Masters of the Universe

There were three big box office bombs this summer: "Supergirl", "The Mandalorian and Grogu", and "Masters of the Universe". In all three cases, the reason for this was at least somewhat political, or at least connected with the Culture Wars - they were basically considered too woke, in one way or another, and therefore people stayed away. In two of the cases, I was of the opinion that they weren't the cinematic abomination that I had feared - neither "Supergirl" nor M&G was a masterpiece by any stretch, but both were fairly serviceable in their own rights.

I watched "Masters of the Universe" this weekend... and I'm afraid it's astonishingly awful.

Now, in fairness, there were some things I enjoyed: the music is actually really good (and, if the law that films with a soundtrack by Queen inevitably become cult hits is true, I'd expect this to happen here too: although the soundtrack is not by Queen, it heavily features Brian May's work). The cameo by Dolph Lundgren is likewise pretty cool - although it's a really bad sign when it reminds you of an older, better, film and that film is itself pretty terrible. And having Orko appear at the end to give the moral of the story is a really nice touch - very reminiscent of the source cartoon.

(Oh, and Surprise! has declared that this film is awesome, largely because at the end Adam rides away on his big green tiger. So that's at least one recommendation.)

I guess the other thing that works is that at least the various characters do actually look like they should - the film basically has all the action figures come to life.

Otherwise, though, no. I'm not even going to enumerate the failures - it's all within touching distance of mediocrity, but ultimately falls short, to the extent that despite investing only a couple of hours into it, and despite getting it effectively free as part of my Prime subscription, I still felt short-changed.

Avoid.