this leave us? Are there lasting lessons from this massive failure? 
Time will tell if 2026 is a pivotal year in the business of movies but there is early evidence that we are in the midst of a sea change. Backrooms, as of this writing, has a box office to cost ratio of 26:1. Obsession, which cost less than 1M, is nearing $300M. The latest Star Wars movie, the first in seven years, is underperforming. 
Of course, if you wanted to make the easy argument – that big franchises are running on fumes and that the small indies are eating their lunch – you’d have to ignore the fact that the Super Mario movie made over a billion dollars this year. Toy Story 5, the second sequel to a trilogy many believe is one of the greatest in film history, just opened to the largest opening weekend for a Pixar movie, ever.
I don’t think Masters of the Universe has a lot of lessons that are unique to it. They probably spent too much money on a brand that is, at best, second tier IP. I’m glad they did – I was really bothered by the cheapness of the Superman movie and I didn’t feel the same way here – but I was also the only person in the showing at my local movie theater. They really needed to have the hardcore He-Man fans, men in their mid 40s to mid 50s, come out in full force and they simply didn’t, even if some of them did appreciate the movie. 
The toy business is simply not something I’m very attuned to – I imagine that a boast in toy sales has been factored into the equation when determining the success of this thing but I also can’t imagine them grossing 100M in toys based on this movie, given that so few people went and saw it.
Where does that leave us? What is the best case for this movie moving forward? 
I would rewatch this movie again and even pay money to rent it but it would have to be a different cut. I would propose the following – pay Topher Grace a bunch of money, give him the raw footage, and try to get a “serious”, 105 – 110 runtime of this movie. Per He-mania.com, yeah that’s real, Travis Knight has said that there is a rough, 3 hour cut. I’d be curious as to what was cut in order to get us down to 2 hours, 20 minutes. 
Here is what I would hope for – 
If there is footage of a better setup with Adam/He-Man being sensitive or caring, introduce that before he goes to Earth.
Cut as much of the Earth stuff as you can. 
Cut as many jokes as you can.
One or two extra set pieces sounds awesome. Anytime there were action scenes in the movie, I was at least not listening to subpar dialogue.
Finally, I wish the Evil-Lynn / Skeletor relationship was a little clearer. Maybe this was just me. I don’t know.
The theatrical cut movie will be too in the hole to make its money back but if you can have a steady rental stream, it will, in the long run, make the movie less of a disaster. I also think a better cut of this movie could spur fandom on and, with enough groundswell, maybe you get a sequel, though I imagine they would be looking for as many places to cut the budget as possible. It would also likely years, if not decades, for that to happen. There will be extension products like comic books and video games, but, as far as being on the screen, fans will have to wait a while.
I think a different cut gives MGM a “do over” – it gives hardcore fans something to point to when trying to explain to younger fans why this thing was so important to them. Maybe, just maybe, it’s a chance to restore the magic.
In addition to Masters of the Universe, I also saw Backrooms earlier this month. It’s hard not to compare the two given the discrepancy in budget (Backroom is reported to have cost 10M) and success (or lack thereof) at the box office. I was tied into Backrooms and gave it my full undivided attention. I was ready to be wowed and, while I don’t think it’s a perfect movie (and has something of a let down of an ending), I will be surprised if this movie is not referenced for years to come. The images from the film are going to be nightmare fuel for a generation and the strange weirdness will, undoubtably, power meme culture for a long time. It’s impossible to not be impressed by the fact that the director is only twenty years old and, if he wants it, will likely have a long career, given his deftness with this movie. I think, for the record, a better script would have helped his movie, too.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Elegant Ramblings. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please consider liking and subscribing to the channel on iTunes or YouTube. You’ll be able to find show notes there. Hope you enjoyed. Bye for now.