Masters of the Universe

Synopsis

Prince Adam returns to battle the forces of evil, defend Eternia and become He-Man once more.

At least that was the plan.

What follows is a two-hour assault on nostalgia featuring questionable dialogue, relentless one-liners and a villain who somehow manages to make world domination look less appealing than a Monday morning Teams meeting.

What I Expected

As a child of the 80s, I went into this film hoping for a bit of nostalgia.

Not a frame-by-frame recreation of the cartoon.

Not an Oscar-winning masterpiece.

Just a fun trip back to Eternia.

I also deliberately avoided looking too closely at the cast beforehand.

For me, this wasn’t about actors.

It was about revisiting a small part of my childhood.

Unfortunately, what followed was less a return to Eternia and more a large-scale transformation programme that appeared to have lost sight of its original requirements somewhere during delivery.

What I Got

The acting was, at best, variable.

The dialogue often felt like it had been generated by feeding every Marvel script into an AI model and then asking it to remove all of the good bits.

The humour rarely landed.

The dramatic moments rarely felt dramatic.

And the emotional moments had all the impact of a strongly worded email.

From a project perspective, the film also appeared to suffer from a lack of clear requirements.

At no point was I entirely sure who the target audience was supposed to be.

Long-time fans expected a return to Eternia.

New audiences needed an introduction to the world.

The film somehow managed to underserve both groups simultaneously.

This is generally considered an anti-pattern.

Skeletor deserves special mention.

Not because he was particularly threatening.

Not because he was particularly memorable.

But because he managed to transform one of the most iconic villains in fantasy into a walking collection of cringe-worthy one-liners.

At one point I found myself wondering how this had happened.

Then I discovered afterwards that Skeletor was played by Jared Leto.

Suddenly a number of creative decisions began to make sense.

Not good decisions.

But decisions.

Even Idris Elba couldn’t save this one.

Which is saying something because he was legendary as Heimdall in the Thor films.

Here he looked like a senior engineer who had joined a project halfway through, realised the architecture was fundamentally flawed and was simply trying to survive until the end of the contract.

Governance Review

Several questions remained unanswered throughout the film:

• Who approved this script?
• Were user requirements gathered?
• Was there stakeholder engagement?
• Did anyone perform acceptance testing?
• Was there a lessons learned review from previous adaptations?

The final product suggests either significant scope creep or a complete breakdown in quality assurance.

Possibly both.

A post-implementation review is strongly recommended.

Change Management

Modernising a beloved franchise is always difficult.

Change itself is not the problem.

Poorly managed change is.

Successful transformations bring existing stakeholders along on the journey.

This felt more like somebody archived the existing requirements document, ignored stakeholder feedback and proceeded directly to production.

The result is a film that carries the He-Man branding whilst frequently appearing uncertain about what made He-Man popular in the first place.

User Acceptance Testing

One cannot help but wonder whether this film underwent any meaningful user acceptance testing.

If it did, the findings were apparently ignored.

The project team appears to have reached the point where every stakeholder concern was answered with:

“We’ll take that away.”

And then never discussed again.

Risk Management

Several risks appear to have been identified during production.

Unfortunately, they all materialised.

RAID Log

Unlike The Empire Strikes Back, where Luke Skywalker ignored the RAID log, this project appears to have ignored the RAID log before filming even began.

This demonstrates admirable consistency.

Review

The highlight of the film?

A brief Dolph Lundgren cameo.

Not because of nostalgia.

Not because of the acting.

Simply because it was a respectful nod to the 1987 film — the only moment in two hours that felt like it understood what this property actually means to people.

Battle Cat eventually appeared.

The end credits also appeared.

Both were welcome developments.

The more I thought about it afterwards, the more it felt like a project that had lost sight of its original objectives.

The branding was present.

The budget was present.

The special effects were present.

The thing that appeared to be missing was a clear understanding of why people liked He-Man in the first place.

There are films that take risks and successfully reinvent a franchise.

This was not one of them.

I’d rather spend two hours troubleshooting printer drivers over a VPN connection than sit through this again.

Movie Scorecard

Overall Movie Assessment

🔴 Critical

A film that appears determined to misunderstand its own source material.

Architecture & Programme Assessment Scorecard

Overall Maturity Assessment

🔴 Critical

The programme successfully delivered a film.

Whether it successfully delivered a He-Man film remains open for discussion.

Movie Hub Metrics

Final Verdict

By the Power of Grayskull…

I would not watch this again.

The 0.1 out of 5 is awarded for Battle Cat — who did eventually appear near the end, though even that was a bit meh — and Dolph Lundgren’s cameo.

Without them, this review would have required negative numbers.

A rare example of a project where the post-implementation review may be more enjoyable than the final deliverable.