Most of us didn’t expect another Masters of the Universe trailer quite so soon, but we did get one only three weeks after the last one. This one is billed as an international trailer and while it shares a lot with the trailer released on April 1, there is quite a bit of new footage, too, which gives us some more insight into Adam’s life on Earth.
So let’s take a look:
All right, now that everybody has watched the trailer, let’s analyse what we’re seeing here.
After a quick montage of shots we’ve already seen in the previous two trailers, we see a shot of Adam pulling a shoe box labeled “Eternia” from under his bed. Inside the box are drawings of Eternia. We see Castle Grayskull and the Power Sword in its holder. We did see this box in the previous trailer as well, only that in that trailer, Adam was holding a childhood drawing of his family, King Randor, Queen Marlena, little Adam with a sword and little Cringer.
The theme from the Filmation cartoon plays underneath theis scene, then there is a voiceover saying “Not from around here, are you? Those stories you’re telling, Adam, that you’re stuck here until you find this magic sword…”
There is a cut and we see that the person who’s speaking is Adam’s friend/roommate with the man bun, earrings and leopard print jacket. This character also appeared in the previous trailer and I called him “Adam’s gay pal” at the time. However, when the cast was announced, there were two characters no one could place, Hussein, played by Christian Vunipola, and Suzie, played by Sasheer Zamata. So I guess Adam’s pal/roommate is likely Hussein.
As Hussein is talking, we also get a brief shot of a drawing of Skeletor on Adam’s wall as well as of Adam’s collection of wrestling action figures as well as an orc/troll-like character with an axe. People have identified the various wrestlers, but so far no one had identified the orc/troll.
We saw in the first trailer that Adam’s bedroom is plastered with drawings of Eternia and that he has an action figure collection and here we see yet more of this. Adam’s earthly life is quite recognisable, because many of us have probably homes that look similar and many of us have probably gotten stupid comments about our collections. Though the real fun is if you get someone who’s scared of dolls and toys and is obviously terrified by a bunch of action figures looking at them. And yes, I have had people like that in my home. When I was younger, these people immediately became my sworn enemies, because if you hate my doll or toys, I definitely don’t like you. As an adult, I just move things aside, if they are clearly making people nervous. To be fair, it was a Mantenna action figure I had just received and hadn’t gotten around to moving to the shelf yet, so I had him on the dining room table, when someone dropped by, and Mantenna really does look super freaky.
On the other hand, Adam’s room and his drawings also show how desperately homesick he is and that he keeps drawing Eternia and its people over and over again just to keep the memory alive. In many ways, this is even sadder than if he had no memory of his life on Eternia at all.
There is another cut and we see Adam in his office cubible, using his work computer to upload a drawing of the Power Sword, asking if someone has seen it. His boss/co-worker walks by, sees what Adam is doing and frowns. This would be the mysterious Suzie, played by Sasheer Zamata, who is pretty well known and recognisable. Suzie has apparently called Adam into her office for using his work computer for private purposes and says, “This obsession with nerd stuff and sword things… you’re freaking people out. Especially Darryl.” There’s a quick cut to a guy in a sweater vest – most likely Darryl – who appears to be so freaked out by Adam that he hides behind a filing cabinet. Adam sighs, “God, I hate Darryl.” Coincidentally, several young female fans of Nicholas Galitzine and now Masters of the Universe promptly proclaimed their dislike for poor Darryl on social media. Sorry, Darryl, but we all hate you now.
It’s a funny scene that once again shows how completely out of place Adam feels on Earth. Though Adam saying “God, I hate Darryl” is also very unusual for the character, because Adam/He-Man is not normally a person who hates anybody. Adam always sees the good in everybody and most likely wouldn’t even say he hates Skeletor, unless Skeletor really pissed him off that day. So Adam saying that he hates a loser like Darryl is very unusual and shows how frustrated Adam is by his life on Earth.
However, Adam’s life on Earth is about to come to an end, because there is another cut and we see Adam going into the comic/collectibles shop where he finds the Power Sword in the hand of a life-size fibreglass statue of a barbarian warrior. The statue based on an sketch by Mark Taylor which was long believed to have been an early He-Man concept, though it’s more likely that it was intended for a never produced Conan toyline. This concept character was finally released in the Masters of the Universe Classics line and given the name Vikor. He also appeared in Masters of the Universe Revelation as one of the heroes hanging out in Preternia. The inclusion of Vikor is a lovely Easter egg for hardcore fans. What is more, Colt Crane has managed to decypher the blurred writing on the door of the collectibles shop and it’s called “The Fright Zone”, which was of course the name of Hordak’s stronghold during the vintage era.
We have seen a version of the collectibles shop scene in the first trailer, but we get a bit more here. In the first trailer, we saw Adam trying to pull the sword out of the statue’s hands, while a comic shop employee tells him he can’t do this. Now, we see that Adam has succeeded in getting the sword and that he has knocked over the statue and pulled off a hand in the process. There’s a great shot of Adam standing on the base of the statue, holding the sword aloft, about to say the magic words.
There is a name on the base of the statue, but it’s not Vikor, which was an invention of the Classics era, but Torak. “Torak, Hero of Prehistory” is the title of a 1979 drawing by Mattel concept artist Mark Taylor, which is widely considered to be one of the predecessors of what would become He-Man. This is a very deep-cut Easter egg, but also a fun homage to the man without whom Masters of the Universe as we know it today would not exist. Only that in the universe of the movie, Mattel chose to stick with the Torak name.
There are some more Easter eggs in the background in the form of film posters. There’s one featuring a half-naked barbarian for a film called “Sword Power” and Torak has a movie in this universe as well, called “Torak – the Warrior Awakens”.
I do have a Classics Vikor figure, so here is my take on that scene:
I used the Classics Adam for these photo, because the Masterverse Adam is too tall.
“The sword! At last! Now I can go home.”
“Uff, this is harder than I thought. Come on, Torak, let go. This is my sword.”
“My name is Vikor, not Torak.”
No, I did not remove the hand of my Vikor, though you can apparently remove the hands of Classics figures.
“At last, success. By the Power of…”
“Hands up and drop the sword. You are under arrest.”
“Oh, crap!”
***
As for Adam knocking over a statue and ripping its hand off to steal a sword, that’s clearly why he gets arrested, as we saw in some photos of filming last year. It’s totally justified, too – Adam did just vandalise a comic shop, after all.
Just as the reactions of Hussein, Suzie and evem Darryl are justified, because let’s face it, if someone we knew kept claiming he was from another planet and was obsessed with a sword that he claims will take him home, we would think he was crazy, too. Because Hussein, Suzie and Darryl don’t know that they’re in a Masters of the Universe movie. As far as they know, they’re living in our mundane world – except that in this universe, He-Man is called Torak.
Next we get the flight out of Castle Grayskull and Cringer replacing Leo the lion in the MGM logo. The rest of the trailer is a shortened version of the second trailer and the only new footage is a brief scene of Skeletor walking along a burning corridor.
As for why the Earth scenes were added to a shortened version of the trailer, I guess the idea is to make the movie and Adam more relatable to audiences who are not hardcore Masters of the Universe fans. That’s probably also the reason why parts of the movie are set on Earth at all – even though most Masters of the Universe fans don’t want to see Earth – namely because the powers that be in Hollywood believe that mainstream audiences wouldn’t be able to relate to a movie that is fully set in a secondary fantasy world. Never mind that the popularity of the Lord of the Rings movies and the Game of Thrones TV show prove that audiences are perfectly happy to accept a secondary world setting. But then, the powers that be in Hollywood also claimed that audiences wouldn’t accept more than one superhero in a superhero movie and that they wouldn’t accept comic accurate costumes. Because the powers that be are often idiots.
That said, Adam being stuck on Earth for fifteen years with no connection to his home, no one believing him and not even knowing whether his parents and his friends are still alive, is actually devastatingly sad, in spite of the humor in those clips we’ve seen. Just as the thought of Eternia being subjugated by Skeletor for fifteen years, while Marlena and possibly Randor, too (unless he’s killed in the opening scene), languish in a dungeon for fifteen years and Duncan and the remaining Masters are leading the resistance, while always on the run from the Evil Forces of Skeletor, is actually terrible. Ditto for Teela having to grow up on the run, without her best friend and with a father who blames himself for everything that has gone wrong (and the Sorceress is probably as much of a deadbeat mother as she always is), and for Cringer having to grow up without Adam, even though Adam and Cringer are pretty much inseparable, that actually sounds devastating.
Last week, Entertainment Weekly published an extensive article about the Masters of the Universe movie with interviews with director Travis Knight as well as stars Nicholas Galitzine and Camila Mendes and several producers. The whole article is well worth reading, but there are some really interesting bits about how He-Man was always more than just a mountain of muscles.
“At the same time, he was talking about kindness. He was talking about friendship and compassion. He was somebody who cared. And he was essentially like a bronzed empathy coach in furry underpants”
This is an aspect of He-Man that even many self-proclaimed fans missed. He-Man was never a gym bro fantasy. He never told us to go to the gym. Instead, he taught us to be a good person and a good friend, to stand up to bullies and protect those in need, to respect nature and particularly trees, to stay away from drugs and that our parents (biological or adopted) do love us, even if they don’t always show it. In fact, I’m stunned by how many people clearly missed this message, but then there are people who believe that Star Trek was just a show about futuristic sliding doors and never “woke” until the modern era, too.
Travis Knight also has some interesting things to say about Adam:
“Nor is Adam,” the director continues of the diminutive young prince, who’d prefer to dance around, “making a fool out of himself” (his father, King Randor’s words, not ours) rather than participate in arms training.
“We see that he is a little bit different in this world full of aggressively healthy buff people […] He’s a bit of a weed. He doesn’t feel like he belongs in this place, and there’s a very good reason for that.”
This is very consistent, because ever since DC Comics writer Paul Kupperberg created Adam as He-Man’s secret identity, Adam has always been portrayed as someone who’s not stereotypically masculine and this is remarkably consistent across mini-comics, regular comics, the Filmation cartoon, the 200X cartoon, the Revelation/Revolution cartoon, the German audio dramas, etc… Adam is always portrayed as a sensitive and artistic soul, a big reader, a talented cook and baker, someone who loves being outside and enjoys nature and who’d rather read a book or go fishing than have swordfighting lessons with Teela and Duncan. In his untransformed state, Adam isn’t exactly weak, but he’s never as fast or strong or skilled as his best friend Teela. Adam is also always misunderstood by his father King Randor – and judging by the above quote, the movie will continue the theme of Randor as a the distant parent who just doesn’t understand or see his kid – and doesn’t really fit into Eternia, though he is destined to become the planet’s greatest hero.
Nor does he fit in on Earth either. Let’s have another quote:
“[His life on Earth] is a little soulless, it’s a little mundane, it’s devoid of color and life. It’s frustrating, because Adam feels like he sees the best in people, he wants the best for people, but it doesn’t feel like any of that is reciprocated for him,” Galitzine explains, adding that Adam has become an outcast, given his constant chatter about this planet no one believes is real. “What is it like to be a pariah from such a young age, and always be gaslit into thinking that there’s something wrong with you, but also the feeling that you weren’t really at home on your home planet either? So it’s this feeling of not really belonging anywhere.”
To protect himself, Adam forms a “cocoon to remove [himself] from the possibility of feeling and being disappointed and hoping,” he continues. “Eventually, after 15 years, he’s really a shadow of a person. He’s lost hope. And so we meet him in quite a depressive sort of place.”
So in short, Adam doesn’t fit in anywhere, which is actually quite sad. And since Adam grows up on Earth rather than Eternia in this version of the story, he also doesn’t have the support of Teela, Cringer, Duncan, Orko or his mother, the people who believe in him. This version of Adam truly is alone.
Meanwhile, Teela and Cringer are just as alone (ditto for Orko, if he is in the movie, which we don’t know). Teela has always been portrayed as an overarchiever, who believes that she’s not worthy of love and affection, unless she’s always the best at everything. Adam is probably the only person in the world who can persuade Teela to relax once in a while and to whom she doesn’t have to prove anything. We have seen what losing Adam did to an adult Teela in Masters of the Universe Revelation, so imagine this happening to Teela, when she’s about ten.
As for Cringer, he lost his family, when he was just a baby, which is also why he’s always scared, because the poor guy is traumatised. And again, this is remarkably consistent across various iterations of the story and there even is a comic about what happened to Cringer before Adam found him, namely that his entire family and tribe was wiped out by an attack by a group of dylinxes (Panthor’s species). Adam literally becomes Cringer’s family and I don’t even want to imagine how traumatising it would be for Cringer to be separated from Adam, while he’s still a young cub himself.
The Entertainment Weekly article also has a few things to say about Teela:
“She is a warrior. She’s trained. She’s much more physically adept than Adam is. Certainly, at the beginning of the movie, she’s a better fighter, she’s more acrobatic, she’s smart, she’s strategic in ways that Adam isn’t.[…] But also, there is a deep empathy underneath her, like Adam. And I think that’s the thing that binds them together, that they just see the world slightly differently. We see that in minor ways, and how she cares for her father, and how she believes in her father even after he spirals, and how she believes in Adam, who is showing no outward signs of being able to be the champion of Graykull. She believes in him.”
Here’s another quote from actress Camila Mendes who plays Teela:
“It’s hard to talk about Teela without talking about her relationship to her father, because I feel like so much of who she is has to do with how she was, I guess, let down as a kid. […] And I feel like that really built this outer wall around her that’s sort of like shielding this inner sensitivity. She’s affected by toxic masculinity just as much as the men in the film. And I think she’s sort of adopted masculinity to protect herself in this very masculine world. It’s how she survives. She’s in survival mode, and has been for a very long time.”
This quote infuriated the usual clowns, because OMG, she said “toxic masculinity” and in the minds of these people, referring to masculinity as “toxic” means the movie hates men. It’s nonsense, of course, because Masters of the Universe has always smashed gender stereotypes left, right and center and gave us plenty of non-toxic example of masculinity. The same clowns also lost their shit when director Travis Knight called Skeletor “the embodiment of toxic masculinity” in an earlier article in Empire magazine, since they apparently failed to understand that Skeletor is the villains and that villains are toxic be definition.
Besides, the above is actually a pretty accurate description of how Teela has always been portrayed. Teela holds traditionally masculine positions as Captain of the Royal Guard or bodyguard of Prince Adam and she grew up without her mother, surrounded by men. She has abandonment issues, because she believes she’s an orphan who was abandoned by her birth parents, and she is the way she is, because she feels that she needs to protect herself.
The interesting part of that quote is that Teela was supposedly let down by her father as a kid. Now Duncan is normally a great father – and a highly deserving winner of the Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award – so how could he have let his daughter down?
Let’s unpack this: For starters, Duncan is great father and dearly loves Teela, but he also keeps the truth from her – that Adam is He-Man, that the Sorceress is her mother and that he is not her adoptive, but actually her biological father (though we don’t know, if the movie will go the route and keep Duncan Teela’s adoptive father). We know why he does this, namely because the Sorceress asked him not to tell Teela the truth to keep her safe, but that’s still a lot of lies.
Also, note that the movie deprives Teela of the safe childhood at the royal palace that she normally has. Instead, she’s forced to live and grow up, while on the run – without Adam and with a father who blames himself for everything that happened.
Blaming and punishing themselves for perceived or actual failures is a family trait. We see this with Teela several times in the Filmation cartoon, when she’s furious at herself for losing a Sky Sled tournament and snaps at everybody, including Adam and Queen Marlena who try to comfort her, in “Rainbow Warrior” or most notably in “Teela’s Trial”, where she resigns her position as Captain of the Guard and exiles herself to the wastelands, after she accidentally teleported her father to an unknown location and into the hands the Skeletor.
As for Duncan, when Adam gets himself killed while fighting Skeletor in Masters of the Universe Revelation (don’t worry, he gets better), and a furious Randor strips Duncan off his rank and banishes him from the palace, Duncan just accepts this fate and spends the next months or even years in a little hut in the middle of nowhere and initially refuses to help Teela and friends, when they show up on his doorstep to ask him to help them reforge the Power Sword and restore magic to Eternia. And yes, Duncan says that Randor has forbidden him from ever doing his job again on the pain of death, but Duncan isn’t scared of Randor, but genuinely feels that because Adam got killed on his watch – even though it’s pretty clear that Duncan had no chance of stopping Adam from doing what he needed to do – he has failed and is of no use to anybody.
And then take Duncan’s brother Malcolm a.k.a. Fisto, though again we don’t know if they are brothers in the movie. Fisto is often portrayed as a grumpy loner – see the Filmation episode “Fisto’s Forest” – and in the 200X cartoon, we learn that Malcolm was a soldier during the Great Unrest, when he was injured, lost his memory for a while and was believed to be a deserter. Malcolm responds to these accusations not by defending himself or explaining what happened, but he runs off to a mining town in the Mystic Mountains, where he hangs out in bars, gets drunk and picks fights with random Eternians for the next seventeen years. In short, this family does not deal with failure well at all.
And now imagine how Duncan would respond to Skeletor conquering Eternia, throwing the queen into the dungeon and killing Randor or also throwing him into the dungeon, all on Duncan’s watch. And then they can’t locate the missing crown prince either. Of course, Duncan would blame himself for everything – and indeed we see him saying in the trailer, “I know what it’s like to fail” – so this version of Teela grew up with a depressed and guilt-ridden father. So yes, she absolutely was let down, which doesn’t mean that Duncan is a bad father all of a sudden or that he doesn’t love Teela, just that he probably wasn’t always there for her as much as he should have been.
Of course, we won’t know for sure until the movie comes out in early June, but based on the trailer and articles, it seems as if this movie will both make you laugh and break your heart, possibly at the same time.
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