Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

wreckingball34 Masters of the Universe is far from a masterpiece. The acting is so-so for the most part, as is some of the casting (Frank Langella as Skeletor is an exception. He was great), but the makeup, costumes, and FX were actually pretty decent. It is a sentimental choice for me since I grew up in the eighties and had most of the He-Man toys. I'm sure others eighties kids out there know where I'm coming from. Give the movie a chance someday. You might just like it.

Maziun He-Man and the Masters of the Universe toys were quite a big hit in the 80's. There is a rumor that He-Man toys were the results of an unsuccessful attempt to market a line of Conan toys and that they only gave him a blonde wig . Anyway , Mattel (the producer of toys) approached Filmation studio to develop an animated TV series out of the toy line. The cartoon aired from 1983 to 1985. Filmation created most of the supporting characters in the mythology, which Mattel then turned around and developed as toys. As you can see the whole show was basically a cynical extended commercial that was being marketed under the guise of entertainment. To be honest the cartoon is a epic hybrid of fantasy and sci-fi, with ancient castles and sorcerers mixing with laser guns and cyborgs. A good potential for interesting movie. "Masters of the universe" movie was made when the popularity of the cartoon and toys was starting to fade. This was not He-Man's first big-screen release. In 1985, the animated film "The Secret of the sword" was released theatrically."MOTU" obviously tries to follow in the footsteps of "Star wars". The real uncredited source for the film is surely Jack Kirby's "Orion of the New Gods" (1971-1977) comic-book from which all the elements have been taken. Director Gary Goddard tried to dedicate the film to American comic book artist Jack Kirby in the closing credits , but the studio took the credit out. The film has also been stripped of much of the mythology of the animated series. Many viewers reviewed the motion picture in comparison to the cartoon, when it really was an adaptation of the toys only.This is one of bigger budget movies made by Golan - Globus , yet disappointingly because of budget restrains most of the action happens on contemporary Earth . Eternia appears at beginning and ending of the movie , mostly works as a backdrop. Thankfully the costumes and sets are superb . The special effects still hold up pretty well. The music by Bill Conti is good , even if it rip offs "Superman".The action is OK . I really liked the final battle between He-man and Skeletor , the flying hover craft and the junk yard battle. At least you can clearly see here what's going on , not unlike modern action movies.The screenplay is rather poor. There is no real introduction to the characters , because the movie is aimed at the cartoon and toy fans . The characters are paper-thin , one dimensional at best. The fish-out-of-water aspect of story doesn't really work , the humor is VERY lame. There are some terribly dumb moments in this movie (the "I'm your mother" scene for example). A little too much time is spent on the soap-opera angle of Julie and Kevin. Dialogues are terribly simplistic. The overall plot is predictable as hell. There is nice extra scene that was supposed to set the stage for the sequel "Masters of the Universe 2", but since the film didn't do very well at the Box Office, the sequel was dropped. The script for "Masters of the Universe 2" had been written, but was rewritten and became the script for the 1989 Jean-Claude Van Damme sci-fi action film "Cyborg".Dolph Lundgren ("Rocky 4 ") looks EXACTLY like He-man , althrough his acting is almost non-existent. Lundgren had only limited acting experience, a thick Swedish accent, and was not yet fluent in English during filming. He needed a speech-coach AND a drama-coach to make this movie. The real star however is Frank Langella ("Frost/Nixon"). He took the role of Skeletor because he wanted to do it for his son Alex, whom was a fan of He-Man and Langella had felt Skeletor was a role he couldn't refuse. Frank Langella admitted in an interview that Skeletor was his favorite role. He wrote some of his lines, like: "Tell me about the loneliness of good, He-Man. Is it equal to the loneliness of evil ?". His performance is honestly great , very theatrical and fun. Courtney Cox (TV sitcom "Friends") is bland as Julie . Christina Pickles as the Sorceress is awful . Meg Foster ("They live") as Evil-Lynn is nice. James Tolkan ("Back to the future") tries to bring some humor as police detective , but can't do much with weak dialogue. Overall , for a toy commercial this is not that bad movie . Just accept the silliness and go with it . Give it a chance on lazy afternoon. It's not really good , but charming and innocent. For a movie about toys this is FAR superior than "Transformers". I give it 3/10.

bh_tafe3 Of all the things to admire about Frank Langella, and there are many, one of the more obscure is that his role here, as the villain Skeletor, is one of his favourites. Here's man who's been nominated for Oscars, been picky with the roles he's selected over a long career, and one of his favourite roles was playing a masked Shakespearean villain in a movie made on the cheap for kids that few people saw. Gotta respect that.So let's go back in time to the 1980s, and He-Man, subtle homosexual overtones and all, was King of Cartoon Land. "I have the POWER!!!" If you were young at the time, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So it was only a matter of time before a Hollywood studio got hold of the property and made a movie. Enter Cannon Films, makers of such masterpieces as Superman 4, The (ex)Terminator, and The Happy Hookers, to try and milk this cash cow.As the hero of the film we have Dolph Lundgren, just off the boat from Sweden and speaking his lines phonetically. And that will make a lot of his performance in this make sense. Poor guy literally has no idea what he's saying. He-Man is trying to save the kingdom of Eternia from Skeletor (Langella) who's forces have captured the Sorceress of Gray-Skull (Christina Pickles-nice name). Old Skull boy wants to take the Sorcerer's power and add it to his own while making some awesome Shakespearean monologues to his henchmen. To make matters worse Grinners has also stolen the mysterious "cosmic key" off a Dark Crystal reject. The key enables Skels to travel wherever he wants to in the Universe by playing a tune, which makes me wonder where he will end up if he plays Sweet Dreams by the Eurhythmics. Luckily He-Man is able to steal the key, and not wanting to get his ass kicked by the baddies at Castle Gray-Skull (including Evil-Lyn, played by Meg Foster, who I really need to introduce somewhere in this plot summary) He-Man and some offsiders cosmically leg it to Earth. Joining He-Man we have Man-at-Arms (a likable turn from Jon Cypher) his daughter Teela (Chelsea Field-The Last Boyscout), and the afore mentioned Dark Crystal reject Gwildor (Billy Barty, Nope, me neither).Once on earth they lose the key and it's found by Kevin (Robert Duncan McNeil of Star Trek Voyager fame) who thinks it's some darn fangle new Synthesizer. He has a girlfriend Julie (Courtney Cox) and eventually they get sucked into the main plot as the Laughing Langella and his forces come to earth to retrieve the key. Also dragged along is Detective Lubic (James Tolkan, the Principal from the Back to the Future films) and they all end up in Eternia to listen to another Langella monologue and eventually see He-Man save the Sorceress and kick Skeletor's ass.This movie is made on the cheap, and has a star who literally doesn't know what he's doing, or saying, or what anyone is saying to him. But what it does have aside from that is a surprising amount of fun. And I don't mean laughing at the movie, though there is certainly opportunity to do that in spades, but I mean the type of fun that is just you, as the viewer, enjoying yourself watching these guys. Front and centre of the enjoyment is Langella who relishes the opportunity to use his theatre training to run off on some truly glorious monologues. But I like a lot of the minor players in this too O'Neill and Cox get into this, as does Cypher. Foster, who apparently was sweltering in her costume for most of the filming, gives a perfectly acceptable portrayal of a villainess/ evil lackey.Masters of the Universe has a hero and a story who, apart from the homo-erotic subtext, are far removed from the cartoon. It's cheap, and obviously so, and has a lead actor giving a performance that has to be seen to be believed. It's no surprise at all that it bombed, and bombed huge. But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy this. This is the type of film that, if you were switching through channels on your TV on a rainy afternoon, you could put on and be pleasantly diverted, and sometimes that's all a movie needs to be. By no means Masterful, but hardly embarrassing. Ultimately, to summarise: not good, but it'll do.

The_Film_Cricket 'Masters of the Universe' is a movie whose problems come two-fold from the conception stage. It is a bad cheap looking movie based on a bad cheap looking cartoon show based on a set of bad cheap looking action figures. After that there isn't much left.He-Man could have been played by any number of last year's contestants for Mr. Universe. But the 'plum' goes to Dolph Lundgren whose wooden expression and personality make him the 'actor' that I least look forward to in any role. He-Man (a character not a million miles removed from Conan the Barbarian) is locked in a sword-clanking battle with Skeletor over the planet Eternia. But who would want it? It's dark, ugly and seems to be under the constant threat of bad weather.Somewhere under Skeletor's awful make-up effects stands Frank Langella but you would never know it. Skeletor is a skeletal creature but his skull looks like a painted plastic mask that someone must have put down a dollar for at the drug store.Anyway He-Man and his warrior friends and Skeletor and his vile band are transported to earth via a cosmic key invented by a dwarf named Gwildor. He was suppose to transport them to another planet but a glitch in the key sent them here. Apparently, the filmmakers decided to forego sending them to that other planet and sent them to California so they wouldn't have to spend money on a new set design.Two American kids find the key and mistake it for something Japanese. They end up helping He-Man defeat Skeletor. What did you expect, a truly original movie where the heroes take that key and go off to new worlds and find wonderous new civilizations and get in adventures with them and then come back and open up mankind to the wonders of interstellar travel and advancing technology? This stuff costs money y'know!