Masters of The Universe (2026)

When the evil Skeletor (a surprisingly perfect Jared Leto) and his monstrous legions invade the city of Eternos, capital city of the planet of Eternia, young Prince Adam (Artie Wilkinson-Hunt) is magically sent to Earth (with the all-important Sword of Power) by The Sorceress (Morena Baccarin).

Unfortunately, along the way he loses the sword and so spends the next 15 years on Earth looking for it.

Now grown up Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) is stuck in a tedious corporate cubicle job until he is finally reunited with his magical sword.

This sends a signal back to Eternia - drawing the attention of both Skeletor's lieutenant, Beastman (voiced by Gary Martin) and Adam's childhood friend, Teela (Riverdale's Camila Mendes), who both race to find him as quickly as possible.

Whisked back to his home planet, Adam immediately discovers it is no longer the beautiful place he remembers, but has been devastated by Skeletor and his minions. Meanwhile, the heroes Adam was surrounded by as a child are downtrodden and no longer recognise him.

It is Adam's job to channel the power of his magical inheritance, boost the morale of his old friends, and overthrow the tyrannical Skeletor.

Masters of The Universe is a great 140-minute, light-hearted, action movie, barely slowing down for its entire duration, thanks for the excellent direction of Travis Knight (sadly, no relation).

This 45-year-old franchise has a rich - and oft confusing - amount of lore behind it already, but screenplay writers Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, and Dave Callaham carve their own path that is both immediately accessible to anyone coming to the story for the first time yet also honouring what has gone before (including a slew of Easter Eggs).

Emphasising Adam's time on Earth adds a swords-and-planet veneer to what has always been (to me) a pumped up swords-and-sorcery epic. His mother, Queen Marlena (Charlotte Riley) fleeting points out that she actually came from Earth, but this is never dwelt on. As with everything in Masters of The Universe this nugget sweeps in front of the audience at warp speed.

Travis Knight ensures nothing drags in his movie. From the trailers I'd feared that too much time might be spent setting up Adam's life on Earth, but I was so wrong. Even moments later on that I thought might be slowing the action down quickly hit the accelerator again.

Occasionally self-depreciating, the film's humour sometimes strays in to "more adult" territory, but this will probably be lost on younger members of the audience anyway, while the rapid fire delivery of some of the double entendres pretty much guarantees eyes and ears will be immediately distracted by the next shiny thing to flash across the screen.

While, it's not the greatest film ever made, it's full of heart and - most importantly - fun. This is no post-modern reimagining of the classic Masters of The Universe set-up: Skeletor and his army are the bad guys, Prince Adam and his are the good guys, end of.

Packed to the gills with interesting side-characters, the often camp nature of Masters of The Universe definitely has it leaning into Flash Gordon territory, but it also shares many traits with the original Star Wars movie, and, possibly in a different cinematic climate, I'm sure this could be "the next big thing".

If there is any justice in the world, Masters of The Universe will be the start of a massive new movie franchise, the final scenes (including one mid-credits) spotlight familiar faces who didn't appear in the main movie but we'd love to see more of in any upcoming projects.

I HAVE THE POWER!!!

The trailers are starting to make this look a bit Flash Gordon-y... and that's a great thing!

All I ask is that the film doesn't spend too long on boring old Earth in the first act before Prince Adam gets whisked back to Eternia to claim his birth right.

Gor (1987)

Generally I'm not one to complain if a movie based on a novel doesn't stick one hundred per cent to its source material, but this 1987 adaptation of John Norman's Tarnsman of Gor is simply taking the piss.

Branded as John Norman's Gor, the opening credits proudly proclaim that this film is based on Tarnsman of Gor - but the first thing you notice is the marked absence of any actual tarns: the roc-like warbirds the warriors of Gor ride into battle.

Instead they have horses.

This is pretty much on a par with Peter Jackson replacing the eagles with Irish Wolfhounds in The Hobbit or Lord of The Rings trilogies.

But this isn't the only peculiar choice scriptwriters Rick Marx and Harry Alan Tower and director Fritz Kiersch make in this un-faithful of adaptation of Norman's 1966 pulpy sword-and-planet story.

It almost feels as if they scanned through the book, picked out key names and phrases and then scattered them at random throughout the script.

We first meet our protagonist, wimpy physics professor Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barberini) lecturing bored students about the magical ring he inherited from his father and its connection to an alien world known as Counter-Earth or Gor (which is odd because when he actually arrives on this alien world and is told the planet's name he doesn't register that this is the place he was talking about 10 minutes earlier).

Having lost his girl to a campus bully (an early appearance from The Mummy's Arnold Vosloo), Cabot is involved in a car accident and wakes up to find himself on Counter-Earth.

However, it's not the alien world readers of the Gor books would be familiar with - the towering spires of the Gorean cities have been replaced by mud huts and caves, while the verdant nature of Gor is replaced with never-ending deserts (more Barsoom than Gor).

Clumsy Tarl accidentally stumbles into the role of hero when the village of Ko-Ro-Ba is raided by the soldiers of Priest-King Sarm (Oliver Reed) - in the books the Priest-Kings are large insectoid creatures, but not here - who are stealing the village's mystical Home Stone (a big point in the book is how bland and ordinary the Home Stones are) and kidnapping the village's ruler, Marlenus (Larry Taylor).

In the book, Marlenus is, in fact, the villain of the piece and it is his megalomaniacal schemes to take over Gor that Tarl is opposed to. Here, he's just some old duffer that Tarl has to rescue - aided by Marlenus' daughter Talena (Rebecca Ferratti) and other random one-dimensional characters - including an annoying midget called Hup (Nigel Chipps). No, I don't know why, either!

With a two-minute training montage, idiot Tarl is transformed into hero Tarl and the plot devolves rapidly into a run-of-the-mill "lifting the yoke of slavery" storyline - which, again, anyone familiar with Norman's Gor series will appreciate the irony of.

Given the general level of sauciness in the novels, it's bizarre that when Tarl is taken to Sarm's decadent palace of delights, it's more Flash Gordon than Flesh Gordon.

This is possibly the only '80s babes-and-barbarians movie where the women keep all their clothes on!

Then just as you think everything is coming to an end, and you're wondering where Jack Palance - mentioned high in the opening credits - has got to, Jack Palance appears, as another Priest-King, and introduces a whole other storyline which goes nowhere and doesn't appear to amount to anything.

Who could have realised they were actually, rather clumsily, setting up a sequel - Outlaw Of Gor - that was filmed alongside Gor?

While Palance is barely in this movie, mention must be made of the other big name though: Oliver Reed. Clearly the worse for wear from drink in many of his scenes, I hope Oli's towering genius was well-rewarded with alcohol for allowing his name - and talent - to be attached to such a trashy flick as this.

Gor is one of those incredible pieces of cinema that is so changed from its source material you have to wonder why the film-makers didn't go the whole hog and simply make it its own thing. It's not as the Gor books have ever had the same cultural cachet of, say, Lord Of The Rings.

There are only really a couple of minor details that they actually get right, subtle little background details (such as the Gorean drink 'paga'), that it would have far simpler to have changed the character and place names (most of which are already used incorrectly anyway) to something else and dropped the Gor connection entirely.

On the plus side, Gor is full of unintentionally funny moments, crappy fight sequences, no-budget special effects, a plot that meanders all over the place, and a drunk Oliver Reed. And Oliver Reed - drunk or sober - can make anything watchable.

Reading Goals 2025

I'm reading Westerns again... for the first time in decades

For the last 18 months or so I'd hoped that I could convince myself to do do more 'constructive' things with my free time. 

Ultimately, though, I found myself spending a lot of time watching television. And I mean a LOT.

I've always enjoyed TV and movies at home, but really this got out of hand. 

I certainly wasn't helped by the constantly expanding library of channels available to us, through Sky and various streaming platforms.

So, it wasn't as though I was consuming mental garbage, but still the number of shows I became addicted to ended up eating into my time more than I could really justify.

I also watched a lot of movies (although possibly not as many as usual... for reasons), and was particularly impressed by the second part of the epic Dune adaptation.

This convinced to take another crack (my third or fourth?) at trying to read the book. So I acquired the gorgeous new edition from Gollancz, then got Dune Messiah from Rachel as a Christmas present (see below).

The third of the original trilogy, by Frank Herbert, comes out later this year, so I have set myself the possibly overambitious goal (given how slow I actually read these days) of reading the three books in 2025.

My new editions of the first two Dune novels

However, in recent months I've also discovered a pair of "booktubers" who have inspired me to focus more on reading, beyond my usual "I have to read stuff that informs whatever gaming project I'm thinking about at the time".

Both McNulty's Book Corral and and Michael K Vaughan (who is not the same person as comic book writer Brian K Vaughan, despite what my addled brain kept trying to tell me) love pulp books, horror, old sci-fi, westerns, and vintage comics, which corresponds to my own preferences.

The Book Corral even piqued my interest in reading Westerns again (something I haven't done seriously for decades).

So, following the show's recommendation, I picked up Peter Brandvold's Nordic & Finn, the first book in a new series, as it tells the tale of a rugged mountain man who adopts a stray dog, and the scrapes they get into.

Rather chaotically, as is my wont when I'm suddenly "inspired" in this manner, I've also started listening to an audiobook of another of Brandvold's books, Bloody Joe.

I know it's kind of 'cheating' but I still consume a majority of books via the audio format, which allows me to "hear" a story in the bath or last thing at night, before I grab a few hours of sleep.

This also allows me to revel in the many, many Doctor Who (and Whoniverse-adjacent) audio dramas being produced by Big Finish. Currently this is the best source for new Who material, the present run of televised episodes being very underwhelming.

Comics-wise, my pull-list continues to get whittled down, but, unexpectedly, DC is making a strong comeback these days, which - along with indies such as Mad Cave's excellent Flash Gordon range - are now dominating Marvel.