As kids, my brothers and I enjoyed watching the Masters of the Universe animated series and had several of the accompanying toys. That said, they weren’t our favorite among the various options available to us and I can’t say I remember much about it, so I felt relatively neutral about the prospect of the IP being revisited in live-action format once again. I had hope it could be surprisingly good, like 2023’s criminally underseen Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, but alas, what this movie’s six (!) writers and director Travis Knight have served up is more akin to the Temu version of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

After an expository introduction filled with some almost painfully corny gags, we are introduced to young Adam (Artie Wilkinson-Hunt), heir to King Randor of Eternos (James Purefoy). While his lineage is filled with great and powerful rulers, Adam is a meek, empathetic boy, to his father’s apparent disapproval. His trainer Duncan (Idris Elba) does his best to toughen him up but to little avail. When the evil Skeletor (Jared Leto) launches an attack on Eternos, it is decided to send Adam to Earth, where it is expected he will be safe, along with the Sword of Power, a (*ahem*) powerful object that must be kept out of Skeletor’s hands.

Fifteen years later, adult Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) is working in an Oklahoma City human resources firm, where he apparently is a top employee despite never displaying any particular aptitude for the job in the moments shown to us. When he crashed onto Earth he had become separated from the Sword of Power and since then has been obsessed with finding it. When he finally is reunited with it, the sword sends a signal back home (because… reasons) which brings one of Skeletor’s minions to find him. He is woefully unprepared for such an encounter—despite the fact that he is visibly jacked underneath the weirdly proportioned outfits the costume department has fitted him in to try and hide it—so it is fortunate then that his childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes) arrives on the scene to save him and take him back to Eternos.

Once there, the situation is pretty dire, with the once glorious kingdom more or less in ruins and its surviving citizens hiding underground. None can believe that the “scrawny” man before them is actually Randor’s son, but when Skeletor’s armies arrive at their base and a battle ensues, Adam summons the power of the Sword and becomes He-Man, convincing his fellow Eternians of his royal lineage and rallying them to his side to try and bring down Skeletor once and for all.

As I said earlier, the influence of the Guardians films can be felt heavily throughout Masters of the Universe, as they attempt to recreate that franchise’s winning blend of thrilling action set pieces, striking visual sequences, relatably quirky comedy, and genuine heart. Every now and then they succeed, in particular with some of the action and imagery, but by and large they are unable to pull it off. Having come from the world of stop-motion animation, Knight actually acclimates himself well as director, so I am loathe to pin any of the blame at his feet, and the actors handle the material fine, with Elba and Leto in particular giving it their all.

The story itself is fine if somewhat uninspired, but it’s the script that is the real weakness here. The very joke-heavy dialogue is more likely to elicit cringes than laughs, with only one or two jokes actually landing, and the themes about father/son relationships, self-acceptance, and teamwork, while well-intentioned, are so perfunctorily handled as to be almost powerless. It’s only during some of the more important fight scenes that the movie really comes alive and where some visual gags actually earn a few chuckles, while the moments in between are merely watchable at best and boring at worst.

It’s hard to tell if any of the writers actually even like their source material, with a lot of the content here feeling almost like a parody. That might not have been a bad idea in and of itself, but the best spoofs come from people with a great deal of affection for the originals and who understand how to write a joke, neither of which appears to be the case here. There is enough to like about MotU to keep it from being a bad movie, but only barely. ★★

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence / action, some suggestive material, and language.

★★★★★ = Excellent | ★★★★ = Very Good | ★★★ = Good | ★★ = Fair | ★ = Poor