Masters of the Universe opened to $29.3 million domestic this weekend on a $200 million budget, finishing second behind Scary Movie 6, which earned $55 million. Globally the film earned $54.3 million, just over a quarter of its production budget in its opening weekend.
The opening-night demographics tell the rest of the story: a 68% male audience averaging 45-54 years old showed up. The kids did not. Only 5% of viewers were under 12, and 6% were between 13-17. The adults who loved He-Man in 1983 came back to see what was done to their property. Young audiences who might have built a new franchise did not come at all. That is the profile of a nostalgia one-timer, not a franchise launch.
The film the creative team built and the film they described in press are the same film. That is the problem.
Director Travis Knight told Empire in February: “Skeletor’s kind of the embodiment of toxic masculinity.” Teela actress Camila Mendes told the press her character was “affected by toxic masculinity just as much as the men in the film” and “adopted masculinity to protect herself in this very masculine world.” The Globe and Mail’s review confirmed: “Make no bones about it, the villain Skeletor represents toxic masculinity.”
He-Man’s villain is toxic masculinity. His female co-lead adopted masculinity as a trauma response. The franchise built on “I have the power,” a celebration of masculine strength as heroism, spent its press tour explaining that masculine power is the disease and the story is about managing it.
Then Camila Mendes told press who inspired her Teela. She said: “I feel like I was a little inspired by Daisy Ridley’s performance in Star Wars. I think that was one that I went to like — I felt there were similarities between those.”
Daisy Ridley. The actress whose Star Wars performance generated years of backlash for a character critics described as a wish-fulfillment cipher who beat experienced fighters without training, solved every problem effortlessly, and existed as a vessel for the franchise’s diversity mandate rather than as a developed person. The Teela actress reached for that performance as her model. The Star Wars franchise this comparison invokes opened its theatrical comeback last month to the lowest domestic number in Disney era Star Wars history.
Jared Leto, who plays Skeletor, did not attend the world premiere, skipped every press appearance, and posted nothing to his 11.4 million Instagram followers about the film. His recent theatrical track record: Morbius opened to $39 million with a 16% Rotten Tomatoes score. House of Gucci underperformed commercially. Haunted Mansion opened to $24 million. Tron: Ares performed so badly it caused the franchise to be shelved indefinitely. Leto has developed a reliable talent for identifying which films will not work. He apparently applied that talent to this one.
The film opened smaller than both Mortal Kombat II and The Mandalorian and Grogu, two films already considered disappointing. Its path to break-even on a $200 million budget now looks brutally narrow. The PG-13 rating gives it a slightly longer theatrical window than a hard-R bomb, and a B Cinema Score suggests audiences who did show up were not hostile. But the opening number sets a ceiling on what the film can earn. The ceiling is too low.
Amazon’s statement after the opening: “Travis Knight and the entire cast and filmmaking team have delivered something truly special, and this opening is exactly the kind of critical first moment that validates our holistic distribution strategy.”
A $29.3 million domestic opening on a $200 million budget validates nothing except the tracking models that predicted it.
The franchise’s core audience came back after forty years. They were handed a film whose creative team had described their villain as the embodiment of toxic masculinity and whose Teela actress modeled her performance on Rey from Star Wars. The franchise did not fail the audience. The audience found the franchise they were given.
What would a genuinely faithful He-Man adaptation have looked like? Let us know in the comments.
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