Travis Knight's jokey Mattel movie will raise the odd chuckle from over-40s with fond memories of He-Man, but after 140 minutes, it feels past time to put away childish things.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
@guylodge See All
Photo Credit: Giles Keyte Nearly 40 years have passed since the colossal financial failure of Cannon Films’ live-action feature “Masters of the Universe” signaled the cultural falloff of Mattel’s successful sci-fi sword-and-sorcery media franchise — which had, for five years, held undiscriminating Eighties kids like this critic in its thrall, before we mostly moved onto other things. But in Mattel media, as in “Masters of the Universe,” no one ever really dies: The denizens of Castle Grayskull have since lived on, in faintly undead form, through sundry comics and toy line revivals and, most recently, a morass of animated Netflix content. And so, with the “maybe this time” mentality that colors much Hollywood studio decision-making these days, we’ve come round to another live-action “Masters of the Universe” feature: bigger in all dimensions, certainly, and better if the unabashed badness of the first one isn’t especially dear to your heart.
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