Reviews

Master of The Love Letter

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Let’s take a break from my discussions of software and Project Management to talk about the 2026 Masters of the Universe film and why it has artistic legitimacy. There, that’s not what you expected, was it?

So the film had it’s challenges. It had sort of OK reviews. It didn’t seem to quite make the money it needs. It had Jared Leto, which is inadvisable on all occasions. But also I had friends who saw it and quite enjoyed it. What’s my take?

The film is actually quite enjoyable. It’s breezy, it looks good (though some CGI seems to have been added quickly), the cast is absolutely on, it’s very colorful and fun. Honestly it was a popcorn movie without the sense of getting tossed into a huge extended universe, even if some elements hint at such ambition.

What really stood out to me was how it was an absolutely love letter to the original series – one I am ironically familiar with due to cultural impact and remakes as the original came after my time. It looks cartoony. It’s loaded with sincere weirdness. Skeletor is overdramatic, a theater kid with dark occult power. It even has a kind of early 80’s vibe to the music and the credits. There’s no way this could be made without people who cared and did their research.

It’s also filled with plenty of extrapolations and little details. The goofy names of the heroic Masters are not their actually names – they’re what a young Prince Adam nicknamed them (before he got stranded on Earth). Refugee Adam, stuck on earth, grows up to be an HR professional – leveraging his genial and kind nature. There are deep cut highly obscure characters – you may not care about someone called Goat-Man but he looks like a badass Gwar extra.

The movie is first and foremost a love letter to the original – and I think that’s where it has artistic legitimacy.

The movie takes a toy marketing commercial with a plot and brings it to life. It has a feel of someone playing with their action figures, with wild action and silly and fun twists. It doesn’t shy away from any of the strangeness it embraces it. Wrapping the plot around a young Adam, who remembers this fantastical world but seems crazy for telling people about it adds a kind of longing to the whole affair.

Did it need to go to theaters? No. Did it need to be an attempt to launch more films? No. Did it need Jared Leto? No, he’s a creep. I think it could have been done for streaming services and be done with it.

But watching it, feeling that love and affection, feeling that sincerity? There was something artistically worthy here. Even if it’s based on a “toyetic cartoon” there was something there.

I think now I have to consider the “Love Letter” it’s own meta-genre. And I may need to rethinking other shows and films and books.

Steven Savage

It is Weird.  It is Art.

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

If you were to ask me who are the greatest musical artists of the past 100 years, I’d first wonder why the hell you asked me.  But, as I answered, I would have to say Prince and Weird Al Yankovic.  Prince’s place is obvious – talented, a supporter of musicians, etc. – but Weird Al also fits the definition of artist.  He’s a musicologist in a jester’s outfit, a man who gets music and truly reaches you – art that makes you laugh for many different reasons.

His “biopic” Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is also art.  In fact, it’s art in the sense of James Joyce’s quote that the emotions art produces are where “The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.”  Art takes you out of yourself, and this movie – also a comedy – definitely does that.

Weird is a fictionalized telling of Weird Al’s career, but that doesn’t do it justice.  It takes the all-too familiar beats that many a bad biopic shoved a real person’s life into and does it with Weird Al’s life (which is often rather tame).  The result is the movie version of one of his songs – taking one thing and making it about another.

However this is not a song, but a movie about a real person, real events, played by real people.  It’s also done with a straight face, except for a few over-the-top moments and sly lines.  The result is surreal, jarring, and funny – where familiar faces and situations appear scrambled inside an often misused story framework.  We know Weird Al didn’t have an affair with Madonna, but the film has that happen because a bad romance is a common biopic trope.

As these falsehoods occur on the screens, the actors sell it with sincerity.  Daniel Radcliffe is exceptional as Weird Al, capturing both his sweetness and going off the rails in service of the plot.  Rainn Wilson does an almost disturbingly good Doctor Demento.  Evan Rachel Wood’s life-ruining Madonna is basically one of Madonna’s old personalities brought to life.  Even when he has but one scene as Wolfman Jack, Jack Black embraces it with a passion to be both the man and the bad biopic role he fills.

It’s all very wrong, all done with a straight face.

Watching Weird is funny, but the more you know about Weird Al (and I’ve been a fan of his, especially into the 90s) the more the experience keeps taking you outside of yourself.  It’s so gloriously wrong about everything that you don’t know what will happen next.  It’s also so familiar in its use of bad biopic beats that it’s a savage mockery of tropes we’re used to.  A Fauxumentary if you will, where you’re both unsure of what is to come but completely sure you’ve seen it before.

Thus I really have to consider this art – because it keeps knocking you outside of yourself.  Is that a trope or real?  Wait why is that history out of order?  Isn’t that plot twist something every bad biopic pretends happens anyway?  How can these people say these stupid and false lines without laughing themselves silly?  Wait, aren’t a lot of these supposed real-life documentaries just this dumb?

It is perhaps the perfect film to falsely sum up Weird Al’s life as it’s, well, just like his songs.  But it’s not just appropriate or a good jab at the media.  Weird is a reminder that art doesn’t have to be staid and dignified – it can wear a Hawaiian shirt, have an affair with Madonna, and eat LSD-laced corn chips.

Steven Savage

Everything Everywhere All At Once: Unspoilable Lessons

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I want to do a review of Everything Everywhere All At Once, the science-fiction drama-comedy starring Michele Yeoh. I want to review it as not only is it worth reviewing, the movie has many lessons for writers and media creators. However, there’s a problem – I don’t want to spoil any of it.

There is nothing in the film I want to risk spoiling because even minor things add to the experience. Each time I think “here’s an example” to communicate the feel of the film, it would ruin some of the delights.

Thus a challenge – reviewing a film you shouldn’t spoil to extract lessons we can use. How do you review a movie this good without ruining it a bit?

In a rather Taoist/Buddhist fashion, I’m turning poison into medicine here. I will explain why I shouldn’t spoil things and what those things teach us about making good media. Its “do not dare spoil nature” is a lesson about why it is good.

So you probably know the basics from the ads. Michele Yeoh plays a woman, and somehow multiple universes and martial arts action are involved. That’s it. Now let’s see why Everything Everywhere All At Once works in a way that won’t tell you a damn thing about what happens.

Here’s why the movie works and what to learn.

The Right Cast:  Saying casting is “perfect” is trite, especially when you have, well, Michele Yeoh. But the entire cast is excellent, and dare I say at least one of them eclipses Michele Yeoh. Each person brings their all to the role and creates many personal, subtle moments. It’s these meaningful moments that are things I don’t want to spoil

Use of Location:  Locations are characters all their own as well as tools of narration and backstory. Everything Everywhere All At Once puts its locations to use, even down to the props, as they can tell stories. A poster, table, desk, or piece of junk can all say something to the audience. Location can and should matter – I just don’t want to go into detail because it spoils.

Emotional Truth: The commercials for Everything Everywhere All At Once are quite wild. But in that wildness are some core, powerful, emotional truths – “throughlines” if you were, weaving the wildness together. A good film sticks with you – and a day later, I was discussing not the scenes from advertisements but the characters and their feelings.  And I’m not telling you about those feelings, you have to see for yourself to “get it.”

The Chosen Form:  Building on that emotional truth, one fantastic thing about Everything Everywhere All At Once could be told in other genres. The chosen form (sci-fi action) was just one of many choices with which to do it. I find a good story, a good emotional truth, could exist in any form – and you can tell if it could or not. 

Use of Direction:  Everything Everywhere All At Once is exceptionally well-directed (if you’ve seen any ads, you can tell it has to be). There’s a fearlessness to the wild stylings and effects, a confidence, that makes the film work. Honestly, few directors could have done this – Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert were amfazing.

As crazy as Everything Everywhere All At Once may look, it is rock-solid in what it does – and what we learn from it. Have an emotionally resonant story, implemented well in your chosen genre, where location allows great actors to tell a relatable tale. There’s nothing in it that we haven’t heard before, but it’s done very well.

Now I hope you go out and see it – but afterward, don’t spoil. Leave others to be as surprised as you will most assuredly be.

Steven Savage