Masters of the Universe (2026)

I’m just as surprised as you are that I had a good time. I thought that whatever nostalgia I had for He-Man had been sapped by my experience of buying and selling and identifying and grading these dumb fucking dolls on the Internet to adult collectors who would absolutely crucify you on Facebook buy/sell groups if your evaluation of paint wear on a softhead Skeletor did not align with yours, and because this had a lot riding against it: Prince Adam slamming Coke Heavies like he’s in a pre-film commercial for the concession stand, the Amazon Prime delivery truck cameo, the way the film tries to wink and nod at the inherent shame of being into this kind of thing, and Jared Leto’s performance of Skeletor through a voice modulator that makes him sound like Scar from Lion King would be a lot for any movie to overcome!

And yet, it kinda does? It’s an aspartame-sweetened remake of the best elements of Marvel’s Thor movies, Ragnarok in particular, and some of its relentless pandering is towards the franchise’s base of aging homosexuals, which I suppose I count myself among. The sugar rush nature of the whole enterprise means that it’s kind of tough to tell if He-Man is actually a harbinger of Woke 2 or if the film is making fun of it, but I’ll leave that for conservative dipshits to decide next week after the film either flops or is a hit. Otherwise Masters of the Universe is Lisa Frank for boys — 40 years late to the party, but a fun time regardless.