u/Kalomika

The problem with Adam in Masters of the Universe isn’t just that he’s goofy, displaced, or written with a modern comedic sensibility. A fish out of water version of Adam can work. A lost prince can work. A confused young man pulled between Earth and Eternia can work. Even a clumsy Adam can work if the clumsiness is a mask, a trauma response, or a contrast against the confidence he discovers through the Power of Grayskull.

The issue is that the movie never really figures out what Adam is.

Sometimes he’s a lost royal heir. Sometimes he’s a sitcom idiot. Sometimes he’s a noble chosen one. Sometimes he’s a guy running from consequences on Earth. Sometimes he’s the one person competent enough to solve problems an entire warrior civilization couldn’t solve. Sometimes he’s a vessel for an ancient mythic force. Sometimes he’s just Adam with a better body and fewer clothes. The movie keeps handing him functions, but it doesn’t give him a coherent character underneath those functions.

That matters because Adam’s supposed to be the center of the mythology. If he doesn’t work, He-Man doesn’t work. And if He-Man doesn’t work, then the whole movie becomes a parade of names, costumes, weapons, nostalgia, and jokes orbiting a hero the story hasn’t actually earned.

Adam isn’t established as especially noble

One of the biggest problems is that the movie doesn’t do enough to establish Adam as a fundamentally reputable person. It establishes that he wants to return to Eternia. It establishes that he misses where he came from. It establishes that he has some emotional attachment to his past. But longing for home isn’t morality. A villain can long for his homeland. A tyrant can want his kingdom back. A prince can want his throne restored without that automatically making him good.

That’s the gap.

The story needs to show why Adam deserves the Power of Grayskull beyond biology, nostalgia, and plot destiny. Give him a moment where he protects someone weaker than him before he has power. Give him a moment where he tells the truth when lying would benefit him. Give him a moment where he chooses mercy over revenge, or takes responsibility for a mistake, or saves someone who hates him. Something. Anything that shows this isn’t just a guy trying to reclaim his side of a political conflict.

Instead, on Earth, Adam ends up stealing, or reclaiming, the sword without evidence that it belongs to him. Yes, we know it’s his sword from the story’s perspective, but Earth authorities don’t. In their world, he’s a guy who takes an object, gets arrested, tricks or escapes the police, and basically becomes a wanted man. The movie plays this like adventure momentum, but if Adam’s supposed to be noble, that should matter. He doesn’t face the system. He doesn’t take accountability. He doesn’t make some hard moral choice. He just slips away because the plot needs him back in Eternia.

That’s a weird foundation for your pure-hearted champion.

The movie wants the iconography of nobility without doing enough of the character work that makes nobility felt. Adam doesn’t need to be perfect, but he does need to be morally legible. He-Man shouldn’t just be the strongest guy in the room. He should be the person whose strength is safest in his hands because of who he is.

Earth doesn’t make Adam sharper, so why is he suddenly the competence upgrade?

The movie also has a serious competence problem. Adam’s written as spacey, sheltered, unserious, and honestly kind of dim for a lot of the runtime. He isn’t presented as some brilliant leader on Earth. He isn’t shown mastering systems, commanding people, thinking three moves ahead, or developing some survival instinct that Eternia lacks. He has a job, sure, but the movie doesn’t frame him as unusually capable there. He feels more like a guy barely keeping his life together than someone forged into a future liberator.

Then he returns to Eternia and suddenly becomes the person warriors, rebels, engineers, royal guards, and lifelong fighters apparently needed in order to function.

That’s where the story starts insulting its own supporting cast. Man At Arms is supposed to be a top engineer, strategist, trainer, and protector. Teela grew up in this world. The rebels survived under Skeletor for years. Ram Man, Fisto, and the others are supposed to be seasoned fighters. Yet Adam shows up from an Earth corporate job and starts solving problems that people raised in this war apparently couldn’t solve for over a decade.

That doesn’t make Adam look brilliant. It makes Eternia look stupid.

The prison escape is the cleanest example. If Duncan is an engineer, Teela is his daughter, Ram Man can ram, Fisto can punch, and this whole group has been surviving under Skeletor’s rule, why does Adam need to be the person to point out basic rock and bars logic? Were their powers suppressed? Were the bars magically reinforced? Were they restrained in some specific way? Did Skeletor design the prison to counter each of them individually? Show me that. Because without that, the scene reads like everyone in the room forgot physics so the office guy from Earth could have a leadership moment.

That isn’t a hero being elevated. It’s the story lowering everyone else.

The movie doesn’t clearly define what changes when Adam becomes He-Man

This may be the biggest character failure in the whole thing: the movie doesn’t meaningfully differentiate Adam from He-Man.

In a lot of He-Man storytelling, Adam and He-Man have a clear split in presentation. Adam is softer, more playful, sometimes underestimated, sometimes deliberately downplaying himself. He-Man is focused, commanding, confident, physically overwhelming, and spiritually clear. The transformation isn’t just a gym upgrade. It’s a mythic shift. It’s Adam becoming the champion, the vessel, the sword-bearing embodiment of the power.

In this movie, the distinction is mostly cosmetic. Adam gets bigger, stronger, and dressed differently, but his personality doesn’t sharpen enough. He doesn’t feel like a young man overtaken by an ancient heroic force. He doesn’t feel like someone whose body suddenly knows how to fight because generations of champions are moving through him. He doesn’t feel like the Power of Grayskull is adding anything to his mind, discipline, or moral focus.

He’s just Adam with more muscle.

That poses a basic storytelling question: why ever turn back?

In the cartoon, the secret identity gives the split a purpose. Adam wants some kind of normal life. He has relationships to protect. He-Man is a public champion, Adam is the prince who can still move through the world differently. Even if the disguise logic is silly, the story function makes sense. Clark Kent and Superman have a similar tension. The disguise works because Clark needs to exist as a person separate from the godlike symbol.

But in this movie, everyone seems to know, or at least has every reason to know. Adam transforms in front of people. There isn’t a real secret identity structure. There’s no clear social reason, strategic reason, emotional reason, or magical cost explaining why he can’t just stay He-Man. How does he turn back? Does he choose it? Does the power fade? Does he say something? Does the sword decide? Does exhaustion do it? The movie barely seems interested.

And that’s the kind of laziness that bothers me. Not because every rule needs a lecture, but because the central transformation of the franchise shouldn’t feel like a costume toggle.

The name He-Man is treated like the filmmakers are embarrassed by it

The movie’s handling of the name He-Man is another problem. The name is inherently strange to our ears, sure. But it shouldn’t be strange in Eternia the same way it’s strange on Earth. This is a world with names like Man At Arms, Ram Man, Fisto, Beast Man, Evil-Lyn, Trap Jaw, and Skeletor. The naming logic is already heightened. That’s the culture. That’s the language of the myth.

So when the movie treats “He-Man” like an embarrassing joke, it feels less like character comedy and more like filmmaker insecurity.

The stronger version is obvious. Adam, raised on Earth, hears the name and reacts awkwardly: “He-Man?” Then the Sorceress explains it as an ancient title, a champion name, something that carries meaning in Eternian history. The Eternians should take it seriously because to them it isn’t a dumb Earth pun. It’s the name of a mythic protector. It should land like a title, not a branding accident.

Instead, the movie acts like the characters are all in on the joke that He-Man sounds silly. That breaks immersion. It makes Eternia feel like it’s looking at itself through our world’s smirk instead of its own internal mythology.

And that’s the larger disease in the movie. It doesn’t just make jokes inside the world. It makes jokes at the world’s expense.

Adam’s leadership isn’t earned

If the story is about Adam becoming the person who leads everyone to victory, then the movie needs to show why he becomes worthy of leadership. Not just strength. Leadership.

Leadership requires more than punching harder than everyone else. It requires judgment, responsibility, self-possession, sacrifice, and the ability to make other people better without making them look like fools. The movie wants Adam to become the rallying center of Eternia, but it doesn’t give him enough moral or strategic development to justify that position.

He doesn’t come back with deep knowledge Earth gave him. He doesn’t bring some tactical insight from another world. He doesn’t heal a political wound between factions. He doesn’t unite divided tribes or inspire people through a hard-earned confession. He doesn’t have to face the people who suffered while he was gone and earn their trust. He mostly arrives, powers up, stumbles through some gags, and eventually becomes the guy the movie says everyone needed.

That isn’t earning leadership.

If anything, Teela should have more claim to leadership in this version. She stayed. She trained. She survived. She knows the world, the people, the stakes, and the consequences. Duncan has the burden of failure and experience. Marlena has the grief and political weight. Adam is the one who escaped to Earth. That could’ve been fascinating if the movie actually leaned into it. He should’ve had to earn the right to lead people who never got to leave.

Instead, the movie treats his return as inherently meaningful because the brand says it is.

The final battle doesn’t clarify what changed

This also creates a problem with the final battle. A lot of the people and forces fighting at the end are basically the same kinds of people and forces that existed when Eternos fell. Adam is needed against Skeletor directly, sure. That part is simple. He-Man is the champion, Skeletor is the big bad. Fine.

But Skeletor wasn’t personally doing every major thing in the original attack. His side beat the royal guard, beat Man At Arms, reached the King and Queen, and took the palace through a broad force structure. So what changed later? Why do the same kinds of fighters now hold their own? Did Duncan regain confidence? Did Teela mature into a better warrior than the old guard? Did Adam inspire tactics? Did the rebels learn from years of failure? Did they exploit a weakness in Skeletor’s army?

Maybe the answers are implied somewhere, but the movie doesn’t dramatize them with enough force.

That’s why the victory feels muddy. Adam wins because the story says this is where Adam wins. Everyone else functions better because the finale requires them to function better. The emotional shape is there, but the strategic and character logic underneath is thin.

And no, “they weren’t strong enough before, but now they are” isn’t enough. What does strong mean here? Stronger physically? Stronger emotionally? More unified? Better trained? Less afraid? More hopeful? More tactically prepared? A good movie makes that transformation legible. It shows us the specific weakness and then shows us the specific growth that answers it.

This movie keeps things too general, then asks the audience to feel a victory it hasn’t fully constructed.

Adam’s guilt is strangely absent

There’s also the issue of Adam’s father and the sword. If Adam’s action with the sword contributes to Randor’s death or disappearance, that should haunt the entire movie. That should be Adam’s wound. That should be why he fears the power, resists the sword, feels unworthy, or believes he destroys the people he’s trying to save.

That’s an obvious emotional engine.

A child touches ancient power, something catastrophic happens, his father dies, and he spends years separated from his home. Then he returns and has to decide whether he can trust himself with that same power again. That isn’t a small beat. That’s the whole soul of a hero’s arc sitting right there.

But the movie doesn’t make enough of it.

He doesn’t seem consumed by guilt. He doesn’t have a deep emotional reckoning with Marlena. He doesn’t have to apologize to the kingdom. He doesn’t get a serious moment where he says, “The last time I touched this power, I lost my father.” The story could’ve made him refuse the transformation because he believes he isn’t worthy. Then Marlena, Teela, Duncan, or the Sorceress could challenge him, not with a generic pep talk, but with something rooted in what actually happened.

Instead, the movie gives him activity, but not enough inner consequence.

That’s why the “emotional core” defense doesn’t work for me. The movie had the emotional core right there and barely mined it.

He-Man is too casually violent for a character defined by restraint

Another major issue is the way He-Man fights. He-Man should be overwhelming, but he shouldn’t feel like Conan with better lighting or the Punisher in a fantasy gym. His strength should be terrifying because he doesn’t need to kill you. He can stop you. He can disarm you. He can beat you so completely that surrender becomes your only rational option.

That’s part of what makes the character powerful. He has the strength to obliterate people, but the moral center not to indulge in it.

In the cartoon, He-Man usually defeats people into submission, escape, or humiliation. He throws them, disarms them, traps them, outmuscles them, or makes them realize they can’t win. That’s very different from a hero who looks angry enough to maim or destroy people once they’re already beaten.

The movie sometimes pushes him toward a more brutal action hero mode, and it doesn’t fully reckon with that. If He-Man is going to impale, crush, throw someone off a mountain, or use lethal force, the movie needs to frame why. Was there no other option? Was he losing control? Did the Power of Grayskull carry danger? Did Adam’s rage threaten to corrupt the champion? Did he later regret it? Does Teela call him out? Does Marlena look at him and see something frightening?

Without that, it just becomes spectacle.

And this is why the Man of Steel comparison actually matters. People can argue about Superman killing Zod, but the movie builds a direct no-way-out scenario: Zod is actively threatening civilians, has already shown genocidal intent, helped unleash world-ending destruction, and tells Clark he’ll never stop. Clark kills him, then immediately breaks emotionally. The act costs him something.

With He-Man, if he’s brutalizing enemies because the movie wants cooler action, that isn’t the same thing. The character’s moral identity should matter. He-Man isn’t just strength. He’s strength under discipline. Strength with compassion. Strength that refuses to become the thing it fights.

Skeletor not being vile enough weakens Adam too

Adam’s heroism also depends on what he’s opposing. If Skeletor is supposed to be the nightmare that justifies Adam becoming He-Man, the movie needs to make that evil unmistakable. Not just aesthetically evil. Not just skull face, dark magic, and villain banter. Morally evil.

The problem is that the movie doesn’t show enough of Skeletor’s rule. He takes the kingdom. He captures people. He kills or harms when the plot needs him to prove a point. He chokes Evil-Lyn, but even that raises strange questions about how power works between them. He has control for years, but we don’t see enough of what that control actually does to ordinary life.

Where are the villages under tribute? Where are the children afraid to speak? Where are the prisoners being worked to death? Where are the people who once believed in Randor but now think Skeletor brought order? Where are the loyalists, collaborators, traitors, propagandists, rebels, victims? Where’s the moral landscape Adam is supposedly restoring?

Without that, Adam’s mission risks shrinking into “my family lost the throne, now I want it back.”

That isn’t enough. A Sith could frame things that way. A dictator’s son could frame things that way. A royal heir can believe he’s righteous simply because he’s reclaiming what was his. The movie has to show why Adam’s side is morally better, not just ancestrally preferred.

If Adam is restoring Eternia, show what was broken. If he’s liberating people, show people being oppressed. If Skeletor is darkness, let us feel the darkness beyond costumes and dialogue. Otherwise He-Man’s victory becomes symbolic before it becomes dramatic.

Cringer and Battle Cat are treated like accessories instead of myth

The Cringer and Battle Cat issue is another example of the movie flattening myth into surface.

Battle Cat shouldn’t just be armor on a big animal. In the mythology, Cringer becoming Battle Cat is part of the magic of He-Man. It’s transformation by proximity to the champion. Fear becomes courage. Smallness becomes majesty. Companion becomes war beast. That’s clean, mythic, and visually powerful.

If the movie changes that, fine. Change it with purpose.

But explain the new logic. Was the armor built for Cringer? By whom? Why does it fit? Was Cringer always capable of becoming Battle Cat but needed Adam’s courage? Did the Power of Grayskull transform him? Is the armor ancient? Does it respond to the sword? Is Battle Cat a state of being or just a costume?

Again, not every rule needs a lecture. But when you remove the iconic transformation and replace it with something flatter, you need to make the replacement feel meaningful. Otherwise Battle Cat becomes another brand element the movie checks off without understanding why it worked.

The same thing happens with Adam. The movie seems to think “he becomes He-Man” is enough because we recognize the image. But recognition isn’t drama.

The movie mistakes goofiness for personality

Adam can be funny. He can be awkward. He can be confused. None of that is automatically a problem. The problem is when goofiness becomes the substitute for personality.

A noble hero can have humor. A mythic champion can have warmth. A young man adapting to another world can make mistakes. But the movie often plays Adam like the joke is the point. He stumbles, reacts, quips, fumbles, and gets treated as silly, then the story asks him to occupy the center of a mythic fantasy about power, loss, destiny, and restoration.

That tonal swing never fully settles.

The cartoon version of Adam being playful works because there’s a knowingness to it. He’s often underestimated, but we know there’s more beneath the surface. There’s a difference between a character playing down his power and a movie playing down the character. This movie too often does the second. It lets the audience laugh at Adam without doing enough to make us respect him before asking us to follow him.

That’s where the film’s whole approach to He-Man starts to feel embarrassed. The name is a joke. The transformation is underexplained. The hero is goofy. The violence is inconsistent. The leadership is unearned. The secret identity logic is barely there. The world treats its own mythology like it needs a wink to survive.

But He-Man o

The Earth storyline falls apart the second you stop looking at it emotionally and start looking at it logically.

We're told Adam is sent to Earth for safety.

Okay.

Safety from who?

Skeletor doesn't control all of Eternia.

Eternia is an entire planet.

Hide him in another kingdom.

Hide him in another continent.

Hide him with rebels.

Hide him with loyalists.

Hide him with Man-At-Arms.

Hide him with literally anybody.

The story acts like the only two options were:

A) Stay at the palace.

B) Get launched across dimensions to Earth.

That's not a choice. That's a screenwriter forcing a plot point.

Then we get to the actual Earth part.

A child crashes into a river.

And then...

Nothing.

Years later he's a grown man.

Who raised him?

Who found him?

Who adopted him?

Did he have parents?

Did he have foster parents?

Did he live on the streets?

Did he go to school?

Did he have friends?

Did he have records?

Did he have a birth certificate?

Did anybody ask where this random child came from?

Did he speak English immediately?

Did he speak Eternian?

Did he have memories?

The movie doesn't care.

Because Earth isn't there to develop Adam.

Earth is there to develop the plot.

And that's the difference.

The movie wants all the emotional weight of an Earth upbringing without doing any of the work of showing what that upbringing actually was.

Compare that to Superman.

Kansas matters.

The Kents matter.

Remove the Kents and Superman becomes a different character.

Compare that to Batman.

Gotham matters.

Remove Gotham and Batman becomes a different character.

Compare that to Thor.

Earth matters.

Jane matters.

His exile matters.

Remove those things and Thor's arc disappears.

Now try it with this movie.

Remove Earth.

Adam disappears through a portal.

Put "15 Years Later" on screen.

He returns to Eternia.

What changes?

Almost nothing.

That's the problem.

The Earth material is supposed to be foundational to his origin, yet it's almost completely irrelevant to who he becomes.

And honestly, that's because the movie misunderstands what He-Man is.

He-Man never needed Earth.

He never needed tragedy.

He never needed exile.

He never needed an identity crisis.

He never needed a journey to discover his purpose.

The whole point of He-Man is that he already had purpose.

He already had duty.

He already had character.

He was worthy before the sword.

The sword simply gave him the ability to act on that worthiness.

Instead, the movie turns him into another modern blockbuster protagonist who needs circumstances to create the hero.

And that's where it loses me.

Because the original fantasy wasn't:

"How does Adam become a hero?"

The original fantasy was:

"What happens when a hero is finally given unlimited power?"

That's a much more interesting idea.

The irony is that by trying to make He-Man deeper, they actually made him more generic.

Now he's another displaced chosen one separated from his homeland, sent through a magical portal, searching for where he belongs.

I've seen that story a hundred times.

The original He-Man wasn't interesting because of what happened to him.

He was interesting because almost nothing had to happen to him.

He was already the guy.

The Sorceress didn't choose him because he survived tragedy.

She chose him because he was worthy.

The movie keeps trying to explain why Adam deserves the sword.

The original mythology already answered that question.

Because he's Adam.

[ANIMATOR] Kam Kalambay | 2D Animator, Storyboard Artist & Animation Director | $65/hr

[For Hire] Experienced Senior Storyboard and Animation Director

Does AI ever try Super Finishers?

The Adam Problem in Masters of the Universe (2026)

The Adam goes to Earth problem!!!

The new update broke the got app on Android