Masters of the Universe Review

Seventeen years in development, through Sony, Netflix and a procession of directors, and the film that finally came out is a surprisingly earnest fantasy adventure that most people declined to see. Travis Knight's approach is the Kubo approach: take the ridiculous material seriously, keep the names, stage it with weight. Chris Butler's rewrite opens with Adam working in human resources in Oklahoma City, the film's one good joke, and gets him back to a kingdom in ruins and a Duncan who has been drinking since the fall.

Jared Leto's Skeletor is the performance everybody argued about: cackling, preening, theatrically cartoonish, which IGN called delightfully weird and the Times took as evidence of a patchwork misfire. He is at least awake. The production, shot at Sky Studios Elstree and in Iceland with 2,180 effects shots, looks expensive and occasionally beautiful, though the Snake Mountain finale is quantity over quality. Daniel Pemberton's score, with Brian May on guitar, is the most He-Man thing in it.

The reviews ran mixed to kind, 67 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 52 on Metacritic, and the audience was not there: 114 million dollars worldwide on a 170 million dollar budget, one of the year's clearest bombs. It found its viewers on streaming, which is where a film this fond of its source material probably belonged.