Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

If you can’t tell from the title of this article, we’ll be comparing:

Masters of the Universe (1987)

Masters of the Universe (2026)

I kind of missed the He-Man bandwagon. I suppose I could have jumped on if my brother’s basketball games didn’t dominate the tv back then. I saw a few episodes but it didn’t ever really appeal to me anyway. It was just kind of on sometimes. I was watching Pooh Corner and Dumbo’s Flying Circus until Ninja Turtles came out.

The kids who had the toys always seemed a little older than me and didn’t want a twerp like me hanging around playing with their toys.

Later in life I knew a friend who said his mom wouldn’t let him watch He-Man because one day he ran out into the front yard where his mom and her friend were talking, reached to the sky and shouted “DEVIL POWER COME DOWWWWNNN!”

That’s pretty funny.

Decades after it had come out I eventually saw the 1987 Masters of the Universe movie made by Cannon Group films. Cannon was a fascinating production company. They were known for finding some up-and-coming action-star like Chuck Norris or Jean Claude Van Damme and just working them to death popping out movies.

Cannon made money by volume more than quality. Seriously, in the 80s there came a point when they were cranking out up to four or five movies a month! And if you worked for them you WORKED for them. No star treatment. You drove yourself to the set. You wrote your name on your plastic cup and if you lost it you didn’t get a new one.

They were also infamous for getting rights to a tired franchise no one wanted to make movies for and running them into the ground. That’s how we got Superman IV The Quest for Peace (1987). Yeah, that was the same year Masters of the Universe came out. Maybe that’s why the opening titles look exactly the same in both Superman and MotU.

They got their hooks into Christopher Reeves to continue as Superman by letting him write the script. Then they saved some money by casting an unheard of Chippendale’s dancer as the supervillain and whamo, you got yourself a budget Superman movie for pennies on the dollar.

I could go on indefinitely about the many exploits of Cannon Group films so I’ll pump the breaks a bit. If you’re interested in more info about them (which I can tell you is absolutely entertaining), I recommend the documentary “Electric Boogaloo: The Wild Untold Story of Cannon Films” (2014). Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who ran Cannon Group, refused to be interviewed for the documentary and then produced their own documentary about themselves called “The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films” released the same year. Yeah, that exemplifies their MO perfectly.

Dolph Lungen had some star power after his break as Ivan Drago in Rocky III (1982). By 1987 Cannon Group had already made Lungren into another one of their action movie poster-children. No one wanted to make a live action He-Man movie but it clearly had a following. It was a perfect opportunity for Cannon films to swoop in and make an official Masters of the Universe film and as an afterthought perhaps they might throw in some recognizable aspects from the He-Man show, why not?

It had Dolph Lungren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor and… that’s about it. Okay it had Man-at-Arms and Teela but I would barely recognize them as anything from the show I never really watched. They looked nothing like what was on the cartoon.

While the plot was really nothing to write home about, Frank Langella is absolutely captivating as Skeletor. Reportedly, he had an absolute blast playing this villain and you can totally tell. The costume looked great. Infact, the costume design was really top notch all around in this version. The filmmakers might have been infamous for pinching pennies on the set but they put those savings on the screen this time.

Meg Foster was amazing as Evil-Lyn, and of course it’s always fun to see Billy Barty. I always thought Billy’s character, Gwildor, was supposed to be a stand-in for Arco. Sadly, THE Arco never showed up in the 1987 version.

Billy did provide some comic relief but for the most part this film took itself VERY seriously. I appreciated the serious take on the characters and story. The story itself however was just not very interesting. The subplot involving Courtney Cox’s character’s parents was just the worst and had virtually no payoff besides making Courtney do something REALLY stupid halfway through the film. Yeah, Courtney Cox is in this. She’s in that show about friends, the title of which escapes me at the moment.

Robert Duncan McNeil must’ve gotten better at acting because he’s been in some big name stuff lately, but man he was pretty terrible in this at least when improvising. A few times someone should have said “cut” a lot earlier than they had and there are some scenes that definitely needed to be trimmed at the ends.

The film is certainly a spectacle but peters out storywise. Nevertheless it’s worth the watch at least as a history lesson and to help understand the nostalgic hype.

My wife might not have collected the toys or watched every episode of “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” but she was definitely more aware of it than I was. When we went to the theater to see Masters of the Universe (2026) she naturally wore her Realm Makers shirt with the non-copyright infringing microscopic lightsaber printed on. You better believe I noticed this time! She insists it’s not related to He-man but I’m taking no chances.

We invited my wife’s brother because he too is from that era and probably wouldn’t have wanted me playing with his toys back then… he’s cool with it now though. My oldest daughter joined us simply because she loves Skeletor, even while not having watched a single episode of H-MatMotU. And we also brought my 9yo son simply because we knew he’d love it even with no background in it whatsoever. When we told him what it was he said this:

“Oh! They made a movie about the guy from the What’s Going On? video and the skeleton guy that says something mind blowing and then runs away?”

To this I laughed loud and long. “Silly child” I said. “This is not a movie about memes and viral pre-YouTube internet music videos circa 2005! This is serious!”

Of course, when 4 Non Blondes’ What’s Up? song came on, I was forced to admit my 9 year old was right. Masters of the Universe (2026) is about the He-Man/Skeletor memes we’ve had over the last 20 years.

It’s a juvenile He-Man (or Prince Adam rather) responsible for naming most of the well known characters (and himself) thus excusing some of the absurdities and names that didn’t age well like Ram Man and Fisto. I could have gone all day without hearing multiple fisting jokes in a movie I brought my kids to but I guess that’s my fault. I should have read the script before attending. Backrooms was rated R and had a surprising lack of fisting jokes. I was very disappointed. If you don’t know what it is, do yourself a favor and maintain your ignorance in this case, especially if you’re at work right now. Trust me, you’re innocence is a precious gift that should not be tainted.

Jared Leto was a hilarious Skeketor, a great mix of comic book villainy humor, the kind we’ve come to expect from him in this day and age where only the Dune movies are allowed to take themselves dreadfully serious without even the slightest winks to an ultra critical audience. MotU 2026 is almost one big wink.

Alison Brie was terrible as Evil-Lyn. I half expected her to be the same woman who co-starred in Detective Pikachu because they have the same demeanor, namely: “I’m a silly person in a silly movie so I must act silly.”

Leto clearly understood the part. Skeletor is funny because he’s so absurdly serious but he never has a leg to stand on. Meanwhile, Alison is in the background practically doing pratfalls and saying “Hyuk! Which way did he go, George?”

Okay, that’s hyperbole but this movie doesn’t take itself very seriously. Would a modern audience accept a serious film about a guy in furry loincloth and fashionably questionable, strategically-placed straps for an upper-body “covering”, fighting a guy who has a skull for a face? Frankly, I don’t think we would. The memes are poking fun at the very idea by OUR standards. I’m half surprised we didn’t see He-man and Skeletor re-enact the dance routine from Dirty Dancing like we see in the Money Supermarket commercials.

It was fun though. It was especially fun to see all the characters and toys come to life. Not literally, of course. This wasn’t a Toy Story situation. Don’t give them the idea.

I will say, I loved LOVED the notion that Adam gets trained on Earth as a social worker and then wants to open a dialogue with the villains. I would not have been disappointed in the slightest if, after a knockdown drag out fight with Skeletor, He-Man sits down with him and effectively enables Skeletor to have some introspection. Now THAT would have been funny.

I did not grasp the use of Queen’s Highlander theme. I know there were some Highlander jokes made but that hardly merits use of the theme. Highlander came out just a year before the 1987 MotU film. These IPs are too adjacent in my opinion to be homaging each other. It’s like watching the My Little Pony Movie and they use the Care Bears theme as a joke. It’s surreal and offputting.

That having been said, Queen’s Brian May’s signature guitar solos accompanying the entire MotU score itself was BEYOND appropriate; not only to achieve that epic 80’s sound but because the man is practically a real-life master of the universe himself. Seriously, look at the Wikipedia page for Doctor of Philosophy in Astrophysics, Sir Brian Harold May, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and prepare to have your mind freaking blown! Yes, that is his actual legit title.

Maybe if I was a superfan of He-Man I might be more upset with this tongue-in-cheek approach that does more fun-poking than serious fan-service. I might have been mad that Skeletor doesn’t have his signature nasally voice. There’s just so much I don’t get about this IP though. So I enjoyed it at face value as I so frequently do most things.

My wife did a deep dive into He-Man lore when we got home. There ARE answers to why the good guys hang out in a dark creepy skull emblazoned castle while the skull-faced bad guy simps over it. Personally it seems kind of greedy of the good guys to me. It’s shaped like a skull! Just let the skeleton guy live there!

There are also answers as to why they have all this crazy technology but act like medieval knights with magic and so forth. Or why Prince Adam dresses so flamboyantly but then hides the fact that his alter ego is a strappy, loinclothed, musclebound beefcake. There’s even an answer for his terrible pageboy haircut which remains despite whatever persona he manifests and inarguably outs his identity regardless.

Maybe he should shout “I HAVE THE POWERRRRRRRRRR…. EXCEPT IN REGARD TO MY HAIRCUT WHICH IS APPEARANTLY IRREVOCABLLLLLLLLE!!!!!!”

It’s no wonder he adopted the pronouns He/Man as his actual name because that haircut makes things a little ambiguous. No judgment here. This might be why the character has remained relevant!

Now if only I could get an explanation as to why I had the same haircut clear into second grade.

Also, if anybody knows how to get this 4 Non Blondes song out of my head please let me know. I’ve been singing it for weeks now.

HEYYAYYAYAYYAYAAAA! WHAT’S GOING ON!