“There is no greater sorrow than to recall a happy time when miserable.” — Dante Alighieri
That line fits what I’m about to write. I watched the new Masters of the Universe last night, and I don’t quite know what to say about it. Was it a cinematic masterpiece? Obviously not. The music was the one thing that stood out from an otherwise average experience. The action and story didn’t do much for me, and yet I watched the whole thing start to finish and let the credits roll. That was nostalgia doing the work, and nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
The moment Skeletor appeared, and then He-Man a little later, something went off in my head. Some chemical reaction fired and I was back in 1990, three or four years old, holding the He-Man action figure my father had bought me. I was too young to know what it even was, what cartoon it came from, what his story was. It was just a toy. But it was the toy I took everywhere.
It was the same figure everyone across the world had. The muscular blonde man in a loincloth, a grey cross-strap harness over his chest, a sword in his hand. I read later that he started out as something meaner, a scowling, horned prototype that tested as too angry for kids to play with, so Mattel softened him into the blonde hero I grew up holding. What made it special to me was that the torso rotated, you could twist it back almost 180 degrees and it would spring back into place. That was the only action figure I owned, and I didn’t have a clue what it represented. I still remember it thirty-five years later, not because it was iconic, but because it was durable as hell. I passed it down to my brother, who played with it for years, and at some point it even joined forces with his GI Joe collection in a crossover only a kid could greenlight.
The other reason I remember it is the burn scar on my leg.
I’ve loved motorcycles for as long as I can remember, apparently since I was three or four. One of my father’s friends rode a Hero Honda CD100. In 1990s India motorcycles weren’t common. Most homes had a cycle or a scooter, ours had a scooter too, so that motorcycle fascinated me every time the uncle visited. One evening he came over and I ran out to sit on his bike, my personal bodyguard He-Man in hand as always. I got to the motorcycle and stopped, unsure where to put the figure before climbing on. The bike had a saddlebag, so I tucked He-Man inside it and climbed on from the other side. As I swung my leg over and put my bare foot down, it touched something hot, a part just below the fuel tank, probably the carburettor. I screamed.
That’s the last thing I remember of that evening. Over the next few days the burn swelled into a big boil and I cried from the pain, and also because He-Man had vanished. Nobody at home could find him. My father tried to get a replacement and couldn’t, not in Bhilai, he’d bought the original in Mumbai or Kolkata. So I was in double agony, the pain in my leg and the loss of my bodyguard.
A month later the uncle visited again. He’d been to Mumbai for work, and I was excited to see him, though this time I didn’t run to the bike. I knew better now. He walked in with something in his hand. It was He-Man. Not a new one. The one I’d tucked into the saddlebag a month earlier, carried around on his motorcycle the whole time.
None of that is in the movie, of course. But that’s what it pulled out of me, sitting there watching it thirty-five years later. As for the film, it has its moments. This isn’t the first time He-Man has made it to live action, there was a 1987 version with Dolph Lundgren that I’ve never seen, but this is the one for my generation. Duncan, Skeletor, and Evil-Lyn all play their parts well. This is an origin story, which means two characters who were a big part of the cartoon, Cringer (Battle Cat) and Orko the extraterrestrial wizard, get only a few minutes of screen time. That was a small disappointment for anyone who grew up with the show. Skeletor isn’t as funny as he was in the cartoon, but he got a couple of chuckles out of me. Evil-Lyn is the standout, and Alison Brie plays her really well. Nicholas Galitzine plays He-Man and looks every bit the part, about as good a casting call as you could ask for.
The “By the power of Grayskull” moment is iconic, and they did it justice. Even Castle Grayskull looks close to the source material, which the nostalgic part of me appreciated more than I expected. This is a film made for people who grew up with He-Man rather than newcomers, and on that count it mostly delivers.
Somewhere along the way I stopped judging the movie. I was too busy remembering. That’s the strange thing about nostalgia. A face, a sound, a toy, a film can open a door in your head that’s been shut for decades, and behind it are memories you didn’t realise were still there. For a couple of hours last night, He-Man wasn’t a character being dusted off for another generation. He was my personal bodyguard again.
So no, Masters of the Universe isn’t a masterpiece. Watch it anyway. Maybe Skeletor will make you laugh, maybe you’ll enjoy the fights, or maybe, like me, the film itself won’t matter much at all and something else will. Some long-forgotten memory from your childhood, dug up when you least expected it. You might even end up writing about it too.
