Masters of the Universe
The young heir to a mythical kingdom (Nicholas Galitzine) escapes to Earth when the kingdom is attacked. 15 years later after a life established on Earth, he seeks to return to his home world and claim what is rightfully his.
My expectations were mixed here. It’s a movie based on toys, and the toys were deliberately vague and cynical to begin with. Is it fantasy? Is it sci-fi? Is it superheroes? It’s all of them because you are a teenage boy in the 80s and we want to sell you stuff.
But the director is Travis Knight who directed the wonderful Kubo and the Two Strings1 and the surprisingly good Bumblebee2 so perhaps this might also be surprisingly good?
Sadly it isn’t that great. It’s fun enough and has that tongue in cheek meta humour vibe that was novel in The Avengers but now is a bit grating and soulless. The effects work in the big action scenes is just people flailing around on a green screen, and I found myself glazing over as everyone was just whizzing around the place hitting each other. Some of the sets are beautifully thought out but there’s no sense that it was ever more than just a computer rendering.
There are jokes for the kids and off-colour jokes for the parents but all of them are oddly predictable. Sometimes it’s satisfying to see a punchline go the way you thought it might, but when that happens over and over again you stop laughing after a while.
I don’t want to be too down on this. It’s by no means a disaster and it’s funny enough and enjoyable enough to take the family to the pictures for. I just don’t think it needed to exist, and I know that the people involved are capable of better.