MOTU 1987 Movie The Official ULTIMATE Thread - TONS of pics!

[Skullmaster]

I am very impressed with the thoroughness of this thread. Those are incredible pics you shared. I especially like the concept material. I must've have seen this movie a dozen times but you've got stuff here I've not seen or even known about.

[BrandonDaCollector]

Well, it had been a long time since I posted in this grand topic of Mine. Skullmaster was the last one to reply to this topic which I really never knew him much and now he he left the board apparently unless he's a spectator for whatever which seems like many former board members maybe or they just left period, either way their missing out on a ton content by Me to talk about. Like I said before, are you a spectator or a player I've always been a player So last year was the film's 35th anniversary, I posted elsewhere on the board I was going to post about it here as well but I decided not to then PB just posted about the MOTU film in his topic and I'm like what the heck

The following quote is from My spectacular Glory Days of Movie Rentals whre I discuss how it was before this digital age came to and how fun it was and many of My local experiences, memories and times that I cherish here ---> http://www.dctoyrevolution.org/general-toy-discussions/my-odds-ends-insane-keychain-t1176-40.html

So like you just saw about Blockbusters's lables their major competition in physical store, not online had'em too and that was none other than Hollywood Video. I have spoke of them many times before. Our usual location was just doors away from where Star Video was believe it out, it seemed like everything became one in a much smaller world as the years would go by. We loved them as much. In My Go-Bots & Rock Lords showcase I spoke of a Walgreens that I got them at, across the street the building used to be a Hollywood Video. We used to go there a lot. Not as much as the one on Loughborough & Morgan Ford Road but still a bit often. They had a really cool collage of movie posters all over their walls, My favorite one was their Batman Forever with the same poster I showed in PB's Movie Trailers topic with Tommy Lee Jones' Two-Face SMILING. Oh it was rad seeing this in huge scale on the wall, if you never been to a Hollywood Video before in the 90s & early 2000s then you missed a really cool video rental outlet that manged to exist longer than Blockbuster but still fell to Redbox, Netflix and this digital age we're in now So at Our main location it was pretty cool. The nephew My Grandma's late friend Violet worked there for a while whom is also related Representative Fred Wessels whom I have met before. My Grandma knew them well. She made deals here at Hollywood Video too like all the rest of the fine stores in this presentation though this was really the last hurrah however when it came to video rental joints. Here is the Hollywood Video Labels.



So I got a lot from Hollywood Video, maybe not as much as from Blockbuster but just as memorable. I saw this over there and I wanted My Grandma MiMi to see if they could put it for sale and with much debate & questionable outcome, her charming persuasion worked and I was able to purchase the 1987 Masters of the Universe live action film I wanted it ever since it came out hence when i spoke of Rainbow Video in the beginning of this grand presentation of My Glory Days of Video Rentals and it was one of the great films that missing from My collection. It's still as wonderful now as it was back then which this year in 2022 marks it's 35th anniversary and I'm so glad I have it in honor of that

Well, They never made a movie book with all the characters and everything else and there's not many people like Me that goes that extra mile and show it all in detail so really if you follow Me why would you need one I think that's all that needs to be said. I expressed My love for it for 5 pages WAY BACK IN 2013 If your a veteran of this topic then go to the first page and relive it all again. If your new to it then go to page 1 so you can see it all from the beginning but keep in mind many of the pics are from Photobucket and this was before they acted fruit with they new software crap so I'm just letting you know I'm not correcting it cause the pics are still good enough

[packerbacker180]

I didn't see this when you originally posted it. There were few things more disappointing in my childhood than this film. I really disliked it. Dolph Lundgren is a fine actor, but he never really scremaed He-Man to me, I think his face is too gaunt. I was really disappointed in most of the character designs outside of Blade and Saurod. I always thought they looked really cool. I never had their figures though as I think by '87 I'd moved on to GI Joe and other toylines and didn't really get many MOTU figures.

I loved the cartoon. Loved. So with so many changes to the characters and this taking place on Earth, I just didn't like much of it. I don't even think I've watched it since I was a kid. And don't get me started on Gwildor and his dumb sonic key. Ugh. Sorry, I think most of this movie was terrible.

I didn't know She-Ra was planned for the film. I'd love to see a studio take another stab at a film. I think it could actually do really well and with a post credits She-Ra or Hordak, you could be on to a pretty good run of films. But it would have to be one right and with respect to the product. For every Marvel cinematic universe there's a trail of awful GI Joe films. But done on Eternia, with a decent plot, I think it could be good. With the popularity of things like Game of Thrones, Thor, and such, now would be the time. And nostalgia is king.

I'd like it if for no other reason than to wash the taste of this film from my childhood. Sorry if that offends anyone.

[AcidDragon]

I have mixed feelings about the movie. When I was a kid, being a huge fan of the toy line and the cartoons, it was a huge shock to me because it was so crazy violent and many of the character designs were not as I expected. I also wasn't a fan of Gwildor even though he was created to appeal to my age demographic. I thought Karg looked freaky as all heck and Beastman looked more like Grizzlor. It didn't really have the colourful palette I was expecting from He-man but I read later that a lot of this was due to the lighting used and in fact, many of the character's costumes were fairly colourful on set but the lighting and post production washed a lot of the colours out. Man-At-Arms was cool enough but Teela didn't really resemble her character at all. Chelsea Field is a fine actress and I would have been fine with her in the role but the costume leaned more futuristic sci-fi than barbarian fantasy like her character tends to dress in the lore. Saurod looked a lot like Trap Jaw and Blade a lot like Tri-Klops that I wonder why they didn't just make them those characters in the first place. I mostly disliked the storyline at the time but I was also happy to have a movie called Masters of the Universe at all so my standards I guess were pretty low.

The Earthling story arc was OK, I could take it or leave it at the time and I still feel the same way about it now. I remember I hated James Tolkan's character back then but I appreciate him a lot more now. Julie (Courteney Cox) and Kevin are just kind of whatever although they're a little more tolerable now but in some ways still annoying as the irresponsible wannabe rock star teenagers.

After re-watching the film as an adult, it's really not THAT bad. I enjoy it well enough and it's true that if you pretend it's not a He-man movie, it's actually a decent standalone sci-fi/fantasy movie. I still hate Gwildor but I appreciate William Stout's character designs a lot more as standalone art pieces. I do own all the movie figures from Matty Collector from the MOTU Classics line as well as the figures that were supposed to be inspired by William Stout's designs.

[packerbacker180]

Yeah, it's very dark photography wise. No idea why they went that route, maybe to hide inadequacies? I don't know. Even back then I couldn't see Tolkan, even though I didn't know his name, and not just think of him as the principal from Back to the Future. I've no idea what their budget was and I know you'd be much more limited in what you could do back then (I think nowadays we could get fairly realistic giant rideable cats onscreen). special effects wise, but nothing really worked for me in the film. I get it, I didn't need Teela to dress like Slave Leia (though I wouldn't have complained) but she looked like she came from Buck Rogers compared to the rest of the characters.

I think Dolph, though he had the physique, was too slim build. Someone like Arnold would've looked more like He-Man to me but then you'd have to deal with the accent ("By da powha of Greyskuh!). Big things like Gwildor and Beastman annoyed me. And Skeleotr having an army of faceless henchmen like some James Bond villain. Little things like He-Man having a cape and shoulder pads annoyed me. The whole film was just one giant disappointment. I can't remember another film that I was really looking forward to growing up that was more of a letdown.

I didn't need kids on screen to help me relate. If I wanted to see a stranger running around in a strange land I could've gone and watched Crocodile Dundee. Someone somewhere in production should've noticed how badly Howard the Duck bombed the year before and said, maybe we should rethink this whole putting them on Earth idea.

[BrandonDaCollector]

Thanks for your replies Guys. My reply is going to be to the both of you

Oh what a critic you are PB. I know that MOTU wasn't the best film but you have a mind set like I did and like everybody else that loved the cartoon and was expecting the movie to be just like it and since it wasn't it left a sour taste in our mouths that we never forgot. I don't blame you and the other people bit over time I see the film differently. Today's day and age wouldn't do the film justice. Mattel has ruined the chances so many times with the corporate density. MOTU is arguably the greatest franchise of the 80s and it's treated so horrible not to mention all the reboot lines that makes the property look like it can only succeed as a action figure & comic media project HolliWeird always puts new characters and changes things around and their still doing it with action figure, comic & video game based movies. Look at Resident Evil's Alice, she was never in the games yet she's the main character in the franchise of the movies With today's symblosm and the stuff like putting a trans character in there to only be cancelled at the last second when it's already filmed to be released in days...that's what happen to the very recent Batgirl movie I try to warn people about this stuff of what their putting in films and what companies like Disney is pushing at the plebeians especially the children

Back in the day I made a big post on Matty Collector of how they should make a MOTU movie with ALL THE CHARACTERS and WHOM I think they should be played by, REMEMBER that Acid It was a HUGE topic that I did I may one day redo it HERE and represent like it was then way back in the early 2010s I thought Dolph had a great look for He-Man, it was the outfit and him not turning back to Adam being the problem. The musical score was arguably the best part like any in film. I loved the Key, the sounds and the music it made. That was actually Bill Conti's (Rocky) tunes of source music he composed...shame people don't acknowledge this great stuff, its so fun to do. Like Gwildor said "MUSIC IS THE UNIVERSE I'm not sure if you know what I mean there. The lighting was fine IMO, I loved the dark urban nature and violence of the movie though I was never a fan of Skeletor killing Saurod James Tolkan was fine, if you were a huge Back to the Future fan like I was then I would imagine that would ave gotten people excited cause you already know that bald headed jerk! Now I had already mentioned certain things that you guys did including Beast Man being more like Grizzlor. "The Kids" were to be like the Kids in the Christmas Special hence they were from Earth. Teela was being changed because Mattel had New Adventures on their mind , there is rare concepts of her looking similar like the movie version. Like I said, I was never sure why the characters were replaced like Gwidor replaced Orko and is all I know the villains were Saurod replaced Trap Jaw & Blade replaced Tri-Klops. Yes, I have the MOTUC movie versions as well I mean they were some of the last & key figures in the line, how could you NOT want them I loved Karg, the vampire bat-man mercenary but I couldn't afford his figure when Super7 made him so expensive though I give them huge credit since Mattel pathetically couldn't make it happen back in their MOTUC line when there was so much demand for him. When Super7 made the figures I had to retire from collecting the line, the market was already becoming really ridicules with high prices

Yes, She-Ra was and with all the bikini warrior & sorcery women in movies in the 80s, if she was done right she would have beat them all I'm sure and yes that even includes 1985's Red Sonja & Queen Gedren which is My fave If it would be done properly The Horde (My fave MOTU faction) would have been awesome, the 80s had so many great horror films and they would have been so great I'm sure

OK, here is a quote from Me earlier...

Saurod: Played by Pons Maar, another new character. Coincidentally, looks similar like the Jungle Hunter Predator, another reptilian alien being seen in the 1987 movie "Predator". He was another addition of new blood that was acceptable and maybe a snake man or even Fangman may been wanted by fans during those time, he was an exciting villain till his unfortunate death. Like Blade, his comic and figure versions looked nearly identical.

So this is something I should have done 10 years ago this year is post a side by side view of Saurod & The Predator. Like so many things, there is a lesser known counterparts that came out the same time yet people only take one and it becomes the dominant one like Marvel's Man-Thing succumbed to DC's Swamp Thing, Bandai's & Tonka's Go-Bots got betrayed by fans accepting Takara's & Hasbro's Transformers more etc. Well Predator came out the SAME YEAR in 1987 as MOTU which was his 30th anniversary last year As you know I am a huge Predtaor fan but seems like I am the only one here. As much as I love the franchise, Saurod is hardly known outside of the MOTU as a franchise as a whole. Shame cause I thought that he was quite good & cool. While they may not look exactly a like, their is similarities in their appearances both being reptilian warrior space beings and one that cannot be seen right away but both had DREADS for hair If you not sure watch the film, even better yet if you have the MOTUC Saurod he has them pinned up in a pony tale. It was a big deal when Scott "ToyGuru" Neitlich pointed it out at @ SDCC back in the day. So here is a pic I made for comparison.

So that's that. I may update this topic from time to time as I should. Thanks for the replies Guys

[packerbacker180]

If it was sword and sorcery on an alien planet, I could've lived with some of the designs. But it being on Earth just soured the whole thing. It was a cheap move to save money on production and it sucked because of that. A lot of the movie suffers because of budget saving decisions. My understanding of Orko is they didn't think they didn't went to spend the money to craft a character that was always floating so they went with cheap, troll garbage Gwildork.

BTW, just looking into what they had planned for the sequel....woof...that sounds like the absolute worst movie ever...

"The sequel, titled Masters of the Universe 2: Cyborg, was written; the script followed He-Man, who returned to Earth to battle Skeletor, who had left Earth as a postapocalyptic wasteland; and the film was to feature Trap Jaw and She-Ra. Pro surfer Laird Hamilton was originally to replace Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and the only aspect known about the sequel's screenplay was that He-Man would have returned to Earth disguised as a professional quarterback."



I literally feel dumber after reading that paragraph. Whoever came up with that hopefully got laughed out of ever screenwriting again.
Hey, HHH would've made a decent He-Man.

[BrandonDaCollector]

Yes, HHH would have indeed. I already covered the sequel is short detail.

The Bleak Future of the MOTU in Cinema!

Masters of the Universe 2! Sadly, a sequel never came to be. Cannon was going to make a MOTU sequel as well as a "live action" Spider-Man movie which both were to be directed by Albert Pyun at the same time but due to a severe money loss they had to can the projects thus cancelling their deals with Mattel & Marvel and had to re-do things about and then came Cyborg in 1989!


I hope one day there will indeed be another MOTU film in the near future, one that will pay more attention to the classic material and be true to what the fans love, we can only hope!

I loved Cyborg but you gotta be a person that's easy to please. Besides 88's Bloodsport (35 years ago this year), 89's Cyborg[/b was THE film that really got My attention of [b]JCVD] thus he became one of My favorites all the way back then Like companies that you thought never would cause they were so huge & popular such as a Acclaim, Cannon went out of business a few years after this

Acid appreciates William Stout's art for the film and I do too. I have talked about it before within the topic. In the trailer to Cyborg RIGHT WHEN IT STARTS, you can see his great art of a distopian city. THERE is how you CAN TELL that CYBORG was going to be MOTU 2. There is numerous instances within the film that anybody that watched the MOTU movie and paid attention to it would notice and say "hey, that looks like it was part of the He-Ma movie. That's because it was and they just left it be because of budget & time



By the way, the director of Cyborg, Albert Pyun died back in November, he was a great director and a true master mind of fighting & sci-fi films, may he rest in peace

[packerbacker180]

I don't remember much about Cyborg, I was never the biggest JCVD movie, especially bis earlier films. Some of his later 90's stuff like Sudden Death I actually saw in the theater when I was a teen and we went to movies almost every Friday. Of course, I'd go see any movie with hockey in it, even the Tooth Fairy.

[BrandonDaCollector]

Shame, it's a great movie as well as the first two Kickboxers however its hard to touch Bloodsport, gosh that one is great. Well I like him. I flipped out when he was Col. Guile in the Street Fighter film. I never had the chance to see Sudden Death at the show but yes, it's a terrific film but sadly that was one of his last major films that was at theaters, at least he lasted a bit longer than Seagal did When you said Tooth Fairly I thought you meant the original McFarlane concept for Movie Maniacs back in the day that was totally redone and turned into Darkness Falls but that will be for Me to talk about at another time. Of course it's more recent with Duaine and I never saw the Tooth Fairy and nor do I plan too