Mattel tried to pull off the Barbie magic trick twice. Spoiler alert: it didn't work.
Rolling Stone's scathing review of Masters of the Universe reads like a postmortem on what happens when studio executives smell profit and miss the entire point of what made Greta Gerwig's Barbie a cultural phenomenon.
The setup is straightforward: Picture Mattel's C-suite watching those Barbie charts spike, then realizing that if a film about female empowerment and doll nostalgia can print money, why not try the same formula for Gen-X men obsessed with He-Man?
Enter director Travis Knight, an '80s kid who once filmed his own MOTU movie with his dad's camcorder. That childhood earnestness runs through this film. But sincerity alone can't save what Rolling Stone calls "brand management" masquerading as cinema.
The foundation exists: Prince Adam (Artie Wilkinson-Hunt) doesn't want to be a warrior, preferring to sketch in his room instead. His reluctant hero origin story unfolds across Eternia with fantasy trappings—flying dragons, swords, sorcery, spaceships. Idris Elba plays Duncan, head of the royal guard, while a humiliating king (James Purefoy) pushes his artistic son toward combat training. Teela (Eire Farrell) softens the tension.
But packing a film with "By the Power of Grayskull!" callbacks and musty nostalgia doesn't make it subversive. Barbie worked because it genuinely questioned its own legacy while celebrating it. Masters of the Universe, by contrast, feels like it's checking boxes on a PowerPoint presentation about quarterly earnings.
This is what happens when you confuse fan service with filmmaking. The result is a serviceable vehicle for toy-selling that mistakes sentimentality for soul.
