Midnight Movie: Masters of the Universe

Here’s one I haven’t seen since I was a kid. I didn’t really watch Saturday morning cartoons as I was never a morning person, so the extent of what I know about He-Man comes from this movie. I hope I don’t offend the die hard fans with my ignorance because, frankly, you guys kinda scare me. So let’s not pretend this stuff is Shakespeare. The extremely bad attempts at comic relief make that perfectly clear.

The mighty warrior He-Man (Dolph Lundgren) lives on planet Eternia, home of Castle Grayskull. The castle, which holds a plethora of magic secrets, has just been seized by the villainous Skeletor (Frank Langella) and the commander of his hellish army, a witch named Evil-Lyn (Meg Foster). There the villains have taken “The Sorceress of Grayskull” hostage with the help of a “cosmic key” which rips holes in the space-time continuum. This plot device will conveniently usher the characters to Earth, probably because Cannon Film Group was unwilling to raise enough money to shoot entirely on Eternia sets.

It’s on Earth that a duplicate of this cosmic key is lost and He-Man must recover it before Skeletor’s minions do. Joining him are a character named Man-At-Arms, a troll, and a female warrior known as Teela, played by Chelsea Field. This band of heroes cross paths with the most insignificant characters in the film: a couple of teenagers played by Courtney Cox and TV actor Robert Duncan McNeill.

I’m gonna take a wild guess that Cox and McNeill’s characters weren’t part of the original mythos. They feel like an afterthought, added by misguided screenwriting logic: “We should give audience members someone they can relate to!” The film wastes so much time on these white bread teenagers, it’s a cheat to everyone who came to see swords, sorcery, and cheesy action. If, like me, you thought Masters of the Universe was going to be set almost entirely in a fantastical world like Flash Gordon, you’re going to be disappointed.

Masters of the Universe desperately wants to be the next Star Wars film, and although Bill Conti’s music and most of the camerawork are up to snuff, most scenes will have you wondering if you’re watching the first take. During a panoramic of Skeletor’s army marching across a battlefield, one of the extras trips and has trouble standing back up. In an action sequence, He-Man is heroically holding off the bad guys as his friends flee through a doorway; the door, which is supposed to be propped against a wall, keeps falling down and distracting Lundgren from his acting. Later, when being lashed by one of Skeletor’s henchmen, Lundgren’s reactions to the whip are hilariously out of sync.

Despite its many flaws, Masters of the Universe just isn’t bad enough to enter “so bad it’s good” territory. And despite some wonderful costume creations, it isn’t quite good enough for anyone else, either, unless they’re fans of the source material. The film looks pretty good in HD and roughly half of the special FX are actually kind of impressive, but Frank Langella’s skull makeup restricts his performance instead of enhancing it.

Highlander: There can be only one (and several sequels)

Highlander 1986

Suppose, for a second, you’re a Trans-Am-driving gun nut who happens upon a dark alley in which two complete strangers are sword fighting. Do you A) drive to the nearest payphone and call the cops or B) get out and shoot at these people who you don’t even know? If you chose B, you belong in this movie.

You know Highlander’s tagline even if you don’t know the franchise: There can be only one. But why must there only be one? When the French Christopher Lambert (playing a Scot) asks questions like that, the Scottish Sean Connery (playing an Egypt-born Spaniard) replies with another question: “Why does the sun rise?” That’s a cheat because even grade school children know why the sun rises, but no one seems to know why Immortals “must” fight. Considering how cool it is, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I mean, who doesn’t like sword fights that produce roughly as many sparks as a bumper car grid?

I’m getting ahead of myself. The year is 1985. Connor MacLeod (Lambert) is spectating a wrestling match at Madison Square Garden that gives him intense flashbacks to his life as a Scottish highlander in the 1500s. When he ducks out early to head to the parking lot, Connor is attacked by another Immortal. Connor beheads the mysterious attacker and absorbs his essence in a supernatural light show known as a quickening. Beheading is the only way to kill an Immortal and the quickening is the process which allows the victor to absorb the defeated party’s strengths and abilities.

Meanwhile, the “seven-foot tall” Kurgan (Clancy Brown) arrives in New York City. The Kurgan is Connor’s arch nemesis, having killed his mentor Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (Connery). Don’t worry—through the magic of questionable screenwriting, Ramírez will return for a more significant role in the sequel. At any rate, the Kurgan has spent the last four hundred years quickening as many Immortals as he can. According to Ramírez, if someone like the Kurgan wins this ancient contest, the world will be plunged into eternal darkness.

The pacing is a little rough. The acting is good enough. You will be forgiven for scratching your head or making MST3K-style quips here and there. My mother tells me this was one of the first movies I ever fell in love with and that she would often hear me, from the other room, popping it into the VCR to watch it again and again. I was so young I don’t remember, but it certainly is up my alley.

When the movie was over I slipped Westworld into the Blu-Ray player and all but forgot about Highlander. But when I went to bed later that night, distant memories of the infamous sequel began to haunt me. When I was eight or nine years old, I had rented it on Pay-Per-View and recorded it to VHS. I still have the tape to this day.

I remembered Sean Connery was in it and just had to know what kind of movie magic they spun to bring his character back to life. I had frequently read how awful the movie was, which was at odds with how much I enjoyed it as a kid. So I bit the bullet and decided to watch Highlander 2 for the first time as an adult.

I may never be able to enjoy another movie again.

Highlander 2 (1991)

Forty years after the conclusion of the last film, Connor MacLeod is not just mortal, but an elderly and extraordinarily wealthy individual, as immortality no doubt reaps some great compound interest. He’s devoted himself to science-based philanthropy. One of the projects he helped fund was an artificially generated shield around the planet after corporate greed destroyed the ozone layer. Unfortunately, the shield has permanently blocked sunlight and created a runaway greenhouse effect. It’s also controlled by the very corporation that helped destroy the atmosphere in the first place. As it turns out, the ozone layer has recovered since the shield went up and the project’s executives will stop at nothing to keep this inconvenient (for them) truth suppressed.

Enter Louise Marcus (Virgina Madsen) who seeks to expose the truth by bringing the shield down. Within minutes of meeting Connor, two Immortals from the distant past (or another planet, depending on which version you’re watching) arrive on bitchin’ hover technology to assassinate the former contest winner. Despite his advanced age, Connor manages to decapitate one and quickens, restoring his youth and immortality. Shortly after hopping on a hover board to dispatch the other assassin, Connor and Louise have passionate sex, right there on the grimy streets.

If you’re wondering how they contrive to resurrect Sean Connery’s Ramírez, it doesn’t make any sense… nor does it matter. All that matters is he’s back, he gets a lot more screen time, and the actor seems to be having the time of his life elevating an otherwise standard fish-out-of-water role. Connery alone is worth the price of admission. Ramírez reunites with Connor and helps him and Louise take on the corporate powers that be.

Siskel & Ebert said only brain-dead moviegoers could enjoy Highlander 2. Some regard it as the worst film ever made (those people have yet to see Now you See Me). If you find the utterly ambitious and genuinely creative Highlander 2 more offensive than the plethora of soulless cash grabs coming out of Hollywood nearly every month, I ask you to reexamine your standards. You cannot call this film boring. You cannot call it passionless. Insane? Well, I’ll give you that one.

Highlander 2 is set in a dystopian cyberpunk future. For the most part, it’s a visually convincing setting. Somehow director Russell Mulcahy managed to squeeze better world-building out of his budget than Freejack, Johnny Mnemonic, and Cyborg combined. The theatrical cut of the film (which is what I initially saw on Pay-Per-View twenty years ago) even visited another planet, but the infamous alien subplot has since been reworked and retconned in subsequent editions.

Granted, the theatrical cut of Highlander 2 ruined the mythology of the original film within the first few minutes. It asserts the Immortals were (surprise!) aliens all along. Luckily, this revelatory dialogue had been filmed with characters who spoke telepathically; the obvious fix was to simply rerecord the voice-over dialogue. In the subsequent versions, all verbal references to the alien planet Zeist are edited out of the dialogue even though the visual references more or less remain, albeit visually altered. This way audiences are led to believe (if they’re still paying attention) that it’s not an alien planet, but in fact Earth a long time ago.

These changes don’t really help the film, though, as it still suggests that Connor and Ramírez knew each other prior to their meeting in the original film. If anything, the changes made the movie more confusing. For instance, when the past assassins are given their orders to kill Connor, they say, “But he’s an old man now.” “Now,” even though the scene is set far in the past?

And you know what? Who cares? Just keep slathering on the 90s cyberpunk aesthetic and sparky sword fights. Highlander 2 is incapable of demonstrating restraint in its crusade for awesomeness. You get hover boards. You get bad guys who look like they’re straight out of a Hellraiser film. And you will never see a hero have sex with the heroine so quickly after they meet… and, uh, I do stress the word “quickly.” (Perhaps that’s the quickening.)

Freejack

Emilio Estevez is a race car driver in the year 1991. He’s married to Rene Russo who has a killer set of legs. An early shot frames those legs against a messy bed. I distinctly remember this shot piquing my interest when I first saw it on Pay-Per-View as a 10 year old boy. Unfortunately, when the camera panned up, I was dismayed to discover it was not Russo at all, but the considerably boyish and oddly hairless Estevez, wearing a pair of whitey tidies.

One of the reasons I love B-movies is they’re often in a hurry to get to the good stuff. It’s not long before Emilio is racing his pink race car around the track while the music lets us know something bad is about to happen. Here’s what happens next in a dazzling (if not confusing) matter of seconds:

1. A closeup reveals a race car’s front tire has just rubbed Emilio’s back tire. Just before the camera cuts away, we see the tail end of Emilio’s car lift from the track.

2. An awkwardly inserted shot, one of pure cheese, zooms in on Russo wearing a dumb hat as she screams.

3. The camera cuts back to Emilio’s car, which is now sailing through the air (somehow) before it collides with an overpass and explodes in slow motion.

4. Emilio, sans car, falls on an operating table. The medical team waiting for him are dressed in silver hazmat suits, which A) lets us know this is the future and B) kind of makes them look like giant baked potatoes. One of the baked potatoes calls for “the lobotomy gun.”

5. Transient rebels (every 90s cyberpunk movie has ’em) attack the convoy… wait, did I forget to mention the operating table was housed inside a moving vehicle?

6. Mick Jagger acts… kind of.

7. The rebels’ missile launchers rock the vehicle Emilio’s in. He seizes the opportunity to swat away the lobotomy gun, which fires green lightning. One of the nurses screams, “We’ve got a freejack!”

8. Emilio escapes from the vehicle, which is somehow on its side now.

9. Mick Jagger instructs his henchmen to, and I quote, “Get the meat.”

10. Emilio, despite being the only person wearing a 90s jumpsuit, manages to evade the police of the future until he’s caught by a phone booth of all things. He’s a little slow, but eventually realizes he’s in the far-flung year of 2009, which is so far in the future, I frankly have a hard time imagining it.

The reason they set the bulk of the movie a few measly years later is so Emilio’s character can rekindle the flame with his wife, Russo, who’s barely aged a day. That’s all fine and dandy, but there’s talk of the “Ten Year Recession,” which means the movie was already dated eight years after it came out. Not that anyone involved with this turkey thought anyone but lame bloggers would be talking about it in the future.

So no, I won’t make fun of the dated stuff. What I will make fun of is the casting. The obvious mistake is Mick Jagger. I hoped he would be funny bad, but he’s just bad. And the problem with Emilio is he already looks eighteen years younger than Russo. I’m not saying Rene Russo looks old. I’m saying Emilio Estevez looks like the kind of guy who still gets carded at bars. (“Don’t you know who I am! Haven’t you seen Young Guns?“)

I have a lot of issues with this movie. One is the absurd lack of characters of color. One black man lives in Emilio’s old house, which is now a slum, another is Russo’s chauffeur, and the third is a bum. Movies about the future should have a good reason for only having white people in it and Freejack has no excuse.

Anthony Hopkins is the bad guy, by the way, stumbling into the picture exactly as the Emperor was introduced in The Empire Strikes Back, hooded cloak and all. So we’ve got Hopkins and Russo, two great actors neutralized by Mick Jagger’s ability to ham up absolutely anything.

The most watchable part comes towards the end. There’s a fun sequence taking place inside the mind of Anthony Hopkins, though it’s nothing really new to the genre. Unfortunately, I’d been struggling to stay awake for so much of the movie, I finally fell asleep at that point and missed most of the good stuff. When I woke up, Mick Jagger had somehow turned into a good guy.

My biggest complaint is the lackluster romance between Emilio and Russo. When they’re reunited in 2009, Russo promptly turns him in to the authorities. When they’re reunited a second time, Emilio is inexplicably cruel. I don’t even remember if they ever kiss. The most they do is hold hands and speak to each other in whispers. What a dud.

Note: I haven’t read the Robert Sheckley novel Freejack was based on, but I admire Sheckley and I’m sure the book was better than this.