MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE - Dolph Lundgren Has the Power!

You have to admire Cannon Films. Producers Yoram Globus and his cousin Menahem Golan had an ability to tap the pulse of the movie going audience of the eighties and deliver some of the best low budget B-movie fare of the decade. They pretty much sparked the Ninja craze with Nine Deaths of the Ninja and American Ninja, they were able to jump on the blossoming breakdancing and hip-hop craze with the two Breakin' movies Rappin' and Beat Streat, and pretty much re-wrote history when Chuck Norris single handedly won the Vietnam War in Missing in Action 1-3.
Is it any surprise then that they jumped onto one of the biggest fads of the eighties: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe? Not really.

Let me bring you up to speed, in case you're unaware of the franchise: Adam, prince of Eternia, is a cowardly, blond muscleman playboy who loves the easy life of royalty. However it's all a scam, because Adam possesses the Power Sword, and when he holds it aloft and says the magic words "By the Power of Grayskull! I have the Power!" he is transformed into He-Man, the strongest, most powerful man on Eternia.

Together with his close allies, Cringer/Battle Cat, Teela, Man-At-Arms and Orko, He-Man uses his powers to defend Eternia from the evil forces of Skeletor and his many colorful minions. Skeletor badly wants to conquer Castle Grayskull and possess that fabulous power for himself allowing him to not dominate only Eternia, but the whole universe.

The movie tweaks things slightly - we never see He-Man as Adam, which doesn&#146t necessarily mean he cant turn back or anything, just that we don't see the playboy poofdah side of things. Also gone are Cringer and Orko, He-Man's friend/mount and comic relief. A giant green tiger and a flying hooded magician would have been far too expensive and difficult to do convincingly with 1980's technology.

Instead we get the dwarf inventor Gwildor (played by famouse short person Billy Barty in one of his better rolls), who has invented a Cosmic Key, a MacGuffin that allows the possessor to open a portal to anywhere in the universe. Skeletor, being Skeletor, wants The MacGuffin badly - and as his troops close in to capture it, Gwildor randomly opens a doorway. And so He-Man, Man-at-Arms, Teela and Gwildor escape Skeletor's men. Of course having the entire time/space continuum to choose from, what are the odds that He-Man will land in Southern California, circa 1986?

Damn near 100% if you ask me.

Anyway, as He-Man and his companions land in Southern California, circa 1986, the Key falls into the hands of a teenage couple who think that it's some kind of Japanese synthesizer and plan to incorporate it into their band's upcoming gig. Unfortunately for the band, Skeletor and his goons are going to be the opening act. . . .

Headlining the movie (sorry, I'll stop with the concert references) is Dolph Lundgren, fresh from his Ivan "I vill break you" Drago roll on Rocky IV. And honestly, I cant think of a better choice of eighties action movie star to play He-Man. He's buff, he's ripped and he's blond. Ok, Dolph wasn't (isn't?) the best actor in Hollywood, but he was able to sell the physical demands of the roll convincingly. In fact it's him through all the movie, since there wasn't a stunt-man big and ripped enough to double for Dolph.

The flip side of Dolph's He-Man coin was of course Frank Langella's Skeletor. The man loves to hear his own voice, letting loose with all kinds of lengthy monologues and stomping around Grayskull shouting at minions in a way that only an actor covered in a ton of latex shaped like a skull head could. There is no subtlety here - but then the animated Skeletor wasn&#146t exactly subtle either - but he does do a damn good job of it.

The man in the directors chair, Gary Goddard, had been previously responsible for really dreadful soft core Bo Derek Tarzan the Ape Man a couple of years previous and had helped Joe Straczynski on the vastly underrated Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future delivers a rather pedestrian take on He-Man. The action is okay, but everything else is pretty functional - and that's about it. The set design and costumes are really good - kudos to the art department - but despite having a huge budget lavished upon the production, it's not very engaging.

At the end of the day, the film was pretty much a flop. Between Masters of the Universe, the Stallone vehicle Over the Top, and the financial train wreck that was Superman IV: The Quest for Peace a shift in the industry economics to favor the major studios instead of the smaller independent film-makers, and an increasingly crowded direct-to-video market, this was pretty much the end of the line for Cannon Films.

The Go-Go boys would break up their partnership with notable animosity and form their own independent studios (oddly enough producing two competing Lambada movies at the same time), before eventually sinking beneath the waves of cinema history.

And with them went a decade of excess and glitz, where an action movie could be jingoistic and loud and dumb and still gain acceptance, where the big studios didn't micro-manage the film into a test-marketed demographic targeted homogenized mess. Where directors didn't have to rely on this god-awful "Shaky Action Cam" that has all but destroyed action movies these day.

And that's a damn shame.

THE DVD -
Masters of the Universe is one of Warner Brothers' early releases, and comes in a snap-case (Blech!). The video is pretty good, if not outstanding. We get a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that isn't isn't too bad - although it seems to run a bit darker than I remember when I saw this in the theater, and the colors aren't as bold as I remember them either. But then this could be just my memory playing tricks on me.

THE EXTRAS -
Only a couple of extras of note, beyond the text-only cast and crew bios and character profiles, is a commentary from Goddard, who proves himself to be pretty knowledgeable and quite engaging. We also get the theatrical trailer to round things out. Not a lot of stuff, but better than some of the other Cannon films on DVD so far.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
Masters of the Universe is not a good movie, but it is a fun movie. Okay, the story (such as it is) slows down towards the middle bit, as everyone runs around trying to find the Key, but it picks right back up again at the end. And of course some of the fans will go "Oh, it&#146s not He-Man! Where is the theme? Where is Cringer? Where is Orko? Change is BAD!", I'll point out that the original cartoon wasn't all that good either (again, it was bad but fun, just like the movie). Cast aside your preconceptions and just enjoy!