41-3 - He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Beginning

We have a confession to make. We watched this movie. We found it very boring. So we spend 30 minutes trying to talk about literally anything else, some of which is He-Man related.

This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Beginning (2002): the 90-minute pilot movie that launched the 2002 He-Man reboot series. But in the spirit of full transparency, we want to admit upfront that we actively avoided talking about it for as long as we reasonably could.

The plot is what you expect, Skeletor's forces return and start to attack Eternia, forcing a young, generally useless Prince Adam to go to Castle Grayskull. In this castle, he accepts the Sword of Power and becomes He-Man, giving him the power to fight back.

It's a perfectly competent, perfectly serviceable piece of early-2000s pilot television, one where you can guess every plot beat about 10 minutes before it happens. It is also, we discovered, almost impossible to talk about for an entire episode, which sent us careening sideways into the live-action 2026 Masters of the Universe film starring Jared Leto as Skeletor (or more specifically, us questioning how he still gets work), Alyx and Sam trying to convince Jon to watch Kevin Smith's Masters of the Universe: Revelation, and a fairly long detour into Alan Thicke.

We talk about why 2002's The Beginning struggles to leave much of an impression compared to its successors, and question if its better to be wild and terrible, or solid but boring.

🔔 Subscribe for our ongoing watch-through of Toonami and Adult Swim's most iconic shows and movies.

****

Toonami Absolution is a weekly podcast where Alyx, Jon, and Sam revisit the Toonami and Adult Swim shows that made them, and you, you.

From the block's early days with shows like Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Transformers: Beast Wars to the imported anime that made Toonami and Adult Swim appointment television for a generation of kids, such as Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball.

****

See more Toonami Absolution stuff (including the video version of the podcast) by checking out our Linktree!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.