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07/26/2026 On the Road with Chuck & Bernie for Sunday, July 26, 2026

07/19/2026 On the Road with Chuck & Bernie for Sunday, July 19, 2026

07/12/2026 On the Road with Chuck & Bernie for Sunday, July 12, 2026

He-Man, Ghostbusters, and Me

Like many American men my age, it's safe to say that my two biggest media obsessions as a child were Ghostbusters and He-Man. I was in love with both of them at different times of my under-tenhood, and I spent a lot of time obsessing over them in spite of the fact that I didn't get the underwear or the breakfast cereal or even most of the toys. Both franchises were very, very important to me.

And then I grew up a bit. Occasionally I would revisit both of them, but I've spent a lot more time as an adult appreciating Ghostbusters while He-Man has been compartmentalized to the category of Things I Used to Like.

And then in 2016 we got the Ghostbusters reboot. A lot of people had A Lot of Feelings about that. I'll agree with the trolls as far as conceding that it wasn't a good movie, but Ghostbusters: Answer the Call's biggest flaw was that it saddled a good cast with an underwritten script on the assumption that they could improvise through it. I'd like to see that same cast in a better sequel, but it was such a flop that studio has since tried to erase it by releasing two sequels to 1989's Ghostbusters II. Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon are likely never returning to that universe, and that's genuinely annoying to me.

Anyway, I watched the recent Masters of the Universe movie over the last couple of nights and enjoyed it, but on reflection I think it has a similar cultural problem to the Ghostbusters series, which is that ultimately, you can't go home again.

That problem is a little more abstract with Ghostbusters but I stil think there's some relation between my reaction to the two movies, so pardon me for belaboring the point. The problem with Ghostbusters that nobody ever acknowledges is that it was a very strange movie when it came out. Comedies in 1984 didn't have epic narrative stakes or special effects budgets, and Hollywood really didn't like the idea of mixing comedy with sci-fi or horror. There had never been a movie like Ghostbusters, and its difficult to wrap your head around that, especially if you're young enough to have been born after the release of movies like Men in Black, Evolution, and Cabin in the Woods. It sounds quaint now, but you can find videos of Dan Aykroyd and Ivan Reitman talking about how they were seriously worried that test audiences would walk out in disgust when the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man showed up onscreen.

That didn't happen. Audiences were transfixed. As a kid I was absolutely enthralled and found the very idea of Ghostbusters to be incredibly exhilarating. And then they burnt through all that goodwill by releasing multiple mediocre cartoons, a sequel that stretched a half-baked story over the same narrative beats, comic books, sticker books, video games, and a landful's worth of toys that practically insulted IP. In 2008 the cast reunited for a Ghostbusters video game which was well-received but which I wasn't crazy about.

The only Ghostbusters property that it well-liked by the majority of Ghostbusters fans is the original 1984 movie. The main reason all other Ghostbusters properties fail--IMHO--is that we want them to make us feel like the first movie did. Human beings spend a lot of time trying to replicate our early, unforgettable experiences, but the novelty can only happen once. Compounded with the fact that we've seen the Ghostbusters formula done and redone ad nauseam, the formula is no longer special.

The reputation of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (hereafter MotU) has suffered less than that of Ghostbusters, which seems ironic to me since it was, after all, a very expansive toy commercial. The MotU episode of Netflix's The Toys that Made Us is a great exploration of how the show was created to sell toys, but somehow transcended its status as an advertisement to offer a moral beacon to young Gen-Xers and early Millenials. I'm not overstating it; in addition to stepping out of the story to dispense wisdom and advice at the end of each episode, MotU went out of its way to depict respect, good moral lessons, and strong female characters in a show where it wasn't actually necessary to do so. But it rubbed off on us. Well, a lot of us, anyway.

MotU did get rebooted three times as a cartoon, but I didn't see the first two. Kevin Smith's version which came out during the pandemic was glorious, but of course the Men's Rights crowd hated it because it was largely about its female characters fulfilling the destinies they were given in the original show.

When MotU 2026 hit theaters I started seeing negative reviews. I ignored them, but I also do not value the multiplex experience, so my plan was always to streat it at home. It took me a couple of nights--because kids--and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I was surprised enough that I took to Reddit to look at other people's opinions to find out why they hated it so much, and it looks like I misunderstood the general reaction: opinions were mostly positive, and the ones that weren't had (mostly) good points. There was a lot less toxic masculinity on display than I'd assumed.

I won't critique other people's opinions, but here are my disorganized thoughts:

First, this is the second theatrical live-action MotU, but it's the one I wanted the first time around. The one made in 1987 by Cannon Film Group was severely underwhelming, and probably the first time I felt cheated by a big screen adaptation of a property I liked. Dolph Lundgren and Frank Langella are good actors, but they weren't He-Man and Skeletor, and Billy Barty's Gwyldor was a poor substitute for the floating wizard Orko. As an adult I can see that they were trying to squeeze as much value as they could from a low budget while simultaneously trying to throw a bone to all of the parents or legal guardians who didn't really want to be there, but it bore little resemblance to the cartoon and as a child I felt betrayed. It's very possible, actually, that the 1987 movie is where my fondness for the original MotU ended. The new movie is exactly what I wanted from the old one: characters. Lots of characters, some fairly obscure. Familiar locations. Vehicles I recognized from the playsets. Fan service walks a very fine line, and in this case I think it mostly succeeds.

Second, I'm conflicted about the "gritty" aspect of the these depictions. On one hand, the characters look great; the designs are more intricate but with one exception the characters are all heavily based on their original look as toys/cartoons. On the other hand, some of the villains look scarier than I'd have made them. Not a big deal; I got used to it. Oh, the one who didn't look as I expected? Roboto, whose body is destroyed at the climax of the film specifically so that they can put her head on a body that looked like the action figure. I enjoyed that.

They look right, but these are not the same characters. This is a frequent problem with adaptations; the dialogue spoken by Simon Jones' Arthur Dent wouldnot have come from Martin Freeman's Arthur Dent, just as Chris Pine's Captain Kirk isn't Bill Shatner's. Generally I just accept changes like these, but I like He-Man better when he hands out dad jokes while he's busting heads and kicking asses. Dad jokes abound in this one, but not the same kind of dad jokes, and not in the places where the original cartoon put them. Also: I am unbothered by profanity, but it's weird hearing these characters swear.

One of the nice callbacks to the original series is that Prince Adam (He-Man's alter ego (do I need to state that?)) is sent to earth as a child to keep him safe. Earth is chosen because that's where his mother is from, which is canonically accurate but not stated more than once or twice in the original series. Some of the complaints I saw online were from people who didn't realize that, and who are tired of seeing characters sent to earth. From a storytelling standpoint, I appreciate that giving the character a job in Human Resources provides an explanation for He-Man's (canonical) touchy-feeliness. There's an early scene where he works out in the gym and asks Dolph Lundgren if he has any advice for the new guy. The cameo was a fun idea but it wasn't handled very cleverly and was one of the film's more egregious missed opportunities.

I have mixed feelings about Jared Leto's Skeletor. I do not care for Leto. At his best he's fine, and his costars make it sound like his method acting makes him harrowing to work with. Like a lot of people, I expected Leto to be the weak point of the movie, but his Skeletor is a formidable and comically effective villain (which is what we want from Skeletor). He cracks a lot of jokes, most of which are better than the ones from the original cartoon in which Alan Oppenheimer voiced the character as if one of Martians from Mars Attacks! had learned to speak (i.e., nasal and constantly shouting). Leto seemed to be channeling somebody, and it took me half of the movie to realize that he sounded exactly like Jemaine Clement; a quick Google search reveals that everyone feels the same way. I won't be bothered if Leto comes back for the sequel, but it'd be nice if they just skipped over him and cast Jemaine Clement who is no stranger to this kind of role.

There is a scene where Skeletor invades He-Man's mind, and we see Skeletor inserted into a montage of scenes from Adam's life on earth. This is the funniest part of the movie but probably very divisive. Skeletor leaning against an office door in business casual clothes and holding a paper coffee cup is a hilarious image, but it's also the kind of thing that takes some people out of a movie.

I dunno, what else can I say? I haven't really talked about the plot. Scrawny, young Prince Adam is sent to earth as Castle Greyskull falls to the forces of darkness, and spends fifteen years (or so) having a normal, human life. He loses his job in HR, finds the magic sword that was supposed to guide him home, and returns to challenge the usurping Skeletor. This is more a homecoming story than a fish-out-of-water story. He has to prove himself, gets into a few altercations, fights the bad guy, and kills him. The scenes on earth are mostly fun, the scenes on Eternia are what I wanted as a kid, and it looks incredible. They make a few mistakes with the characters but... it's just not that important to me. I have outgrown MotU but never soured on it, so this movie--which feels like a labor of love--is a welcome celebration of nostalgia and I don't feel the need to raise a finger and "well, actually" any of it. The violence gives me pause. This might be too much for my nine-year-old. '80s He-Man never killed anybody, but then, it's heavily implied that Skeletor is coming back (if there's enough interest).

And there might not be enough interest. The movie did not perform well at the box office, but also that doesn't mean quite what it did in even 2016; maybe I'm just chronically online, but it seems to me that people are actively hostile toward the moviegoing experience right now. Still, they teased a She-Ra movie in the mid-credits scene, and I'd be just as interested in that movie as this one. Also, I always preferred She-Ra's villains, so there's that. If they cared enough about MotU to give Triclops and Trapjaw prominent screentime, then here's hoping they'll do the same for Mantenna and Leech.

As Sonia Greene said of H.P. Lovecraft's lovemaking skills, MotU 2026 is adequately excellent. That means it's not a great movie but it's good enough. As I said, I grew up and moved on from Masters of the Universe; seeing a good He-Man movie so long after walking away from MotU is like catching up with old neighbors whose presence was accepted but never exactly desirable. I'd have managed without it, but I feel pretty good that it all turned out well.

Oh, and keeping Orko offscreen until the epilogue? One of the best ideas in the film, for several reasons. Six-year-old me liked Orko, but I introduced my son to the cartoon when he was four or five and I just wanted to strangle that little floating nuissance.