Movie Discussion: Masculinity in Masters of the Universe

The Masters of the Universe movie is a ton of fun and laughs… but it also addresses some very important points about what it means to be a man.

Warning: spoilers ahead for the Masters of the Universe movie

I watched the Masters of the Universe movie over the weekend. I had only heard of the Masters of Universe and He-Man, and had seen nothing from the toys and original cartoon series prior to watching this movie. I was born too late for it to be a thing for me. I have mostly only seen the memes of He-Man and Skeletor. So, I didn’t really know what to expect going in, other than from the promotional material I’ve seen for the movie. It seemed like it would be really funny and the type of movie that doesn’t take itself seriously.

It was really funny. And really fun. It was full of colour, none of the Marvel desaturated filters. The action scenes were very stylised. The soundtrack was amazing. But what really struck me was the message of the story itself. Given that He-Man/Adam Glenn is a big, buff, blonde man, and I would even call him a himbo, who has super-strength, is the chosen one, Adam is also a humble, principled man. He juxtaposed against Skeletor. But at the start, they’re basically two sides of the same coin. Their journeys diverge.

A Tale of Two Insecure Men

Skeletor

Let me start by saying that Skeletor is a really funny character, he is such a drama queen. But despite his supposed “tough” exterior, he is deeply insecure. He degrades his followers. He beats them into submission. He uses fear tactics to get them to fall in line. All so that he can feel superior to them. He needs constant validation from Evil-Lyn and his followers, by demanding they laugh and clap at the right times. He’s emotionally immature, very childish, narcissistic. But unfortunately, he never changes throughout the movie. There was no character growth, just more descent into madness.

Even Evil-Lyn pointed out to him that he already had everything he wanted. He had the kingdom. He had the followers. But he wasn’t settled because he didn’t have the Sword of Power. He felt like it was all temporary and could be taken away at any time (he was right about this, to be fair). He felt threatened by the mere existence of Adam. He cannot be at ease until he knows there is no one else who can defeat him. But that’s just unrealistic. A secure man wouldn’t be threatened by another strong man’s existence.

He is the dangerous insecure man. Skeletor is over-the-top comical, but we also know men like this in real life. The kind of man who belittles his girlfriend in front of his buddies. The man who cannot control his temper. The man who gets violent when things don’t go his way. The kind of man who has to make everyone around him feel small so that he can feel big. A manchild. Selfish. Only uses his powers to serve himself and hurt others. The kind of man who is susceptible to being red-pilled by Andrew Tate and Clavicular.

Adam Glenn / He-Man

From the start of the movie, we can see Adam grew up as a small boy, compared to his classmates. He was bullied. His father, his teacher, and his peers thought him weak. He struggled with fighting, but his father raised him with this belief that to be a man is to be big, strong, a fighter, a protector. Adam is the prince of Eternia so he’s going to be king someday so he really wanted to be like his father, he desperately wanted his father’s approval.

He got sent to Earth as a young boy as his home planet, Eternia, was attacked and taken over by Skeletor. He had no idea if his parents survived at all. He was given the responsibility of taking care of the Sword of Power, which he lost immediately. We’re never shown how he survived living on Earth, or who raised him. We just find him as an adult man.

Adam Glenn was a bumbling idiot of an adult man. He ended up with a job in HR, which he hated. He never stopped looking for the sword, and he never stopped wanting to go home, back to Eternia, to his detriment. He kept talking about Eternia and all the magic stuff to people on Earth, who of course just think he’s delusional and crazy. Aside from the movie trying to convince us that Nicholas Galitzine was not absolutely jacked under the pink shirt and has no idea what he’s going at the gym, it was very clear that he had deep insecurities of not being good enough to be prince of Eternia, to be the Champion of Grayskull, and admittedly, he had not done a good job so far in his life.

Once he finally returned to Eternia with the sword and he was finally able to wield the power of Grayskull, this significantly boosted his confidence, but also to his detriment. Because he had grown up with this idea of what it means to be a man, which is being big and strong and good at fighting, he immediately used his power for violence. Yet again, to his detriment. Because his father was killed as a result of his recklessness and big ego. It was then that Adam learned that violence is not the way. This is his character growth.

The Sorceress has always said that she chose Adam to be the Champion of Grayskull because of his compassion and empathy, because he tried to understand people as best he could. The movie proceeded to a funny scene where Adam used his HR, corporate-team-building skills to lift the spirits of the citizens and work together to escape the prison. While it was a bit trauma-inducing to hear corporate-speak in a fantasy movie, it also worked. Because in most, if not all, cases, fighting and war are the immature thing to do. A lot of things can be resolved if people were just willing to communicate and hear each other out.

While at the end of the movie, He-Man defeats Skeletor by fighting with brute force, I would argue that it’s not because Adam had not learned the lesson. He tried to talk to Skeletor and come up with a resolution that way. It’s not Adam’s fault that Skeletor is absolutely not responsive to that approach, with Skeletor being a very comical villain. And it is still a superhero movie so… gotta show off them powers, ya know?

The most powerful line that Adam said is “I have the power, I just prefer not to use it.” Not a lot of people understand that. At the end of the movie, the lesson is also laid out more explicitly by Orko that “Muscles don’t make a man.” Adam realised that he didn’t need to be anybody other than himself. Having the power helps but it should only be to an addition to who he is. What really matters is how he is on the inside. Adam won because he became a secure man.

Wrap up

Go catch this movie in the theaters. Don’t let it flop like how we fumbled the bag with the Dungeons and Dragons movie. We need more movies like this in the cinema. Not just for the lessons on masculinity, but we also just need more classic, epic action adventure stuff.