Three years after Greta Gerwig challenged archaic notions of femininity in her $1 billion grosser Barbie, Mattel decided to put another favourite action figure under similar scrutiny. Travis Knight’s action fantasy He-Man and the Masters of the Universe gets a timely update with its ripped protagonist undergoing a much-needed transformation. No, I’m not referring to the metamorphosis he brings about in himself by raising the Sword of Power and screaming those sorcerous words. The makeover here isn’t as drastic or dramatic, but far more ingrained and relatable.The first time we see a grown-up Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) in the film adaptation is not in Eternia, but on Earth as he narrates the story of how he landed on the planet after being transported by the Sorceress. Unlike Gary Goddard’s 1987 adaptation, Masters of the Universe, Adam doesn’t grow up in Eternia. Instead, he’s sent to Earth when he’s a kid to save him from Skeletor’s siege on his home planet.Thus, like Superman, he grows up among Earthlings and thus, inculcates their ethic, value system, and vulnerability. Raised as an orphan in Oklahoma City, he finds himself a job as a Human Resource (HR) manager. His choice of arsenal, thus, is not bulging biceps, sorcerous sword, and mighty shield, but persuasion through discussion, deliberation, and dialogue.Adam here is also a Gen-Z He-Man. He’s well upto speed with the woke culture, and insists anyone ready to pick a fight to pull their punches. He doesn’t refer himself to as He-Man till the very end of the film, even though he’s transformed twice into his ripped alter-ego by then. In a cheeky callback, him christening himself “He-Man” comes less from flexing his male ego, and more from his Gen-Z tendency to spell out his pronoun (‘He’/him).When we don’t see him sport the iconic loincloth, we see Adam mostly dressed in a pink shirt. It’s the antithesis of what one would expect as the go-to OOTD of He-Man, even when he’s pretending to be one among the many on Earth. But Adam wears it rather matter-of-factly, and not like as a badge of honour like Ken (Ryan Gosling) in Barbie. His trajectory, in fact, is just the opposite to that of Ken — he starts off as a misfit in the Darwinian world of Eternia, only to come into his own as a soft-spoken HR guy on Earth. Adam in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is mostly seen sporting a pink shirt.Breaking the circle of brotherhoodOne would imagine this Adam would stick out like a sore thumb in the presumably chest-beating world of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Particularly when he’s being essayed by Nicholas Galitzine, who’s in his soft boy era with memorable turns in Cinderella (2021), Red, White & Royal Blue (2023), and The Idea of You (2024).He’s a far cry from the OG He-Man, Dolph Lundgren, who even pops up for a cameo in this adaptation, pumping iron in the gym, but also shelling out a key advice to Adam — to always be behind, and not in the front every time. The words register with a clueless Adam much later, when he realizes what his successor was trying to tell him, having left his young and foolish self behind for an older and far wiser one.Story continues below this adThe latent messaging was to break the circle of brotherhood, let more people in, put the manly inhibitions aside, and confide in each other emotionally. The He-Man of another era would’ve snarked at that E-word, but in this adaptation, all men double-check their masculinity, from Adam’s tough taskmaster Duncan (Idris Elba) to even his arch nemesis, Skeletor (Jared Leto).Duncan, who’s too sure of saving his masters from a Skeletor invasion, gets his cockiness put to test by Trap Jaw, who ends up getting the upper hand that day. That leaves Duncan in a drunken, dejected stupor for the next 15 years, till Adam returns to Eternia. Throughout that period, he’s looked after by his daughter Teela (Camila Mendes), who has the combat skills of her father but also the equanimity of a woman to assess the situation on her feet and decide when to fight and when to flee. Idris Elba plays Duncan in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.It’s only after Duncan reluctantly confesses his failure to Adam man-to-man that he finally feels worthy of looking his daughter in the eye and admitting that she’s the better, braver warrior of the two. “How are you doing with your feelings and all?,” Dunkin asks Adam, clearly lacking the vocabulary that a man like him would never be equipped with, having always traded his vulnerability for a lofty veneer.Duncan’s epiphany is also aided by Roboto (voiced by Kristen Wiig), a war machine reprogrammed by Duncan into a cleaning robot. Duncan, too insecure of coming across as a lesser man, does to the robot exactly the opposite of what he does to his daughter — domesticise her so that she doesn’t showcase more bravado than him in the battlefield. But like her daughter, who remains in touch with her feminine instincts, Roboto also fails to keep her primal tendencies at bay and ends up not only jumping into conflict zone, but also carrying her incapacitated inventor on her shoulders. It’s only after he comes to terms with his fragile masculinity that Duncan treats Roboto as an equal, fighting side by side with her in the climactic showdown.Story continues below this adFlesh over bonesIf He-Man here is projected as a symbol of soft masculinity, it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that Skeletor would be at the pinnacle of tough manliness. But the way Jared Leto plays He-Man’s arch nemesis is like a wannabe man, who doesn’t care to validate hand-to-hand bouts (“face me like a man? I don’t have a face”). His default setting is to take a cheap shot, instead of exhibiting brute strength to assert his supremacy.That’s because he’s in desperate search of the Sword of Power, which he feels would help him transform from a demon to a God, or from a limp excuse of a man to the apex predator. He lets his female associate Evil-Lyn (Alison Brie) do the heavy lifting, and exercises all his manly excesses on her when she fails to get the job done. He’s the equivalent of a domestic abuser who takes out all his frustrations on his female partner in order to compensate for his own insecurity as a man. Jared Leto plays Skeletor in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.He’s borderline obsessed with He-Man, his gaze enamoured by the physical specimen, in his desire to look exactly like him. He’s all bones and no flesh, but that’s not just confined to his anatomy. That’s also his inner constitution — purely skeletal, not a sign of life, no beating heart. All Adam needs to overpower him is not the ripped muscles, but merely flesh and blood that makes him more human, and by extension, more of a man.A pep talk by Duncan urges Adam to invoke his masculinity when it comes down to protecting his family and his kingdom because it’s always the soldiers who save the day during war, and not poets. But that doesn’t stop Adam from not exercising the human — and the Human Resource — within to resolve the conflict with dialogue, even with a hopeless tyrant like Skeletor. When he provokes his masculinity, claiming Adam isn’t “man enough to use the power”, he clears the air before delivering the final blows — “I know how to use the power. I just choose not to.”Story continues below this adAlso Read — Maa Behen scrutinizes what Bandar doesn’t bother to examine: Inherent bias against womenWhen Adam offers him a peace proposal in order to “break this cycle of violence”, Skeletor dubs him as a “muscles milquetoast” and mocks how he comes “dangling his sword” into his cave. Skeletor is not technically wrong because the Sword of Power can easily be substituted for ‘big d**k energy’ here. Like how a d**k doesn’t always make a man, the sword also doesn’t hold all the power. As Adam learns the hard way, it was always the man, and not his dangling weapon of choice.