Queen Marlena Has Orange Hair…

I suppose this was my first clue that this live action adaptation of the 80s cartoon, HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE was going to be close, but different and good but not great in comparison to the cartoon from my childhood. The REAL Queen Marlena (meaning the cartoon one) had orange hair. This live action one has BLONDE hair…

Let me say OF COURSE, nostalgia colors my memory when I think back on Saturday mornings, but thank goodness we have Youtube and my DVD collection to refresh my memory on these charaters.

Yes.

I said DVD collection. I have the entire He-Man and She-Ra collection on DVD. So you are reading the critique of an expert on the series. I saw it all in real time as a child and over again as an adult. Details are my specialty here. Let us go quickly on our journey to ETERNIA and back.

First of all I think the casting of Idris Elba as MAN AT ARMS

was a genius move, and not just because he is the very embodiment of black excellence, BUT because his casting puts to rest a paternity issue the kingdom of Eternia always has for me. You see for some reason FILMATION was obsessed with red hair and that played into a problem for this kingdom and the royal court in general. Idris Elba does not have red hair, obviously, so clearly the mother of TEELA was a redhead. The only issue for me was that Queen MARLENA had red hair and MAN AT ARMS had red hair but KING RANDOOR DID NOT…

I always got the idea TEELA was the love child of MAN AT ARMS and QUEEN MARLENA., because ADAM and TEELA had such brother/sister vibes. They never spoke of TEELA’s mother in the cartoon; paternity and children come into big play when SHE-RA is introduced. (Yes, the movie has a surprise for us SHE-RA FANATICS- STAY TILL THE END OF THE CREDITS). So making MAN AT ARMS not a redhead was a smart idea. I suppose that could give director Travis Knight an out to say that is why he made QUEEN MARLENA have blonde hair, but that might be giving him too much credit. He seems to just be obsessed with blondes as he makes EVIL-LYNN blonde also when she could have had any color hair since she just wears a black skullcap. We never saw her hair in the original cartoon…(listen i told you I was an expert here so it is all about the minutiae, ok).

I have to say the casting was done well. I did not know the kid who played Prince Adam, but he mostly just needs to be beefcake, look pretty, have “glorious thighs” as SKELATOR says later in the film and make us feel safe. Nicholas Galitzine does that and then some.

I will admit at first I found it problematic that Idris (the only black male in the film, save for a villian under SKELATOR) was a drunk who turned into a coward. But he got his redemption arc. And I was not pleased that the only Black woman in the film was the boss of Adam on earth,

(comically brilliant Sasheer Zamata in a role meant to be funny but directed or acted in a way that was just cloying and emboddied the very incompetent Black boss that DEI has been villainized to install) who lacked authority and was a wet noodle. I wanted there to be a Wizard of Oz aspect where the people he ran into on earth had an analogue on Eternia. That was a missed opportunity. I know had she been cast as TEELA the bros would have lost it. I was the only Black person in a pretty packed theatre. I just feel like she was misused/underused. She is such a talent. That is my biggest problem with this film was that is comes in at a B plus for me because it underplayed parts that could have been explored more or written better. The dialoige is pretty HORRID. Here is one of my best examples I took note of how BAD the writing is: Upon approaching Snake Mountain, MAT AT ARMS says,

“We don’t know whats in there.” Which is a stupid enough line as it is. SKELATOR and his minions are in there and the captuired citizens of Eternnia and your mother and father. We literally know this from SKELATOR himself! LOL But anyway going on. HE MAN responds as they are making their approach:

‘I am in there.”

HUH?

The writing is bad, but the acting is good to pretty great and the costumes are cartoon perfect in the last scenes. When I say the writing underplayed things or did not use people well, we have zero development of Adams’s roommate on earth so we do not care when he appears again later on. What was that relationship like? Who is this guy who cries at romcoms? Where did Adam find him? Does he believe all this mess? Then, when he is transported to ETERNIA at the end, he is pretty chill, not screaming or anything that a talking cat is next to him. Also like I said we needed to see more of the drudgery and office work life of the daily life of Adam to get the impact of ETERNIA better. The office should be the antithesis of ETERNIA, right? We see it for like 3 minutes so it does not leave much of an impact. The SORCERESS was wonderfully played by Morena Baccarin, and she was pitch perfect, though I would have liked more action from her as the SORCERESS could mix it up with her magic. A battle between her and EVIL-LYNN was a missed opportunity as LYNN slinked off after a certain scene. She is sure to be in the next film. All in all I give it a B plus because at the end the ORIGINAL He-Man theme was finally heard and the crowd lost it. The film did a good job at fan service while doing some new things that fit. The writing is far too clunky and bad, underwritten for me to give it an A.

BIG B PLUS!