The History of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe/Masters of the Universe (1987) Retro Review

hello everyone and welcome to movie goodness where we examine life through cinema here on the kb radio network i am your host kevin reed and

today we are going to travel to the planet eternia we're going to go over the history

of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe,

a toy line and cartoon that came out in the early

80s that just captivated the eyes and imagination of young gentlemen like myself around that time who was born at the perfect time to partake in this phenomenon that was Masters of the Universe.

And

I...

can't imagine my childhood without an he-man action figure in my house i was i mean just like any other little adolescent boy around that time had the action figures played with them uh

fought against skeletor and all of the other minions and even even doing crossovers fighting against gi joes and stuff like that your imagination Thank you.

was your playground back in the day.

See,

we didn't have,

I'm sounding like an old-timer now,

we didn't have the iPhones and the iPads and 3,800 channels to surf.

We just had toys,

man.

We had actual toys that we could play with,

play with the toys and then turn on the TV and watch the cartoon and play alongside of the

cartoon while it's going on in real time it was a joy it was a joy i i still have my he-man action figure and you may wonder do i whip it out and play no i say i still have it because i know where it is it's

it's not with me here it's at my parents house is at my mom's house buried in the backyard he-man lost the battle

in one of my imaginary in one of my imaginary wars that was taking place and i did a ceremonial funeral for he-man and now i always intended on going back and digging him up but

didn't happen and eventually uh my dad god rest his soul he he gave me uh a basketball court one year for my birthday.

And he poured the slab and everything so I can have a basketball court in my backyard.

And I believe that He-Man is currently under that slab of concrete in my backyard,

resting peacefully with some other toys.

He-Man wasn't the only one that I laid to rest back there.

It's pretty much Pet Sematary for toys and action figures in my mom's backyard.

But...

fully intent on replenishing my collection i just haven't had the time or the money because you can't you can't just go to toys r us anymore it doesn't exist and find a he-man action figure you're

gonna have to go on ebay or wherever and buy these things and they're not cheap they're collector's items so i i i dropped the ball there i really dropped the ball there

I probably could have paid off a car or a house or something by now with all of the toys I had growing up.

And either broke or did a realistic burial of these characters.

It was,

look,

yes,

I'm weird.

I know.

I'm weird.

It is what it is.

At least I can admit it,

doggone it.

But that's besides the point.

The point of all this is my

80s.

my childhood was he-man when you think of watching saturday morning cartoons or afternoon cartoons when you come home from school the first cartoon that pops in my head is he-man in the masters of the universe that's all i remember well

i'm not all but it's like the number one cartoon of my childhood you know then you get the the

Thunder Cats and Silver Hawks and all that other good stuff that was around that same era and the plethora of cartoons but I'm telling you man we we had it good back then

we had it good and we just didn't know it because you look now now i'm searching for cartoons i'm trying to recapture my childhood and i can't find any good cartoons to watch you know anything that captures the imagination like

it did back in the day now all of those cartoons pretty basic you know there was nothing innovative i mean because it was targeted for kids let's be honest here

There wasn't any

Orson Welles,

Citizen Kane of Saturday morning cartoons that was so deep and character driven that you was just enamored by all of the storytelling going on.

That wasn't the goal.

The goal was just to keep kids occupied for 30 minutes at a time.

And He-Man was definitely that.

He-Man,

it was silly.

it was dumb at times but it was so entertaining you know when you go back and think about it and look about it look at it now it's a silly concept and so that's one of the things that give me a little hesitation of

this new adaptation of masters of the universe that's going to be released on june the 5th in theaters this live action adaptation to be exact i i'm i'm excited for the nostalgia of it all you

But I'm not looking for anything perfect out of that movie.

I'm not looking for anything to make any sense,

to be honest with you.

I just want to be entertained for an hour and a half or two hours,

however long the movie is going to be,

because I will be there.

On June the 5th,

you can best believe that I will be trying to recapture my childhood with this film.

With all that being said,

let's go back to where it all started.

What was the genesis of this character?

In case you don't know,

if you wasn't an old grizzled man like myself and wasn't around around this time and don't know exactly how this character came to be,

is he based on a comic book?

Is he a character that came from the mind of a studio head that just wanted to make a quick buck with a Saturday morning cartoon?

Or did it come from a toy line?

Well,

if that was your guess...

you was 100 correct he-man is a superhero of uh this franchise called masters of the universe which includes a toy line several several animation tv series but most recently they had uh adaptation on netflix and

comic books as well um and and as of june the 5th two live action films uh

the one that's coming up on june 5th and the other one is going to be our review at the end of our show masters of the universe which came out in 1987 yes 39 years ago

39 years ago i still i can't believe it was that long next year it'll be 40 years since masters of the universe that star

Dolph Lundgren as he man you have Frank Langella as

Skeletor,

a movie that is so bad.

When you hear people say movies that are so bad,

they're good.

They're talking about Masters of the Universe from 1987.

Horrible movie,

but we'll get to that in a few minutes.

But

He-Man is categorized by his superhuman strength and his powerful sword.

just like

any superhero whether it's in comic books or any other media he does have an alter ego prince adam and he-man and his friends they attempt to defend the secrets of castle greyskull on planet eternia and

the rest of the universe from the evil forces of his uncle and arch enemy skeletor uh just a little a little uh bonus feature here he-man

has a twin sister who later on had her own animated cartoon she-ra and so the character was created by designer mark taylor who based the character on his childhood drawings one

of those drawings uh was used by mattel's designer roger sweet in his pitch to mattel for a new action figure line.

Now,

to give you a little backstory with...

that

Mattel had just passed on the toy line for...

star wars they didn't see any value in that so they passed on it so george lucas took it to kenner the toy line and they developed the toys for star wars which generated like four billion dollars and

mattel was kicking themselves in the behind because of that decision so they was scrambling trying to find the next big thing to kind of compete now because

At this point,

they've been overtaken by Kenner.

So after failure,

after failure,

they tried out this He-Man thing.

This was back in 1976.

And it was Roger Sweet who chose the name He-Man and suggested that it have a twist action wrist.

Something that was innovative at the time.

it's for us

action figures and toys are concerned and so roger sweet sculpted and presented three different versions of the figure to mattel including a soldier a spaceman and a barbarian the barbarian version was chosen and developed into the character's current form that we know today afterwards

roger sweet was taken off of the project and mark taylor came in to be the principal design designer.

of the toy line and so back then when they released the toy line they had a storyline to go with it too it wasn't just a toy here you go play with it even though most kids didn't care do you know but uh

for the ones that were actually going to play with it and create their own world their own universe their own little stories they gave a little backstory for all of these characters and

That's when

the tv show came into play so they they hired these uh writers for a tv show to go along with the toy lines see this was this was odd at least it was for me when i found out this what it was because initially i thought that the toys were based on a cartoon but no it's the opposite the cartoon was based on the toys and uh normally

you would think like a movie or tv show or something like that

they release a toy line to go along with it to help with the promotion and the merchandising and all this other stuff but no no no no no uh they released the cartoon or or produced this cartoon to

sell toys so this is where we get a lot of the backstory the uh supporting characters our villains and all this all this was devised by the cartoon by the writers

And as they came up with these ideas for the show,

then the toy makers would have to go and design the characters so it can go along with the

TV show as well.

And so that's how they worked hand in hand to create

He-Man in the Masters of the Universe.

And it became an instant success,

rapidly increasing the sales of the toys.

And it was a huge success.

especially in the 80s gaining 9 million viewers in his first year in the united states alone and began broadcasting to at least 37 countries as well the massive success of that series led to a feature-length film in

1985 he-man and she-ra the secret of the sword uh from the same production team and it shared continuity or spin-off series

for she-ra princess of power there was also a primetime hour-long christmas special he-man and she-ra a christmas special i vaguely remember that i was i was like

six or seven when they came out i remember that but i don't remember anything about it but i do remember them releasing a christmas special that was the that was the thing back then i think

infamously everybody remembers the uh star wars holiday special which was my god but uh yeah man the cartoon was uh awesome it was i loved that cartoon jumping

over to the comic book pages evan and masters of the universe also graced our comic book pages dating all the way back to

1981 when it first had its first

mini comics if you will and that was released by Mattel and it was the story of the characters and

in those early comics conan was a barbarian he was just wandering like this dystopian world well the planet of eternity but it was dystopian looking and he was just wandering around and

uh the world was dealing with the aftermath of a war but the results of the war you had leftover uh machinery and weapons that were used you know in this dystopian world

And the war opened a rift between dimensions,

which allowed

Skeletor to travel to Eternium.

And Skeletor has set his sights on

Castle Greyskull,

the fortress of mystery and power.

And whoever controls Greyskull will control the masters of the universe.

That's always been the story when it came to this particular property.

But to prevent

Skeletor from achieving his goal,

He-Man has received special powers and weapons from the sorceress and defends the castle from Skeletor.

So that was basically the official unofficial origin of

He-Man and his special abilities because he has superhuman strength.

He's a superhero.

And he has that power sword.

So he is a bonafide comic book superhero.

And so we fast forward to a couple of years after that.

And

DC Comics stuck their hands into the

Masters of the Universe cookie jar.

They debuted a comic back in July of 1982.

And the series crossed over into the DC Universe.

in a story that had e-man teaming with superman and from there i think the next year they debuted a masters of the universe limited series in dc comics and that ran for three issues and

so you had a nice little run in dc when it came to masters of the universe and this was all running concurrent with the tv show and the toy line so

all of this was i guess you consider canon in this universe i've never read the comics i i didn't read the master i didn't think it was i didn't think it was a legit thing to be honest with you because you normally

uh around that time you always get a comic book uh adaptations of a tv show or a movie that was just like one-offs and stuff like that so i never really

pay much attention to them unless they had serious runs in the comics but i i didn't really dive into the masters of the universe comic but the uh dc comics run didn't last long uh in 1983 they kind of went back to mattel mattel was releasing these mini comics throughout the

80s all the way up to uh 1986 and in 1986 marvel Oh.

decided to give it a shot but not marvel proper it was one of their subsidies uh star comics they made a 13 issue run of masters of the universe but not really just like i was mentioning earlier how they have

these run one-offs in the comic books when a movie or tv show come along well that's basically what this comic was to go in line with you

Masters of the Universe,

the movie that came out in 1987.

And this was the story or the backstory.

It was a

13-issue run for this version,

I guess you could say,

of Masters of the Universe.

Because if you've seen that movie,

like I said,

we'll go over it.

But it's not a true adaptation of this.

property uh but uh it was it went on to be in uh comic scripts in the newspapers uh throughout the rest of the

80s all the way up to the

90s where it kind of pumped the brakes once it got to 91 kind of re-emerged in the early

2000s with image comics they gave it a shot it bounced back to dc under dark horse comics and

2011 I believe and it had a nice little run for about four years there and

went back to dc proper where it was a part of the official dc universe and this ran from 2012 to 2020 even uh having masters of the universe involved in the injustice storyline in

uh dc comics you know that six-part crossover series they're very they held it up man i remember reading the issue with

He-Man in it.

I was like,

wait,

what?

I was lost at that point but currently it's still holding strong in

Dark Horse comics and it is presently still a part of that canon over there that's where

Masters of the Universe Revelations and

Revolution which is the animated show that was on Netflix that's what that show is uh,

based on because the comics in the,

dark horse comics,

I should say is the prequel to that show.

And so,

here are the list of all of the TV shows that he,

man,

and the masters of the universe are affiliated with going all the way back to the premiere of he,

man,

in the masters of the universe in

1983, this grace,

the small screen for,

the majority of my come up come up and uh when i was a youngster in 1985 you had he man and she raw a christmas special uh in 1990 the new adventures of he man in

2002 he man and the masters of the universe now let me pause for a second right there that was a really good show that was one of the best adaptations

of he-man that i can recall it was it was so realistic and well i say realistic but grounded and raw and it was a dope you know it really i guess that show felt like okay the

kids the little kids that watched in 1983 they've grown up now so he-man needs to grow up with him and that's what the 2002 version felt like.

it was so good so so good didn't last long i was kind of upset about it it didn't last long at all it was it but it was so good um from 2021 to 2024 you had uh masters of the universe revelation

and revolution and in 2021 you had the cgi reboot masters of the universe

As far as films are concerned,

you have He-Man and She-Ra,

The Secret of the Sword.

That was the 1985 animated film.

And the 1987 live-action

Masters of the Universe.

Chippendale Rescue Rangers in 2022.

There was a cameo.

If you remember that movie,

that movie was so underrated.

I think that is the most slept-on movie ever.

Chippendale Rescue Rangers was awesome.

I love that movie,

but He-Man and Skeletor make cameos in that movie,

and then we're getting our reboot of Masters of the Universe in just a few days,

but before we run out to the theater to catch that one,

let's circle back to 1987,

and let's review

Masters of the Universe.

directed by gary goddard it stars dolph lundgren as he-man franklin jeller as skeletor you have a young courtney cox in this film this film had a 22 million dollar budget and that's that's 1987 money and

it only mustered up 17 million but out of that 17 million

10 bucks of it was me and my dad i begged my dad

and to bring me to go see this movie i wanted i mean it was nothing i wanted more in life at the time than to go see masters of the universe i i couldn't wait for this movie i remember seeing

the trailer for this movie and my little six-year-old mind just blew out of the skull i was like what

it's gonna be live action it's gonna be real it's gonna be actual human beings playing he-man i'm like who can play he-man and this is fresh off of watching rocky ford you know it in seeing this big russian

who we found out later is actually swedish but you see this big old russian towering over sylvester stallone and you know

Sylvester Stallone you know around that era he was he was Rambo he was Rocky I mean he was a man's man this big old uh muscular guy and to see him look like a little kid next to this guy in that movie was

like phenomenal like where did they find this guy wait he's gonna play he man oh yes perfect perfect but you know

I'm six years old I was in a cinephile back then

I didn't consider the fact that Dolph Lundgren,

at the time,

couldn't act.

You know,

he couldn't act,

but he barely spoke English.

From what we find out later on,

his lines had to be fed to him.

And so,

that's me now talking.

Back then in

1986, 87,

I didn't care.

And so,

we go...

we go forward i get to see skeletor in live action i get to see eternia in live action i get to see a man of man in all at arms you get uh uh oracle i get to see all of these characters well not

so fast not so fast uh canon the canon group is the studio behind masters of the universe and if you don't know anything about the canon group they're very

very predominant uh movie studio of the

80s that gave you these low budget action movies uh around that time and that just looked bad it was just the most cheap looking action movies you're ever going to see but they're so so

fun to watch but they didn't have money like that and it was even worse because superman 4

the quest for peace and you may wonder what that got to do with masters of the universe live action film well canon released that movie and they put all their eggs in the superman basket it's

because it's superman it was smart move they got the rights released the film and it was horrible box office disaster banked up the studio unfortunate

part for masters of the universe this all happened in the middle of production and so all of the plans they had initially they this movie wasn't going to take place on earth this movie was going to take place on eternia

because that's what the story is that's what he man in the masters of the universe is.

It has nothing to do with Earth.

So...

the studio head said okay i know how we can save money let's set it on earth let's let's find a way to set it on earth and so that's what they did and that's how we get this movie this monstrosity of a film and i

must say at the age of seven or wait 1980 i was eight and at the age of eight i've i've realized at that point i knew the difference between a

bad film and a good film and this was the bad one i sat there and i realized for the first time in my life in eight long years on earth this is the first time i'm sitting in a movie theater mad

did not enjoy it i've seen bad movies up to that point but i didn't get mad or i didn't realize they were bad until later

because i was just happy to be in a movie theater i love movie theaters i love going to watch movies did not love this because the movie was so bad i can live with the fact that they changed it up okay i know that there's gonna be a

deviation from the source material we get that today do you know whether you transferring it from a comic book or a tv show or a tour line it doesn't

matter whenever you transfer one media to another there's going to be changes so i get that

I can live with that,

but I couldn't live with this.

First and foremost,

this movie is set on Earth.

I don't understand why it had to be set on Earth.

I don't understand why Earth played a major part in Eternia and Castle Grayskull.

Made no sense.

Then you have no Oracle.

Now.

is 1987 this is pre-cgi ai whatever you didn't have that luxury and so you had to cut back on some things but to give you another character that

made no sense that was never introduced in any other iteration of masters of the universe and make him a central part of the story

I think his name was

Gwondor or whatever.

Horrible character.

Ugly as well.

And then this cosmic key thing that opens up these rifts in the dimension to whereas you could travel to Earth and Eternia and this,

that,

and the third.

Whatever.

But that was the

MacGuffin of the movie.

But the most offensive thing about this movie.

that I recognized in 1987 sitting in that movie theater that got me so mad was the fact that we're focusing on Courtney Cox character and her boyfriend

I could care less about her story

I came here to watch He-Man say

I have the power

and kick Skeletor's butt.

That's the only reason I'm here.

But for some strange reason,

they felt they had to give this movie some gravitas to connect with the teenage audience because that's what 80s films did.

Around this time,

you got The Breakfast Club,

Pretty in Pink,

St.

Elmo's Fire,

and all these,

you know,

with the Brat Pack movies.

All that was coming out,

so they figured,

Hey.

teenage movies are getting over let's try putting the teenage story in this one why why it made no sense courtney cox characters parents died in a car crash right and

so this was her this was her arc throughout the movie she's dealing with grief throughout this film and she stumbles upon the key uh the cosmic key and he man is tracking it

down as well as Skeletor sending his minions after and all this other stuff all right whatever but they were the central focus of the film now there's a lot of reasons why that could have happened reason number one the aforementioned Dolph Lundgren can't act at this point he can act now

I've just seen him in movies seen him in multiple films where he was killing it on screen

he just didn't find his scribe this is second film you know so he didn't and he's starring so there's a lot of pressure on him and so you have that going for you so they were trying to hide him that's why you didn't get a lot of he-man all

right reason number two due to the fact they couldn't create an eternia they had to kind of draw your attention away from that

So we followed these two characters through the entire film.

Or if reason number three,

they really didn't have a story and they were just flying by the seat of their pants.

I go with reason number four,

all of the above.

It's just a dumpster fire of a movie.

The performances here,

look,

everybody was trying.

I rewatched it the other day.

I can honestly say they were trying.

They had nothing to work with.

It was nothing they could do to make this movie better acting wise,

you know,

their performance wise.

What was on the page was complete garbage and they tried.

Every actor in here,

even Dolph Lundgren at this time,

they tried.

But you know who tried the hardest and you know who I love even to this day is Franklin Jell-O.

as Skeletor.

He is the only one out of this entire cast.

that knew exactly what movie he was in he chewed up every second of seeing that he was in he act a plump fool as skeletor i loved him in this movie the only redeeming quality of this movie is watching frank langella's performance over

the top doesn't do it justice that's not an app

description of his performance he went all in and i can't man you can't do nothing but tip your hat to franklin jella as skeletor in this movie he went all in he

didn't care he was like you know what i'm here y'all paying me let me go with it and he went with it loved his performance really did.

The action was not

not all that good uh dove london swinging a sword didn't look good you know it didn't look fluid nobody looked like they were trained at any point for these action sequences uh the visual effects was horrible but you got to kind of give a little learning curve there because it was 1987 you know it wasn't matrix level special effects they had a couple of good shots in there like When Skeletor arrived on Earth,

I thought that was a...

Pretty cool scene.

But the rest of the visual effects was not looking good.

One in particular,

the final fight between He-Man and Skeletor.

Speaking of He-Man,

let me get to that.

Speaking of He-Man,

the fact that he was never Prince Adam in this movie.

Never.

He was He-Man the entire movie.

But anyways.

Going back to that final fight with him and Skeletor,

it was dark.

It looked bad.

And that's kind of excused when you learn the backstory.

The sets were being torn down as they shot.

That's how much they were in financial peril during the production of this movie.

They'll shoot scenes in a certain set and they'll move on to the next scene.

and they're tear down the set so they can kind of hurry up and rebuild another one for another movie to try to pull them out of this financial bind that they're in and so when you got to that final fight they had to be in a set you

know it was set in a spot that they already filmed in and there was no set and so that's why it's dark they're basically fighting in a warehouse with nothing around him just with the

you know clever lighting and all this other stuff that's why it looks the way it looks and i just feel bad for the filmmakers and everything because they were so handcuffed in this movie it's it's i feel bad for them because they probably had a good movie that they wanted to produce but

they couldn't financially another thing i liked i liked the scene when he man got the sword of power

back,

I should say,

when he pulled it out of this little locking mechanism that Skeletor put it in.

And he finally said the line,

I have the power.

And that was cool because I like the way he it just looked cinematically.

It looked great.

And that was your your your crowd pleasing moment when he pulled it out of there.

Like like King Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone,

if you will.

It was awesome.

That was awesome.

If the rest of the movie was like that,

we'll have a different,

we'll be singing a different tune.

So with that,

Franklin Jell-O's performance,

and everybody really giving it their all.

They really gave it their all.

I can't knock the movie.

I would consider it a cult film right now.

You know,

it's...

hey it's one of those guilty pleasures this is the sheer definition of a movie that was so bad that is good you can watch this and laugh you know that's the type of movie this is you can watch it and laugh especially at the end because

we get to the end of this movie and like i said courtney cox character her parents died in a car crash now this was long before he man and uh

man-at-arms and everybody came to Earth.

The Cosmic Keep,

they

They went back to Eternia or sent them back because they all had went back to Eternia.

That's where the final battle happened in Castle Grayskull.

And so they go back home.

And when she gets back home,

she wakes up out the bed,

goes downstairs,

and her parents were there.

I couldn't take it.

I couldn't.

I was so mad.

Eight years old.

walking out the theater man i remember my dad asking me hey did you like it he's still waiting on his answer today and and god rest his soul he's passed away and he'll never get that answer because i didn't have an answer for him i i couldn't i couldn't answer him i don't know what

i watched i still don't know and i watched it the other day i still don't know what i watched

they should have just left it alone once every sign told them to leave it alone but they kept going they they tried their best to make chicken salad out of chicken you know what and they just it still was chicken you know what and

then had the audacity audacity and i didn't notice at the time because this is pre-mcu stayed to the end of the credits and all that there

So I didn't know anything about a post-credit scene and all this here.

I found out years later,

years later.

I think I was a teenager or something like that.

Masters of the Universe was on HBO or something.

And I tried watching it again,

got disgusted,

left out the room.

I came back and the credits were about to end.

And all of a sudden,

Skeletor head popped up out the water and said,

I'll be back.

I'm like,

wait,

what?

wait they just add that oh that was there the whole time i was i did not know it had a post credit scene after all those years did not know it and it they had the audacity to set up a sequel to

this crap thankfully it didn't come to fruition masters of the universe from 1987 gets a letter grade of a d minus yeah only a couple of

redeeming qualities about this movie it's a it's a true guilty pleasure it's one of those movies you watch just to say i watched it yeah i watched that that's it it's no icebreaker here there's nothing that's going to engage a conversation the only conversation you will have with others oh did you see masters of the universe from 1987 yeah that movie sucked yeah it's i feel the same way that's

the end of the conversation

There's nothing else to say about Masters of the Universe from 1987.

Hopefully,

hopefully,

this one will be better.

Hopefully,

this reboot that's coming out at the beginning of June will be better.

As long as it's better than this,

I'm good.

I feel like I got my money's worth.

And judging by the trailer,

it looks like it's...

leaning into the camp is leaning into the uh uh uh real origins of the character we're going to get a real adaptation of uh masters of the universe he-man and prince adam and uh skeletor and

all this other good stuff it looks like we're getting what we hoped we had gotten in

1987 but we shall see i would like to

to know did you own any uh action figures from masters of the universe or did you collect them did you break them did you bury them in the backyard after a long exhausting battle with skeletor i would like to know that i like to know did you watch the 1987 masters

of the universe film with dolph lundgren as he man and what were your thoughts on it it sucked okay yeah that's all we you talk about.

Any who's I want to know your thoughts,

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Network. Everybody,

thank you for joining me as we went over the history of He-Man.

masters of the universe want you all to know that i love you continue to love everyone and until we speak again you all be blessed

The History of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe/Masters of the Universe (1987) Retro Review

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