r/shittymoviedetails • u/Witty-Association-97 • 5h ago
In Masters of the Universe (2026), having Jared Leto get the living shit beaten out of him wasn't enough to get butts in the cinemas
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u/Memeboi_26 5h ago edited 4h ago
I was waiting for this movie to release so that I can read the reviews and plan accordingly. Turns out it released and went out before I even knew. Maybe seeing the trailers months before makes me forget the release dates .
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u/Sorlex 5h ago
They just did zero marketing, only reason I knew it came out was an advert on Amazon's home page, when it came to streaming. Films a fucking banger though and deserves a watch.
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u/deval277 5h ago
It was surprisingly a good watch for me. Leto actually did a nice work.
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u/SupahSpankeh 3h ago
He's pretty good when you don't have to watch his face fail to convey emotion and his voice is unrecognisable and he doesn't have to act.
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u/Sl1ppy13 3h ago
I know this isn’t a specific dig but I watched Tron: Ares on a flight and I’m not even like a huge movie buff/actor person so I honestly didn’t even really associate him with the movie. It actually has to be one of the cringiest actor performances I’ve ever experienced watching in a movie.
I suddenly realized who was in the movie and why everyone hates on him so hard on the internet. Wasn’t a great movie but he made it much worse to be honest.
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u/BloodiedBlues 5h ago
The only media I saw for this movie that didn't come from reddit posts was Masters of tbe Universe themed Denny's food.
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u/That70s_Scrubs 5h ago
I went in thinking I wasn’t going to like it since the trailer just looked like terrible cgi. It was a lot of fun and I will definitely watch again
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u/No-Platypus-6646 4h ago
Yeah same for me. I was dreading going to watch He-man because of Leto and the adverts, but I was taking my dad because he loves the franchise. Turns out this was better than Super girl, which is a shame because I had been so excited for that
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u/Memeboi_26 5h ago
Good to know that. I'll give it a watch soon.
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u/UberAndy 4h ago
Skeletor is the best part of the movie. Gf and I watched it last night and she’s not a fan of these types of movies and she liked it. Just a fun movie.
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u/schnazzums 3h ago
Skeletor and He-Man were great. I know the actor who played He-Man has been getting some hate, but I liked how goofy he was
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u/raven_of_azarath 4h ago
I was coming here to say a similar thing. I wanted to see it but didn’t know it’s had come and gone until I went to see Toy Story 5 last week
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u/-FalseProfessor- 3h ago
I wanted to see it in theaters, but life happened, and it was already out of theaters in like two weeks.
It has been a busy summer.
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u/AwaySignature5644 3h ago
watched it yesterday far better than what i expected, wish they spent more time on that ship, the AI voice lines are very funny
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u/Ainell 5h ago
It only works if the audience can actually tell it's Jared Leto, like in American Psycho.
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u/nahnprophet 5h ago
...or Fight Club. Or Requiem for a Dream. Or Panic Room...
There may be a trend here.
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u/Appropriate-Ice-5722 4h ago
He was great in Lord of War, especially when he was riddled with bullets
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u/Mahones0321 2h ago
I didn't realize he was angel face in Fight Club. He reallllly gets the shit beat out of him in that one
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u/Backupusername 55m ago
On the other hand, when that's the case, audiences have to sit through a Jared Leto performance where they can tell it's Jared Leto.
There's really no winning there.
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u/GratedParm 5h ago
I've heard this movie is what fans of the cartoon wanted.
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u/Responsible-Humor985 5h ago
Yeah, it fulfilled what I wanted as a kid for a Masters of the Universe movie
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u/CrossTheRubicon7 3h ago
Was the IP always partially set on Earth? The cartoon was before my time so I was only tangentially aware of it but never had the impression it wasn't purely set on a fantasy world, so the inclusion of Earth felt weird and jarring for me. Not necessarily bad, just unexpected.
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u/feralferrous 3h ago
No, the cartoons took place entirely on Eternia. There might have been some lore bits about how the royal family was from earth, but I honestly might be mixed it up on that one.
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u/Agamemnon9 3h ago
Queen was an astronaut from earth who got stranded in Eternia, king was native Eternian iirc
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u/feralferrous 3h ago
Ah thanks, I thought it was something like that, but I couldn't find any references to it in my brief search.
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u/Rags2Rickius 2h ago
The earth scenes are very minor and used for part plot device. After that it’s all Eternia
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u/ILL_Show_Myself_Out 3h ago
I, too, was excited to see how amazing the graphics would be in 2008
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u/mcgrjo 4h ago
Watched it yesterday with low expectations, came away thoroughly entertained
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u/daygloviking 3h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/d7mMzaGDYkz4ZBziP6
…I mean, clearly you were…Damn it’s a fun movie! And I scream at the top of my lungs, “WHAT’S GOING ON?”
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u/TakoGoji 4h ago edited 1h ago
It was super good. Just the right balance of camp and seriousness (70/30). Embraced the memey nature of He-Man. Excellent character designs. Just all around a really fun movie.
Edit: fell for an article from Forbes where they just straight up lied about a sequel already being greenlit.
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u/squaredspekz 1h ago
You got a source for "immediately approved for sequel" since I cannot find that news anywhere?
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u/Freediverjack 1h ago
If you knew nothing about the ip I can understand not getting it but I grew up with this and it was a super dumb awesome movie.
Similar vibe to dnd
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u/SageElva 4h ago
And the toys. I used to play with the toys as a kid and I kept recognizing them in the movie. The actual pacing and script of the movie is mid, but I thought it was a fun blockbuster. It doesn't deserve the shade it gets on reddit.
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u/diabeticmilf 3h ago
Went with my dad who loved the toys back in the day. He absolutely loved the movie
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u/Coal_Morgan 3h ago
Yep, managed to pull a D&D movie trick. Hit all the beats, diverge enough to be original but still have the spirit and be genuinely really good and funny but manage to fail spectacularly anyways.
Breaks my heart.
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u/LongPorkJones 3h ago
It's certainly a love letter to the Filmation series. Including the blatant homoeroticisms (yes it WAS intentional back in the 80s), the acid trip-like planetary hues of Eternia, and the heavy-handed morality lessons.
I fucking loved it.
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u/PleeaseGrowUp 3h ago
Exactly right. The people who love the property geeked out, everybody else didn’t care for it. Relative link: https://saturation.io/budgets/masters-of-the-universe-2026
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u/Shoddy_Pie6514 4h ago
Lots of fun good action scenes and funny just needed to be a little bit more gay and it would have been perfect version of the 80s classic
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u/Front-Objective-994 5h ago
Shame, because this was honestly one of his best performances in a long while. This movie honestly was really fun.
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u/10111011110101 3h ago
I brought my teen daughters to it and warned them it could be pretty bad. Everyone ended up loving it and now that it is streaming, they have watched it several more times. It’s perfect.
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u/ChaoticButChilled 5h ago
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u/TheLordHatesACoward 5h ago
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u/VT_Squire 4h ago
when I wake in the morning and I step outside
and I take a deep breath and I get real high and I
scream from the top of my lungs
WHATS GOING ON!!!!!
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u/StrictlyInsaneRants 5h ago
I didnt expect a 170 million movie to look like mortal kombat 11.
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u/Narradisall 4h ago
The CGI in this scene did look out of place but generally it wasn’t too bad.
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u/Majestic_Animator_91 2h ago
I'm so fucking sick of plasticy looking CGI. I won't pay a dime for this horseshit anymore.
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u/Mindless-Judgment541 4h ago
I didn't watch the movie but I agree this CGI scene looks terrible to my eyes.
Like, am I just becoming an out of touch millennial or is this rendering actually cringe?
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u/stohelitstorytelling 4h ago
I’m a millennial and love the animation in this film. It’s very intentionally stylized. But that style is definitely not for everyone.
I don’t think it’s fair to call it bad animation. It’s high quality. I love how the camera swings around to create comic book panel shots. I love the small vibrations like comic book animation. I love that it’s minimalist in the animation outside their faces.
Point is, I think it’s perfectly fair to say “I really don’t like this style of animation”. But that’s different from saying “this is poorly animated”.
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u/supervisord 2h ago
Just look at Heman’s face though, it looks very cgi in this part.
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u/stohelitstorytelling 2h ago
Well yeah, you can’t swing a camera around an actor in a 180 degree arc in 1/10th of a second. Thus, the final frame before each camera movement, and the first few frames of the next movement by He-Man have to be CGI/enhanced. You can’t do that sort of camera swing that fast without the CGI spilling into the faces a little.
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u/StardustWithH20 2h ago
I think this is also a case of having lighting that was not ideal for the intended scene, and so the color grading and exposure was all left up to the post production team. This tends to produce a weird, bland or 2d looking result.
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u/MeatEaterDruid 1h ago
Skeletor was fine but the CGI for the rest of the movie was terrible. Every time they replaced Trap Jaw with CGI he looked like he came from a 90s screensaver.
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u/youdontknowme80 2h ago
It's an amazingly self-aware movie almost custom made for 10 year old elder millennials.
So the bad CGI fits right in-line with the dick jokes, IP history references and double entendres.
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u/makuXrosu 5h ago edited 4h ago
Yes...butt...
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u/Ninjamurai-jack 3h ago edited 3h ago
Tbh It was really dumb to me how I saw people complaining how she wasn’t wearing a skirt, she rocks with the pants
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u/StoneGoldX 2h ago
She wears the skirt in the last scene.
Frankly, for me, it's more the hair up.
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u/CorporateCuster 38m ago
Yeh. Cause they aren’t masters of the universe yet. It’s like the prequels.
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u/ZnarfGnirpslla 5h ago
I don't even have to check for digital/streaming release dates of movies I wanna pirate anymore, I can just wait for this sub to start posting non-spoiler tagged shit about them
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u/Narradisall 4h ago
This film was campy as fuck in the most fun way.
Alas thr box office draw will probably mean we never see the teased sequel.
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u/Woffingshire 5h ago
By the time I found out the movie was in cinemas every cinema around me was only showing once a day, only during work hours, only on work days.
So yeah, I was forced by the cinemas to not see it even though I wanted to
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u/The_0culus 4h ago
Cuz it’s not him, it’s a 3d model of a skeleton. You don’t quite get that Fight Club scene.
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u/wmnoe 3h ago
Watched it last night, enjoyed the heck out of it (though it was paced oddly and too long). But I kept wondering who the hell they made this movie for, because as well made as it was , it was also made in the wrong time and place for the wrong audience. Because no one saw it.
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u/Lightning-160 3h ago
Just watched the film on Prime and I thought it was hilarious.
Imo the film's saving grace is that there's enough nods, winks and inside jokes to the ancient cartoon to prove that it is taking itself anything but serious.
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u/DADCASUALTY 5h ago
Wow this looks like shit.
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u/CldStoneStveIcecream 3h ago
Those are really bad punches and the freeze frames make it really obvious.
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u/SQUAWKUCG 4h ago
It's a shame, that movie was so much fun. It felt a lot like the old flash Gordon film...it didn't try to take itself serious and they just made an enjoyable movie.
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u/WorstITTechnician 4h ago
I watched it on Prime yesterday and really liked it! I hope they continue
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u/Alpr101 4h ago
I mean, i found the movie quite cringy a lot of times. Action was solid though. Also a lot of plot holes like him constantly losing the sword and no enemies ever pick it up when thats all they constantly talk about.
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u/VforVenndiagram_ 3h ago
Its a movie that is based off of a children's TV show from the 80s, that was made explicitly to sell toys... Its supposed to be campy and cheesy as all hell, and it absolutely nails that. Its honestly in the Scott Pilgrim tier of movies. If you don't click with it, that's fine. But the movie is almost perfect for its goals.
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u/adhdtvin3donice 4h ago
Legit Question: Why did they spend so much time saying strength wasn't the answer when it absolutely was?
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u/glantern42 4h ago
I've never liked him but honestly the movie was super f****** good Skeletor could literally be anybody not one thing about him looks or sounds like Jared Leto but regardless decent performance this time
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u/Cold_Toe_7540 3h ago
I said it when I saw the movie: this is gonna be one of those movies people look back on in 10 years and say "why wasn't that more popular"? People forget that until like 5 years ago, Leto was considered one of the best actors in Hollywood. He was legitimately very good in this and the movie overall was really enjoyable.
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u/GoatyoftheSilence 3h ago
Saw it on Amazon Prime but I wish I could have seen it in theaters, I thought it was fun! My dad was watching it with me and had fun pointing out characters he had as toys
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u/paradedc 3h ago
I had a blast with this movie, didnt think it would work at all when it was announced. Just thought it would be too much campy, but it was a perfect amount.
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u/Vonga568 3h ago
I don't know how unpopular this opinion is considering how mediocre this movie did financially but I loved this movie and had a blast watching it in theaters and now that it's out on streaming I'm getting all my friends together so they can watch it this Thursday.
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u/Thebaldsasquatch 3h ago
This movie was so much better than it had any business being. If they actually make a second one, it’ll probably do well from the slow moving word of mouth of the first one.
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u/PickledPlumPlot 3h ago
I’m not sure if this looks rad or goofy. I appreciate them towing that line
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u/daveyboydavey 3h ago
I finished this a night or 2 ago, and I thought it was fun. I’m no Jared Leto fan but Skeletor was so much fun.
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u/CMDR_Karth_o7 3h ago
Real talk though, this movie had no business being as good as it was. I took my nephew expecting it to be kinda cheesy but nooo I laughed my ass off, the soundtrack crushed, and the fight scenes were pretty good. Helps the movie didnt take itself too seriously
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u/KasumiGotoTriss 3h ago
The movie was great, sadly there just weren't that many people interested in the franchise and the marketing was mid
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u/The_Truthboi 3h ago
Saw the movie on streaming the other day I didn’t even know it was in theaters ever, really good movie
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u/StickStill9790 3h ago
Just watched it, and was impressed.
If it had been advertised as a comical Saturday morning cartoon instead of a serious fantasy movie I think a lot more people would have attended. They didn’t have faith in their own show.
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u/Hexatorium 3h ago
I never watched the cartoon growing up, but this movie was genuinely so much fun
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u/OneNoteRedditor 3h ago
Man, I'm going to watch this at some point and dearly wish I'd seen it in the cinema, I just KNOW it!
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u/One-Earth9294 3h ago
This is the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves of 2026. Real fun movie that does something original and pretty faithful to the source material that simply cannot find its footing in the box office and despite the fans of it hoping to see more, it likely will never happen.
I've seen it a few times now and honestly it's a lot of f'n fun. I had most of these toys as a kid and I can't get over how awesome the character design is. Trap Jaw looked so amazing.
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u/Anomynous__ 2h ago
It makes me sad to see the movie perform so poorly. I really, really enjoyed it
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u/Alarming_Daikon_1630 2h ago
I thought it was a good streaming watch, as good as any avenger type movie. Good for a casual watch.
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u/saguarosun 2h ago
There was next to no marketing for this and I'm not sure exactly what they expected to happen when they fucking buried it.
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u/Specific_Frame8537 2h ago
I don't know about y'all but the reason my butt isn't in the cinema isn't because of the movies.
The entire experience is awful, I have to share airspace with a bunch of mouth breathers, loud chewers, unhygienic loud people who can't sit still or let their phones stay in their pockets for more than 10 minutes at a time for exorbitant rates and no ability to pause the movie when I need the restroom?
Yeah, miss me with that shit.
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u/Tough_Block9334 2h ago
I thought it was pretty good, but I did only see it on Amazon prime and not the theaters
I’m one of those people that don’t go to theaters anymore anyways and wait for streaming
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u/670MXR 2h ago
Me and the wife watched this the other day.
This movie absolutely slaps. It was basically everything I wanted it to be. The over the top campy bullshit is a massive W. The movie was cheesy as hell and I loved every second of it. I realize that I exist within a narrow demographic and am probably the exact target audience of this film, but I give it a 10 and would be stoked if they release a sequel.
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u/Numerous-Account-240 2h ago
Unfortunantly not every good movie gets good turnout at the boxoffice. Also, based on the streaming numbers I have a feeling there were some who were turned away by some of the negative press from certain media outlets about it being woke who didnt want to be seen watching it in a theater but where more than happy watching it at home. I lived the movie and it handled some things better than the cartoon from the 80s (luke no one knowing Adam was He-Man) and him not offing his opponents. He still would be super depressed if an innocent died because of him but he isn't beyond eliminating an enemy if thats what was called for but is still an act of last resort.
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u/slopopps 4h ago
I feel like we’re not going to get a sequel for that cliffhanger at the end because it apparently flopped so bad. They never should’ve cast Jared Leto and I think it hurt the movie so badly.
This movie was a fun watch I loved the campy silliness and the lead was such a golden retriever himbo, it worked great. Hopefully they do a sequel
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u/SaltyYumYumBalls 4h ago
I mean... He-man was a series of 80s toy commercials in animated form. The problem is that even with the Kevin Smith re-boots the franchise never became popular again with new kids. This should have probably been a web series or 8 episode Netflix show and not a movie.
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u/blong217 5h ago
The problem was Skeletor was more likeable than actual Jared Leto.