05 June,2026 07:52 AM IST | Mumbai | Mayank Shekhar
A still from ‘He-Man: Masters of the Universe’. Pic/YouTube
The movie, Masters of the Universe, is He-Man's origin story.
While the film had begun, for the first few seconds - I wasn't sure, if I was still watching some low-quality, AI-type ad, with the camera panning across the main location, that is, the fictional planet, Eternia, and Castle Grayskull within it, where little prince Adam is chilling with fellow royals, before he disappears into a time-space vacuum, as this imagined world comes under attack.
The make-up, costumes, and production design (mostly computer-generated), look like the popular show, from Sunday-morning Doordarshan, has been pretty much directly projected to the gigantic IMAX screen.
It's only a little later, you figure, there must be a sense of sarcasm and irony to it all.
The idea is, perhaps, to go back, quite literally, to the late '80s, early '90s. As vintage Indians, whether millennials or Gen X, still remember He-Man from. Hence, the leaps in technique and storytelling seldom get in the way of nostalgia pro-max.
Tech apart, how am I sure of this intent?
Consider the dialogue between He-Man and his archenemy, Skeletor, in the climax. He-Man tells Skeletor to face him like a man. Skeletor replies, "A) I don't have a face. B) I don't want to!" They're truly screwing around, aren't they?
That's a fair sample for you to guess, this funny, self-aware He-Man is more along the lines of, say, Deadpool, than the dark DC universes with vulnerable superheroes weighing in on life's greater concerns.
Also, if I hadn't skewed my own PoV, as an audience, by the powers of grayskull - how many grey cells would I have left by the end of Masters of the Universe? Precious little.
Once that mental switch occurs, now I have the power - to tag along with Prince Adam, He-Man's alter-ego, who appears as any other white mortal (Nicholas Galitzine) in Oklahoma City, out on a date from Hinge - supposedly regaling a girl, at a restaurant, with his back-story, that's left her more scarred than particularly impressed. It's hilarious.
Prince Adam derives his own powers from a super-sword that glows with fire bolts of striking energy. Somewhere between his travel, from Eternia to Earth, it seems, he lost that sword. Finding which remains his life's mission, besides reuniting with his OG gang from Caste Grayskull, invaded since by Skeletor.
Is that all? Yes. There's something about the way superheroes from our childhood evolved onscreen, over decades, that it's hard to instantly take to something, that keeps it simple, stupid!
He-Man hardly fell into the Hollywood trap of self-serious superheroes, chiefly because there was never much literature to back it.
For what might be rare, the universe of these masters came to us as toys, first, by Mattel, brought to Indians by Leo! The elementary comic strips debuted, thereafter, to support such plastic figures.
Namely, besides He-Man himself - his closest ally, Teeler (Camila Mendes), her dad & captain of the royal guard, Man-at-Arms (Black star, Idris Elba), pet-tiger Cringer, who transforms into a battle-cat.
And, of course, the crazy villain, Skeletor (Jared Leto), plus the castle itself, that practically everybody I knew had a private collection of. Bloody expensive at the time. Most of it broken into its parts, sooner or later.
These characters reunite in this film, while my brain goes back to those toys, instead - not once wondering what's it that we watched as He-Man returned with a fresh plot, every week, on TV, once upon a time. Maybe, that was unimportant.
As with this throwback that I thoroughly enjoyed at its premiere - with '90s popular candies, Fatafat and Phantom cigarettes, to pick up, on the way in. Some of the audiences appeared old enough to write pop-culture history from memory.
How about the Gen Z/Alpha - what're they really gonna get out of this? I don't know.
The thought going through my head, on my way out of this He-Man, teasing a sequel after the end-credits is - if I'd myself come back for another round, anytime soon.
Like this film, nostalgia is great fun, in mild measures - not if you make a habit out of it, no? Still, never say never!
