Masters of the Universe (1987) (with Matt Swaford)

[00:00:12] Welcome to Movie Oubliette, the film review podcast for movies that most people have mercifully forgotten. I'm Dan. And I'm Conrad. And in each episode, we drag a forsaken film out of the Oubliette. Discuss it and judge it to decide whether it should be set free or whether it should be thrown back and consigned to oblivion forever.

[00:00:41] Do the films others tend to forget. Come with us and don't come up the Movie Oubliette. Welcome Eternians to episode 199 of Movie Oubliette, the Continental Crossing podcast with me, Dan, back from my holiday in New Zealand, but currently in Melbourne, Australia.

[00:01:10] And me, Conrad, buying garden furniture in Cambridge, UK. In this podcast, we deep dive into forgotten genre films, horror, sci-fi and fantasy because nothing says a good time like interdimensional synthesizer art playing cosmic keys and scantily clad, greasy, muscly men wielding massive broadswords. Hello, Conrad. That's always a good time. Welcome back, Dan. How are you doing?

[00:01:44] A family, very distant family. People we had never met before. And was this, I always imagine it being in Hobbiton. So were you under a great tree, picnic tables? I mean, it was beautiful, miserable weather, very cold, very wet. But it was a great time and visited part of New Zealand I had never been before. So Taranaki, kind of the west coast of North Island. But it was great. It was a very relaxing holiday.

[00:02:13] Oh, that's good. So you're well rested and ready to delve into the jubilee once more. Yes. Yes. Mailbag for today, Conrad? Well, we had two pieces of mailbag. We've got Ola Jonidevic on Phenomenon. And he said, It's an odd movie. Bought the Ultra 4K unseen. And even if it was a sale, I'm not sure of the decision. But it sure is different. Well, yes.

[00:02:45] Yeah, it's definitely different. Have you ever done that buy things in a sale and then thought, still not sure if this was a good idea? Oh, all the time. All the time. Yeah, I often buy things just because they're in a sale, even if I know I don't like them. Oh, right. Okay. I think that's probably an illness. We also heard from Serge of Cold Crash Pictures. Hello, Serge. Oh, hello, Serge. And he said, Bug Buster seems to know it's no good,

[00:03:14] which makes for some fun, self-aware humour. But I don't know if that's enough to actually recommend it to anyone. The only reason I can think to watch it is if Doug Jones himself suggests you check it out as an example of his lesser-known work. That is, of course, exactly why it landed on the latest episode of Movie Oubliette, where they actually interviewed Doug Jones, and he talks about almost killing Randy Quaid. Mm. I know. Yeah.

[00:03:42] All of that in all caps. Yeah. Was a pretty amazing moment. Yeah. Special episode. Yes, I'm still pinching myself that that actually happened. It did. Amazing. But even more excitingly, we get to talk to somebody else today. We have a very special guest, the man behind Reclaimers Vintage Toys on Instagram and the host of the Endless Bullets podcast. It's Mr. Matt Swofford. Hello, sir. Hello. Hey.

[00:04:12] Hello. How's it going, guys? Good. It's great to see you. It's been way, way too long. I know. Way too long. We haven't collaborated since Iconicon, which is years ago now. Yeah. Good old dead heat on Iconicon. That was a great one. It was. Yeah. I really enjoyed that movie. Well, I know we had had one set aside, what was it, about a year ago? I think the final countdown. Oh, yes. And I had a last minute emergency that came up and I wasn't able to be there. That's right.

[00:04:41] You guys sufficiently tore that one apart like I was going to. It kind of worked out. It did, yes. As long as you were nodding along, then that's all fine. Every time I had a notepad, I was listening to it and I was like, yep, yep, that's what I was going to cover. Yeah. So I just went right down the checklist. I was like, yep, they covered all of the stupid things. So what have you been up to recently? What can people look out for on your channel?

[00:05:06] Well, it's Endless Bullets has kind of been on a hiatus for pretty much since not long after the last Iconicon. I think 2023 is the last one I did. And it's kind of a long story and I don't want to bog everybody down with sadness. But one of my closest childhood friends died. And my first geeking out on movies was with him. So I had to kind of heal from that.

[00:05:32] And I also started a new job that I got a big promotion at work. So I really just didn't have the time to put into it, to editing and everything else. But I talked to our mutual friend, Michael French, and bounced it off him. And I'm going to start doing the show again and do it as a live stream. That way I don't have to edit and just air it directly on YouTube. So that'll be coming probably in the next month. Oh, cool. I think it'll work really well as a live stream. Yeah. There's so many I'd love to talk about.

[00:06:02] And even newer ones, newer movies that have come out in the action genre that I really want to cover. Well, we would love to hear it and we'd love to participate if you ever think there's a film we'd be a good fit for. Oh, absolutely. I've already got one in mind. Oh. But it's a surprise. Well, speaking of film, would you like to do the honours and venture into the Oubliette to fetch us a film for today? I would. I would. I'm going to see. I'm kind of... There's this doorway here in this big rock. I'm going to check it out.

[00:06:34] I'm going to open the door here. Oh. Oh, there's a lot of locks on this thing too. It's a carrot. Oh, ow, my head. Ow. That's going to leave a mark. Not a lot of room in here to move around. Wow. Lots of gizmos and... Oh, hey, look. A doorway. And it looks like it leads to the caverns underneath Grayskull. Wow. That's convenient. It's almost like Skeletor wouldn't even need a key for getting into Castle Grayskull if he just knew about this passage. Oh. Oh, anyway. Oh, there it is.

[00:07:04] There's a movie I'm looking for. I've been looking for you. So what film do you have for us today? Masters of the Universe from 1987, directed by Gary Goddard and starring Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langella, Meg Foster, Courtney Cox, and Billy Barty. Yeah. And what happens in this movie?

[00:07:26] On the planet Eternia, the evil warlord Skeletor has invaded and only the buff and buttery champion He-Man stands in his way of complete dominion. Together with his two fellow heroes and a quirky leprechaun inventor, they escape to Earth and enlist the help of two teenagers and the worst cop in town to find their magic musical machine so that they can rejoin the fight and save their precious sorceress.

[00:07:53] Will they arrive in time or will Skeletor and his evil warriors open the great eye and become masters of the universe? Can't wait to check it out. After the break.

[00:08:19] And we're back to talk about 1987's Masters of the Universe. Matt, you plucked this out of the Ubliet for us. Is this a film that you've seen before by any chance? Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. I'm what I always refer to as patient zero for He-Man. I was five years old in 1982 when the toys first came out.

[00:08:42] And I remember my grandmother taking my brother and I from store to store on an entire day's journey looking for those figures. Oh, wow. And we found like the tertiary characters first, like Merman and Man-at-Arms, but we couldn't find He-Man and Skeletor. So we literally went to like 12 stores looking for these things. I read the mini comics. I watched the cartoon before school. And I had a subscription to the He-Man magazine. Oh, wow.

[00:09:10] And I learned of this movie while they were making it about a year before it came out and was just super jazzed about it. And when it opened, I didn't see it opening weekend in the theater. I actually never saw it in the theater. Oh. But I saw it when it first came out on VHS. Ah. And saw it many times. Wow. So this is one that I had on VHS. I did not see it in theaters. So I think, Dan, that makes this one a childhood nostalgia episode. Yeah. Childhood nostalgia.

[00:09:40] Did any of you watch the series, the cartoon? Oh, yes. Yep. Every day before school. Yeah. You couldn't escape it pretty much. And I think it was because Reagan relaxed the FCC rules around advertising toys to children. So I think originally you weren't allowed to have a TV show that was basically just an ad for a toy. Until Reagan got rid of all of that pesky regulation and opened the free market that Mattel took this rather daring approach of commissioning,

[00:10:09] commissioning however many episodes you needed for syndication back in those days. For syndication, the magic number was always 65. Wow. Okay. So it was Filmation that produced that cartoon. And they sold it to lots of local stations, I think. And almost gave it away on the proviso that they always showed it every day as soon as kids got out of school. Yeah. And so we were just indoctrinated with He-Man.

[00:10:39] You could not escape it. So, Dan, did this completely pass you by? I mean, the cartoon was always on. It was a little bit before my time. So when I was watching cartoons, there was more Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and G.I. Joe. Right. So a little bit later. But I did watch a fair amount of He-Man and also like Thundercats. I kind of got them both confused. They were both kind of muscly characters in some sort of weird fantasy world. Yeah.

[00:11:08] But I never saw the movie, though. That did not cross my path for some reason. I'm sure other kids at the time did. But yeah, I never watched a movie until my 20s. Oh, wow. But before watching it, though, you both had prior knowledge of He-Man, of Masters of the Universe as a property, though. Yes. Yes. It's always interesting to me, people that come to it completely blind, like with no prior knowledge and just watch it as a movie.

[00:11:35] Or people that come to it with preconceived ideas in their head of He-Man and Skeletor and everything else and all the characters that they want to see. Yeah. And also all the themes and all the transformations that you don't see in this movie. Because I was expecting that. I was expecting Adam to transform into He-Man when he brandishes the sword and says that iconic line.

[00:11:59] And he does say that iconic line once, but he doesn't transform, which was deeply disappointing. No, they completely jettisoned the idea of him having a dual identity. Yeah. Which I always found ridiculous in the cartoon. I mean, Clark Kent taking his glasses off is one thing. But, I mean, He-Man looks exactly the same when he's Prince Adam. The only difference is he's wearing less clothes. So I don't know what that says about his family.

[00:12:27] But obviously, as soon as he takes his shirt off, they're just not looking at his face anymore. Yeah. It's the pink shirt, right? Yeah. He-Man would never wear a pink button-up shirt. It's true, yeah. So you're right, Matt. I mean, it really does depend on whether you came at it with preconceptions as to what your initial reaction was going to be.

[00:12:49] Because, of course, the film did surprise diehard fans when it first tumbled off the conveyor belt, courtesy of Canon Films. An interesting outfit to begin with. Do you know much about Canon Films, Matt? I don't like the word expert, but I've been called a Canon Films expert before. Because, again, I was ever-present for their entire rise from the Ninja movies all the way to into the early 90s.

[00:13:17] With the VHS culture, I was very big into that as a kid. And I've seen almost every one of their movies. They were not the right studio to do this movie. They were the studio that stepped up. There was two offers on the table. Warner Brothers offered $15 million as a budget. They offered $17.5 million. And so the producer, Edward Pressman, was like, OK, well, we're going to go with these guys because that $2.5 million will make a big difference. It's still about half the amount that you would need to do what they wanted to do in this film.

[00:13:47] Yeah. Which is about half of what people expected as fans for this film. They were sort of maverick, weren't they? They were not a major studio. They were an independent outfit. It was two Israeli cousins who were really just sort of blagging their way through it almost. When the major studios of the time would have, you know, somewhere between six and a dozen films in pre-production or in some stage of production. Canon would have like 84.

[00:14:15] It was just all insanity. And what they would do is they would take a poster and a name and a title to Cannes Film Festival and say, hey, does anybody want to buy this movie? And then somebody would say, OK, we'll give you the distribution rights for Spain or whatever for $1 million. And they would go to the bank and say, OK, we've got this promised to us. Can you give loaners the money? They'd be loaned the money and then they'd go and make the movie and pocket 25% of the money themselves. That's exactly right.

[00:14:45] They would leverage deals before anything was tangible. Right. So they, like you said, they would take a picture or an idea and they would say, oh, Chuck Norris is going to be, you know, He-Man in this movie. And it's going to be humongous. And we're going to get Gene Hackman and all these people. And he would make these promises. One of the cousins, Menachem Golan, they were hucksters in the nicest sense of the word. They were showmen. One of their nicknames in Hollywood was the Go-Go Boys because it's all about go, go, go, go, go.

[00:15:15] And it was almost like the Roger Corman school of making films where Menachem Golan was asked once, what would you do if someone gave you $30 million to make a movie? And he said, I wouldn't know what to do. I could make $30 million movies, but I couldn't make a $30 million movie. I would feel bad taking that much money to make a film. And it shows with some of their later films, especially when their company was in extremely bad shape.

[00:15:42] They were in freefall when they made this movie and Superman 4 and Over the Top. And instead of kind of hunkering down and saying, wait, maybe we should rest and recuperate and regroup and figure out a new strategy. Their idea was, we're going broke. Let's spend more money. Let's make bigger movies. That's the problem. They were brilliant when they were successful. But when it didn't work, they were idiots. Yeah. Right.

[00:16:12] They were like, oh, we want Superman. And oh, we want Spider-Man. Well, they didn't know what those things were. When they got the rights to this film, they had no idea. They just knew it was a popular toy. So they thought Spider-Man was a man that was a spider that went around fighting other spiders. So, I mean, we're kind of lucky that we got the movie that we got, considering that they had no preconceived notion of what Masters of the Universe was. It was a mess. It was a mess of a studio.

[00:16:41] They had some really good, fun, cheap films. And this movie is kind of the antithesis of what they did well. Yes. Right. They come into it. They're trying to make a science fiction epic on a budget of 17 and a half million. I think it eventually swole. Is that the right word? Swell. Swell, yes. Swole is what he meant. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Swell to 22. But still, they are trying to do it on a budget.

[00:17:11] And as a result, various things get jettisoned. So, number one, some of the characters that are more difficult to achieve in 1987. So, Orko, the floating comic relief character, which would have required compositing in every shot he was in or wire work or animatronics or a combination of all three. That's gone. And Battle Cat, goodness only knows how they would have done that. Stop motion. Stop motion. Yeah.

[00:17:39] It would have had to have been Phil Tibbet's stop motion or cell animation is really the only way you could. Or a giant puppet. Yeah. And all three of those things would have looked awful. Yeah. Or painting a tiger green and yellow stripes, kind of like what they did with Beastmaster, painting the tiger black. Right. Which was also awful. Yes. Yeah. I mean, that was also another one of my disappointments of not seeing Battle Cat in this movie. Yeah. But we don't get any of the tertiary characters either. Certainly none of the villains.

[00:18:08] I mean, you've got the Beastman. Beastman is about the only mainstay. Yeah. The rest of them were all new. You do have Skeletor. And I think Skeletor is probably the best piece of casting in this lineup because it's Frank Langella, who was huge on Broadway at the time, riding high in the film world because of Amadeus. And he's an inspired choice. He is a brilliant actor. And I've never seen him give a bad performance. I referenced earlier the magazine that I had a subscription to.

[00:18:38] They were talking about the making of the film in the magazine. And they did a brief synopsis of all the actors. They're like, John Cypher. He was in Hill Street Blues. And Chelsea Field from Commando. Yeah. And I'm like, the hell was she in Commando? Oh, she was the stewardess. She has one line. And then they say, Frank Langella, he played Dracula once. And that was my only background for Frank Langella going into this film. Yeah. It feels relevant, doesn't it, in terms of genre?

[00:19:07] He puts on an absolute show with this film. It's not even near the same level of movie without him as that character. I like the makeup that he's in. A lot of people deride it. But again, same problem with Battle Cat. How do you make an animated skull with no eyes and just floating inside of a hood in 1987? You can't do it. But they brought in Michael Westmore, an amazing special effects makeup artist. And I think it works. But he kind of gives Skeletor his own thing.

[00:19:36] And acting through that makeup, it's even more astounding, the job that he does. Yeah. Yeah. No iconic Skeletor voice, though. I like his voice. It's not the same as the cartoon. No. And that was our only frame of reference. Yeah, yeah. Because the cartoon was Alan Oppenheimer, who has voiced, you know, a gazillion things. I've met Mr. Oppenheimer years ago, a very, very sweet guy. And I asked him about that Skeletor voice. And he said, well, I had to, it's a skull, so the nose is open.

[00:20:03] So I put the voice all up into my nasal cavity because I figured it would be a nasally voice. And that's how he gets that voice. If you push all of the noise in your head through your nose, it's kind of what comes out. So I don't know. I thought he brought, his voice in this movie was different than the cartoon, but it brought such a sense of menace and danger. Like, he was terrifying. Seeing this movie as a 10-year-old, I was like, this Skeletor is kind of making me like, eh. Yeah. I'm getting the ick, as the kids say. Right.

[00:20:32] And then, of course, in the lead role, we have none other than Dolph Lundgren, who at this point in his career was most famous, I think, for being one of Rocky's opponents. Rocky IV, the great America versus Russia Cold War era, where I'm not sure how many lines he had. He had one line in Rocky IV. Wow. And he could not speak English then either. He spoke, I want to say, five languages, but he couldn't speak English. And so he had to pronounce that line in Rocky IV phonetically.

[00:21:02] And he kind of had to do that for Masters of the Universe too. And that's why they did ADR. They dubbed him throughout most of the movie. And yeah, he basically had to memorize his lines phonetically. Yeah. And it shows. It kind of shows. Yeah. His accent wavers to so many different accents. And I wasn't quite sure what he was going for. Well, the pentameter of his voice goes all over the place too. And the pitch and everything, it's like, I don't want this to be able to die.

[00:21:33] And he just kind of says like, this is our fight. He had a voice coach. He had a dialect coach. And that's the problem. Dolph looked amazing. Beautiful, beautiful man. I mean, he was in peak physical form and he looked like He-Man. Yes. But he couldn't speak English. Yeah. And he had no acting ability whatsoever other than just saying the lines. And he really didn't have a lot of good screen presence either.

[00:22:00] And that shows in a lot of the scenes where he kind of doesn't know what to do. The opening shot on him, he just looks like he's waiting for a bus or something. Yeah. And he just has kind of a nonplussed presence. Yeah. It shows. Yeah. I thought the title of this film was apt. Like, Masters of the Universe. Not He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Because he is really barely a character in this movie. Like, you could probably take him out of the movie and he wasn't.

[00:22:28] I mean, apart from that final fight scene at the end. Like, he doesn't do a whole lot. Conrad, I feel like you would describe him as a charisma vacuum. Like, there's like nothing that appealing about him apart from his physicality. Which, yeah, like you said, Matt. He does portray physically He-Man to a T. Like, he is incredible. Yeah. He was the perfect choice to play that.

[00:22:54] And actually, before Cannon even signed on, Edward Pressman picked Dolph Lundgren. He was like, that's He-Man. That's our guy. Yeah. Before we cast anybody else, that is your He-Man. So whoever we sign on as director, whatever studio takes this, it's a package deal. So they pre-bought him without considering he can't act and he can't speak English. Yeah. I mean, it's often the case that in these superhero movies, the villain outshines the hero. Sure.

[00:23:24] You think of like Batman from 89 and Jack Nicholson's Joker easily outshines Michael Keaton as Batman. But the difference there is that Batman has a mystique and a distinct silhouette. And he's kind of cool. And less is more, almost, with him. And Michael Keaton gets to play as Bruce Wayne. So it sort of balances out. Whereas with this, yeah, you do have a charisma vacuum that's smeared with baby oil. And he's so oily. Oh, yeah.

[00:23:51] He's oily and he looks like he's just got done working on a car. Yeah. He's greasy. Like he's dirty and oily. And it's like, hmm. And he's not the character from the cartoon. He doesn't have a secret identity. He's not ridiculously strong as in pick up a vehicle and throw it strong. He doesn't gain any superpower strength or anything. No. Well, even his one big feat of strength at the end when they're in the throne room and he pushes the column down.

[00:24:18] It's kind of like it took everything he had to do that. It was almost like, you know, I expected to see him like with a floor jack over there. Like, come on, we can get this thing down. And in the cartoon, he's punching planets out of the ear. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a huge contrast to what every kid thought of as He-Man can do anything. Like he's Superman, essentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:24:45] So I guess the other thing that we need to address is where the action is set. So instead of being a grand fantasy in the world of Eternia, which is what we're all used to from the cartoons, we get stuck with Earth, present day, suburban California. You get a gymnasium. You get a music shop. You get a back alley or two. Somebody's house. Robbie's ribs. Yeah.

[00:25:15] And Robbie's ribs. Yeah. Let's not forget Robbie's ribs. Yes. Well, every fantasy film needs a rib hut. And to say that fans were disappointed on learning that the bulk of the action was going to take place on Earth in the present day, I think is an understatement. Yeah. It did a big ols, essentially. Right. So instead of setting it in this fantasy world or back in time, which everyone wanted, brought

[00:25:43] it to 80s modern day America. Okay. And it doesn't quite have the same sort of ethereal quality. Yeah. I was disappointed because at the start, it felt really great being in this fantasy world and all these magical things happening and weird characters. As great as Langella is a Skeletor, I feel like the real villain in this film is the budget. Right. Because literally all of those decisions to shoot it in Whittier, California and make it

[00:26:12] present day and just to show you a nibble of eternity at the beginning and at the end, it's like, hey, look, look what we could have done had we had more money. Even when He-Man meets Man-at-Arms and Tila in the beginning of the movie, he's like, what happened? That was some battle, huh? Like they're basically telling you about the war that we didn't get to freaking see. And it's like, wasn't that a thing? Yeah. Anyway, well, what do we got now? It's just us three. Let's go to Earth. You know, and it's budgetary backpacking. It's like... Yeah, it absolutely is.

[00:26:42] I mean, it's even budget Eternia, isn't it? Because I think originally they location scouted Iceland and then something amazing in Idaho. And then eventually, you know, the production designer was saying just anywhere other than Vasquez Rocks and where do they end up? Vasquez Rocks and Eternia just looks like every B-grade Western that you've ever... It just, it looks like a shithole. Yeah. Fair enough, in the cartoon, it looked like a shithole with a castle in it as well.

[00:27:12] So I think they realized what we were familiar with. But still, it does not look great on screen. Even in the cartoon, Eternia was like shithole, but with purple sky and wacky looking trees, you know, like it was just different enough. And in this one, it's pretty much where Captain Kirk fought the Gorn. Yeah, sure. You know, it's where every Western shootout, like Conrad said, it's a bunch of rocks. Yeah.

[00:27:36] And then we're brought to California and we meet our Earth characters, Courtney Cox, playing Julie and her boyfriend, Kevin. I had no idea. I forgot that Courtney Cox was in this movie. Yes. Well, they have kind of a situation ship too. Like, I remember even seeing this as a kid and being like, do they even like each other? Question mark. Yeah.

[00:28:03] Because I feel like it's like the hour and a half breakup of those two where at the beginning, she's like, yeah, I got us some ribs. It's not romantic or anything, but whatever. Can you take me to the, you know, like he's an Uber. Like, take me to the grave site so I can see my parents. And then I got to get on a plane. Yeah. Like, they're not, they don't act like a couple, really. They act like, like they could have just as easily been friends. Yes. You know, no pun intended.

[00:28:27] So what do we think about our Earth characters, Julian and Kevin and Lubick? Oh, I could write a book about Lubick. We'll get to that. Well, Kevin, of course, is played by another fine actor in a very early role, Robert Duncan McNeil, who I know as Tom Paris from seven seasons of Star Trek Voyager. Very fond of him in this. He looks so, so young and easy to jump to conclusions about technology that he finds in smoking craters.

[00:28:58] This is a Japanese synthesizer. What? Sorry, what's your point of referencing? I know what this is. Yes. Get out of the way, girl. You don't know anything. He's not much of a character. As Matt says, there's not much of a relationship because basically the two are splitting up. Julie is leaving home because she needs to get away because her parents have died in a plane crash prior to the beginning of the movie. And she just needs a fresh start. She works in a diner like Sarah Connor.

[00:29:28] And she even has Sarah Connor's best friend, it looks like. Yeah. I think her performance is really good. She's likable. She's asked to do kind of a lot of stuff, a lot of reactions, a lot of crying, a lot of screaming, a lot of... Oh my God, there's a monster trying to kill me. And in the next eight seconds, I have to cope with that and then try to escape while the whole gym is on fire. So she does a pretty good job of processing all that on screen.

[00:29:54] And she never comes across amateurish, even though this was, I believe, her first film. I think she had been in Misfits of Science. And she was known as the Bruce Springsteen girl dancing in his Dancing in the Dark video. Yes, of course. That's what kind of put her on the map. Yeah, I agree. I thought she was actually quite good in this movie. A lot of her roles felt like almost like a slasher. Like she was just running away from murderous creatures, basically. Everywhere they went, it's just carnage.

[00:30:23] Just everything was just either on fire or just ripped apart. Like when they go to her house and just rip her whole house apart. It's ridiculous. Yeah, I kind of liked her. And I mean, as kooky and ridiculous Kevin's character was with the synthesizers and the big, how he figured out the tones, which is ridiculous. Absolutely absurd. I kind of like that as well. Like I kind of like this sort of like on the rocks relationship. It wasn't what I expected in a movie.

[00:30:52] You expect a love story. I almost expected Julie to fall in love with He-Man, but that didn't happen, which was kind of a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, it was unexpected. Although he does say to Kevin at the end of the movie, like, you take care of her. Like, you know, you win, you get her. You know, it was like there was kind of like that vibe a little bit. Yeah, sure. One thing that did make me giggle is the first time that Teela meets Julie, she's instantly jealous. Oh, right. Because two women cannot be in the same room with He-Man.

[00:31:22] Without a bitch fight breaking out. Yes, yes. I thought Julie was a really interesting character in this movie with her whole backstory with her parents dying. So there is that one scene where she gets tricked by evil Lynn, who's disguised as her mother. And the end as well, where we have that very heartfelt scene where they send Julie and Kevin back in time before her parents die. And I thought it really worked for me.

[00:31:50] Like, it was actually a really nice sort of end to the movie. It's definitely a happily ever after type moment. And the only issue I have with it is that apparently Julie's dad and mom own their own plane. Yes. Yeah. But the house that they lived in, I don't know if they could afford their own plane. Yeah. It's peculiar, isn't it? I was trying to figure out why.

[00:32:10] Is it because they don't want to make out that Julie only rescues her parents from getting on some commercial airliner that crashes and doesn't prevent the whole thing from happening? So, like, there's like 200 other people that perish. But, you know, screw that. At least Julie's parents are okay. So maybe they were trying to scale it down so it doesn't seem quite so selfish. I don't know. I think that's what it was. I think a continuity person was probably like, wait a minute. There's implications here.

[00:32:39] Let's just have the keys to the plane right here. That's easier. Why wasn't it just a car wreck? Yeah. I think it is more like a plot continuity thing where she can't just tell her parents don't get on a flight. Because, like, why not? We've bought tickets. We're going to get on. But if they have a private plane, they're not going to lose any money. She can just take the keys. Right? Even as a kid, I thought, how do the mechanics of this work?

[00:33:04] Because Gwildor suddenly mentions, oh, hey, do you want me to drop you back at the right time or any time in history? Because I can do that. And you think, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on. There's time travel. There's time travel now. So why couldn't you stop the invasion of Greyskull? Oh, no, that doesn't work.

[00:33:23] And then when she does go back, it's one of those time travel deals where she doesn't go back as herself, dressed as she is, having experienced what she's experienced in this time frame with another version of her there. No. She wakes up in her bed in the most hideous nightgown you have ever seen. She wakes up as Holly Hobby in a onesie or whatever she's wearing. But yeah, that's a huge, huge plot hole.

[00:33:51] That's right up there with him having a backdoor secret passage to Greyskull. Why do they even need the key? Yeah. But yeah, you're right, Dan. For me as a 10-year-old, emotionally it worked. I wanted her to get back to save her parents from the plane crash. Yeah. Because Courtney Cox is such a likable performer, you buy it. Yeah. Credit to her, I guess. Well, I kind of half expected the sorceress once she was freed. I feel like she could have played a role in that because she's magical.

[00:34:21] Yeah. That would have made a little bit more sense than the key being able to do it. Did she do anything in this movie, the sorceress? No. She might as well have been a coat rack in this movie. She becomes the thing they have to rescue. Yeah. I feel like something's missing here. Like maybe in the script she had more sort of agency or something. Well, she is needed to cure Julie because of course Julie has this sort of scabby leg. Oh, yeah. Dissolving leg.

[00:34:47] And I think Gwildor says that only the sorceress can save her now, but we never see her do it. And Julie seems to be fine in the finale. So I guess that happens. Yeah. I don't know. It's one of many problems with this movie. One thing I will credit this film for that I did not realise. It is breathless. It does not stop. Yeah.

[00:35:17] Just from one action set piece to another. Yes, they're all earthbound and they're all in not particularly salubrious locations, but it does not let up. It is just one chase after another trying to get away from Skeletor and either get the key or get the key back or keep the key. This MacGuffin is just shepherded through this thing in a relentless chase that will not stop. Yeah, I did want to ask though. There are two keys in this movie.

[00:35:46] So why does Skeletor need the second key? Well, he has a great line and he says, He-Man lives and possesses that key. I must possess all or I possess nothing. I mean, that's Frank Langella bringing that Shakespearean background. Yeah. He's basically doing Shakespeare in this movie and he rewrote so many of his lines to actually be interesting because it was written very, you know, no, we must get him. Like it was just very generic. So that's his motivation is that he just has to possess. He wants it all.

[00:36:16] He's power hungry and he's playing that villain as a 10 just going for it. Like ultimate ambition. Yeah. It's interesting you compare it to sort of Shakespeare because it did feel like another movie, Thor, the first Thor movie, which was directed by Ken Spreder. And it's basically the same kind of film. Like it's a bunch of weird fantasy swordsmen that go to Earth and then they have to figure out Earth and win however. Yeah. It's basically the same film.

[00:36:46] But, you know, this movie came out way, way earlier. Another difference between the cartoon and this movie I found was just the endless amount of shooting of blasters. Just like blasters everywhere. Yeah. Just lasers all over the place. I mean, they had laser guns and stuff like that in the cartoon and it's always kind of been part of the property. But He-Man carries that sword around in the entire movie and he mostly just uses it as a shield. Yeah, he does.

[00:37:15] To bounce laser blasts off of. I mean, he cuts a couple of robots in half with it or whatever, but it's not really a power sword. It's just a sword. And even when he pulls it out of the thing and holds it up and says, I have the power. Well, he had that sword the whole time. Yeah. I know. Nothing has changed. He hasn't gained the sword. Yeah. He just feels better. That was the extent of it where it's like, oh, okay, cool. Yeah.

[00:37:44] You're completely right. Yeah. I mean, I did hear that that's Mattel's doing, right? Like He-Man couldn't kill anyone. That's why all the troopers are robots because he can't hurt another human being. No. Yep. I mean, Skeletor did have robots. I actually watched an episode of the old cartoon show just to remind myself what it was like. Oh, the hoverbots? Yeah. I've forgotten about his little hoverbots that used to fly around. They look like eggs with tiny little arms and legs and they're like.

[00:38:14] Yeah. Yeah. So cute. So we're replacing those with full-on men in shiny plastic armor and it's a black stormtrooper, basically. It is. And I know that the production designer was not thrilled about that, but he lost that particular battle. But yeah, it did mean that they could meet Mattel's strict guidelines on He-Man not killing anybody because he's just dismantling robots in a shower of sparks. So it's fine. Yeah.

[00:38:42] And there are certain parts of it where you could see that they were shooting, but there was no laser coming from the gun. Like there were certain times where like you could tell that they had no idea what the scene was going to finally look like. So they were just shaking guns around and hoping that they would put lasers coming out of them in post. And there are certain scenes where I noticed that there were missing lasers. Yeah.

[00:39:07] It did feel like a lot of the battles were kind of pointless as well because it's just blasts everywhere. And occasionally a trooper would get shot. But that was it. Like it kind of felt like there were no stakes in every battle. Yeah, I agree. It was shootouts for the sake of shootouts. And even in the music store when they're all crashing in. And I mean, there's only so much room in that place. Yeah. And they acted like it was a, you know, like an Olympic size swimming pool. And I mean, they're eight feet away.

[00:39:37] And it's almost like, I got you. I got you. Oh, yeah. You know, like they're just kind of jumping back and forth. And it's like, OK, now let's move four feet this way. And oh, let's shoot at them some more. And like nothing's happening. Yeah. There's no consequence here. And yeah, there was a whole lot of that. I feel like that's why there weren't as many evil warriors and characters. Yeah. They can't all live happily ever after. So that's why there were so many robots and air centurions and things like that. Yeah, yeah.

[00:40:05] If you have a henchman that they all look the same, you can just keep reusing the same five extras to like in the sense. Like when they had the big epic, like we've opened the portal and we're sending all the troops, like a lot of close ups. And I'm assuming just 10 guys just walking around in circles in front of the camera. Like it didn't really have the same expansive, epic, like platoon of guys that they were trying to achieve.

[00:40:35] Well, talking about close ups, there are so many shots in this movie that are tight fives and tight threes and tight twos where it's like, hey, Kevin's talking to Lubick. Let's get right up on them where they're the only two things in the frame. Right. And even when there's five people, five characters, they have them all huddled together where it's like, okay, we've got this one static shot. Yeah. All of you just like they're taking a picture. It's like, oh, get in there, get in there. You know, you're out of the frame. Move in some more.

[00:41:02] When they first land in the swamp, I guess, right by Robbie's ribs, like He-Man's squatting down and then they're, you know, it's like they're telling a ghost story or something. Like they're all just bunched up. Yeah. When they go into Julie's house, it's the same thing. They bust through the door and Dolph Lundgren, poor Dolph, he didn't know where his mark was. So they go in and he's like trying to go up the stairs or whatever. And then he has to like stop himself and like pull himself back into frame. Oh, wow.

[00:41:30] And he's like, you know, kind of bouncing around like with his gun. Like, oh, what are we doing? What are we doing? This is his first film as a director. Gary Goddard, he directed some live shows prior to this, including a live show for Conan, wasn't there? That's correct. So I think that was probably the connection. They thought, well, he's done a guy that was oiled up before. He can do it again. Sometimes he does, despite the budget, he does get some interesting shots in there.

[00:41:55] Like there is a lengthy scene with Kevin and Lubick, the policeman, where the camera moves from various different setups in like a Spielbergian one that you don't really notice is a one. And part of you thinks, well, this is very elaborate and quite impressive. But then another part of you thinks this is just because they needed to get it done in one take and pack up the lights because they were filming nights for 40 days or whatever it was in this small town.

[00:42:22] And they had to get rid of all evidence of their shoot and let the town come to life again, you know, at 6 a.m. in the morning or whatever. So, yeah, I don't know. It's a bit of both. But they did seem to use their limitations to do something innovative sometimes. Well, and to Gary Goddard's credit, too, he didn't direct. I don't know if he directed any other movies after this. I don't believe he did. But he did not have a second unit director on this film because they didn't have the budget for it.

[00:42:48] So he shot every for everything you see in this film was Gary Goddard. Wow. Did you guys happen? I'm a credits geek. So I don't know if you guys happen to catch who edited this movie. No. Anne Coates edited this movie. She won an Oscar for editing Lawrence of Arabia. Wow. So there's a lot of prestige with this movie. Richard Edlin did the special effects.

[00:43:11] And there was a lot of 65mm shots in this, especially like the portals opening and the end when he pulls the sword out. That's all 65mm. And I mean, Richard Edlin was one of the founders of Industrial Light and Magic. I thought Richard Edlin's work is really fine in this movie. I mean, you can tell he's up against it in terms of the budget, too.

[00:43:32] But there's a lot of things like when they do have the lasers firing, he's hand animating interactive light on characters' faces, going down the walls in alleyways. Because it was not there when they were filming. So all of it's been added in post. And I thought, wow, he's adding an attention to detail here that makes this film a lot better than it had any right to be visually. Absolutely. And apparently the film, the director said that the film looks better because they were doing the 65mm special effects.

[00:44:01] That could only be developed at an MGM developing lab. So the whole movie was developed at this MGM lab. Whereas most of Canon's films were done in some sort of much cheaper facility somewhere else. Some bathroom somewhere. Yeah. So Masters of the Universe looks different from every other Canon movie. Yeah. In terms of its cinematography. If I didn't know this was a Canon movie, I wouldn't know this was a Canon movie. Yeah. Well, yeah, the director didn't want the logo at the beginning. Ah, right.

[00:44:30] Because he wanted to try and divorce it from their brand. Ah. Now it's time for Random Trivia. So Matt, our resident Masters of the Universe expert, what fascinating piece of trivia did you find in your Cosmic Key today? I mean, there's a lot I have about this. The throne room set that was built for this movie was at the time one of, if not the largest, soundstage ever built. It was actually two levels.

[00:45:00] When you look at Skeletor, when he's walking on the main runway of that throne room, you can see down below it, there's two soundstages there. But they wanted multiple levels for that ending gunfight or whatever, the big battle at the end. And of course, they only shot about 20% of what they wanted to. But that's where a lot of their budget went was for that set. Yeah. It looked impressive. Like really impressive. Oh, yeah. It's amazing, that throne room set.

[00:45:27] You could tell that it was built for a massive, wide-ranging sword fight between He-Man and Skeletor. And then, of course, the creditors came and closed down the production. And they ended up just shooting that weird, we're in an alternate reality disco shootout. The lights change again. Yeah. The lights have gone out. What do we do? Let's fight. Yeah.

[00:45:53] And an interesting bit of trivia is that's not Frank Langella in the Golden God Skeletor armor. That is Anthony DeLongas, who played Blade. Oh, right. That was done at the very end, after they had pulled the plug, basically, on the production. They shot that sword fight, which is why they did it so low-tech. And, of course, Frank Langella had already finished all of his stuff. And so, Anthony DeLongas stood in for him. And he stood in for him during some of the fighting scenes. Ah, okay.

[00:46:23] Right. Yeah. And that's our trivia. And that's our trivia. Should we talk about Lubeck? Oh, boy. I didn't like it. I thought he was annoying and unnecessary in this movie. And didn't do a whole lot. Like, why was he in this movie? James Tolkan is such a... Also, rest in peace, James Tolkan. He just died about a month ago. I've seen him at a lot of conventions and stuff. Just a very, very nice guy.

[00:46:53] Loved the fans. Did it all the way up until pretty much the end. I think I saw him at Dragon Con last September. Oh, wow. I think at 94 years old. But he was just the definition of a character actor because he always is just him. He was the admiral in Top Gun. Right. And the principal in Back to the Future. Ah, yeah, yeah. He's calling Marty McFly a slacker. He's that guy.

[00:47:16] And in this, they decided to make him like a New York City Bronx accented detective. Yeah. In a long leather trench coat in California, in middle America. They don't even say it's California, but in small town America. And this guy's, you know, like he's Popeye Doyle out here like solving a mystery. And, you know, keep that coffee hot. It's going to be a long night. And he is the worst policeman I've ever seen in a film. Oh, yeah.

[00:47:45] He doesn't have any weapons training whatsoever. He lets a teenager get his gun away from him. And he has no idea how police procedures work. He's like, ah, you know what? I'm taking you downtown. Never mind. Let's go to her house and just walk in. And you know what? I don't like this thing. I don't think it's yours. I'm going to take it. And he's just making up all of his own rules. Like, what? Yeah. I feel like he was almost in his own movie. Yeah. Such a presence. And to me, he's the comic relief of the film.

[00:48:14] I think Gwildor was supposed to be. You know, it's like, oh, he's the quirky little dwarf character. But Lubick is just completely unhinged. Yeah, he is. He felt like he deserved a spinoff series all of his own. In my head canon, because he's such a bad cop, I feel like he was a detective in New York City that something happened. You know, like he's disgraced and had to go to the only job he could get was in a small

[00:48:39] town because even the other cops, the uniform cops in this town, treat him like he's a reject. They're like, OK, another one of your little crazy things here, Lubick. Like, where's all the spacemen? What's going on? Like, he's an idiot. I feel like he's really trying to kind of prove himself to everybody with this case. Yeah, it feels very high stakes. And then at the end of the movie, spoilers, he's sitting in the throne room in Castle Greyskull

[00:49:05] and he's talking about never going back to Earth because he's got everything he could possibly want, including a woman. Yeah. What is that? Well, and I feel like that plays into my theory, too, is like he had nothing. Like, he was a crestfallen, disgraced, do-nothing, terrible cop. And, you know, no woman would ever talk to him. And here he is. He's an attorney and they don't know anything about his past. And there's a beautiful woman.

[00:49:32] And I guess they made him the steward of Greyskull or something because he says, I have a castle. Yeah, it's amazing. And effectively, a mail order bride. I hope she's consenting. It's not great. So that's a peculiar character. Now, we briefly mentioned Gwildor, who is obviously the stand-in for Orko. It's Billy Barty, who we know from Willow. And he is wearing, again, another Michael Westmore creation.

[00:49:59] A ginger beard that at one point gets soaked in barbecue sauce, which makes me want to gag. It's just awful. I don't think he's quite irritating enough to hate. I know that a lot of people at the time were disappointed that it wasn't Orko. But then I remember that kids sort of hated Orko sometimes as well. So I don't think he's quite as irksome as he could have been. He's annoying at first. And I even thought that as a 10-year-old watching this movie for the first time.

[00:50:26] He's annoying because he's not Orko, like you just said. But people always judge him and this entire movie, in all honesty, for what it wasn't as opposed to what it was. And his performance definitely mellows as the movie goes on. At first, he's like... And he's just, you know, ook and ock. And, you know, he's basically there for reactions and to squeal. But towards the end of the movie, he definitely softens up a little bit.

[00:50:56] And he kind of becomes more integral. And he does have a really great line that he says to Kevin when they're trying to fix the key and figure out a way to get back to eternity and save the day. And Kevin's all down on himself. He's like, you got the wrong guy. I'm just a keyboardist in a high school band. There's a million of me. And he says, only one of you, Kevin. Only one of anybody. And he says it was such an earnestness that even as a little kid watching that, I was like, you know what? He's right. That's cool.

[00:51:23] And I think that line was supposed to make every kid feel like, you know what? I am special. Like, I am different. Like, I'm... And that's okay. And I'm awesome. Yeah. You kind of see a little bit of character growth there. Yeah. And it means that Kevin has something to do as well. Like, he is, like, an important part of getting back to Eternia with his perfect pitch and synth knowledge. And being able to... Yeah, that's it. It's my superpowers. It's funny.

[00:51:53] Like, they hook up a Casio keyboard to... This is, like, going back to Eternia. And they've got wires hooked up to knobs on the keyboard. It's like, that's not how keyboards work. There's no electronics in a knob. So, I'm sorry. Well, they also... When Gryldor's like, if only I had one of these, a medical transposer or whatever the hell he says. And they're like, I've got one. And they literally pull it off their arm. Oh, yeah, yeah. Now I need a neutron collider.

[00:52:23] And he's like, I've got a neutron collider right here in my pocket. He's like, ah. And if only I had a keyboard. Yeah. And then Kevin's like, oh, I know where there's a keyboard. Back at Charlie's Music Shop. Well, they're all full of laser holes now, dude. Yeah. Very convenient. Very convenient. I mean, coming into this film with no prior knowledge of He-Man or Masters of the Universe, I kind of think it works. Like, it's got the campy, fun, adventure aspect of this movie.

[00:52:52] And if you have zero expectations for the characters or what they're supposed to do, what they're supposed to say, I think it kind of works. It's kind of fun. I agree. I think it's a swashbuckling fantasy adventure movie that eight-year-olds can watch and 80-year-olds can watch. And it's fun. It's not a great He-Man movie. And I've always said that. And that's what everybody judges it by is, oh, it's not what I wanted. Yeah, yeah. And granted, this movie was supposed to be a He-Man movie.

[00:53:20] But because of the budgetary, because of the studio involved, because of the time involved, the whole thing was never going to be great. But considering all of those limitations and all of those problems that were going on, I mean, Mattel, in 1985, they made a boatload of money. I'm paraphrasing here. They made like half a billion dollars on He-Man in 1985. Wow. In 1986, they dropped sharply right off a cliff. Right.

[00:53:48] So by 1987, they were on life support. And Mattel had never made a movie before. Right. So this was uncharted territory. Uh-huh. And Canon was also in free fall because Superman IV had failed. Over the Top had failed. And those were two of their biggest budget movies ever. Right. And they were already... They already owed $100 million to banks. Wow. But yeah, I agree with what Dan says. Like, the movie works if you don't go into it saying, I expect this, this, this, this, and this. And just watch it as it is.

[00:54:18] It's a fun little adventure movie. Another element that isn't maybe what the fans of the cartoon were expecting is the music. It's Bill Conti, probably best known for composing the Rocky scores at that point. I don't know whether somebody thought, hey, maybe the guy that did one muscly person could do a film about another muscly person. But in any case, this wasn't his genre. Right. He had not done a grand sci-fi space fantasy.

[00:54:45] And he decided not to use any of the themes from the cartoon. Yeah. So he just comes at it from the direction of, let's give every character a theme and let's go the John Williams route. Let's get a big symphony orchestra and just go hell for leather in the most dramatic fashion. And this movie is so heavily spotted.

[00:55:06] I don't think the music stops except maybe when they shoot the musac out and it stops so that Kevin can hum one of the themes composed by Bill Conti. And it's very Holstein. There's a lot of Mars in there. I absolutely adore it. It's not the cartoon. But it makes the movie seem bigger and more exciting than perhaps when you look at it, it actually is. I agree. I absolutely love it as well.

[00:55:34] I think if you take that away from this movie and Franklin Jealous performance, the movie drops by 70%. Yes. They add so much to it. And I was watching it this morning before we jumped on here. And that music is amazing. And it takes those small like, oh, it's a shot in a gym. And it makes it huge. Yeah. It's very Superman and very Star Wars. I mean, yeah, John Williams. And yeah, it is very huge. I kind of expected some cheap synth score, but it really isn't. It's very grand, very orchestral. Yeah.

[00:56:03] The opening credits are a lot like Superman 4 that came out a few months before. Yeah, yeah. Also by Canon Films. So it's the floating at you through space title cards. Yeah. With this grandiose score on the soundtrack. It was recorded by a number of different orchestras across Europe. Oh, really? Again, to escape paying a union. Of course. A union orchestra in the US. Mostly in Munich. Ah.

[00:56:28] And apparently it had to be heavily edited because when the tapes came back, they'd have a few takes of each cue and not two bars would go by before somebody made a mistake. So the score is sort of edited almost like a bar at a time to try and get something that really sounded. Wow. Okay. So again, it's Canon going for doing the music on the cheap that resulted in them having to do an awful lot more work.

[00:56:56] So it probably wasn't cost effective in the end. Still, if you listen to the soundtrack album, you can hear it. There are a lot of flubs. Oh, right. Particularly in the brass, which is often the case because you really hear brass mistakes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You do. But it's charming. I still love it. Okay. Despite that. Well, when you squeeze that much sound and that beautiful of a score out of a $17 million movie or 22, whatever it ended up being, that's still impressive. Oh, yeah. Very, very impressive.

[00:57:25] But unfortunately, it did not fare well at the box office. It grossed only $17 million worldwide against a budget of 22. Many of the people involved in the film suggest that had it been kept in theatres, word of mouth was picking up and it could have gotten legs, but it was competing against Stakeout and The Living Daylights. And unfortunately, it came third against those and then slowly drifted away and then was pulled. Yeah. And there was going to be a sequel. Yes.

[00:57:55] There was. They wrote it. And they, of course, they had Frank Langella pop out at the end out of the pink goo and say, I'll be back. Yeah. I noticed another Arnie line in the movie. He says, I lied. It's like, what? He just plagiarized the Arnie moves? It works though. Yeah. I mean, they plagiarized a bunch of scenes from Star Wars. Yeah. When Skeletor falls down the shaft at the end, it's, I mean, that's lifted directly from Jedi. Yeah.

[00:58:23] But they did write a sequel, which was, surprise, going to take place almost entirely on Earth. Oh, wow. Skeletor escapes and uses the key or whatever, comes back to Earth and becomes a businessman. Oh, God. And ruins the world, causes World War III. And then, so it's a post-apocalyptic on Earth and He-Man comes back and whatever and blah, blah, blah.

[00:58:48] But they were going to have, Dolph Lundgren was not going to be invited back, I guess. Oh. They were going to use surfer Laird Hamilton. Okay. You know, in the surfing world, he was like the Michael Jordan of surfing. He was going to play He-Man. It was going to be on a lot smaller budget, believe it or not, with Albert Pune directing. Wow. They had sets for it and everything else. They reused some of the costumes.

[00:59:14] And instead of making a sequel to that, they made the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Cyborg. Oh, okay. Because they lost the license to Masters of the Universe, I think. So, yeah. But the bad guy in Cyborg wears the chain mail that the character Blade wears in Masters of the Universe. Right. Okay. Yeah, I saw an interview with Albert Pune where he said that he was hired to make this and the Spider-Man movie.

[00:59:39] And the plan was to film early Peter Parker scenes before he's bitten by the spider, halt production, make Masters of the Universe 2, and then come back and film the rest of the Spider-Man movie after whoever was playing Peter Parker had gotten swole. Right, okay. But they lost the rights to both properties. The checks literally bounced. Yeah. I feel like we dodged a bullet there, right? Yeah. We probably did.

[01:00:08] We're all better for it. I think so. Coming to you live from the Movie Oobly at Theatre, it's the prestigious Moobly Award. Okay, it's a Moobly Award where we nominate our favourite sword of greyskull swinging parts of the film in a number of collar of algebra, truth-speaking categories. Best quote.

[01:00:33] My favourite quote is from the sorceress who we said didn't do much, but she does come out with a sick burn after all of Skeletor's monologuing. She finally says to him, Men who crave power look back over the mistakes of their lives, pile them all together, and call it destiny. Oh. I do love that line. It's a little clunky, but it is a burn.

[01:01:00] It's clunky, but it's very, very true, and it does take him down a peg or two because his only response is essentially just a hitter, which feels like a win, I think. Yeah, yeah. Favourite quote for you, Matt? My favourite quote is from Skeletor. Like we've already covered, he paraphrases lots of Shakespeare in this movie, but my favourite line is when Blade asks him after they return

[01:01:27] from failing to get the key and capture He-Man, he says, Give me one more chance, Lord Skeletor, and we will succeed. And Skeletor says, I am not in a giving vein this day. And then he shoots the other guy. I know. It's like, oh, no, fuck this guy. And zaps Sauron and makes him disappear. That is paraphrased from Shakespeare's Richard III.

[01:01:57] Richard III says that to the Duke of Buckingham. Ah, okay. Best hair or costume? My favourite hair in the movie is Dolph Lundgren's Immaculate Mullet. As a blonde-haired kid in the 80s with a mullet, this is what I always wanted my hair to look like. It usually did not. Yeah. Conor? My favourite is after Skeletor monologues at great length about being a god

[01:02:27] and then costume changes into a fabulous gold outfit with a ridiculous headdress that has more horns on it than I think I've ever seen on a headdress ever before and a gold lame cloak. And what you've got to remember is that the power of Greyskull is essentially neutral. It's good if it's channeled through somebody who's good. It's evil if it's channeled through somebody that's evil. So this version of power that you're seeing,

[01:02:56] this is Skeletor's personal vision of power. Doesn't he look fabulous? I think it's very revealing about who he is. Yeah. A lot of gold. A lot of gold. A lot of gold. I love the design. The design's very sort of Aztec looking. It's great. It is, yeah. No, I think it says a lot about who he is, that he's this lonely megalomaniac who just wants to be loved

[01:03:23] and his version of power is to slap gaudy gold over everything. Yeah, he looks like an Aztec chandelier. Yeah. You see, you've just described it much better than I did. Most 80s moment. The most 80s moment for me was the two people in the convertible outside Robbie's ribs making out. That's right. Just making out because that's what everybody did in the 80s.

[01:03:52] There was no internet. We just had to make out everywhere. Yeah. It's like, hey, you know what? We just got this bucket of chicken and ribs. Let's just throw that in the back seat and make out. Yeah. With a convertible top down surrounded by people. Let's just go for it. I mean, teenage life in the 80s. Simple times, yes. Conrad? I thought the most 80s thing about this movie was the hard-bodied hero

[01:04:22] because this was the decade where physique was spectacle. Of course. In Reagan's America, emerging from the cynical 70s as a strong, confident, white male supremacist country ready to take on the world. But the irony was that most of the actors in question were not American. I mean, you had Stallone, granted, but you've then got Schwarzenegger and Lundgren and Van Damme

[01:04:50] and very few of them were American or could even speak English, particularly convincingly. But they were still packing out all of these action movies. We had to import all of our muscles for America in the 80s. Favourite scene! My favourite scene, oddly enough, is the opening. I just think that the combination of the opening titles, the fanfare from Bill Conti, and then it just plunges into this really dark military march.

[01:05:18] You're introduced to the attorney, a throne room. Everything is huge. There's all these stormtrooper characters, like, marching through and Skeletor banging his staff on the floor as he walks down there. It's... The opening of the movie is really sort of balls to the wall and ambitious. Like, it feels like, holy shit, this is going to be huge. And then you end up in California.

[01:05:46] But the opening, I think, is very impressive. They kind of blow their wad with that one. Yeah, they do. But the first ten minutes, it goes like gangbusters. I was very impressed with it. Yeah. My favourite scene is when the mercenaries attack the gym in the box factory when they first show up on Earth. Because, I mean, watching it now or watching it when I first saw it as a kid,

[01:06:15] it was the first time that you kind of really feel like, oh, man, like, these guys mean business. Like, these aren't the bumbling idiots from the cartoon. Like, the first thing they do is they start shooting at Julie and beating the crap out of the janitor. Yeah. I just feel like their attack on her, where she's running and, like, you know, scurrying underneath the stage and everything, and I feel like that is Skeletor's evil warriors doing what they do. They're just kind of marauding. It's a fun fact, too. They almost burnt down that gym that they were shooting in.

[01:06:45] Oh, wow. Like, all of that fire is pre-CGI, so that's all actual fire while they're shooting. And when you see them run and the mercenaries chase her out the door, that whole stage and everything is a bonfire. Wow. And they almost lost it. They just happened to barely get it under control, but they almost lost that whole building. Oh, wow. The way they beat up that janitor as well, it's like, holy crap. This is a kid's movie? What?

[01:07:12] I do love when Kevin asks him what happens and you just hear the janitor say, you don't ever want to know. This guy's just had the worst day of his life. Most cliche moment. Mine is the magical doodad at the end that makes everything okay, where they give her the, you know, they give her, oh, you'll always have Eternia with you if you take this little tchotchke.

[01:07:43] That part, I was kind of like, oh, look. And they zoom in on it. It's like, oh, it's Eternia. So, look, we can come back anytime. And I kind of hate that. Sure. And kind of in line with that too, we've already talked about it. But the fact that she's able to go back in time before her parents, it's a feel-good moment, but it's also very cliche. Oh, yeah. It's like, oh, it was all a dream, you know, like when the fact that she wakes up in those ugly pajamas.

[01:08:14] Anyway, sorry. Yeah. That's funny that doodad that helps you get back to the magical place you visited. It was very popular. It's even in Explorers. Yes, I was going to mention that. Yeah. One of my favourite films from the era. And it's, yeah, it's such a cliche. Hmm. Yep. Mine is, it's a line. It's when He-Man and co enter Greyskull at the beginning of the movie and it's empty and somebody says, it's quiet, too quiet.

[01:08:44] Oh, yeah. Really? Really? Even in 1987, that was a cliche. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Best special effect. My favourite effect of Richard Edlund's is the visual effect of the portals that are opened by the cosmic key because I love how reality pinches first and then the hole opens and people can move through this sort of swirling vortex of something or other. Yeah.

[01:09:13] But I love the pinching first. It's just one of those little details I really like. I love the swirling effects as the cosmic keys sort of before the portal. So it's they've touched the red button or something and you've got these kind of swirling colours almost like pixels. It's a really great effect. Yeah. Conrad stole mine. Oh, sorry. But that's okay. That's okay. I figured that would happen. Yeah, I do love the portals but as a secondary to that I would say

[01:09:44] we haven't really talked we've talked about the production design but the production designer was Bill Stout William Stout who was actually a guest on Iconicon on the first one and he was a guest they did a panel talking with him very nice guy and I wasn't on that one but he I love the little lights on the Eternian weapons that He-Man has and Tila Skeletor has them on his arms on his gauntlets and on his gloves where it's like sequential lights

[01:10:12] on the throne I feel like there's one when he puts the sword in it kind of and it goes like green to red or whatever I love all that little stuff it's small and it's just LEDs or whatever but I feel like it adds such a kind of a hardiness to their costumes Favorite sound effect I like the little song the little Bill Conti melody that plays whenever the cosmic key is activated Yeah

[01:10:41] and all the ethereal you know do do do do do yeah that's another one that just lives in my head like I love that that little piece of music yeah yeah and also when Kevin presses some of the other other buttons it sounds like electric guitar like it's like wow sound for you Conrad for me I love Kevin's voice when he has the collar of algebra on I like that too it's a combination of Robert Duncan

[01:11:10] McNeil's performance he's sort of like really calm and breathy and it's obviously being phased I think and it's yeah I love it it sounds really peculiar and it works very well yeah there's like a reverb on it but it's a really boxy kind of reverb sound it's an odd yeah it's an odd effect that they've put on his voice it's really good most funniest moment the first lines that He-Man delivers is when they're

[01:11:40] in Vasquez Rocks they're in the burnt out desert and he just kicked the crap out of a bunch of robot bad guys and Man-at-Arms and Teela show up and help him out and they shoot the last two or whatever and he's staring uphill at them looking right into the sun so he's got this like his eyes are kind of squinty and he's kind of like he doesn't even know what he's looking at and he belts out the line I've been looking for you

[01:12:10] and of course you know Dolph because he could not speak English it comes out as like looking for you and of course his mouth when they ADR it it does not match up at all right yeah so and by the time it gets that part of the line out he's making this big smile with his eyes closed and then he starts walking uphill towards him and it's just so jarring and I remember seeing it as a kid and being like oh this isn't good on his part like he's not

[01:12:40] he's not going to be great at this no bless him all right funniest for you Conrad it's a small moment Billy Barty is actually quite funny and it's in Julie's house after they've just rescued Kevin from the collar of Aldebar and Gwildor suddenly shows up dressed in loads of Julie's parents clothes I guess and he said he claims if we wear these native clothes nobody is going to recognize us

[01:13:10] now this is the first time Kevin has seen Gwildor so he looks at him and shouts what the hell is that and Gwildor replies see native clothing and I thought that's actually a really good one liner one word one liner see it worked yeah all right and that's our mooblies that's our mooblies I'm Mary Jo Peel and you are listening to movie oubliet

[01:13:44] it's final verdict time should masters of the universe be unchained from the oubliet to eat Robbie's ribs and chicken play its interdimensional Casio keyboard and be worshipped as a god or should it be chopped in half by he-man sword blasted to bits by skeletal star troopers and drop kicked back through the portal from when came into the darkness of the oubliet Matt you've brought to us masters of

[01:14:13] the universe should people watch this movie does it hold up through childhood nostalgia I actually think it's better than the nostalgia goggles that a lot of people watch this through and what I used to because I'm able to separate and watch it just for the movie that it is and not the movie that it's not and I feel like it's for 35 years 40 years almost it's been unfairly judged for what it doesn't accomplish and what isn't in it instead of what it actually produces and

[01:14:43] in the film the finished film that we get it's got a beginning a middle and an end and it does what it sets out to do do we all wish that there were more things in it like battle cat and orco and you know the whole stable of heroes and villains and and all of this wild exotic stuff on another planet absolutely but that wasn't in the cards so the product that we were given it's a fantastic you know adventure it's a fun time I mean I feel like anybody that watches this movie sure you can pick it apart

[01:15:13] but compared to its contemporaries other action adventure movies from that era I would put this way above a lot of those that are well regarded to this day so yeah I would definitely set it free okay Conrad how about you well I've always had a curious soft spot for this movie and it's odd because it's not really the sort of thing that I would gravitate towards generally certainly not the sort of big muscle bound hero type of adventure most of the Arnold Schwarzenegger things other than the

[01:15:42] Terminator and Predator I didn't really enjoy but there's just something that's so winning about it it's something that where I wasn't so attached to the cartoon that I was disappointed by what this movie is not I just took it on face value for what it was and in fact because it leaned so heavily towards Star Wars I liked it even more I liked all of the storm troopers and the laser gun blasts and the fact that it is just so relentless it is non-stop action from beginning to end and somehow it still manages to have a heart

[01:16:12] to it and some lovely poignant moments from Gwildor to Kevin between Julie and her mom it seems to capture some nice moments despite being sort of a bonkers piece of fluff really with so many plot holes in it and so many ridiculously camp moments in it that it shouldn't really hold up to scrutiny but it's got a great score great production design and a cast that's really going for it and it whistles along in 100 minutes and I still think it holds up I think

[01:16:42] it's great fun yeah well I didn't have nostalgia goggles going into this but I did expect the cartoon in movie form and if you go into this movie with that in mind it's a disaster it's a deeply disappointing movie you don't have the Adam transformation there's no battle cat Skeletor's voice is wrong even Skeletor's like makeup and effects are not how you expect it

[01:17:12] to be and it's not set in the Eternia like it's all the wrong things in adaptation well it's an adaptation of the toy line basically but if you go into it thinking it's an adaptation of the cartoon it's just a complete failure but if you kind of take yourself away from that and you just watch it as a movie and don't think about He-Man as

[01:17:45] so I think I kind of would recommend this to people but not people that are coming from the cartoon like if you're watching it completely blind I think it really does work as a fun adventure fantasy sci-fi and I love that kind of mashup sci-fi and fantasy as well it kind of remind me of Krell and it's good it's great so it gets a clean bill of health from us surprisingly but what did our patrons think let's go and check in

[01:18:15] with the patrons vote hello Gary I've been activated this will end as it always does patrons vote please yes yeah my faith in you all is restored yeah and it's unanimous keeper Anthony says when I was younger I remembered thinking this was an awful movie but I also remember watching it all the time

[01:18:45] I must have had a VHS copy growing up the movie is definitely an example of canon low budget style of filmmaking the best thing about it is skeletal I enjoyed my rewatch of this one for the skeletal portrayal alone I say let it go and Evander said set free what is maybe the first live action feature film of a toy license I'm surprised you didn't go with the first unofficial adaptation the beast master with mark singer

[01:19:14] as he man I mean da and his battle cat as a minnesota I would recommend he man and she rah a christmas special so yeah we're all setting it free so the new movie has got a lot to live up to goodbye masters of the universe off you go well matt it's been invaluable having you on this journey as our resident

[01:19:44] mo2 specialist or patient zero as you called yourself where can people follow you and see more of your views on great toy franchises well my main venture is what I'm most known for now is reclaimers vintage toys reclaimers with a K on Instagram and that's where I sell I buy and sell a lot of vintage toys I reclaim them from the trash heaps and the yard sales

[01:20:14] and I re-deliver them and redistribute them to all the toy collectors out there so you can find me there I'm always posting stuff and I will also be relaunching the Endless Bullets podcast soon it and you can email us at movie

[01:20:43] dot oomliet at gmail dot com yes and if you want to support the show then go to patreon where for as little as a dollar you does help us out and spread the

[01:21:13] word yes and if you would like to hear us do an audio commentary for the first time why not pre-order vinegar syndrome's latest 4k edition of explorers where you'll be able to hear our dulcet tones among the extras yeah congratulations on that too by the way thank you yes we were very excited okay Conrad what time is our

[01:21:42] 200th episode if you can believe it yes so we will be marking this occasion by covering the film that inspired the name of our podcast the 1986 musical fantasy labyrinth yes nice it's not a forgotten gem but it's our 200th episode so we thought why not cover the movie that started at all it was a box

[01:22:12] office disappointment but yes you're right it hasn't really been forgotten but we will be joined by a very special guest can't wait very nice all right until then thanks again mad for joining us on this episode for masses of the universe i am yeah curious to check out the new movie thank you for having me it was great to see you guys again and i really enjoyed this so thank you until next time listeners goodbye bye for now bye

[01:22:52] this must be one of those new japanese synthesizers