He-Man is Thor

Last summer, we saw Nicholas Galitzine and Camila Mendes on set filming Masters of the Universe, a live-action He-Man movie that no one has the guts to just call He-Man. (Also, Masters of the Universe just makes me think of the theme song Queen wrote for Highlander, which is titled “Princes of the Universe”, but the hook is so damn catchy I can’t help but hear Masters of the Universe in that rhythm. That song goes hard.) The teaser for He-Man Masters of the Universe dropped yesterday and it looks like Thor. They just made Thor again, y’all.

Watching the teaser I thought, I don’t hate the look of this, and then I realized it just looks like Thor: Ragnarok. Down to Idris Elba playing a grizzled space warrior and the hero being a blonde himbo space prince, Masters of the Universe is deeply Thor-coded. It makes sense, people love Ragnarok and that’s the version of Thor—a blonde himbo space prince—that worked best. But then I saw the shot of He-Man in all his short-skirted glory at the end and, well, Thor never looked that dumb. There’s just no way to make the classic He-Man regalia look any less leatherboy-coded. They should have overhauled the He-Man look, but I know they can’t because fifty-year-old men would cry about it ruining their childhoods.

In short, He-Man is sent to Earth to escape a war—not unlike Superman—where he lives as dorky Adam Glenn and forgets his roots on the planet Eternia. Galitzine actually looks pretty charming in Adam Glenn mode, I’m kind of feeling his wide-eyed earnestness. Eventually, though, Adam remembers his roots and returns home to claim his rightful place as a space prince. He has a big ass sword, a bitchy bob, thighs of steel, and a bunch of colorful friends, of both the humanoid and animal variety. He also has a nemesis, Skeletor, who is played by Jared Leto. In a sign that Leto’s strange hold on Hollywood has finally relaxed, while we SEE Skeletor in the teaser, we crucially do not HEAR him. They’re hiding Leto!

I don’t think He-Man Masters of the Universe looks bad, per se, it just looks so much like Thor: Ragnarok that I can’t really see anything else. I think they’re also angling for a Barbie style, too, where Adam Glenn is very earnest and endearing and a fish out of water, like Barbie was when she came into the real world. It’s not the worst formula to copy. But the He-Man cartoon in the Eighties was just a commercial to sell toys, and we have plenty of examples in the Transformers franchise to show how hard it is to make naked commercialism into a genuinely thrilling and emotional film experience.

Though director Travis Knight did pull that rabbit out of his hat with Bumblebee, so maybe he can do it again with He-Man. The heavy reliance on Thor aesthetics makes me question the confidence the filmmakers have in He-Man, but we’ll see, I guess. And I will fully own my own hypocrisy, because while I am largely disinterested in a He-Man movie, if they ever make a live-action She-Ra movie, I will be first in line.