Masters of the Universe (1987)

At the center of the universe, at the border between the light and the dark stands castle Gracecar. For countless ages the sorceress of Gracecar has kept this universe in harmony, but the armies of darkness do not rest and the capture of Gracecar is ever most in their minds. For to those that control Gracecar will come, the power, the power to be supreme, the power to be almighty, the power to be masters of the universe. Welcome to analog Jones in the temple film, I'm Steve. I'm Chris and I'm Brad and we're a VHS podcast that looks at the box art trailer and behind the scenes and we've got a huge one this week, which is technically an air quotes Chris's pick. So Chris, if they can't read, what did you air quote pick 1987's masters of the universe? Yeah, I learned that's about four minutes ago that it was my pick. So I think it's the fact the universe picked this for us for us, our audience and especially you. Yeah, I think it was what's the guy that likes animals a lot and it doesn't wear a shirt. Leverking? No, no, we watch like Conan. But I think I watched this instead of Beast Master one time and then we had the cancel the recording and I was like, yes. Well the thing is like you brought you brought this movie up the most and you've accidentally watched it for another movie. So I figured, oh, this is Chris's pick. I asked you and you're like, yeah. So you're it's your pick. Good. Good. All right. So before we get into, you know, brand new in the quick facts and everything, I thought we do a deep dive on where Mattel is at the time that this comes out and where Canon films is. How did these two gigantic entities of our entertainment just smashed together in 8687? Well, here we go. You might know Mattel from Barbie if you're ancient and maybe even Hot Wheels way back in the day. But they ended up in 1977 passing on Star Wars. You know that huge movie that happened that year off of like, I don't know what it made like $700 million. $700 million in 1970s money, too. What they did rebound with Barbie making a billion two years back. So I love to say on the Star Wars, a lot of people, including people working on Star Wars, didn't think it was going to succeed. Well, the thing is, it had an insane deadline to get the toys out because I think the movie came out in May and then they wanted all the toys out before Christmas. So it's an insane deadline. So Mattel passed, they just didn't want to deal with that. You can watch the toys that made us on Netflix. That has a lot more information on it. But you know, Kenner took it and then Kenner, the rest of history became a juggernaut in the toy industry. But since then in 1977, Mattel had been trying to find its Star Wars for a long time. So we had them go into Battlestar Galactica in 1978 and then they tried Flash Gordon for 79 through 80 and then lastly 1981 clash of the Titans. Now as you can tell, the toys have made us never did any episodes on those. So they didn't work. It just didn't quite live up to Star Wars. I mean, I don't even remember them really. I remember the Battlestar Galactica, but that's only because when the show came out in the sci-fi channel, I ended up looking back in the past for it and everything. Yeah, I was like, I have a cake because we would have been growing up with those toys. Brad would own those toys. I don't think Star Wars toys. Well, the Battlestar Galactica and clash of the Titans and Flash Gordon. Yeah. We were slightly too young. You were the right age. Yeah, Brad stepped away. So like, Mattel, it was trying to find their Star Wars. So we mentioned it didn't quite work out with their 78 line of Battlestar Galactica. There's 79 and 80 line of Flash Gordon and their 81 clash of the Titans. Yeah. I do like how it was two series of Flash Gordon that came out and I believe in the toys that made us when they were going over he man, they said that Flash Gordon sucked. Like it didn't work well, but they must have spent a lot on the IP. So they're like two series of it. I mean, yeah, we got queen doing the soundtrack. Nothing says like, hey, bring your kids to this because queen is doing the soundtrack. Yeah. Great soundtrack, by the way. So they were having a hard time with it. But luckily in 1980, amendments to the Federal Trade Commission Act were passed, which denied the FTC, the authority to regulate children's advertising, deeming it an unfair practice. This changed along with broader deregulation policies initiated in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan made it easier for companies to market directly to children, going to just put it right in their head. As a result, there was a significant increase in advertising during children's programming and the emergence of the toy opgolips. That's what I'm going to call it. The cartoons designed to promote specific toy lines and merchandise. Yeah, they've ruled. Thank you, Mr. President. Well, so happy about that. Yeah, I'd like to know I'd like to do a deeper dive into that, but I didn't find that, you know, much more important than what we have here. But I'd like to know what spearheaded that exactly. Was it just like, hey, we need to bump in the economy? What's, you know, target children? Probably. I mean, they made great, great 80s and 90s cartoons because of it. Oh my gosh. Yeah, they're still going movies and cartoons. Yeah, we were blessed with just, yeah, awesome toys, everything. Yeah, it was, it was a toy epidemic. It was nuts. So that led to Mattel first going, okay, battle start galactica flash Gordon clash with the Titans didn't work. You know what? There's this new movie coming out called Conan the Barbarian. So we're going to do the toy line for them until they find out it was going to be rated R. And they're like, oh, shit, we can't do that. Little bit of nudity, maybe a little sex in there and I think there's some rape and going on. So, yeah, I think going on there, yeah, not so much for, I mean, I saw it when I was a kid, but, you know, is it, is that, is this how we got human? Yes. So, what did I, that rules, I'm so happy. 1981, 1981, they were feeling the pressure. They're like, man, we have to get something out. So they basically, they took, they had this guy named Roger sweet who developed prototypes for a new toy line. He had the objective of finding the new star award or creating the new star wars and he came up with three prototypes. One kind of looked like, I want to say the man, kind of looked like Boba, Fett, another one looked like just a really weird robot, but he had this one that stood out to the marketing at Mattel and it was a barbarian with that was super muscular, had a really mean expression on his face, a bare skin cape and a battle ax. But what really stood out to them was the name he man, he gave it and they're like, oh, that's a name we can mark it. So that's how this started. And then they're like, okay, well, let's go to the design team. They went to a guy named Mark Taylor. He was a Mattel artist and designer and he was instrumental in creating the look and feel of he man and the other characters like Skeletor. And he is deemed specifically responsible for creating Skeletor and he has a great story about it in the toys that made us so you can go back and listen to that. But he was drawing inspiration. They basically told him to draw inspiration from Frank Frizetta from the 70s and I believe all the way in the 80s, maybe there was drawing like the barbarians. And he loved to draw this stuff. He drew a lot like Frank Frizetta. So he came up with a bunch of concepts and then it went on to creating some of these toys. Shit, we got to sell these. We've got to sell these. So you had a bunch of them coming together, creating this and then going to their first sales pitch, which was for child world and Mark Ellis, the director of marketing at the time from Mattel, proposed that, you know, because the child world was like, that's great. They look cool and everything like that. But, you know, Star Wars has a movie. What does he man have? And he goes, oh, I didn't tell you. Bullshit. But it's coming with like many comic books and each one of them so they can be introduced to the characters. So, oh, we've got to produce a comic book, which they did for each toy. And then when they went on to the sales pitch for Toys of Us, they're like, yeah, comic books are cool, but you know, five year olds can't read, right? And he's like, uh, yeah. So the same guy said, hmm, I didn't tell you we're doing two one hour specials that we're going to put on TV. And like Paul Cleveland, which was the, uh, what was he, the senior vice president of worldwide marketing of Mattel was like, oh, shit. Oh man comic books and now a cartoon so they went to film a mission or was it a filmation and which was led by Lou Shreimer at the time was tasked with creating two one-hour specials which he ended up convincing Mattel hey you know since you're designing all the characters and we're doing all the animation everything he goes it's not a lot more expensive to do a full season of this which I can't believe because a full season is like 60-something episodes 65 per season I just looked it up because I was like maybe I'll watch these again they're I don't think they're streaming anywhere I think you have to buy them yeah I think you got to buy them two dollars an episode but you know what you can get it other ways yeah there's illegal ways and there's probably a complete DVD or blu-ray set out there I'm almost 1000% positive that you go to Amazon and find it really quick so he created these a filmation did and they showed Mattel the first four minutes of it that they had and they knew right away holy shit we have a hit and so the Masters of the Universe toy line hit Toy Shelves in February 1982 which I thought was really interesting I'm surprised they didn't try to launch them for Christmas but I guess you know they couldn't but anyway it was an absolute hit and in September of 1983 he man and the Masters of the Universe premiered on television and went from 1983 to 1985 with a total of 100 episodes 130 episodes a full-length animated movie called he man and Shira the secret sword in March of 85 and a Christmas special in December of 1985 this thing was rolling it even had a spin-off show called Shira Princess of Power that ran from 85 to 1987 with a total of 93 episodes which I was impressed I don't remember Shira that much as a kid I don't know why because I always remember it was on right after he man so I watched it there's boy toys and girl toys that's why you hate women so I explain the reason yeah that it is so the the good thing about the show is I was born in 85 and I grew up watching it which means I didn't start watching it probably tell almost 90 it was still going still on rotation still had toys I still grew up playing with all of it yeah I think I started watching this after the movie probably about 1988 89 somewhere around there right when Ninja Turtles were starting so I remember he man Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Transformers GI Joe all that was on syndication you can find it really easy wow so they just made this up on the fly they just went to their office looked around saw stuff on the walls and on the shelves and like okay we'll model a character after that and basically he man is basically Bud Light Conan yeah that's why he rags a tiger it was just there yeah it was part of the like big gym toy line and Paul Cleveland told one of the designers to use it and they're like it's it's not to scale it doesn't make any sense he goes I don't give a shit and the next day he came back and it was painted green and yellow and he goes it's it looks cool and he goes yeah but it's still not the scale and he goes I don't give a shit but a saddle on it came back the next day they had a saddle model for it and he goes that's it that's right I love it how they just like just winging it the whole time and it worked out oh yeah I mean the toys that made us didn't go into it but they're modeling too was crazy how when they first started they were just slapping shit together you know as an engineer this shit is hard to do when you're when you're executive say you're your managers like just coming up with new things change and everything every day and you're having to redo everything and like so these guys hats off to you everyone who was involved with this I honestly if you look at a lot of stuff earlier I think it was easier for them because they didn't have 30 years of reference material they had like a few things and just go off of that and they're trying to build something new now we have entire life's like lifetimes of reference material that you're always comparing it yeah you don't have any fans to alienate because yeah just ever been done for yeah and let me tell you they made money off this creation I've got sales by year here from the toys that made us and in 1982 they promised 13 million dollars and they hit 38.2 million in 1983 when the cartoon was hitting they made 80 million in 1984 it went up to 111 million in 1985 250 million which that was the last year the show ran but then you know we had syndication forever but 1986 it hit a total of four hundred million dollars and sales that is that's 1986 money to yeah and then or I said yeah 1986 and four hundred million dollars and then 1987 it crashed with only a total of seven million dollars and they said one of the biggest reasons was they had too many side characters on the shelves and not enough of the main so then stores started to put them on sale and once they were seen as on sale and kind of passed you know the prime then people just stopped buying them plus they didn't want to buy buzzman or extendo man and all the buzzman yeah but I mean they weren't selling they just like he man and skeleton evil in and all these cool things they weren't on the shelf plus you had an entire sheer a line too which kind of in a way watered down the product of he man but even though she or did sell well for a while I mean obviously I don't know if the sales by year that they had in the toys it made us if that includes she or but I assume it does just just my yeah I'm assuming they want those numbers to look better so plus splitting up between he man and she probably so it's probably easier just to say total sales let's take a break and listen to one of these Mattel commercials I think the first one right here for he man who's the big guy with the muscles he man the most powerful man in the universe skeletons is enemy he man he man skeleton and castle grace go you have to put the castle together here you see man oh yeah watch this action bad now I can't the power he man in skeletal each sold separately castle grace go all so separately from the masters of the universe collection from a tell so that is kind of the story of Mattel creating this and then getting to the master of the universe 1987 but we have an entire other company to talk about and this is nuts when I was I just wanted to go through a few films of Canon before they got to 1987 and when I started going through the list I have like 20 something movies written down here and that's me not even counting all of them canons filmography is insane so I'm gonna start 1984 with break in in May of 84 exterminator two in September of 84 ninja three the domination in September of 84 so they had two movies there in September on the same day I think once straight down this is like we were talking about this earlier worth if they were to had they were trying to do Netflix you know before streaming was a thing so imagine if they had streaming it just would have been the Canon channel and they'd be just streaming something new every week oh god could you imagine if you could get the Canon channel on something like Pluto I'm saying that would be I I'm not somebody when you guys talk about the studios sometimes I just glaze over so I don't keep track of that stuff that's like a thing I don't do Canon though I do that's a thing I remember in Miramax it was on so many movies back in the day opening credits on everything you know yeah you see Canon especially if you see Canon and go on Globus like you're gonna see some messed up stuff I'm gonna look up Globus oh so I got more so in 84 we also had missing an action in November and then break in two electric blue in December that's right break in came out in May of 84 and break in two came out December of 84 that's how insane they are and we've got more here missing and now we move on to 85 missing in action to the beginning rapid which I highly recommend to anyone if they like break and rap in his great life force American ninja underrated life forces wacky one of it and then we got hard rock zombies invasion USA the adventure of hercules death wish three King Solomon's minds and runaway train another great one then I'm enough people talk about it's never coming back what Canon runaway train oh yes I mean that was the Canon film that was very close to getting nominated for an Oscar it's sad that it didn't or maybe it did I can't we'd have to look yeah yeah and then in 86 we had Delta Force the Texas chain cell massacre two America 3000 cobra with Steven Seagull I mean Steven Seagull Jesus what's wrong with me so Vester Stallone and Vader Steven Seagull and Vader's for Mars actually it wouldn't have been because cobra was recut by Vester Stallone and he made it what it is today so invaders from Mars and then fire walker which is also a Chuck Norris thing I had to put that in there but as you can see you can see these like big time they're hiring big time actors big time directors and now we're about to get in with a they purchase all the IPs because you get into Alon Quartermain in the lost city of gold over the top. We have American Ninja 2, the confrontation, and then here we go, the big IP's. Superman 4 came out in 87, July of 87, Masters of the Universe came out in August of 87, and then Death Wish 4, the crackdown came out in November of 1987. And this is when Canon was going big, you know, they were getting their Sylvester Stallone's, they were getting their Toby Hoopers, they were buying Superman, they were buying Spider-Man, and they were buying Masters of the Universe. It was time for them to hit the big time. So they came up with a bunch of money, and instead of making Spider-Man with it, they decided to split that budget and create Superman 4 and Masters of the Universe, and off the profits of those two giant films, they would then create Spider-Man. And as you can tell, that never happened. So something happened with Superman and Masters of the Universe, and we're going to talk about one of those films now, but I just thought that was fascinating to go through their 84 through 87 films. 42 movies in three years. It's nuts. And we didn't even get to stuff like cyborg and blood sport. That's farther in the future. Cyborg is one of the best. And cyborg actually, I think was Masters of the Universe Part 2, like they had all their production sets, and they were like, "Well, we're not doing this." And then they were like, "Yeah, just make another movie." Blood sport is epic. It's one of my favorites. Watch it the other weekend. Stan El Trump's favorite, too. Multiple interviews. I think he gets it wrong. I think he thinks of hot shots, because when he takes her hands, he's gummy bears and chocolate. I think that's when he gets excited. Was that when they were mocking kickboxer? And they're mocking like all the Rambo and everything. I think it's hot shots or hot shots, part-duce. I know hot shots. I thought it was specifically mocking Top Gun, but yeah, maybe I haven't seen that. I know in Tartanoo they do Rambo a little bit. So you know you made it. It's like when Weird Al does a parody of you, you know you've made it as a musician, so. I got him out of breath. That's so it was to a TV spot. And then we'll continue. "Preview audiences have already discovered a new hero." "It's nothing but action." "Gilatory is a madman." "Be dead, great man." "Don't one grin is he, man. Frank Langella is Skellator." "It was almost like Star Wars and I loved Star Wars." "I hate it, hot." "Master's of the Universe, rated DG." "Start tomorrow at theaters everywhere." "Alright, so after those two histories, I'm passing it on to Brad to read the quick facts and who's starring." "Alright, well first quick fact is, it's fantasy, it's sci-fi, it's 1987, it's only Canon films good deliver." "That's right, this time the power is real." "The power is real, so we got Gary Goddard direct at this bad boy, his first full-length film, went on to direct movies like Jurassic Park and Terminator 2." "No, Dark Rides, for Jurassic Park and Terminator 2." "Oh, okay, I need to learn how to read." "You're written by David O'Dell who is at the screenplay for Dark Crystal and Supergirl, there we go. Billy Conti did the music. He also did music for Rocky and Karate motion pictures, Karate Kid. But we're talking about, I don't remember, but. " "Oh yeah, I forget to put in no." "Karate Kid." "Don't skip any of my words, but I'm gonna forget some." "Don't forget that." "Just here we did by of course the Canon group, I just love it when that logo comes on there. I'm like, I'm sticking around because you're gonna see, like we said earlier, you're gonna see something interesting. We got a running time, 106 minutes, that's one thing Canon does really well I think is they got their run times down pretty well." "They do, they do pretty good, like even if I don't like the film, I'm never bored." "No, release date August 7th 1987, this is gonna come up later in the show. It was up against some other films at the time that weren't very helpful to its bottom line. Here we got a box office of 17.3 million on a budget of 22 million." "Yeah, earlier I said the budget was 17 million, so I got that confused. I read that wrong, but I'm thinking that that $22 million budget, some of that was pocketed." "Well, if they split it between the two films also, Superman 4?" "Well, so I mean what they were saying is like they had $40 million for Spider-Man and then they split up the two budgets. And again, like Brad said, $22 million in Canon money is probably half at least. I don't believe them at all. I really don't." "So speaking of ratings and numbers, again here we got Rotten Tomatoes score of 21% on the tomato meter and a 41% popcorn meter, which I think is probably edging up these days as you go back and look at it from a stylish standpoint." "Yeah, that's one thing I've noticed about this is it has really softened people's opinion of it. It's improved because it was very harsh when it came out, especially from critics and then some of the fans I get were confused because this was very different than the cartoon series. But yeah, this reminds me a lot of Super Mario Brothers from '93 where. " "One of our favorite movies." "Yeah, I mean the following years, people stopped grading it specifically on the cartoon and started grading it as its own sci-fi film and I think it is helped." "Yeah, I can see what." "You remember the show Super Mario Brother with the drunk Italian stereotype before every episode? We could have got that as a movie and I think they did pretty well doing what they did. So I don't know what the fuck you want, some of this stuff to be. "You know, I remember watching this kid. I was disappointed to do that. They've been set on earth and everything. But if you look, you understand like they do that so they don't have to build those elaborate sets with all kinds of animatronics and crazy things because that's a lot of money and it's a lot cheaper to set it in a town in California." "I love it." "Yeah. And it makes me hopeful of what they can do with the new one that's coming out because I know they've been saying who they're going to have in casting and everything like that. This is a kind of film where if you want to build it in one of those fantasy worlds, you kind of have to have CG. I just don't see how it's possible." "What are you talking about?" "Look it up Chris while he's reading the rest of the stuff." "What are you talking about?" "There it is." "Oh right. They're making a new event." "Oh yeah." "20026. I've seen some of the cast that's looking really good." "Yeah, they're spending money. This is like serious." "Okay." "No." "All right. I'm the starring here. We got of course Dolph Lundgren, our friend. Back again on the show. He's he-man. Adam. He never goes by Adam and this. He's he-man the entire time. "Yeah. That was one of the complaints by people way back in the day. Where the hell's Adam?" "But we've reviewed him before and I come in peace. Universal soldier Rocky IV, which we haven't reviewed Rocky IV, but he was in there as Ivan Drago. Of course we got Frank Lenzella and Skeletor. Why keep mistaking for Christopher Lee, but he was in. He's been a bunch of broadway who's in junior with Arnold." "He's a tree." "Look." "Frank Lenzella rules. Courtney Cox as Julie Winston. She was formerly married to a WCW World Champion." "Oh, who's that?" "David Arquette." "Oh, that-what? Oh my God. I can't- I forgot. That's obscure. That's what I said. "I remember WCW was just imploding and they were just given the championship to someone new every 15 minutes. He was one of those guys." "Yeah." "I was like, man, was she married to like Diamond Dallas Page for like a month or something and then right when you said it, I was like, holy shit. I forgot he was champion. Was it any champion for like a week and then he lost it on Nitro or something?" "Yeah, but there's like a whole thing where he- there's like a documentary of him learning how to wrestle." "Yeah, I watched it like he wanted to do it." "He wanted to like wait to them and he's like, I want to wrestle. Can we do something?" And then he did a wrestling movie too at the same time, right? "No, I don't know." "I think he did. Let me look it up while you-," we'll just say yes. It's on the internet and out of the back. All right. "You might remember him from the series 2010, the reboot, which I watched religiously, but it got canceled." "That was good." "It's on a ton of TV work. Up next, Meg Foster is Evil Inn. She's been in one of our favorites they live." "How?" "Yeah." "She is great." Chelsea Field is Tila, yet John Cipher as Man of Arms. Willie Barthey as Guildor, he's been in Willow and I looked at his filmography. This dude has about 70 films under his belt. From he worked from 1930 to 2001. "Yeah, and I think he even started like a former union for dwarf actors in Hollywood. He was- he not only was a prolific actor, he actually did something for his own community in acting. "Yeah, it's big skill. Got to get a lot." "Then James Tolkien plays a known on-sense authority figure as detective Lubick. We've reviewed his work in Top Gun and Back to the Future. Christina Pickles as the sorceress. I think the sorceress has overrated in all he-man properties." "Dutel." "She was. Wasn't she like a bird figure? And I remember being like a bird. Yeah, that's what that's what are Halo stuff is all about. I'm gonna throw some source for his hate out here and lastly as far as the main heroes and the normal traditional he-man characters we got Tony Carroll with Beastman just a classic basically the Mount Rushmore he-man characters. Yeah, that was I initially he was a bear that they said in the toys that made us but they said it was too close to Chabaka. Okay, I think everyone had Beastman, he-man, Skeletor. Looks more like Blanca and I don't know which came out first. I'm assuming missed it. Of course, Master's here. First came out before Street Fighter. Yeah, that's what I'm assuming. Okay, this is the leading into the rest of them. These are new enemies. This was another complaint that I had about the movie and I still have this complaint. I don't want to see new enemies. I want to see Stinkor. I want to see people out the buzzman. I want to see all these guys. It was the guy that Cyclops guy. I want to see him with the course. We didn't get them. We got the new enemies. We got Robert Towers playing Karg. Anthony D'Londres has blayed. He had been in some Highlander of the series episode two Pond's Marr plays Sarrod who weirdly enough was a puppeteer on the movie Monkey Bone and we got Richard Sponsor as Pig Boy. Oh, the story of Pig Boy. But I can tell you that David Arcad did star in a wrestling movie. It was called Ready to Rumble. And I think he did the wrestling in WCW to promote that movie. I'm not 100% sure because honestly, I didn't after like 1998. Basically after WrestleMania 14, I think it was with Iron Mike Tyson. I don't think I ever watched WCW again. They were about to put WF out of business. He was the one man out of a, if you watched that documentary, this whole attitude era wasn't, well, he didn't want to go that route initially. It was just out of desperation. He did that. You have a character like Stone Cold Steve Austin whose gimmick is, he drinks a lot, he swears and he beats up his boss. That's always going to work. Yeah, and I want to go too far in that. But when you have like McMahon accidentally creating the own character of Mr. McMahon because he did the whole Montreal screw job with Brett Hart. It was like perfect when Stone Cold and that character, like those two characters clashing and it just became the attitude era and it was absolutely insane. But things just inverse so fast and WCW was when the toilet quig. Yeah, oh man, the fault WCW's nuts. There's so many documentaries about out there, but you know, back into this movie. You guys can talk about wrestling all day. We should start a wrestling podcast because we're not those out there. Then at Geekscape have one for a while I thought they might still I don't hear much about it anymore. So maybe they don't. I'm not a Geekscape podcast, you know, like expert because I feel like there's so many now, which is great. The family is really grown, but it's just like, wait, we're doing what? We have what? You want us to start? You want us to guess start what? Yeah, and I never keep up with the emails because I'm a horrible friend. Yeah, I wake up and there's 30 of them. I'm like, oh, wow. What did I miss? Anyway, did we get through all the enemies there? The new ones? Yes, we did. Yeah, we did. So out of all the new ones, I want to just ask you guys, I'm going to do a little poll here out of what Carl blade, Surrod and pig boy, which one is your favorite? I think for the movie blade looks pretty rad and like fits the whole like feel of the movie. And carg is cool. There's a little smash face. Yeah, I like carg because he's just can't follow orders whatsoever. Every time he's told to do something, he just can't do it and then he has some excuse afterwards. Yeah, you know, they never came out with a carg toy because they came out with blade and Surrod. Actually, I think I have the Mattel movie toy commercial right here. They didn't come out with pig boy, I don't think. Maybe they did later on, you know, for all of us, old farts in nostalgia because if you guys don't know the story of pig boy, it was I'll tell it later and behind the scenes, it's it's about the most hilarious thing in this movie. And the poor, the poor kid who won the contest is in the movie for like what, two seconds? If that, I don't even know. Yeah, they're just paying over him. Yeah. Oh, man. Anyway, let's get into the movies that came out at the same time that was competing against this. Brad, what helped kill the box office return in this movie? Well, you're going up against some franchises here and some other major studios and actors. And you have a lot working against you at this time and you're also canon. So sometimes you don't plan things out very well. So this is where coming up with things on the fly. I didn't pay off so well. It went up against James Bond in living daylights against stake out La Bomba. La Bomba. The Lost Boys, RoboCops, Snow White and the Seven Tours, rerelease, Summer School, which is really good if you have enough, you can't see that and can't buy me love. So you're going to get lost in the shuffle there. I think I saw like almost all those movies. Yeah, I don't remember stake out very well or Summer School. Can't buy me love. No, Summer School is like great. Is it, but I mean, you have RoboCops, Lost Boys, La Bomba. La Bomba was really big. And that was fucking huge. Yeah. It played every day on Fox. It seemed like they were just playing La Bomba and then that movie where this middle schooler makes out with this teacher or something. I can't remember. They take her to prom on a bike, a prostitute. It was a prostitute intended to be their teacher or that movie. Oh, is that risk your business? I don't know. It's like, uh, I heard prostitute. Tids in middle school or high school or whatever and they pay a prostitute to pretend to be their teacher. Huh. Yeah, that movie was on and La Bomba like every week. I mean, that's tough competition. And you already had, you know, Masters of the Universe falling in popularity, you know, with the crash of 7 million in 1987. This was bad timing. If this one came out in '86, this movie probably would have easily gotten around $40, $50 million just because of the popularity. It just, just terrible timing by Canon. And just, you know, and the word amount, that was actually something that was probably as big a deterrent in this film as, you know, the timing was once critics saw it and you go to the paper and you're like, oh, most of the film takes place on earth. And then they were just like smashing it because they're like Dolph Laundron is not a good he-man. That was a lot of crue, critique of it. It was on earth. A lot of the villains they didn't know. And then this is something that I think is really softened. And I still to this day don't get it. Is people complaining about skeletons latex max? I loved his mask. I thought it was great. It's super creepy. Yeah, you know what? That actually might have been more of a problem. Maybe it was too scary for little kids. Maybe I don't, I don't think this movie is a kids movie. I think this would be like the teenagers that grow up watching their siblings watch he-man. That's what I would feel would enjoy this more than. I was just a kid and you know, I was never scared. This is like, I was through watching, you know, Top Gun, Rambo. Yeah. Predator. You know, this is in that phase. I also watch this as a kid and enjoy it very much. Yeah, we rented this a lot in the 90s. This is one of our go-to's, which is sad because this movie has absolutely no trailers on the VHS, some bullshit. And the DVD that I have here that I listen to the commentary on. There's no trailers on this. It's just bare bones. It does that old like DVD bullshit, where it's just like, oh, look at the special features. It was commentary, characters, and the trailer. And you know how the characters would just be still screens that you could read about the characters. I'm like, okay. That was such a bullshit special feature back in the day. The early time. I don't know. When you were like 14, that rule, I thought, why I had to read. Now, you just look at it. That's true. I didn't even read it as an adult. I just went through them and it's like, oh, it's this bullshit. Back. I'm reading enough to do research on this film. I'm not reading these. Okay. So our favorite new enemy was Blade. I agree with that. I wanted to say "Pig Boy" just to be a contrarian, but honestly, no. I just like the story, "Pig Boy" sucks. Fuck that little kid. You're gonna smash your dreams. All right. Well, let's watch the trailer for Masters of the Universe. At the far end of the Universe, there is a planet ruled by a being of other evil. And there is only one man, dare's challenge him. They are locked in a battle to the death, a battle that will take them across the heavens, a battle that will finally be fought. I was the fucking town of Broughton. Across the face. Police! How might he move? Of course. I think I'm gonna need some backup. Can you show us the way? No. So tiny help me! Jolly! From a distant galaxy, they have come to Earth. Dolph Lundgren as he-man. Frank Langella as Skellator. Only Jolly have the powers to be. Masters of the Universe. Live the adventure. I don't know. Me and Brad love some flying disc action. You put people on hoverboards and fighting where they are. The swords? I mean, you got it right there. When did Highlander 2 come out? I don't know. 1991, I remember correctly. Okay. So, yeah, you're right. Wow, excellent job there. Of course you would know exactly when Highlander 2 came out. But yeah, that's exactly what I thought when I saw those two. I was just like, "Oh, Highlander 2." Look at that. I was like, "Maybe Highlander 2 actually stole this from there." But did you notice what this film looked a lot like in the trailer? I mentioned it earlier. Mattel was fighting this toy line the entire time. Star Wars. Yeah, the troopers, storm troopers. No, that's out there. So, how funny is this? That they marketed this as Star Wars on Earth. And the whole point of He-Man was to battle Star Wars toys. It's kind of. See, one of the big problems with this is like, obviously it was on Earth and everyone's used to be in an eternity of the entire time. But it's almost like they turned into their competition. And I think that was part of a problem during the time. Because no one really wanted to see He-Man Star Wars. When you get into the 90s and this becomes a cult classic, I didn't care that it looked like Star Wars. I just wanted to see something fun, which this was. This had all the ingredients of a cult classic. It doesn't quite know who to market this film to. Because if you market it to the original fans, they're going to feel crossed. Because this feels nothing like the cartoon. It was fantasy. It was science and magic mixed together and everything. And you know, eliminated some of the characters or changed some of the heroes in this. You never had Prince Adam. And then you go to the new kids who are probably younger than their older brothers or older sisters playing with these toys. And none of this matters to them. And it's probably too advanced for them anyway. It's too violent. So they probably couldn't even go to the movie theaters. They actually cared about that. Not our parents. But some of them out there. So this has all the ingredients of a cult classic where it would be rented a ton on VHS just to like fill time on the weekends or in the summer. Yeah, we owned it. I want to solve it for you. See, we never own this until we rented it so many times at the video store that they offered to give us another cut because they had a few copies of it. They're like, do you guys just want to buy this? Because I remember the guy looking it up in the computer. He's like, you've rented this like 14 times. We're like sweet and they sold it to us for like five bucks because you know, they didn't need all these copies. No one was renting them. And then that's how it became part of our collection. Even though that's a bad business model by that guy, but whatever. It keeps you going back. Always give children discounts. You'll have lifelong customers and stuff. We went there forever. And I think about the movies I grew up watching all the time. And in my mind, we owned them because I watched them so much. The cost of them. I'm like, Jesus Christ. Where my parents going out and buying a new movie every paycheck. I mean, during a certain time period before it reached the 90s. Yeah, VHS is where outrageous, especially for the buyers, you know, like the rental places. And if they ever got caught like buying it at Walmart and then renting it out, they'd get huge trouble from their supplier. Yeah, like my local store did. Ooh, that's dangerous back then. But I did find a fan review that kind of like put this together. And a really simple review. It was this was an instant cult classic. Everything anyone could want from the 80s cheese. Skeletor was magnificent stealing the show. And who could not admire evil in I haven't laughed this much in decades. And that was from May of 2025. And I saw so many from like 2020 to 2025, praising this movie, just being fun. Yeah, once you get over the fact that it really breaks from the theme of he man, as you were going into. It's, you know, Star Wars on earth and you know, you start grading it on its own merit. It is fun and it is an nostalgia filled ride. I don't even think of she man when I watch this. That's part of it right there. You just nailed it. That's the same thing with Mario Brothers. When I started to like it later on was because I don't think of Mario Brothers. I don't think of him and with this either. I think of the the film. That is one of the issues where I don't learn people or studios and stuff like that. But I can appreciate when I watch something. For what it is, I think better. Then being attached to something else. Like Nicholas Cage. I love him. I'm like, I'm doing. All right without further ado with all this behind us, although all the history of Mattel and Canon and the trailer Chris, let's go over this movie. Read the notes. I'm gonna read this for the first time. So bear with me. Awesome. The joys of working overnight. She got to sleep during the day. On the planet of attorney, the warlord, Skeletor sees his control of Castle Grace call the center of power in the universe and captures the sorceress of Grace. I love how the movie just hops right into that. Yeah, and you get to see all these fantastic matte paintings. By the way, I am saying matte painting, but when I listen to myself, you know, editing these, it always sounds like I'm saying, matte, but matte painting. I'm sorry. Matt, Matt, yes, Matt, Matt's painting. Oh, he does all these. Fish sticks. Fish sticks. Okay. Look at up. Look that up. We're not explaining it. All right. I'm sorry. I'm going to. He ran a drink soldier. Man at arms and his daughter, Tila rescue the locksmith welder, all door from school doors. Yeah. They did. I don't remember if they noticed him being detained or they just want to kill the troops and then they're like, Oh, there's a little guy and a net. I think he man says they've got some they captured someone. He probably thought it was one of their soldiers of their larger group because, you know, they put in so few heroes in this. Any friend or any enemy of skeletons, a friend of ours will throw invites them invented a cosmic key that can open portals to anywhere by using a lot of notes, musical notes. We got there. He's because he asks why they wanted to capture me. He's like, I made a key. That's how about anywhere and they're like, so we got in the city. And it's like, yeah, I didn't mean to. The origin woman came and asked for it. Yeah. And this was right here when as even as kids, we knew as like, huh, where's Orco? The little store surre that flies in this is basically the replacement because I felt the repertory as a kid. Obviously in 1987, making a flying character throughout the entire film was impossible. Plus he was such a comedic character that I think, you know, obviously they wanted to make this more serious. Yeah, this gives me more like willow vibes. Yes, 100%. Yeah, I don't know. I think this maybe didn't know what it wanted to be. It had trouble, but you're also grabbing from a very fictional cartoon. Which is funny because willow comes out the next year and does really well. So, Jesus Christ. This movie did willow copy this movie. Well, I don't ever know. Is this evil? Didn't you? You've already sealed the key and give it to skeleton. That's all they were talking about. She stole the first key, but he had another prototype. And this is the prototype is what he man and his gang is using. Oh, yeah, they hide in the fold away wall. I love that. I got the door open up and he's like, where's this thing? He's like under Castle Grayschool. And one of the big things the director in the commentary said is like when well door was like close in all the doors, the very last. one is just like a normal lot, you know, like the little latch that you put so you can open up the door and talk to someone. He's like, he had people run to like, like, you know, basically a home depot, whatever it was back then to get that. And he's like, I just thought that was so great to put in. Yeah, I do like all the locks and they're like, you can't activate it because if you do, they'll find us. And then they hear everybody and they're like, "Looks like they already did!" He made in the gang travel to free the sorcerer. It does not go well for them. No, they go in the secret passage underneath. Castle Grace going end up getting right in the middle of the action. You know, they routinely, he, man and his friends routinely have just terrible security practices for Castle Grace go. Like every property of this, Castle Grace go gets assaulted by some oversight of theirs. Like, they're security person who's ever in charge of that. They need to do shit case. They have tunnels, they have doors that are just open. All the anyone can just dig a tunnel right in Castle Grace go. Yeah, if you see in the eyes, they're just open. Well, to their defense a little bit, they just took Castle Grace go. So maybe they don't know all the ins and outs. And then so as they're escaping, they just types in random keys and they go. And they don't know where they're going and they think they got the good skeletal recruits. They got the key and out of nowhere that grappling hook comes out and grabs the key and yanks it through. And then they lose it in the warp. And they just like, you were high more much more likely to end up in the center of a star somewhere than you were like in. Yeah, I would not want to go to any random spot in the universe. And then there's so many more places that you would die. So I think what they wanted to do with this is like the key head musical notes that would send you to planets that had living life on it. I think that was the whole point, but it did not get explained really well in this story. So it's just like, I don't know, we're going somewhere. They don't even talk really about it being musical until later. Yes, until they introduce Kevin. Like how it uses musical notes to dictate everything. They talk about that in the alley scene like at the end when they go and gets the keyboard and everything. Yeah. Good thing they found a musician. Yeah, every living planet, I guess, is supposed to be encoded with us a song of some sort. Our song's free bird here. But yeah, when they're going through its lost and Kevin and Julie find the key date. So they pop out like a swamp and then it goes to a graveyard, but we were talking before this. We can't figure out how far away it is. And why it would be so far away from where they all popped out of it. The magic of plot. Yeah, because that grappling hook. I mean, it just flung it somewhere else when they popped out. Yeah, that was my thing is like, so you held onto the grappling hook. But somehow the grappling hook would go of it. I was like, well, that's terrible design from that grappling hook. I do like how they go to grab the box of the key. And he just holds the hook and he like shakes the hook and it's smoking. Where the fuck's the key? But they find it and need to start fucking with it and they activate it. That way a skeleton or an evil link can track them, but they don't track them all the way. No, and I love the screen that they show on that is so star wars and new hope. You know, where they're like checking out the Death Star. And this one they're just like, this is Google Maps. They, Skeletor has Google Maps or Evil in. I don't know who came up with this, but good job developing Google Maps in 1987. Or ahead of the time. That's a sci-fi man. It's that leads technology. That important video games. Then Skeletor dispatches his scout team of card blade beast man in Sarod. Down to a total mercenaries from like Empire Strikes Back. Completely just. Because these ones are extremely incompetent. Boba Fett. Yeah, Boba really real competent, right? Died real fast, Starlock Pit. Hey, he didn't die until the next movie, okay? There's a lot of time there. He got his man. Yes, he didn't die at all. Oh, that's true. There's only lived in there for 170. So what do you have to say about Boba Fett now? Uh, the shots sucked. Hey, except the part where you know, main Mandalorian. The whole way through. Yeah, I was like, yeah, this is it. You're still supposed to be a tertiary character. You're not supposed to be a main character, bud. No, this would be like doing a show about mana arms. And then like five episodes in. He man comes in and just totally disrupts everything. And everyone's like, oh, oh, the show's kind of good now. But as a whole, it still sucks. You know what? I was watching this and I thought, you know who would have been an awesome man at arms and who had a great connection with Canon already? Who's that? You're gonna say Bronson? Chuck Norris. Bronson would have been awesome too. I think Bronson would have been a lot better than Chuck Norris, but just gonna been chain-smoking. I do, I do like that. Him and the detective that they chose for these roles. I think they fit as just old grumpy men. Oh, yeah. Who is James Tolkien? It's all good. Yeah, J.R.R. Tolkien's great, great, great, great grandson. But so the scout team gets dispatched. They failed the cap for the key and return to the attorney. Yes, Galator pushes them killing Sarad. Yeah, he shoots the crap out of that guy. And then sent Evelyn with additional soldiers to capture the key. I don't remember how they failed the cap for the key. Was that at the school? Yeah, were they like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, high school on fire and then Julie runs away. Yeah, and that detective thinks Julie's killing all these people. My favorite part is when was his name Krog? Whatever his name is. He's just like, we were overwhelmed by the he-man troops. And then Evelyn's like got her little, you know, like, I don't know. It can show what happened in the past right there. Oh, that fucking pizza platter. Yeah, that's. And then he's like, you're overwhelmed. More like out there, where you're out, outnumbered. More like outclassed. I was like, oh, the little girl must help team man to feed you. And then Evelyn tracks down Charlie at the house. Great scene. I love all that. Putting the truth collar on him, getting them to tell him all the info. Yeah, they just leave it on him. That's like this major piece of advanced technology. Instead of like killing them or anything, they just leave it on him. And they use it. The good guys use it to question him. And I'm sure it's painful to answer when you're being questioned. He doesn't seem like he's enjoying it. And they're like, no, no, no, no, leave it on. We got some questions asked. Yeah, where's the key? Yeah, Julie's going to ask some like deep personal questions, but she never does. Maybe that's in the director's cut. But we're skipping the scene where him and the detective go back to Julie's house, or his house. Julie's house and the Julie calls. And he's talking. Yeah. Oh, if you find Julie and she's like, this is Julie, idiot. I'll be fine, Der. I know you can't talk right now, but do you have the key? Yep. And that wouldn't work. Now cell phones are so loud. Everybody can hear both ends of your conversation. Well, I mean, he would be young, so he'd probably be FaceTiming anyway. Or talking on speaker phone. Yeah. Excuse me. I'm talking on the phone here. Yeah, I know we can all hear it. I hate that. I had someone in a theater. I can't remember what movie it was. It was it was right when the theater started to open again from the pandemic. And someone in the corner was literally talking to someone on FaceTime. And I was just absolutely amazed. And then before I could speak up, some guy the back goes, hey, take your phone call outside. And I just clapped. It's like, thank you. You should have beat him up, Steve. We're clear. We're in another day. It was, no, they're too young. See, it's an awkward age. Oh, yeah, teenagers and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, he was like 17. So like, yeah, this is when the the assault on the Karen, how we just went around like just trashing Karen's and making people feel bad for being Karen's Karen's have a role in society that is going missing now. Yeah, but we still hate him. Yes, I'm their parents. We can still hate him, but we need him. Hey, people hate minimum wage jobs because those are kids jobs. But don't be closed during school hours. I'll be a man. That's right. All right, moving on. It's all about my convenience, okay? Yeah. And then we skipped where he took the key to the music guy. He's obviously in this. That's Japanese. Because then the detective, the detective gets the key and takes it to him also. He's like, yeah, I've seen it and then they're fucking with it. And that's when he man shows up and then that's when the army shows up and just destroys all that cool music gear. Oh, yeah. This is a great scene where the guy gets thrown into all these acoustic guitars that are sitting there and just destroys all of them. Yeah, the director said that was a tough scene to shoot. Because he's like those poor guitars because they were all real. Yeah, that's why I was like they don't look like fake ones. They look real. They were purchased to destroy. Yeah, and the PV cabs there, the full cabs. I'm like, that was a great. I love those. But my favorite is they're just bantering back and forth. Well, you don't think they like us. You know why they being zony? And he throws the grenade into like the barrel of just metal. Grab it. Yeah. And it takes forever to and detectives being an idiot in the whole time still being like, "You guys are on my cop, freeze." And it was like aliens are attacking this place. You're not seeing anything. - Now, you know, like Teal is in this fight and everything and I don't remember her, was she the daughter of Man of Arms 'cause she wasn't this movie? Was she in the cartoon? - I think she is. That's canonical. - And she had a completely different design too, right? - Yeah, I remember her being more fantasy and less sci-fi. - Yeah, I'm gonna look at that. - Man of Arms, I remember standing out. I haven't seen the animation a long time. - Oh yeah, Man of Arms is awesome. - This is the most he man I've watched, this movie over the years. - Oh yeah, yeah, no, I remember Teal. Yeah, she's got like the- - She's showing a little rest. - Yeah, she's showing some cleavage. She's red hair, everything like that, yeah. - She wears a crown. Oh, no, I'm looking at the modern version, but yeah, I got it. I might be confusing another character with Teal. Also, but she's like a woman, like an Amazonian. - Yeah, you might be confusing her with Evil Lyn, 'cause Evil Lyn is just kind of like- - Maybe. - The blue version of that? - Yeah, yeah, that's probably it. That's probably it. Not very smart. - Oh, I just saw Alison Brie is playing Evil Lyn and the new stuff. Ooh, that should be fun. She'll really milk that one. - Yeah, we knew he did the voice for the Netflix special, like Heaven Smith and Netflix special. She was really good too. - The character, that's a very character. I mean, Evil Lyn, like Seduce's Skeletor, get some all worked up and everything and then steal something from him. I mean, she's always like messing with Skeletor. - No, I like how her superpower is that she looks good. (laughing) You know, I don't have any skills. I'm just real pretty. - Well, she's supposed to be really magical too. - Yeah, she's really smart though in the film. They kind of, you know, she's like the tech genius in this. - I think in the film, they do really well as like a dimensional character. Where she's like strong and smart and a leader and conniving, which I mean, is a good thing for Evil people. - Yeah, she's really kind of the machine that makes it all go. I mean, Skeletor is kind of a moron and she's the one who keeps it on the rails. - Yeah, she's like the right hand man, so to speak. And without her, Skeletor is just not the same. - Yeah. - And the 80s cartoons are way different. - Different era. But then she turns into Julie's mom, which I think Julie is a fucking idiot for this. - I agree. - My mom's been dead for how many years I was at the cemetery. And now I just think that she's working for the CIA and they used to get this musical key that came from space. - See, I can never figure out what the timeline between her parents dying and her leaving the town is. - It's gotta be significant enough that they buried them. - I don't know, at least a couple months. But the whole thing is just like, oh, we're doing really important work. So we had to fake our own death. I was like, come on Julie. - They're not Russian spies here. - Yeah, your parents were just your parents and you're fighting aliens, maybe be a little suspicious of things. - That's why we judge women harder on the show. We expect more out of them. Not this dipshit Kevin. - Yeah, fucking. - Kevin is molestor van around town. I'm gonna be in a band. - Sure, sure you are. - You're gonna fail Kevin. That's what you're gonna do. - You're gonna be working in a factory, baby. - I love how she runs in there. She's like, my mom needs this and just leaves and like, all those got the gun that is shot 'cause they're fighting on the floor for some stupid reason. That is a trope in movies I will never get. There's like this amazing thing going on that everybody should like rally around and then they're just bickering in the back. Well, 80s and 90s, especially like the treat cops like complete buffoons, you know, like, there's a space fight going on in the other room and he's just like, you know what, you're gonna get arrested for life if you don't give me back that gun. And I'm like, you know, there's a space fight going on in the other room. Everything this Kevin kid said, you should probably listen to and maybe I don't know, help he man so you can live. - But no. - Shoot the people with red lasers. This is generally, if you see red lasers, you gotta kill the people. But I mean, it's just a trope that they had going on there. - Can you imagine if we develop laser weapons and they can only get it and red there and like, fuck, we gotta switch these, we gotta figure out how to get it in green or blue. - Yeah, that is, you see like a shirtless blonde guy, you know, he's a good guy immediately. - Yeah. - Oh, he's real ripped wearing leather. - You know, speaking of that, that he man vest, I used to have one of those in college and we go to football games wearing that. - Just the, just the bondage straps. - The vest part, yeah, the furry version. - What, you weren't in college? I didn't know they had any human stuff in the '70s. (laughing) - Don't worry, Brad. - We're all officially old now. - That's true. - I hit my officially old this last month. - Two weeks. - He been yelling at clouds? - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - Well, man, he also clouds. - Kids walking in the yard. (laughing) - But this is a, they opened, they used the key to open the portal even fucking bigger. The skeleton can get this giant floating throne through. And a bunch more troops to capture everybody. - Yeah, that was big time Star Wars inspired there. - It's really cool, the throne is rad, dude. - Yeah, not saying it isn't. - The tank, it's all cool. - Well, and they had an vental that stuff too, because they didn't have any of that in the, I mean, they had some of the vehicles, they use as inspiration, but a lot of the stuff in the show, I remember being based off animals. - Yeah. - So-- - You're like the bully mammoth. I'm making that up, I don't remember. - Yeah, I mean, you could have gone with that. I don't know, I didn't realize there's 130 episodes. As a kid, I've probably only seen like 60, 'cause I don't remember. - There's 65 per double season. - Yeah, so-- - Unless it's 65 total, but Google's weird. - He-Man was crazy, because I remember waking up in the morning, he-Man was on. I'd come home after school, he-Man was on, and then on the weekend, Saturday morning cartoons, sometimes he-Man was on. So it's just crazy-- - 65 total. It's counting both seasons. - Well, yeah, but they had a total of 130. - Well-- - Something. - Yeah, I'm looking and it says 65 episodes on season one and two, but if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, this has season two, episode 65 is the last one. So it's-- - Nope, nope, nope, I found it. Yep, okay, yeah, you're right. It's all of it. - I was right. - I looked at the list. - I looked at the list today as well. - That is making your writers and your animation staff freaking busy, working around the clock. - They worked those poor animators to their dead. - Seasons back in the day are insane. Now they're like eight episodes, 12, 20 max. - Yeah. - It's like eight episodes once every three years. - Yeah. - I think a normal syndicated show, wasn't it? Like it was around 30? Episod, I can't remember, but it was a lot. It's a crazy amount. 'Cause if you think there's only 52 weeks in a year, well, if you made one season of 65 episodes, how the hell, I mean, that's like three seasons nowadays. - That was more. - Yes, absolutely nuts. But anyway, so they finally get to Castle Grace Gole 'cause they captured he-man and then they do the, oh yeah, Kevin remembers the key jingle. (singing) - It's like it's really catchy. I was gonna use it in a song. - Oh, don't you worry. I've got that chord right here. (dramatic music) - More round. (laughing) The director also liked to point out the biggest laugh that they got was when Kevin's trying to remember the jingle and the song and the background's playing. And he's like, I wish that song would stop and Teel would just shoot the. (laughing) Shoot the stereo thing right there. He said that was the biggest laugh they got. - I think that's like one of the best scenes in the movie, arguably. When they're compiling everything together and then the cop throws back up and they yell, I don't think it goes to grab everything and they just teleport in it's half of the building. Like the family just shows up. - They get at the car shows up too. And then the detectives in there. - Night at the Roxbury when he's like, the nightclub is the outside. (laughing) - The Elephal, the detectives, I left out his primitive shotguns starting mowing down all these stormtroopers and everything with their advanced technology. - He kills way more people. - So Matt and I had the original host of this. We had a huge discussion one time because we were talking about Star Wars. And I was like, you know, metal bullets would go right through their plastic with ease. And like this movie proves it. He just takes a shotgun and he's like, "Hey, no one takes pot shots at me." And then he starts wailing these black stormtroopers. - Finally understands what he's supposed to be doing. He wants to shoot somebody and they've been telling him to the whole time. - Hey, he gets rewarded at the end. They give him a wife that probably is, you know, who knows? - Did you know? She tried to kiss him multiple times. - Oh, and he turned away? - Yeah, he kept moving his head and going away. And I think she was like just being like, "Oh, yeah, I got a beautiful woman." And he's like, "I would kiss him." And like he moves and then she goes to like kiss him again and he like dodges again. - Oh, I'm gonna have to rewatch that. - He just ends up staying on an interior. He just stays there. - Yeah. He said it's some sort of, retirement. He's like, why would I leave? I got a good woman. I got this robe. I can go in anywhere. Just basically just live in the Playboy Mansion for the rest of his days. Yeah, and this has got to be months after because I had to like fix the key in everything. Yeah, I noticed that the the sorceress returned to her youthful self, which was end up being Courtney Cox's mom and friends later on. Yeah, we did miss that when I read slow and I like to talk a lot. So when I read the notes, sometimes it goes along. I'm sorry. But we skipped when Skeletor turns into Shaol Khan. This is a crazy. I so remember this as a kid because this is like super shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to like where you just have a character show up at the end. You're like, whoa, that's awesome. Yeah, it combines the sorceress and the oh man, the sword sort of attorney. Yeah, that's how he gets this gold armor and it's so yes, the ticking clock and this is weird. I still though I've watched a movie twice now in the past two weeks, one with a commentary on and one without. And I guess the whole point is like are the moons or something the universe is aligning to give him the power of the universe. And that's why they had to get back to Castle Grace gole and time. That's why they kept in man arms kept saying how much longer they had. So they put a ticking clock in this. But I'm going to be honest, this is one of the most like unrecognizable ticking clock. I never felt stress from it the entire every time I've this is the first time I've ever heard that. What do they call it? In this movie so many times. It's the same it's the same purpose of the rings or have been Lord of the Rings. It's something to move the plot along. Yeah, a lot of them call it just the ticking time, you know, the ticking bomb. I think that was the original. It's just like you have a ticking bomb. Oh no, we have to stop it in five minutes. Yeah, movie time is usually like 20 minutes. So yeah, I just never felt like I just felt like this was the motion of events. I never felt like it was every time it happens. I see this in this film. I forget it. And I'm like, oh yeah, they're trying to do that. If they just don't do a good job of selling it. Yes, the score is not moving fast enough if that's his goal. No, he's not. Yeah, he's so like he's so over confident. I mean, I love how Franklin Jell-A plays him. How he's just like he's kind of lazy because he's like, I can kill anyone at any time. And I love it when he man's talking like when they're on earth and they're on top of that roof. And he's just like, whatever, he's like waving him away. I don't care. Just take him to attorney. Yeah, let's punish him. We're going to kill him. No, that way he man stays with us. Yes, we want you because he wants to, you know, pretty much beat him down. So no one in attorney will ever rely on him to be the hero again, I guess. Yeah, is it lonely being a hero? Is lonely? It is being evil. It seems like not. He's hanging out with friends. You dumb ass. Yeah, and everyone's terrified of you, Scouts or I mean, your closest friend is Evil in and she basically bails on you when shit goes bad. They just walk out of screen. Skeletor is a very unique intriguing character. And he's still like, you know, you see memes of Skeletor today, even new ones like every day. And he's in a character from the 80s. So obviously, you know, he is over. He's over with the fans. This is something they brought up in the toys and make us and then the director also brought up in the commentary. It is hard not to keep the camera on Skeletor because he's so much more interesting than he man. Yeah. And they said that and the toys and made us the, you know, Skeletor made the show. He was the star. I think the villain is the show and most things. Like the villain is usually the most interesting, the most complicated, the coolest looking. Yeah, out of all the 80s cartoons that I can remember right now, the only two that were like close and balanced. And I think maybe the most balanced was Megatron and prime and prime was because he was so grandiose and just like huge, you know, bigger than than life itself. And then you had Megatron just being a total fucking crazy man. But he also had star scream and those two were so good together. I think G.I. Joe and Transformers had the cast of characters enough on both sides that it was interesting because Joe fucking sucks. But like all the guys around them are really cool, like Sergeant slaughter and say guys. And then you had the cobra that side. Oh, cobra. Cobra commander is just yeah, he's going amazing. Just screaming all the time. We even got into like center cats where it's like mumrod and like his. Yeah, that was like a fan. Oh, now that you mentioned thunder cats, they'll probably do a once once he man comes out, they'll be a thunder cats movie immediately after we're all like it. The dude, I hope that they make these retro movies feel more like retro movies. They like I told me I watched tank girl not too long ago. And I was like, it just felt like I was watching a movie. He man just feels like you're watching a movie. And I miss that. You can have your dunes and stuff. That's awesome. But I also sometimes just want to feel like I'm watching a movie on a Saturday afternoon. Oh, you want a lazy, a lazy watch where it's like you can watch it any time. You can watch it for a movie night or you can watch it while you're falling asleep on a lazy Sunday. But you it also just feels like you're watching a film. Like it doesn't try to sink you into it. They just feel like you're watching somebody that made it. Oh, so it's not you don't want it to be too epic. Yeah, just want to because Dune is epic. It's heavy. That's like said, you can have dunes. I can turn that on with my surround sound system dim the lights. Well, let's talk about the end of this film when they ran out of money, which is pretty funny because cannons like, yeah, we're out of money. So you're done after this shot. So they had shot all the way up to when he man breaks skeletal or staff and like turns them back to normal. They didn't have anything after that. So the director had to take part of his salary and sort of kind of duct tape the rest of the set together and shoot it in a dark lit like sound stage. I thought it was a garage. I thought someone said in the past there's a garage, but it's actually a small sound stage and he kind of like taped duct tape the rest of this, you know, production together and then uses on money to shoot it along with skeletal or falling in the pool. And then once they're done fighting, it goes to the like celebration that you have in Star Wars where they get the medals and everything. And then we have the like, why would I leave? I got a good woman. And then it goes to that. And I think that's so funny that cannons just like, we don't have time. We have no money. Goodbye. And he's like, I'll use my salary. Yeah, they just he falls in the hole very Star Wars and then right to just cuts to them being done straight up extortion straight up extortion on cannons part to there. It's kind of dirty where it's like you're telling this director's like, well, if this movie sucks, it's going to reflect bad on you. You're not going to work. And so you're going to have to spend your own money to make it, you know, somewhat serviceable. And I don't know if he ever did a film after this. I think he just did like dark rides. But maybe he did. I didn't look that hard. I just when I saw that he did the Jurassic Park dark ride and T2 and a few other ones is like, you're talking about the amusement park rides. Yes. Yes. University. I've never been to Universal or anything. Universal Studios. Yeah. That's he directed those that T2 one was fucking awesome. He did something called Captain Power. I don't know what that is. You should look it up. It looks rad. It does suck when you get stuck on something like that. You know, you got to use your old money to finish it. Because I just love I guess cannons just like, yeah, he broke the staff then do this celebration is like, yeah, you can't do that. And it also happened like a month after the shoot. You know, they had to get the actors to come back and the two of them to fight in some dark sound stage. I got the idea to finish it though. Well, Franklin Jellah loved this movie. He loved Skeletor. He said he had an excellent time on the filming this. So I think he had no problem because he said he did it for his son. But clearly, you know, he also had a great time doing it. So all right. Let's take a little break here. We'll let you listen to the original He-Man intro while we gather our thoughts for behind the scenes. All right. Here we go. And the masters of the universe. I am Adam, Prince of Eternia and Defender of the Secrets of Castle Grace Go. This is Cringer, my fearless friend. Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said by the power of Grace Go. Cringer became the mighty battle cat and I became He-Man the most powerful man in the universe. Only three others share this secret. Our friends the sorceress, the Minerarans and Orca. Together we defend Castle Grace Go from the evil forces of Skeletor. ♪ Baby, hey ♪ - We're back. I love those old intros. That was great. I do want to watch the show now. - Yeah. It seems like it's bad. And I don't know why people complain about this movie so bad. But I sure love "T-Man" as a kid. - You know what toy? I was so jealous of. It was my cousin Brad had Castle Grace call where he carried around his "T-Man" toys and that was badass. - Yeah. - Before we get into the behind the scenes, Brad, I noticed she wrote down some classic 80s sci-fi tropes. - Yeah, so it watches movie. We get to recommendations, I'm gonna say yes, because you watch on its own merit. Just check out these tropes here. It's like you get a fish out of water hero, the evil warlord villain, the McGuffin Quest, Ragtag, band of heroes, the outlandish head and shman, the damsel and distress. You get the cheesy 80s, laser battles, the budget-friendly modern-day earth setting, power of friendship ending, and then the post-credit sequel to these at the end. So it's like this really checks off a lot of 80s sci-fi fantasy trope boxes. - Yeah, this was the first film I ever remembered doing the post-credit tease. This was such a huge thing because the way we discovered it was we always let the credits play, because my brothers and I, I don't know, we'd just be getting something to eat and trying to figure out what we're gonna watch later. And when it popped on, I remember my brother, Andrew Yelling. He's like, "There's more!" Like running in and just missing it and then pressing stop, rewinding, hit it in the right spot and just like, "Oh, there's gonna be a sequel!" But then after time, we figured out, this is well into the 90s and I'm like, "I don't think there's a sequel, guys." (laughing) - Yeah, you're right. - I don't think I'm gonna miss. - I think they're lying, though. - I would have been rad, but I also think it's great as a standalone piece. - Yeah, just 'cause I'm fun. We should do a whole list of best post-credit, non-marble movies, 'cause I feel like there's gotta be quite a few out there. - Flash Gordon. - Another one around the sequel? - No, I've got there, yeah, I've got there's a lot. - I've got there is, anyway, behind the scenes here, Canon films acquire the rights of Spiderman. Oh, I already explained this, that they split. They were gonna do Spider-Man, that they split the budget to do the two movies Superman 4 and Master of the Universe here, but-- - It goes straight to Pig Boy this poor soul. - Yeah. So during the filming, Mattel held a contest for children for a chance to appear in the film, which this guy, this little kid named Richard Sponsponder won the competition, but his victory was announced as filming was nearing completion. So they had to figure out a way to get this kid into this movie and they were already past the earth scenes. They already had them all filmed in the can. So they basically had their makeup team put together this Pig Boy character that would be holding Skeletor Scepter, and at the very end, before he turns into super Skeletor, it's like a two-second scene where he rips the staff away from Pig Boy and that's all you get for this kid. And that is the tale of Pig Boy. - I thought there was something dark in there, but I'm not really sure. If there is, someone can do, I didn't do a lot of research on it. I just knew. - I don't know if they want to know if that kid's life sucked. - I think someone did an interview with him years later. I don't know if his life sucked after that, but I already brought up the Frank Onjello. Absolutely loved this movie, loved the experience that it was fantastic. And it's one of his favorite roles that I see Brad, you put that note there. Masters of the Universe used Jack Kirby's plot to New Gods, his comic book, as an inspiration to the story. And John Burns in comic shop news number 497 brought it up. He said, "The best New Gods movie in my opinion is Masters of the Universe." I even corresponded with the director who told me that this was his intent, and that he tried to get Jack Kirby to do the production designs, but the studio nixed it probably because he cost you much money. But yeah, the director Gary Goddard, he clarified that Burns comparison of the film to Kirby's New Gods was not far off at all. In fact, the storyline was greatly inspired by the classic Fantastic Four/Dr. Doom, Epics, The New Gods, and a bit of Thor thrown in here and there. I intended the film to be a motion picture comic book through it, though it was a tough process, well, what the? Was it a tough proposition? - It's what you do to prostitutes. - Opposition to sell the studio at the time. Yes. Oh, man, I got really just, could not read it. So that was really interesting, 'cause when we had Jonathan London on and his brother, when we were doing "How Comes a Frog Town," he told us all about this, and I looked more up on it, and I thought it was just fascinating how that was Gary Goddard's like intent. He wanted to make it like New Gods, and then throw a bunch of other stuff. He really wanted to make a true comic book film. - I'd feel like it. - Yeah. Oh, and then Bill Conti, who did the music on this, this is crazy. So this movie, when he was coming up with writing the music for it, they had a musician's strike at the time. So he basically wrote it all, and then gave it to people in Europe, orchestras in Europe to put it all together, and then they just put it on the movie. And I gotta say, this is one hell of a musical score. This is way too good for this film sometimes, I think. I'm like, wow, this is amazing. - I think it's one thing that helps with us liking the film. Can you imagine it the music suck? - Yeah, yeah, I know. If it was like cheap, like a TV movie music, you know, it would just really downgrade the film. And probably, I mean, just to look back at it now, it's just how good the music is, and then how you're like, this is just like kind of a fun sci-fi, fished out a water film. That just mixes a bunch of stuff together, little he-man, a little star wars, a little Thor, a little new gods. I love that. Just like a big melting pot of sci-fi. - Yeah, it feels like a lot of different things, and then it feels like it inspired different things. Some of my favorite movies, and Mortal Kombat. Do you can't tell me Shao-Kon's not Skeletor? - Shao-Kon's, do you think based off Skeletor? - Yeah, and Shredder. - It's fair enough, yeah. Let's see here. I forgot to mention this. Even though he-man ended in '83, and then the he-man movie kind of tanked in '87, it really tanked it and kind of. It was a massive bomb. Basically killed Canon, 'cause Canon could never financially get back after Superman IV in this. But he-man did go on to have many more cartoons. I don't know if I captured them all, but I think I got them. We had the new adventures of he-man that ran for 65 episodes in September of '89, and that was on syndication, so I guess anyone could buy it to play it there. - Maybe that's what I grew up watching. - Well, it was a lot different. It was a lot more spacey. But apparently that did not do well. The toys did not sell well at all. It just was not appealing to the new generation. I think the old generation was confused. They're like, "What the fuck is this?" New he-man. Then skip about 13 years, we had he-man and the masters of the universe. It ran 39 episodes and premiered of August 2002 on Cartoon Network. I do remember this, because I was in college in Cartoon Network who was massive at the time. I don't remember digging it that much. I just, it just, I don't know, it's too old maybe. - I was in a frame then. - No. Then we had he-man and the masters of the universe for 26 episodes. That was two seasons that ran September 21st on Netflix. I didn't watch this. Actually, didn't even know this existed. - I knew it existed. I did not watch it. - So, and masters of the universe revolution, I watched the first episode of that today for fun. - Yeah, there's also revelation too. There's two parts to it. I've seen all of it. It's really good. Kevin Smith, Mark Hamill doing Skeletor, got Henry Rollins in there. He's freaking awesome. - Okay. - So, I guess I need to watch that. - Yeah. - And it introduced a lot of new characters. 'Cause the first episode, I was like, who are all these people? - And it goes hard. I mean, Moss Man, I'm not gonna spoil that for you, but there's Moss Man. There's all the good one. Stinkor makes an appearance even so, this legit, Stinkor in there makes a legit. - And who was the good guy that like shot the elephant, that shot the water out? He was in there too. I forget his name. - Oh yeah. I got a rule. - I remember that character just shooting water to people. And then we got Brad put the note here, Masters of the Universe coming out in 2026. - Yeah, 'cause when I was watching this, this is for E7 version, I'm thinking of myself. If they did this today, who would they cast? And then I go and look it up. I was like, oh, they already got a new movie coming out in 2026. So yeah, it looks pretty good. - Yeah, it was on my Facebook feed one day. And that's why I decided I was like, we need to do this. So we're gonna force Chris to pick it. - Yep, that's fine. - All right, let's move on to recommendations. This is gonna be pretty easy. Brad, I'll let you go for it. - Yeah, I'm gonna say definitely just watching on its own merit. You know, it's for the nostalgia and just the jeeziness to it. It's not too heavy of a watch. So that's my recommendation, yes. - All right, Chris, how about you? - Yeah, this movie fucking rules. I love it. Every time I watch it, I like it more [BLANK_AUDIO] more. It's like I think I like the fantasy and sci-fi crossover aesthetic a lot. Yeah, with me, you know, I tried to separate it from the salge as a kid, because you know, I loved it as a kid, but also I was I was just being born when he man came out and I watched it on syndication, but I guess by the time I got around watching this on VHS a lot, I didn't care as much that it wasn't like the cartoon, I definitely was confused a lot because I'd always try to figure out who blade was and all that. And then watching it now, I am a lot softer on it and had more fun because I just think it's funny to see, you know, this story that had so much grief on it, you know, with Duff-London, you know, hating it, saying that his English was terrible. I watched this and I thought his English was fine. I found out that's because they re-dubbed it and he had been practicing a lot a lot of the lines. That's why it's so much better. I was like, it's better in Highlander and it's better than Van Damme. Which Van, oh, they're, oh, you're talking about their actual like speech. Yeah, I think he did just fine. Van Damme never really got better. Did they just understand him better as time went on? I think, I think we just learned to understand what he was saying. But yeah, this film's just, it's just a fun fish out of water sci-fi that like I said was a melting pot. I think it's so much better than what it's current time gave it. And I understand why it bombed. I really do. It was a tough box office and the film was just confusing at the time. And I feel like that happens a lot that you, you know, once you get like 20 years out, you re-look at it and you're like, oh, this is fine as its own movie. It really shouldn't be called Masters of the Universe. No. I like it when they make movies based on something else, but they can't call them any of the characters. I just think it's funny when the toy companies just forced them to put new characters in so they could just sell more toys. Yeah, like Ninja Turtles too. Or Transformers when they just killed off a whole bunch of them. They're like, they're like, no world eater. Oh, what is it? Unicron. All right, now we'll go on to the museum. This was the second time I've had to reclaim my property from you. And belongs in a museum. So do you. This is the part of the show where we got in the film jungle. Like Indy to put something in our wing of the museum. I guess this would be our sci-fi wing in the museum slash like toy line museum because we've also done Transformers. You guys weren't a part of that, but that was, you know, GI Joe the movie. So Chris, you quote unquote picked it. You get to go first. I have a couple. So if you guys pay one of them, I can go with another. You guys go. Steven, you. I'm going with the Skeletor suit. I thought that was the cool is like super shredder thing. Gold suit. Gold suit is wild. Yep, that was one of mine. And you know what? Let's just listen to Frank Langella talk. He just sounds so great as the God Skeletor. [Music] And what consequences are you now? This planet, these people, they are nothing to me. The universe is power. You are unstoppable power. And I am the force. I am the power. I absolutely love that. And I'm sure they've made a toy of that. I think that would be fun to have as just something for people to come over and talk about it. Like, oh my God, I remember that movie. That's right. Maybe gold Skeletor. All right. How about you, Brad? I'm just going to go with Frank Langella as a performance-ass Skeletor. The makeup and everything. It was great. That's doing rules. Storm reminds me. Everything is crystal-ly every time, but it's different. It's the different guy. He's great. Both great. I won't pick Skeletor then. I was going to pick it Skeletor scene. I'll tell you afterwards. But I'm doing the music scene with the car and the wall and everything. I think that is arguably one of the most memorable scenes in the movie. Oh, we're the entire scene. In Grayscale, yeah. That's wild. That actually would be a hell of a conversation piece if they ever made that as a stach. The Todd McVarlin used to do. Like, respond. They used to have those cut out to the comic book in Toy Form. If you had a diorama of that in your room, everyone would be like, is that from He-Man? Damn right. From Night at the Roxbury. And then otherwise, I really liked the holographic head of Skeletor when he's yelling at people on that mat. Oh, yeah, yeah. Good painting. And then they're like walking around in front of it. I just think it's really cool. Yeah. The restart wasy there too. I just thought their job of making Grayscale, the inside of Castle Grayscale is nuts how they used. It was so big they had to use two film studios because it was all real. I mean, they went out and built this massive gigantic set. Maybe that's why they were getting out of money. Oh, probably. And then all those statues, remember, he man pushed down one of the statues. Yeah. Those were like gods, technology gods of the past. They said, and those were full carved out statues. I don't know what they're made of, but that's nuts. I need to look up to the history of He-Man then because that sounds really cool. I don't know if those were in the show. I just know they were in the movie and he mentioned that those were like old gods that wrote laws and created technology that they used to this day. That's cool. I guess that's what Skeletor was essentially trying to become was the top god out of all the gods. I guess that's cool. I mean, it wasn't the best commentary. A little bit because I had already looked up so much on the film. And mostly he just kept saying, oh, this is where the lighting's really bad. He was just talking about scene by scene. He wasn't going into anything that was really big. At first, he didn't even seem like he wanted to be there because he was like, well, I'm tasked of doing the commentary for the DVD here. And I'm like, oh, wow. What an exciting start there, buddy. I know how it feels. Yeah. That means Chris wants to go. All right. I want to go. You heard it here first. I hate everybody. Yeah. All right. That will end it. We'll be back next time with another. Oh, it's my pick next time. It's another Canon film. So if you guys want to go out and watch it, I think it's on 2B. You can watch Ninja 3, the domination. It sounds a little kinky there. I own it on VHS and about the screen factory of it many years ago. This film is so this is one of the most Canon Canon films the Canon can make. It has nothing to do with the first two Ninja films. They throw in new characters and they just slap Ninja 3 on it to sell it. And I'm like, ah, there you go, Canon. Hey, man, I'm looking at pictures of it. It looks pretty fun. It's wild. I've seen it a few times now. Matt and I watched it at a movie party one time when I was first introduced to it. And I go, what the fuck is this? Yeah. The three little boys that are ninjas wanted to have backwards caps. Yeah, it's a promising. Yeah, that's, but you know, if you notice there's a trend here, all of our best episodes are like when we first see a movie, we're like, what the fuck was that? Yeah. Yeah. Chris is definitely talking about three ninjas. And I knew or something. I just scrolled down and it starts showing three ninjas. And I was like, that's a wrong movie. Those would be fun films to do. At least the whole Cogan one. But I bet that whole Cogan three ninjas is probably dreadful. But it also might be right up her alley, but that's for another time. So remember to be kind in rewind. In today's story, Elena tried taking a magic potion, which she thought would help her. Well, she found out there aren't any magic potions. And you know what? There aren't any magic drugs either. Anytime you take one from anybody with your parents or your doctor, you're taking a very big chance. You're gambling with your health. Maybe even your life. Drugs don't make your problems go away. They just create more. You're listening to the Geekscape Network.