The Guardian is Clueless about Masters of the Universe

Supposedly, we’re getting a Masters of the Universe live action movie in 2026. Of course, a Masters of the Universe live action movie has been in development hell for almost twenty years at this point with production companies, directors and scripts – many of them sounding absolutely terrible – coming and going like a revolving door.

So most Masters of the Universe fans have fairly low expectations of a live action movie ever happening at all. One of the regulars of the German Masters of the Universe podcast Das He-Manische Quartett is infamous for his repeated statement “Der Film kommt nie” (The movie will never come).  Other fans have taken a wait and see attitude and basically say, “Well, I’ll believe it when I’m sitting in the theatre.” Expectations of the movie being actually good are also rather muted. After all, we’ve already been there in 1987 and while that movie has gained cult status by now, it wasn’t very well liked back in the day, because it took way too many liberties with the source material.

However, the proposed Masters of the Universe live action movie is currently in production again and we’re getting a steady trickle of casting news. Nicholas Galitzine, best known for Red, White and Royal Blue, is supposed to play Prince Adam/He-Man, Camila Mendes, best known for Riverdale, has been cast as Teela and just this week, Alison Brie, whom I mainly associate with her role as Trudy, Pete’s long-suffering and annoying wife in Mad Men, was announced as Evil-Lyn. So far, so fine, but I’ll still believe it when I see it.

That said, the casting of Alison Brie has attracted more mainstream attraction than the casting of Galitzine and Mendes, probably because Brie is better known. And so Ben Child, who has a weekly geek media column in The Guardian, penned a spectacularly clueless article about the proposed live action Masters of the Universe movie.

Even the headline is terrible: “Can Travis Knight’s He-Man movie do for boys what Greta Gerwig’s Barbie did for girls?”

Yes, we all know how fiercely gendered the toy industry is, but must we really perpetuate those shitty stereotypes, especially when we know they’re wrong? Because in the 1980s, Mattel found to their own surprise that forty percent of all Masters of the Universe toys were sold to girls, which is what prompted the introduction of She-Ra. The 1980s Filmation cartoon was eagerly watched by both boys and girls and though Masters of the Universe fandom skews male, there are a lot of female fans, me among them. This isn’t surprising either, because Masters of the Universe has always featured plenty of impressive female characters such as Teela, Evil-Lyn, the Sorceress, Queen Marlena and of course, She-Ra and her entire supporting cast. Finally, there is a remarkable number of male Barbie collectors as well.

Ben Child attempts to establish his fan credentials by pointing out that he used to watch the Filmation cartoon (though the article is illustrated with a promo images for the 2002 cartoon) and even owned a one-armed Man-at-Arms figure as a kid. However, he can’t resist pointing out how silly the cartoon was and it’s pretty obvious that he hasn’t rewatched the show since the 1980s and doesn’t seem to be familiar with later takes on the property from New Adventures via the 2002 cartoon and the 2018 She-Ra and the Princesses of Power to the recent CGI Netflix show and Masters of Universe Revelation/Revolution at all.

Instead, Ben Child’s image of Masters of the Universe seems to be coloured mainly by memes and jokes such as the whole “Prince Adam singing ‘What’s Going On?’ by the Four Non-Blondes” meme (and honestly, what is it with that video? The combination of early 1990s indie music and Masters of the Universe never made any sense).

Ben Child also insists on comparing Masters of the Universe to Barbie, because both are based on toylines, even though Barbie and Masters of the Universe are completely different types of toys. Barbie’s big selling point is that she can be whatever you want her to be and doesn’t really have a defined story beyond some vague basics. Masters of the Universe, on the other hand, comes with a defined story, characters and worldbuilding (even if there are several conflicting continuities). He-Man is not the male answer to Barbie, that would be Mattel’s Big Jim line from the 1970s, which indirectly influenced Masters of the Universe because several toys and accessories (Battle Cat, Panthor, Zoar, Screech, Webstor’s grapling hook and Beast-Man’s whip) were repurposed from the Big Jim line to save costs.

As a result, making a Barbie movie posed very different challenges then making a He-Man movie. Because Barbie doesn’t have a defined story, so the Greta Gerwig had to come up with one and decided to send Barbie into the real world. The result was a lot better than it had any right to be. He-Man, however, has a defined story and most people who go to see a He-Man movie will want to see a version of that story. Part of the reason why the 1987 movie failed was that instead of giving the audience what they wanted to see, namely a live action version of the Filmation cartoon set on Eternia (which to be fair would have been extremely expensive to produce in 1987), the movie instead sent He-Man, Skeletor and their respective friends and associates to Earth and inserted them into a 1980s teen drama. I actually enjoy the 1987 movie now (and I should probably write a detailed review for this blog), but back in the day this film wasn’t what anybody wanted to see.

Ben Child acknowledges the existence of the 1987 movie, but he’s clearly not a fan. Instead, he calls the movie “fiercely po-faced and clunky” and finds it unbelievable that Frank Langella, who’s generally considered to be the best thing about the film and who is on record that Skeletor is one of his favourite roles in his stellar career, would debase himself to appear in such a film. Honestly, has Ben Child had any contact with Masters of the Universe since the 1980s at all?

The main problem with the article is that Ben Child seems unable to view Masters of the Universe as anything other than a joke. He writes:

Yet, it’s also possible to imagine how, in the right hands, Masters of the Universe might be ripe for forward-thinking, culturally adept satire. If Barbie is the stereotypical archetype of a woman, as seen by young girls who haven’t realised that they are viewing the entire world through a male-curated prism, surely He-Man is her XY chromosomed equivalent. Are preteen boys preternaturally designed to imagine it’s impossible to be a hero unless you are willing to destroy your health through extreme steroid use, or is the world they have grown up in telling them this?

I’m sorry, but a forward-thinking, culturally adept satire is not at all what I or any other Masters of the Universe fan wants to see. What fans want to see is a movie that takes the premise and characters of Masters of the Universe seriously. And in fact, we already have a stellar example of a serious and more adult take on Masters of the Universe, which still embraces the beautiful weirdness and absurdity of the 1980s original, in Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution (whose producers Rob David and Ted Biaselli asked showrunner Kevin Smith to take the material seriously and treat it like Shakespeare), while the Netflix CGI show offers an updated take on the premise for today’s kids and the 2018 She-Ra and the Princesses of Power did the same for He-Man’s twin sister. And no, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for humor. Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution, the CGI show and the 2018 She-Ra all have plenty of humor and jokes and Kevin Smith even snuck a fisting joke into Revelation, but they still take their premise and characters seriously. Mere minutes after Fisto makes a fisting joke, he gets brutally killed and has his soul snuffed out be Skeletor and you’ll probably cry, even if you weren’t a huge fan of the character as a kid. Also note that the Barbie movie for its satirical moments does take Barbie and Ken seriously and treats them as characters rather than stereotypes.

What is more, Ben Child is completely wrong when he views He-Man as a stereotype of toxic masculinity, because that’s not at all what he is. Because Masters of the Universe has always subverted gender stereotypes. And so we see Adam engaging in female-coded activities like baking or cooking or reading or bottle-feeding Baby Cringer, while Teela not only has the male-coded job of Captain of the Royal Guard and Prince Adam’s bodyguard, but is also stronger, more athletic and a better fighter than Adam in his untransformed form. Masters of the Universe has shown us men crying, when this was still a culture taboo. It gave us a woman chosing her career as Sorceress of Grayskull over motherhood, it gave us a nuturing single Dad who somehow managed to juggle parenthood and a demanding career and it gave us a female NASA astronaut turned alien queen well before Sally Ride. There’s even a whole episode with the message “men and women are equal and better together”. Finally, He-Man’s muscles don’t derive from steroids, but from the Power of Grayskull.

But it gets worse. Child writes:

Why does the wimpy Adam of Eternia have to transform into the impossibly hunky and muscley He-Man before he can actually get anything done? Perhaps Adam and Cringer (the pathetic alter ego of space tiger Battle Cat) can emerge as the true heroes of Masters of the Universe, gaining the keys to the cosmos via a balanced view of gender politics and deep understanding of the nuances of feminine strength and leadership, rather than just smashing Skeletor’s skull with a sword.

Again, every single word of this is wrong. There are many examples of Adam and Cringer being heroic and brave without turning into He-Man and Battle Cat, from the Filmation cartoon onwards all the way to Revelation/Revolution, which makes it very clear that Adam is the heart of the story. Adam is also smart and resourceful, both as himself and his alter-ago. He-Man isn’t a mindless brute, except for the roughly fifteen minutes when he becomes Savage He-Man in Revelation and beats the ever-loving crap out out Skeletor, a scene which is so remarkable for how uncharacteristic that behaviour is. As for the “deep nuances of feminine strength and leadership”, have you met Teela? Or the Sorceress or Queen Marlena or Lyn or Andra?

Honestly, if you think that He-Man is just about smashing Skeletor’s skull with a sword, something he never does anywhere in the history of Masters of the Universe, though Savage He-Man whacks Skeletor with a battle axe at one point, you really need to rewatch the Filmation cartoon (try “The Problem with Power”) or the 2002 cartoon or just watch Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution.

I’m not the only Masters of the Universe fan to take issue with Ben Child’s very simplicistic take on He-Man. Here is a Twitter thread by Dad-at-Arms, which counters Ben Child’s claims with multiple examples of Adam being heroic and Teela being amazing.