This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity: stutters, repeated words, and filler sounds have been removed, and punctuation has been added. All substantive content has been preserved.
Matthew
By the power of TruStory, I have the microphone! Yes, it is Matthew and I am here to talk about Masters of the Universe, along with Pete Wright, a fellow of my generation. We grew up on He-Man. We all wanted to ride a Cringer. We all wanted to befriend Teela. We had all the feelings, all the thoughts, and now, like so much more of our childhood, it is being mined for money and nostalgia bait, and reinterpreted. So me and Pete Wright are here to talk about this movie, to talk about the trend of nostalgia bait, to talk about what in the world was happening with this movie, should have been happening with this movie, and what did we think overall. So, Mr. Pete, I’m just going to start by asking: what was your relationship to He-Man growing up?
Pete
My relationship to He-Man — I saw the first commercial when the first Castle Grayskull toy released, and I thought, that’s cool. A year later, the cartoon comes out. I watched every episode of it, and then it vanished when She-Ra came out, and I did not play with the toys anymore. Frankly, I transitioned hardcore to Transformers, and this has been a brand that just evaporated in my life. It’s been fascinating to revisit, because I was deeply into it, and then suddenly, like somebody flipped a switch, I was not. This is the weirdest legacy brand play that I think I’ve ever seen.
Matthew
Well, it’s been on such a weird journey. I’m going to assume that, like me, you did not see the Dolph Lundgren 1987 movie.
Pete
I absolutely did.
Matthew
Oh, you did? Okay. So you know that brand a little longer. For me, I was also a little younger than you, so I think I was not watching it when it came out, but I was watching it in syndication. It was never my favorite. I was definitely a Voltron guy — that was one of my favorites. As I was thinking about it, there are like three or four of these TV shows that were all on around the same time. You get home from school and they’d be on back to back. I get them mixed up. I had totally forgotten that Orko was in this. I thought he was in another one where they all come together to make something. But yeah, it was kind of interesting. Have you paid any attention to the most recent Masters of the Universe content that’s been coming out?
Pete
No, I have not.
Matthew
So as far as I understand, about four or five years ago, one of the best animated shows that’s ever come out was made — an animated version of She-Ra by a fantastic filmmaker and creator whose name I cannot bring to mind at the moment. A queer woman who very clearly wanted to do a reinterpretation of She-Ra from a specifically queer feminist lens. She had shorts on under the skirt, which the old-style male fans went absolutely crazy angry about. But it was a fantastic show — wonderful characters, wonderful dialogue, great messages. And then a couple years later, Netflix worked with Kevin Smith and they had a Masters of the Universe animated show, which I thought was really fun. We did an episode on it. The first half doesn’t really involve He-Man and puts Teela and the Sorceress and some others forward, and He-Man comes back in the second half. I guess that has just kind of continued on. And then doing some more research, what I understood is that this movie comes out of that, plus all the nostalgia bait in general, plus the success of Barbie. The idea being: what’s the next big Mattel toy we can do?
Pete
Yeah, I think the Barbie thing is something that is being under-investigated in all of the sturm und drang of He-Man the film being arguably a flop. What’s interesting about the closed-loop problem of this version of He-Man is that its biggest opening demographic was very clearly us — 45 to 54. That was 29% of the total audience according to opening weekend receipts. Under-18s were barely double digits combined. The nostalgia audience showed up for this and the next generation did not get a handoff. Part of the problem — the countercase with Barbie — is that that toy IP was a genuine cultural event across generations. It wasn’t just a two-season show based on a toy that we loved for three years in the ’80s. Barbie is something that grandmothers bring their daughters who bring their daughters’ daughters to the movie, and they all get something out of it. And I think that is where this movie will be relegated: as just a missed opportunity, because Mattel chose their next big-budget brand to be something that was already in the cultural graveyard.
Matthew
We have talked to other podcasts about you sitting down with your children to watch Star Wars and how excited you were about that. Do you remember watching He-Man with your kids?
Pete
Oh, God, no. It was passed on. Not at all.
Matthew
I think that’s a part of it. And I also think there’s a part of it about Greta Gerwig making very clear from the beginning that the Barbie doll has a very interesting, controversial place within feminism — is it a symbol of feminism or a symbol of patriarchy? The movie was very clearly interested in wrestling with that. I think one of the reasons this movie fails — and this has nothing to do with the marketing — is that there was an opportunity to do something similar with He-Man, but the movie kind of just didn’t want to pick a lane and wanted to have fun with it all. But let me just start with you: overall, what did you think of the movie?
Pete
It served its needs for me, and I’m conflicted by it because the movie started and I thought, this is going to be dumb. And it lived up to that bar for a little while. Then I started getting notes of its own wit, of its own self-awareness, and I thought there was some fun stuff in there. It’s kind of big, dumb, and brilliant, but only in these weird bursts. For example, there’s a bit at the end where all of the major characters are standing on the big bridge outside of Castle Grayskull and somebody says a line, they all have their hands on their hips, they arch their backs, and laugh together. That is one of those iconic things from the cartoon that I did not expect, and the moment I saw it, I was awash in exactly the nostalgia that I think they wanted me to have. I was laughing out loud and the rest of the audience was absolutely into it. So those beats were successful. But — and again with the Barbie comparison — Barbie took its baggage and absolutely weaponized it for satire. Most of He-Man, I think, was largely embarrassed by its own baggage. There are these whiffs of brilliant doses of wit, but otherwise it’s a movie that tries to address its baggage with the most obvious plays you could possibly imagine — making Adam an HR representative struggling with conflict resolution. I’m not sure that was the way to update this character. It was a way, but not sure it was the way. So I think the further I get from it, the more fondness I have for its wit, but I think I’m going to forget this movie pretty quickly.
Matthew
I feel the same way. I’m trying to describe this movie and I came home and said to my partner Mary, I don’t think I saw a movie — I think I saw the He-Man Film Festival. And the problem was that the five movies I saw were all playing at the same time. First of all, there was Skeletor auditioning to be a Shakespearean villain — one of the most evil ones, like Iago. There was a Saturday Night Live sketch starring Fisto and Ram Man trying to make as many sexual references as they could. There was some of the best episodes of Community, where they spoofed something — and Allison Brie was doing that. She was 100% running a spoof. There was someone who said to Idris Elba: the most clichéd role right now is the cop or soldier who fails in their job, gets drunk, disappoints their daughter, and somehow their daughter inspires them to come back to themselves and be a good person and put down the bottle. Idris, no one can make that work. And Idris Elba said “bet.” And frankly, that was my favorite of the many movies we saw. And then there was Nicholas Galitzine in a one-man meditation on masculinity.
Matthew
I feel like Barbie said: this doll is at the heart of all discussions around feminism — let’s talk about it. And I felt like I spent most of this movie unsure what it was trying to say, because going into it, there were kind of two ways it could go. Just to give some context: the He-Man character is utterly masculine — he’s named He-Man. And if you grew up watching it, you’d think, oh my gosh, this was the height of masculinity. A lot of people who talk about Hollywood being “too woke” and tearing down masculinity will hold up He-Man as an example of what a real man should be. The thing is, it was campy as hell. The pink shirt Adam wears is because Adam wears a pink tunic throughout the thing. The whole thing is very camp. It is masculinity as told by the WWE. It is, in a sense, a satire of itself. But there were large parts of the movie where I was cringing because it felt like it was saying, “yeah, we don’t need a woke movie — we need a movie about manly men who do manly things, and we’re going to give you that with this He-Man.” So much of his being the HR guy gets played for laughs, played for “can you imagine — he has pronouns.” And of course it’s a Black woman who’s not traditionally attractive in the way Hollywood often dictates. I think she’s very beautiful, but the movie seemed to lampoon her. And another part of it was kind of saying, maybe He-Man’s idea of masculinity is kind of dumb, and maybe we should talk about this in terms of toxic masculinity. There were four writers, and that’s never a good thing. By the end it just felt like a mush. To me, the movie didn’t have to take on masculinity at all, but it felt like it kind of wanted to, and then didn’t know what it was trying to say, and just wanted to tick some boxes on both sides while playing it very, very safe.
Pete
There are a bunch of things I want to respond to, but Galitzine is an interesting one. This is an actor who puts his body through brutal extremes to embody a character whose arc argues that manhood is not about the body — and then the camera is going to linger on his pecs the whole time. It is a celebration of the body, and that’s fine — the body is awesome — but I almost feel like the more it tries to reckon with its own updating by way of empathy, not dominance, it’s hanging a flag on the wrong things. I’ll note that director Travis Knight said himself that Skeletor is the embodiment of toxic masculinity. And we haven’t mentioned Skeletor once yet. I’m not sure Knight saw the issues with portrayals of masculinity embodied in He-Man himself when he was making this movie. There is little evidence on screen that he did.
Matthew
Like I said, I thought Skeletor was in a different movie entirely — auditioning for a Kenneth Branagh superhero-Shakespeare film. And I thought he was fantastic, one of the best things in the movie. I was horrified when I heard it was Jared Leto, because I don’t normally like Jared Leto, but the red eyes — all of it works so well. I think you’re right that that’s why the movie felt messy. There was just so much going on in so many different directions and it didn’t know what it was trying to do. There’s this recurring joke where Adam is the guy who gets teased at the gym because he doesn’t know how to do things — but he has this super-muscled physique. He’s an Eternian baby. He’s the son of the king, Prince Adam. The Sorceress declares he should be He-Man, but not because of strength — because of his empathy and leadership, which we never actually see demonstrated in the movie.
Pete
And practically, this was something that took me out of the movie — he’s already a big guy under his clothes. There is no way I’m going to believe he’s actually a scrawny nobody until he gets the sword. He was already massive, and this isn’t an issue of effects or anything like that. I feel like they needed a visual transition, and the visual transition they used — making his body appear smaller in the shirt and then bigger again during the big moment — was just weird. Like, let’s just own it. There are people with large physiques. He was fine. Would it have been better to do a reverse Captain America kind of situation? I don’t know. This was weird.
Pete
What’s interesting to me is that you bring up camp — He-Man has always been this camp, queer-coded icon, right? The fur loincloth, the strappy harness, the physique, “I have the power!” And in some ways the movie leans further into that, almost to the point where it’s trying to make a masculinity then-and-now argument. But really it’s saying this is what this character was all along — we’re going to have jokes about the loincloth being in the way all along and celebrate this character as a multi-quadrant appeal character. I actually don’t mind how that comes out. This sort of nod and wink of the character as a queer-coded icon plays for me in a way I didn’t expect. It’s one of the things I think the Galitzine portrayal does well.
Matthew
That’s interesting, because I think if I had seen that movie, I would have liked it a lot more. I don’t think I saw it. To me, it didn’t feel like interesting commentary — it felt indecisive. It felt like one person was writing a scene to go one way, and someone else was writing a scene to go another way, and no one ever reconciled them. His relationship with his father is one of the best examples of the movie’s problems. We get a scene early on where Idris Elba as Man-At-Arms, Duncan, is there with Adam as a boy. Adam seems like he’d rather read books than go out and train. He doesn’t want to play with swords. He’s constantly getting beaten up, especially being bullied by a girl. Duncan says, “stand up right now so that your father can see you are strong — that you get back up even when you’re knocked down.” It’s a really beautiful little moment. Except then the father never turns around. And then the movie forgot about that. When the father dies, there’s sort of a half-hearted moment where the father says, “I’m sorry I didn’t treat you better.” And He-Man immediately just throws it off: “No, no, don’t worry.” We never have any wrestling with it. To me, that’s a great setup: you could be the kind of man your father wanted you to be — which is what people thought He-Man of the ’80s was — or you could be the man you’re supposed to be. That would have been a great movie.
Pete
I think the way you put it is right on. I don’t have the exact line, but it’s something to the effect of, “I just wanted you to be able to protect yourself. I wanted you to be safe” — not “I wanted you to be comfortable and embody your own identity.” I came off like a jerk when you were 10 because of my own stuff, not yours. There was none of that reconciliation. You’re right to call it half-hearted. It felt like an empty reconciliation that never addressed the actual issues between father and son. And it made Adam’s empathy and HR skills — which should have absolutely come to bear in this moment with his father — a punchline, rather than a genuine source of emotional bravery: being able to say truths to his dad that he was never able to say. That’s the movie I wanted.
Matthew
Another way the movie could have gone — there’s a scene where he goes out on a date, and here I think is one of the bits of genuine brilliance: the movie starts with him as voiceover explaining, “welcome to the world of Eternia.” And it’s beautiful and Technicolor, putting those rolling shots of Asgard to shame. There’s a great fight between the evil and the good. And then you get to the point of Adam being thrown out of that world and landing on Earth — in Oklahoma City. And then the punchline is it cuts to him on a date, and she’s asked him, “so how did you come to Oklahoma City?” — and that was the answer he told her. I thought that was great.
Pete
Yeah, I thought that was really successful.
Matthew
And then it turns out the woman is like, yeah, no, I’m out of here. You show him as this fish-out-of-water. I found a number of comments online from women and from people of other genders saying: the way his biceps look in that pink shirt, he could talk about whatever he wanted — I’m not leaving that date.
Pete
You know, I believe they call those “boyfriend biceps.”
Matthew
And the idea that he’s not considered impressive — again, what if the movie was: yeah, he’s gym-bro adjacent, but that’s not where masculinity is. In this version, his muscles don’t change, but he gets courage, he gets leadership, he gets presence.
Pete
Like, even though he has all those things, he also has his humanity, and those are the tools he gets to use to solve problems. And you can still make it a big fight thing — people want to see swords clashed, great — but I think we’ve got to bring up that final Skeletor montage where Skeletor shows up in all of the situations we’ve seen over the course of the movie, dragging He-Man through this mental montage. I thought that was fantastic, one of the highlights of the movie. Essentially Adam is reliving these moments while Skeletor is judging him in the garb of those scenarios. I thought it was funny and so smart — that sequence.
Matthew
Fascinating — not my interpretation in the slightest, but I love that it worked for you. And I can see it — with the idea of Skeletor as toxic masculinity, I can totally see where you’re coming from. It just didn’t work for me for whatever reason.
Pete
Well, it’s also a chance to see — believe it or not — a performance from Jared Leto in absolute CG costuming and still have some personality come through. That’s one of the real successes of Skeletor in this movie: in spite of all of the crazy things they did to bring this character to life, you still see a performance underneath it. And I think that played very well.
Matthew
Jared Leto and Idris Elba were just in a class above everything else going on. And that, to me, was part of why this felt like so many different movies — Idris Elba was obviously having fun with it, Jared Leto was playing it straight and serious, like Michael Caine in Muppet Christmas Carol. I loved him in that role. I just felt it was so weird from everything else.
Pete
What did you think of Evil-Lyn and Allison Brie?
Matthew
I thought that was one of the biggest fails of the movie. I went back and watched some cartoons of her this morning. Yes, it’s a ridiculous character — and I’m sure a lot of men of a certain age with particular tastes loved her character quite a lot when they were kids. She’s definitely in that “I am mean and sexy” tradition. Here she’s played so campy that, to me, it felt just like a Community bit. What Jared Leto and Skeletor were doing felt on such a different level. She’s just constantly vamping and playing off a comedy version of Skeletor that isn’t there. What did you think of her?
Pete
I’m a huge fan of Allison Brie — I think she’s very talented. And I don’t think the conception of Evil-Lyn in this universe was a win. I never quite connected with her. I certainly never connected with the character design. I never transcended seeing Allison Brie with the headgear on. I just never reached that point. And I think that’s a disappointing thing because I think Allison Brie brings a lot to these kinds of characters.
Matthew
Let’s go back to Community — she’s been doing the “too sexy” bit for decades. She can pull that train. But watch the character she plays in GLOW, or some of her other work — she has incredible range. I think if they had said, “we want you to play this the way Jared Leto is — serious, sexy and evil, scheming,” it shouldn’t be that she’s completely devoted to Skeletor. It should be that she’s happy to stab Skeletor in the back if she can. It just felt like they told Allison Brie to act like this is a Community spoof. And she did a very good job of that because she’s very good at it. But it didn’t fit.
Pete
It was tonally separate from the rest of the movie in a way that the other characters — Teela, Man-At-Arms — they all felt like they were on team He-Man. And even the rest of team Skeletor — all the beasts and the cyborg creatures — they all felt of a piece. Evil-Lyn never gave us anything of interesting substance. Character design was underperforming. Very much so.
Matthew
I want to talk a bit about the history of He-Man, and then we’ll talk about the whole idea of nostalgia and why these movies are getting made. Part of what got me thinking about this: I’ve seen a million MGM movies, seen the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer logo, and I’ve always seen the Latin phrase they use — Ars Gratia Artis. I never really thought about what it meant. This movie, for the first time, had it translated into English on screen. I thought that was really ironic because that phrase means “art for art’s sake.” And people have been very clear since the beginning that He-Man was made for one specific purpose: to get you and me to bug our mothers to buy the toys. My understanding is that an order went wrong somehow and they got far more He-Man toys than they planned on. They wanted a way to sell them. They started by writing a little comic book that went with it, but that wasn’t doing well enough. So they created a show. Originally it was going to be just a short series, but the FCC prohibited that because apparently children’s programming couldn’t just be a 30-minute infomercial. So they had to have a story. And then Filmation — the company — was legally required by broadcasting standards to include a life lesson as the moral of each episode, because it was so linked to toy companies. So apparently at the end of every episode, He-Man and one of the other characters would say, “and today’s lesson is friendship.” One of the first episodes literally has him saying: “in this episode I won because I befriended someone who was different. Remember, friends — whether people are different in race or religion or anything else, they can be your friend.” And if anyone remembers the ending of every G.I. Joe episode — “now you know, and knowing is half the battle” — that was all broadcast requirements.
Pete
Yeah, same thing with the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, I think.
Matthew
Yes — anytime it was directly linked to a commercial product, that was the broadcast requirement. So how do you feel about all these things from our childhood — most of which are linked to commercial products like Transformers — coming back? Are you in general a fan of nostalgia bait movies, or do you not think it’s the best thing for Hollywood to be focusing on?
Pete
Well, as someone who loves movies, I love movies. When I see these kinds of properties come around, my first reaction is, “oh God, no.” And then I go see it because I’m curious, and there’s a 10-year-old kid inside of me that wants to see if they put on screen what has existed in my sense-memory for the last 40 or 50 years. So I am both slightly offended by it and also it’s catnip. Those two things have to exist at the same time. Do I think they should be made? I didn’t think so — and then I saw Barbie and thought it was enormously successful in what it was doing with that property. So do I think they should keep taking swings? Why not? Now, originally, when He-Man came out as essentially a 30-minute commercial, as an adult I imagine myself being enormously frustrated by that cross-promotion. But that’s a decades-old frustration.
Matthew
And that’s not new. You’re not a Paw Patrol merchandise situation. And I think there’s a very cynical view that some TV shows are there to sell toys and others are there to produce high content. Sesame Street is one of the best examples of selling high content — and an awful lot of PBS shows got paid for by people buying Big Bird merchandise. So there’s a part of me that wants to get up on the moral high horse, but I know this has always been the case. I remember one of the things people were saying on Twitter on the first night of Mandalorian: “What the hell is Disney doing? Why is there not a stuffed Grogu already in the online Disney store?” And it has turned into a huge marketing thing.
Matthew
This is not connected to anything, but I thought it was a fun bit — part of why Mattel pushed He-Man and then Barbie was that in the early ’80s, they needed an entertainment toy bonanza because they’d had a chance in the late ’70s to produce toys for a little-known sci-fi thing called Star Wars. And apparently Mattel turned down the Star Wars contract. So six years later, everyone was like, “oh my God, we have to find the next thing.” And that’s what He-Man was supposed to be.
Pete
Where did Star Wars go — Hasbro?
Matthew
Yeah.
Pete
Fascinating. Should this one have been made? Should we keep making it? Critics’ response is generally lower than audience response. Obviously not enough people are seeing it — it is a $200 million movie that is not performing to its scale. Travis Knight — I’m from a part of the country where the Knight family has a bit of a reputation, especially in the arts. Studio Laika is about 10 minutes from my house, and Travis Knight was at the head of that for a long time. I find the strategy behind this movie really interesting. They could have done one of three things: faithful reverence to the property — play it completely straight, treat the sacred as completely sacred — and I think we have some flops that live in that space. Or commentary, destroying its own baggage — Barbie, Lego Movie, all great examples. Or a sincere reinvention — keep the soul, completely change the story. Dungeons and Dragons is one, Bumblebee arguably another. I think Travis Knight tried to do two and three at once here — lovingly mock the toys while trying to be sincere in a reinvention. And ultimately the result doesn’t reconcile those two things. So does a nostalgia property owe anything to the kid who loved it? Is there an ethical obligation to honor the source material in a way that a purist would not judge poorly?
Matthew
I think there’s another category we can throw in — the Willow TV show. There were also a number of adult sexual jokes in this He-Man movie — the number of times they talked about Fisto going to fist people and Ram Man going headfirst. I don’t care about that kind of stuff, but I can imagine guys of our generation who might have thought they were going to take their eight-year-old son to it going: no, it’s a little too weirdly adult. But also, the TV show Willow is a great example of a much higher quality project that missed in the totally opposite direction. Were you a huge Willow fan?
Pete
I was not. I saw the movie. I never really connected with the property.
Matthew
You may have also been a couple years too old. I really loved it. Me and Ashley Coffin and a couple others did a great podcast on it a number of years ago — we’ll put that in the show notes. And there’s also an episode from Mandy Kaplan, who’s been a fan of this podcast and was on the parenting podcast with Pete and me. Her podcast is Make Me a Nerd — check out her episode, I’ll put that in the show notes as well. But the Willow TV show was utterly beloved by younger generations and utterly hated by the people who loved the movie, because it told a completely new kind of story in the same universe. If I had never seen the Willow movie, I think I would have loved that TV show. But because I was promised Willow nostalgia and got none of it, I was really annoyed. So I don’t think there’s any kind of ethical obligation to nostalgia per se. I do think all art has some ethical obligation to say: if there are hard questions here, I’m going to wrestle with them instead of trying to kick the can down the road. And I wonder if this movie would have been a lot different if it were made five years ago. The changing political landscape, the changing attitudes toward these things — I think it all plays a role. At the very least: if you’re going to do a remake, pick a lane. You don’t have to be political commentary. You can just be camp. You can just be nostalgia. I don’t care. Just pick something.
Pete
I would just throw in that the auteur signaling did enormous heavy lifting for Barbie. Greta Gerwig coming off Lady Bird and Little Women and doing something really unique with it — I don’t think Travis Knight comes with the same auteur pedigree. He is still the lead animator and CEO of Studio Laika, and their new movie Wildwood is already getting great commentary. But I feel like this is the movie we got — a big swing, a love letter to 10-year-old me. And that’s fine. It’s a weird thing for me to say “I don’t think this movie was made for me” when I believe in my heart of hearts that it was. It just wasn’t made for me right now.
Matthew
Tell me about the time it would have been made for you.
Pete
I think I would have had a very different experience had I been maybe 18 or 22, seeing this movie when I was in a very different headspace — as a young man feeling like I was on top of the world and confused about all kinds of directions and choices, but also kind of invincible. And wow, look at this character on the big screen that I loved from just 10 or 12 years ago, who is actually being the guy I think I could be if I take ownership of my own agency moving forward. That would have been an interesting time for me to see it. I’ve just aged out of that audience. And now I’m sitting here in the catbird seat, both aware that it’s a love letter for me and picking it right apart.
Matthew
I think for me, I would have said it wasn’t made for me but was done very badly. I loved the Barbie movie and I remember feeling a sense of jealousy — not a big overall sense, because clearly far more movies are made for me than for my partner — but I remember listening to her and others talk about how that movie felt having grown up playing with Barbies. And I do get that with movies like Transformers and Ghostbusters. There were those fun nostalgia moments in this movie for me too. I just felt there was a conscious choice being avoided about what to do with the big questions around the movie, whatever direction it went — something that was kind of cowardly about not engaging with it. I also think it’s just a very hard time to talk about something so tied to ideas of masculinity as He-Man. Just having his pronouns on the nameplate — he/him — that’s incredible. There’s no way you can do that without me wondering, what are you trying to say? Because apparently when the first preview came out in January, there was a huge storm of protest: “Oh, it’s woke garbage.” Whereas I think it was kind of making fun of that.
Pete
I think so too.
Matthew
And either way, I think it’s satire. You can’t just have that in a movie without it saying one thing or another. In this particular moment where every aspect of masculinity is so debated — it makes He-Man a great time for a movie, and also an incredibly difficult time to make a low-key, “we’re not going to make a big commentary” movie.
Pete
One of the reasons Barbie worked so well across generations is that there was something of substance in it for everyone — jokes for kids, gags for adults, big monologues and speeches about what it means to be a woman, to be an adult. What we got in He-Man was jokes about oral sex. There’s a certain thinness, a cellophane approach to addressing the bigger issues — and there was already a model for doing that with these properties, in the form of Barbie from the same studio. I think you’re right — had this been made five years ago, we might have seen something different. But it ends up being popcorn fun, a parade of pixels that is ultimately empty.
Matthew
I want to be clear: yes, I always want to talk about gender and politics, but I’m really glad you brought up the Lego Movie. Because the Lego Movie had a lot of commentary in it, but it wasn’t poking at a hot-button issue. It was more commentary about positivity and freedom and choice — and no one was going, “oh my God, I can’t believe Lego Movie did this.” It’s kind of anti-capitalist, but in a way that a lot of Hollywood is, while making billions of dollars. So yeah, it didn’t have to be that. It could have been more like Lego Movie.
Pete
I think so too. I think it’s an interesting swing. I don’t know what’s next for Mattel Studios, especially after this one. Did you stick around and see the credits?
Matthew
I did, all of them. It brought back Orko — and reminded me I had totally forgotten about him, I thought he was from Voltron or something else. But then they did a lead-in to what is very clearly a lot of action for She-Ra. And this movie really bombed, so I don’t know if they’re going to do it. But what do you think if they go in that direction?
Pete
That was my central point — will they continue with a She-Ra project after the performance of He-Man? That seems risky. I don’t have a connection to She-Ra that I had to He-Man. I did not watch the show. I don’t know anybody who played with She-Ra. And so that would be a bit of a Barbie experience for me — I didn’t have a real connection with Barbie, and I loved the film. I wonder if I’d have the same experience with She-Ra.
Matthew
If you’d told me 10 years ago a She-Ra movie was coming out, I’d have been like: eh, no thanks. Unless my spouse was really interested in going to see it. But after watching the Netflix animated show — which unfortunately has been taken off Netflix, though I think you can still find it on other platforms — I would be super excited for it. Except I cannot possibly imagine a big studio making the version that is super feminist and super queer in the current climate. Because that show exists, the majority of people who care about She-Ra today probably do so because of that show. So yeah, I would love to see a She-Ra movie from one perspective, but I don’t think this is it. And frankly, given the performance of this movie — my first thought was: if this were beating Mando and Grogu, I’d have real fears about America. But this is doing about one-third as well in terms of opening weekend as Mando and Grogu did.
Pete
Mando and Grogu is still being considered a failure at the box office.
Matthew
And it’s the lowest-performing Star Wars movie. It’s also the first post-pandemic one, which is a big deal. Yeah, I don’t think this is going to launch a franchise.
Pete
I don’t think so either. I have heard they’re talking about other toy and board game properties to give this sort of Barbie treatment to, now that they’ve repackaged Mattel Studios. Is there a Mattel property that you feel would be a banger — shut up and take my money style?
Matthew
For me, I want the Gummi Bears movie that is constantly winking at the fact that those bears are high as hell. Because Gummi Berry Juice — I watched as a kid and had no idea. You watch it now and those people were high as kites. That was the whole point. Or it’s steroids. I don’t know. But some kind of movie that’s really fun, still has high adventures, has the cute bears, but also winks at the audience. I think a Gummi Bears movie could be perfect.
Pete
Okay. Well, I was already a Transformers kid — and they’ve already made that. And was it my Transformers? You know, it was fine. It’s exactly what I needed, and some of those were actually fun. I don’t think they ever did Devastator, and I wanted my construction vehicles to come together and form Devastator so bad.
Matthew
The animated show they did was much better than I thought it was — we did an episode on it. But the original movies were Michael Bay. No, no, thank you.
Pete
A movie that I thought was much better than it deserved to be was Real Steel. Do you remember Real Steel with Hugh Jackman?
Matthew
That was the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots father-son movie?
Pete
Yes. And that is on the Mattel list for the Barbie treatment — Hot Wheels. Somehow there’s an action adventure Hot Wheels movie in the queue. Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots — I played the heck out of that game. And Hot Wheels — who knows what’s going to come of that. But those are my picks. And Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots has Vin Diesel slated to be in it.
Matthew
Of course he is. Who else would you possibly imagine? I’m kind of thinking, what were some of those other shows from that era? Or even just the Saturday morning cartoons we loved?
Pete
Well, there are 16 projects. After Masters of the Universe, we’ve got Matchbox Cars, Hot Wheels — Matchbox has John Cena and Jessica Biel slated. Bob the Builder — that’s an animated feature film. Polly Pocket, written and directed by Lena Dunham, live action. Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em with Vin Diesel, American Girl, Barney, Magic 8-Ball, Uno, Viewmaster, and Wishbone are in various stages of development. Magic 8-Ball is described as a horror comedy — we’re getting into some real Ouija territory there.
Matthew
Wasn’t there a Winnie the Pooh horror movie that came out recently?
Pete
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. Yeah, it was — that’s a whole thing. You get into public domain stuff and Winnie the Pooh went dark. I think it has a sequel too.
Matthew
Some of that stuff is just going to miss me. I will say the Barney one is going to bring back a weird nostalgia because I was in perfect older-brother territory for Barney. It was not my thing, but it was beloved by my friends’ younger siblings. I distinctly remember one of my favorite high school gatherings: me and a bunch of friends at 16 got together in a park, put a bunch of Barney memorabilia into a trash can, lit it on fire, and danced around chanting “We Mock Your Existence.”
Pete
I don’t think that’s going to be the subject of the film. I think they’re going to go in a different direction.
Matthew
I don’t expect that, but I’m guessing. Hating Barney was definitely a meme at that time — the internet was just getting started, but it was a thing.
Pete
A photorealistic purple dinosaur just trying to make his way in the world — that would be the way to do it.
Matthew
Well, there is that movie coming out now — End of Oak Street, I think — which looks like a dinosaur horror movie, and it’s not Jurassic Park. I didn’t know that was legal, but I guess Jurassic Park can’t claim a monopoly on dinosaur movies.
Pete
Okay, I need to do some Googling.
Matthew
Was that not in the previews in your version?
Pete
I’ve never heard of this.
Matthew
So the last one I’ll throw out — I would love to see a live-action version, because in my mind it’s one of the best combinations of Disney-world stuff along with an incredible spoof of my favorite comic book character: Darkwing Duck. Darkwing Duck is Batman as a duck. And I don’t know if you were too old for it, but it was just perfect when I was a kid.
Pete
Yeah, I think that would be a good one. There is a lot of Disney from that era of Disney TV that hasn’t been taken to their new live-action angle. Scrooge McDuck, DuckTales — all of those properties, I’m down for all of those. I would find a youth to drag to those movies.
Matthew
The last one I’ll mention — one other that’s been a very successful version of nostalgia done right: Scooby-Doo. The Scooby-Doo movies have done such a good job of acknowledging the stoner aspect, acknowledging all the queer and campy dynamics. I haven’t seen them all, but I know they’ve been wildly successful and everyone loves them. They’re legitimately funny.
Pete
Like they’re legitimately funny movies, a lot of them. And I think you’re right — I can always have fun going back to a Scooby-Doo movie. They get it.
Matthew
All right. Well, Pete, thank you so much as always. I love that you come to these crazy ideas and hold to your side when you hop on with me. As I mentioned, you should check out TruStory.fm. Another podcast you should check out is The Next Reel, where Pete and myself and a couple others just did an episode about Mandalorian and Grogu. But Pete, that’s by no means the only podcast you’re on. Give us a little sprinkling of where else we can find you.
Pete
Every place at TruStory.fm — I’m on a number of shows there across The Next Reel family of film podcasts. I host the Headstone podcast, about looking at your life and delivering a great last line. It’s on death and mortality. It’s a real charmer. I also write books, and you can find out more at ItsMePete.com. My first work of fiction, Lattice, came out in April. The second book in that series is coming out in about two months. And I even have another book coming out before that, not in the same universe. Maybe I’ll have some sort of mailing list on there that you can look at. But I think people in your audience might actually like some of the fun stuff I’m writing at ItsMePete.com.
Matthew
Definitely check all of that out. All those links will be in the show notes. You can find all of my podcasts at TheEthicalPanda.com. You’ll also find my Star Wars podcast, where we’re doing a lot of stuff on Mando and Grogu. We very soon have an episode coming out — probably about two weeks out — for Pride Month, where we’re going to be talking about some of the queer characters in Star Wars. And no, we don’t just mean the two women who kiss at the end of Rise of Skywalker. We’re going to talk about Sister, the transgender clone. We’re going to talk about a number of awesome characters. So thank you all so much for tuning in. We have spoken.
