Masters Of The Universe Review: Endless Jokes And Riffing Rob A Potentially Fun Adventure Of Its Power

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What does it mean to possess power? If it had to be boiled down to one word, let me borrow it from our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man: responsibility. In a society built around the patriarchy, cisgendered men wield a majority of the power, which is why it's so important for them (young and old) to remember to use it responsibly. This message lies at the center of "Masters of the Universe," the new live-action fantasy adventure adapted from the popular cartoon and toy franchise which began in 1982. It's a great message, and one which is threaded throughout the film with sincere heart.

Unfortunately, that's about the only sincere element to be found in the movie, which is practically brimming with desperate insincerity masquerading as fun. Director Travis Knight's last film, 2018's "Bumblebee," built a 1980s sci-fi action pastiche around a heartfelt relationship between a girl and her robot car, thus emulating the best of '80s genre fare itself. He fails to bring a similar approach to "Masters" here, as the film's script immediately takes a tone reminiscent of too many other recent fantasy adventures (particularly the "Thor" films) which seems to imply that they thought the best way to stop audiences from potentially laughing at the film was to get them to laugh along. As a result, the movie ends up feeling less like a rousing adventure and more like an overlong (141 minutes!) Saturday Night Live sketch. It feels like the filmmakers eschewed their responsibility to selling audiences on these characters and their world, and instead relied on going for easy gags and cliches. "Masters of the Universe" may seem fun at first glance, but its ephemeral nature does its material and themes a disservice.

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When Marvel Studios hired Taika Waititi to make "Thor: Ragnarok," Waititi's penchant for taking nothing seriously mutated into a deadly, story-killing virus. In "Ragnarok" and its follow-up, "Thor: Love and Thunder," the primary thing that mattered was The Joke and little else. "Nothing matters and this is all silly" is a decent enough philosophy for sketch comedy and feature-length parody films, but letting it threaten to kill all sincerity in an adventure story is something to avoid. Unfortunately, "Masters of the Universe" doesn't realize this, beginning its journey into the weird, vibrant world of planet Eternia with a voice over from Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) which sounds positively embarrassed.

From there, the movie hits so many Marvel Cinematic Universe beats that it feels like it's running on Cliff's Notes. Adam is whisked away to Eternia by Teela (Camila Mendes) after she picks him up from Earth. (We never see Earth again, because it was only in the film so that Adam could make relatable jokey references.) On Eternia, Skeletor and Evil-Lyn (Alison Brie) want the Sword of Power that Adam brought with him to Earth because they're Evil (no really, this is their explicitly stated motivation ... they're Evil), so they chase the heroes around through a lot of very pretty, well rendered alien environments. 

Yet whatever verve Knight injects into the movie's action sequences is continually undercut by the film's willful dismissal of itself and the world it half-heartedly tries to build. The movie is stuck between emulating the lighthearted tone of the children's cartoon and a more grown-up adventure fantasy, and seems to hope that endless riffing will serve both. 

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There's a sad irony to "Masters of the Universe," which is that a movie all about Adam learning to be his own man (as well as the broader, more positive definition of what it means to be a man) is so caught up in trying to seem relatable or cool at all times. It feels like the script was punched up to death, leaving too much of it confused for the sake of humor. Ships that fold space call the very act of folding space "weird." Eternians make savvy jokes but don't understand certain Earth terms. Adam is inspired to save his home planet mostly because he drew a bunch of pictures of it while on Earth. By the way — who raised this kid during his 15 years of exile? The movie sure doesn't care!

One person who does seem to care is Jared Leto as Skeletor, who continues his campaign to star in every '80s franchise he ever loved as a child here. While the actor seems to be doing a thinly veiled impression of Tim Curry in the role, he's got a pizazz about him which really stands out amidst the rest of the cast, who're saddled with too many shrug-and-snark quips. To be fair, the film's little flashes of earnestness — in its message, its visual effects (Skeletor looks genuinely real in an uncanny fashion), its production design and its bombastic score — keep it from being a total failure. Is the film a mostly accurate version of the cartoon, jokey tone intact? Sure, but it also needs to tell a story, and at that, "Masters of the Universe" is powerless.

/Film Rating: 5 out of 10

"Masters of the Universe" opens in theaters on June 5, 2026.