Masters of the Universe and What’s Making Us Happy

The new Masters of the Universe movie is packed with Easter eggs for fans of the old 80s cartoon and toys, but does this wannabe summer blockbuster have anything to offer for everybody else? It features big names playing the signature characters, like He-Man (Nicholas Galitzine), Evil-Lyn (Alison Brie), Man at Arms (Idris Elba), and Skeletor (Jared Leto). But the movie also adds a contemporary and comedic comic riff on the story. If you like nostalgic adaptations for superfans, check out these episodes: In 'Mortal Kombat II,' fatality meets fan service https://www.npr.org/2026/05/08/nx-s1-5814848/in-mortal-kombat-ii-fatality-meets-fan-service 'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' has high charisma https://www.npr.org/2023/03/22/1165377735/dungeons-dragons-honor-among-thieves-has-high-charisma Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support Pop Culture Happy Hour+ https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Speaker 01

  Are you in the Masters of the Universe window? If you were a kid in the 80s, you probably are because ever since Mattel launched their line of Masters of the Universe action figures back then, there have been animated series, movies, comics, and more that worked to sell those toys to kids and nerds. Well, there's a new movie starring the whole gang: He-Man, Skeletor, Evil Lin, Men at Arms. And the cast is stacked with big names: Nicholas Galitzine, Alison Brie, Idris Elba. That's great news if you're already a fan, but does this wannabe summer blockbuster have anything to offer for literally anybody else? I'm Glen Weldon. Joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is podcaster Jordan Morris. He's the co-host of Jordan Just Go and Free With Ads. Hey, Jordan.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  Hi, Glenn. I have the power to talk about this movie with you.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  You certainly, certainly do. Also with us is filmmaker, pop culture critic, and iHeartRadio producer, Joelle Monique. Hey, Joelle.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  Hi, Glenn.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Let's get to it. The new Masters of the Universe movie takes the basic plot points of the old 80s cartoon and adds a contemporary comic riff on them. Here, Adam is a sad-sack HR professional on Earth, played by Nicholas Galitzine. He longs for his lost youth as a royal prince on the planet Eternia. But when the evil Skeletor attacked, young Adam escaped to our planet and lost the legendary Sword of Power somewhere along the way. Spoiler: He finds it and returns to Eternia to try to defeat the villain and save the world. The problem: He's still just a schlubby guy who can't fight. Can he learn to unlock the Sword of Power, which grants him amazing powers? And the body of a fitness influencer, along with a loincloth, a harness, a spray tan, and a blowout?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Masters of the Universe is in theaters now, and it is an Amazon original film, so we should note that Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Jordan, what's your take here? Were you a Masters of the Universe kid?

• 2:12Speaker 02

  I was. I was in the pocket, uh, 80's kid over here. So I had some of the action figures. I definitely watched the cartoon while I was eating Eggo's. But unlike some of the other properties of my youth, I haven't really kept track of this one. I know it's been rebooted a couple of times, um, and had, you know, uh, Netflix series and new toys and video games and stuff. I haven't really paid attention. So this is the first Masters of the Universe thing I've consumed, uh, in a while. And yeah, I liked a lot of the Easter eggs. I think there's a few cast members here who just nail this. I think there's some, you know, terrific, uh, acting in this. Some cool action. I think there's a lot of jokes. There's a lot of humor.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  This movie feels very punched up to me. Um, there are four credited screenwriters, but I would also guess that probably six or seven people who had worked on Rick and Morty at some point all got 2,000 bucks and a sandwich to come in and dump in a bunch of jokes. So yeah, sometimes it feels uneven. Sometimes it feels like unrelated jokes are coming in from off screen. I think this movie kinda lives and dies by whether or not you think it's funny. And, um, yeah, that stuff worked for me a little bit less, but there is a lot to enjoy.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  I'm glad you brought up the humor. I want to unpack that even more. But first, Joel, what'd you make of it?

• 3:31Speaker 03

  Oh, Glenn, I was not a He-Man stan growing up. Uh, it took me a while to discover the allure of hair metal. I got there. Uh, but I am a, a fan of the comic book Summer Blockbuster movie. And so I was eagerly awaiting this film. I said, summer, uh, new kids on the block. We're getting some new stars or, or stars we maybe spent some time with on TV who are taking their big leap to a major motion picture. I was really excited for it. I have notes. Um, to me, if we're gonna do a summer blockbuster and it's about the sword, you gotta make these fight scenes have impact. I need to see new inventive stuff. I need to see creative ways of shooting it. And I think after the roller coaster ride

• 4:16Speaker 03

  that was the Mando action sequences specifically. This felt a bit of a letdown. However, portions of the comedy really worked on me. I thought goofy, good time, over the top. My god, do we get some like, class A, like, just tongue in cheek. Like, it's very adult. I was shocked at how like,

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  winking and nudging it was to the audience in a more of like an adult context. And so in that way, like, it really, it pinged for me. I thought, costumes, production design, fantastic. Like, if you're gonna do a very, like, over the top, in-your-face kid's show, like, I kind of think visually, this is how you bring it to the screen. So I think, like, as a non-fan, I actually kind of left being like, this is fun and I would see a second movie. It's not perfect. I think we could have cut 40 minutes from this movie and done just fine, guys. I don't think you need most of that second act. Gonna be real honest, but when it was working, it was hitting.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  All right. This is a good mix. You got some people like the action, maybe not the humor. Some people like the humor, maybe not the action. This was, uh, just a fascinating cultural experiment, social experiment for me because as someone who is off-book on superheroes and the deep lore of Star Wars and Tolkien, to sit through a movie as a normal, and just like, to feel like my long-suffering husband must feel every time I'm forcing him to watch something. It's like, because this missed me, right? I was a snot-nosed teen when all this stuff came out, and I would watch this, but I would watch it ironically with all my friends to laugh at how terrible the animation was. It has to be seen to be believed how bad that animation was. But I didn't internalize any of this. I didn't

• 5:52Speaker 01

  love it. I dismissed it, which is exactly what a lot of people have been doing to everything I love for decades. So, um, I get it. And I sat there thinking, boy, this stuff just isn't hitting for me. And there's no reason, Joel, to your point, to keep me here for over two hours. But I am so happy for the folks that this is gonna hit for because I can tell how ruthlessly it's been targeted to hit them. So Mazel Tov, you're in for a treat. If this is your thing, go and piece. I do think it's interesting that this is a Mattel Studios production. Mattel also did the Barbie movie. Barbie is another piece of extruded plastic that is responsible for generations

• 6:30Speaker 01

  of, uh, young women's body dysmorphia. So like, equal time. He-man screwed up a lot of young men's body images. I know that for a fact. So they're screwing everybody up. Good for them.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Not to mention cats, right? I mean, you see cringe and you're like.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Cringe and you're like, geez, look at those haunches.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  I'm never gonna have those haunches.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  You're never gonna have those haunches. So one of the writers on this is Chris Butler. He is a writer and director of animated films. He wrote and co-directed Paranorman back in the day, wrote on a film called Kubo and the Two Strings, both of which I liked.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  Fantastic.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  He was interviewed on the red carpet at the premiere of this movie because he's a writer on this film too. He talked about how, as a queer kid, he was drawn to He-Man. He maybe didn't understand why. He joked about, you know, how good he looks in a harness. Where's the lie? And, and he said he realized that when he went back and saw those, the original series, he loved it because it was camp. And he decided when he came on board this movie to steer into the camp. And look, I want to get your temperature on this because certainly there's always been a lot of queer coded stuff in the world of He-Man, starting with that name. But apart from some pretty obvious and some pretty cringey gay jokes,

• 7:39Speaker 01

  which I was here for because I felt they were targeted to me, and the Queen needle drop, which I think it's more a Flash Gordon riff, but I think the gayest slash campiest thing in this movie is Jared Leto's performance as Skeletor, which is, yes, he's wearing a mask. The voice is buried under layers and layers of digital voice modulation. But somewhere underneath all those ones and zeros, this guy is having a ball. And like, he is giving classic gay Disney villain. He's giving Scar and Jafar. You pick up a little bit of Frankenfurter?

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I, the whole time I was waiting for him, like, he's looking for Prince Adam, right? But I was just waiting for him to, you know, find Rocket. It's like, it is so Tim Curry. I mean, the anticipation.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Also, a bit of Addison DeWitt, a bit of George Sanders in All About Eve.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  I can't be mad at that. But I don't like Jared Leto as an actor. I mean, Requiem for a Dream is 26 years ago. And also because he was jumping into that accent with both vocal cords and because the audio mix was so crunchy and because you can't get any visual cues. To what he's saying, because a skeleton got no lips. I was working at about eighty seven percent comprehension level of his dialogue. Did you guys have that problem?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, Leto's going for it. And yes, a lot of digital gunk is being dumped onto his vocal performance. And yeah, I, I, I feel like I more got the tone of what he was saying rather than what he was actually saying a lot of the times. And, and yeah, and I like the tone. And I, and I think the Leto stuff is a good marker for the stuff I liked in this movie. It's the over the top stuff. It's the camp stuff. I thought that stuff worked really well. Some people in the movie know what movie they're in. Some people do not. Leto definitely did, I thought.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  It's so funny. When I was sitting down, somebody's like, the voice is going to be a big thing for me. Like, I can't get the voice wrong. So I know, like, for super fans of He-Man, like, that voice needed to be on point. And I think they found a good overall tone for it. I don't know if it sounds like perfect. I do think maybe it could have been clearer here or there. If we were gonna go full camp, almost feels like, I'll put it this way, I feel the studio pulling that back a little bit. I mean, like, we're not gonna go full till gay camp over the top, but we'll let you have your fun here and there. I do think the overall look for him worked really well for me. I felt like the beady eyes were working. I thought, like, the mouth movie, we have a lot of people with either no lower jaws, or like, the teeth mouth thing doesn't work because there's not muscles, which sometimes, like, pings for

• 10:14Speaker 03

  me when I'm watching skeletons on screen. But this kind of, it worked. I think what made it work, though, was him opposite Alison Brie.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, who plays Evelyn, right?

• 10:24Speaker 03

  I think, like, he's having such a good time.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  That's it? I finished?

• 10:33Speaker 05

  Of course, my lord.

• 10:34Speaker 04

  When I raise my fist like that, I'm done!

• 10:36Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  That is the crescendo!

• 10:39Speaker 05

  No for the future, my lord.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  She plays Evelyn so well. That is a camp character. That, like, she's, like, two seconds shy of Cruella de Vil-ing this thing. Like, it is such a delight to watch her. And I think the two of them together, playing almost two different types of evil and going back and forth, like, every time we cut to them, I was like, back in the movie. Like, I really loved them. I wouldn't mind seeing, like, Just the two of them do the

• 11:07Speaker 03

  lot of fun.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I also liked Alison Brie a lot in this. I think she really nails it. I want to shout out another actor who I thought really understood the assignment. Camila Mendes, Veronica from Riverdale. She's a real pro at kind of staying in the moment, but also kind of letting you know that she knows what she's saying is bonkers.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  And yeah, I think she's perfect for this. She has to play this kind of like, you know, hard fighting, hard punching warrior woman.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Tila, yes.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  And she's, she's in it, but also she's not spiking the camera going like, can you get a load of this, this gunk?

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Except, except, Jordan.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yes, please.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  I think she is.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  I think she is. And I think that's, that's what I'm pinging on here. This movie's humor seems to me to be squarely in what I now think of as the current default approach. The sensibility we're getting a lot of these days, which I would call the comedy of de-escalation, right?

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Which is where if there's some thing in your big nerd property, that's like this big overblown piece of nerd lore that you have to, you know, work around. The way you do that is you have all the characters comment on how nerdy and goofy and overblown it is. You call them Fisto? Really? Seriously?

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Like that.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Which, I mean, Marvel didn't invent it, but they kind of perfected it. But it's now become so common. It's the air we breathe that no longer seems like it ever arises out of the situation, or it's something that's happening. It just seems like this thing we do. It seems like when we process nerd culture into something for the masses, we're making sausage, right? And that's just the spice we add to the sausage. And I know you've decried this approach on this show in the past, Jordan, so how does she finesse that? Because not a lot of people in this movie are finessing that.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, I also agree with you, Glenn. I think that this movie has a move that it does a lot. And that move is music swells, leading the audience to believe something dramatic is about to happen, and then the music cuts off and something silly happens. This movie does that so many times. And I do think it works in some cases and it doesn't in others.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  But yes, you're, you're absolutely right that the movie wants you to cry when, you know, we're cradling an injured character. But then in the very next scene, it's also like, get a load of this crap, huh? This is kind of dumb, huh?

• 13:28Speaker 03

  You guys, we've cracked it. We've cracked it. Cause here's the thing.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  If this movie is 40 minutes shorter, you don't care about any of that.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. That's true.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  I was like, okay, listen, this is, this is act one. We're on the planet. Kid's got a problem. There's a disaster. He gets sent somewhere else. He has trouble getting back. He gets back. Okay. You know this movie already. You've seen it a dozen times. It's fine. It's a summer blockbuster of He-Man. I'm very cool with like, paint by numbers. And in that first act, Idris Elba is carrying us. He put all of us on his shoulders and he said, I've got this. I understand the tone of it. I understand who I am. I can do the comedy. I can do the action sequences. I can make you feel a lot for a character in a very short amount of time. And then they take him away and you're like, bring Idris Elba back. Oh, you kind of need him. Like that, you need that level of energy and star power, I think.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  And I think, I really wish we had just been with Sascha Zemeta on Earth. She is killing this role. She is so funny as the head of the HR department.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. She's really funny. She's really good.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  She plays Adam's boss, Suzie on Earth.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  She was really great. And I think that that was what was working for me. Like we'd have these cameo people kind of come in, deliver these really great, fun, cheeky performances. All of that is good. I don't know. I just thought maybe more of these like little cameos and keeping the tempo up could have done a lot to save this movie. I'll say save it, but make it better.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  I will say, watching it at a screening with, which was both repress and for, I was gonna say normals, but there were some real fans there. There were some Mecha next stands in this audience that I didn't know existed. It was interesting to hear which jokes hit, which jokes didn't. The cheap gay jokes got a big laugh entirely from me. But anything that riffed on the original series cliches, there's a way that characters laugh in the original series. Big hit. It was the new stuff that is ostensibly there to bring in people who aren't like fans of this. Like anything that was Adam as an HR guy, trying to work toward conflict resolution, which happens a lot. Crickets every time in my view. Absolute crickets.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Interesting. Yeah, that's, that's a joke. This movie also really likes is that, you know, on Earth, Adam is a, you know, wimpy HR guy, who likes to ask for consent and use pronouns and stuff.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  And, uh, ha, ha, ha, wouldn't that be funny if someone did that? And, you know, and that's to contrast with the He-Man who solves problems with swords and punching.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  At some point, this movie wants you to think that solving problems with talking is, is the way to go. And maybe we've evolved more since the eighties and isn't it time for a new kind of He-Man that solves his problems with talking? And then it just has him beat a bunch of people up. So it, it, it's not looking into that too hard, but it takes a crack at maybe investigating the kind of toxic masculinity stuff that He-Man is part of, but it doesn't look at it that closely.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  And I understand that you can't make this movie and have He-Man and Skeletor talk it out, you know, over a matcha. I understand that that's, that's not the ending anybody wants and that that would be pretty sweaty in and of itself. But I think the fact that it spends so much time going like, isn't talking really the way to go? And then just turns into punching, I think, just kind of points to the fact that this movie doesn't know what it's doing all of the time.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  I kept getting reminded of films like John Carter and Jupiter Ascending.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  But those films were not pegged to like a culturally ubiquitous totem of body dysmorphia like, like He-Man like is. Like this is a known IP. It should get butts in seats. I don't have a sense if it is going to though.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Cause I'm outside the window.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  It's a great question. I do think that if you are a He-Man stan and you have a kid who's kind of in the pocket too. If you have a 10 year old or something, I think this would be a fun movie to see with them. You know, depending on how much your 10 year old loves homoerotic humor. So, you know, there's some, there's some, there's some adult jokes in this, as we've mentioned. But, I mean, I do think that the, you know, 10 year olds of the world will like the action. They will like the talking cat. And they will want thousands of dollars worth of toys based on this. So I, I do think this could be a fun, shared experience.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  What was really pinging me is in my critics and fans screening, all of the fans were older than me.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  I did not see any babies in gear or chatting it up afterwards in the lobby excited to hear about it. I think the amount of 10-year-olds who know about this property are probably very low. I'll be interested to see who comes out for this film. I just think there's some kind of disconnect between this IP and the very young generation.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  All right. Well, we're all coming down on this a little bit differently, which is healthy and good. I think we all kind of say, look, if this is your thing, go do that thing.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Strap in. Yeah.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  All right. So up next, what is making us happy this week?

• 18:37Speaker 06

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• 19:26Speaker 04

  This week on Up First, we're in the final days before the midterm elections, and this is one of the wonderful things about politics, one of the wonderful things about humanity. We have all this data, we have all this information, and nobody really knows what's gonna happen. We're gonna follow it day by day through Election Day and beyond. And you can listen to Up First every morning on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Now it is time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What is making us happy this week? Jordan, kick us off. What is making you happy this week?

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yes, I would love to. Uh, since this movie is powered by nostalgia, I thought I would, uh, give a recommendation that also gave me a lot of good nostalgia feels. Um, it is a graphic novel called Raised by Ghosts by, uh, Brianna Lowenstein, a great cartoonist. This actually, uh, just got nominated for an Eisner Award. That's the Oscars a comic book, so, um, you know, this is a good one. This is a memoir comic about growing up, going to high school in the nineties. So, you know, you get a lot of great music references. You get a lot of great fashion, but it's not just that. There's also a really kind of like beautiful, sad, funny story here. This is Brianna's story about growing up, uh, with divorced parents who are kind of absent

• 20:41Speaker 02

  and her kind of like making her way into the adult world. And it has these kind of beautiful, like painterly visuals, but all the dialogue, I think this is really brilliant. All the dialogue is from her kind of past notes in high school. So the notes you kind of fold up elaborately and hand to your friends and it's like diary entries too. So all of the dialogue is the stuff she was feeling and thinking at the time. And then kind of going with these kind of largely dialogueless visuals. It's a really, really clever way to tell this story. So, uh, yeah, it's Raised by Ghosts. It's by Brianna Lowenstein, uh, and it's fantastic.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  That's a great pick. Thank you so much, Jordan. All right, Joel Monique, what is making you happy this week?

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Glenn, I know you share with me in our love for Interview with the Vampire. I have seen the first three episodes of The Vampire Listened.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Joel, make that three.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  Jordan, welcome to the club. Oh my God. This series had me nervous. If you follow Interview with the Vampire, you know, you've been following Jacob Anderson's Louis de Pont de L'Arc for two seasons and what has been a blistering, riveting retelling of Anne Rice's classic novel. They changed a lot of things. He's black now. He's dealing with a, uh, country trying to re-enslave people. It's not at all relatable. Um, it is dark. Sexy and fun and I totally in the grip of this show. This season, they're calling it The Vampire Lestat. They're switching leads. Uh, Sam Reed's Lestat has been in the show from Git. He's fantastic.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  Uh, and now he's taking over the lead role essentially. All the same characters are coming back, but it's Lestat's show and they're changing a lot to fit the tone of this new lead. Character. It's also a musical notoriously challenging to do specifically in the medium of television. We only have so many good musical moments on TV. You can count them. It's daring and risky and my God, if the first three episodes are any indication, they're pulling it off. Uh, I, I really think this show is something special and I don't want people to miss it while it's airing.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Joel, I agree with you. I was worried about this season too, because it's a big change. All I wanted it to be was funny, stay funny. It's staying funny. So that is Interview with a Vampire, the third season of which is now called The Vampire Lestat on AMC. Thank you very much. Um, what's making me happy this week? Documentary Now was a very funny mockumentary series that ran on IFC for four seasons between, um, 2015 and 2022. It was created by Seth Meyers and Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Reese Thomas. And it was just a, they did a series of parodies of, you know, groundbreaking documentaries. Everything from Salesman to Grey Gardens to Actopus Teacher to Jiro Dreams of Sushi and many more.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  But the thing is it did it with this incredibly exacting level of detail and wit that made it all the funnier. It was also a show with a bit, the bit being that this show Documentary Now wasn't just a comedy series on IFC, but it was in fact, an American institution that had been broadcasting prestigious documentaries into American homes for decades now. Uh, last month, the gorgeous coffee table book called Documentary Now was published. It's a companion book to the series and like the series, it's got a bit and it's committing to it because it purports to be the revised and expanded fourth edition of the seminal 1975 text. It features an original introduction written by the original host of the show, Burt Lancaster, which is not actually written by Burt Lancaster because he was not.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Not actually the original host of the show. A new introduction by Helen Mirren, who was the host of the show. But that was actually written by Seth Meyers. The book contains all these behind the scenes archival materials, which are not actually behind the scenes archival materials. And then, you know, stills from the show that identify every actor on it, like Hayter and Armisen and Kate Blanchett and Owen Wilson as the characters that played on the show. Some folks will be interested in this. It also includes the complete musical score for Co-op: The Musical. So if you want to get soused this Christmas and have everyone gather around the piano and sing along to the song "Holiday Party," parentheses, "I did a little cocaine tonight," close parentheses. Now's your chance. That's the coffee table book documentary now.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  And that is what is making me happy this week. And that brings us to the end of our show. Joelle Monique, Jordan Morris, thank you so much for being here. We had the power after all.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  Thanks, Glenn.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Was it the friends we made along the way? Was that the power? I kind of zoned out near the end of the movie. Was it the friends we made along the way?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Also, he says, "By the power of Grayskull, I have the power," which is just too many powers. He said there were powers. Too many repetitive.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Let's do another pass on that catchphrase.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Let's do another pass at that. This episode was produced by Lennon Sherburne Huff's Apathama. And my cats have been edited by our show writer, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Ken, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next week.

• 25:37Speaker 06

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• 25:41Speaker 07

  This election season, let the NPR Politics podcast save your time and your sanity. We'll help you understand key races, which polls you can safely ignore, and what might happen if power shifts in Congress. Our short daily episodes come out every afternoon, so you can spend less time scrolling through each chaotic news cycle. Make NPR Politics your hub for midterm election coverage. Follow our podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  I'm Kevin Ruse.

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  And I'm Casey Newton.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  And together, we've been tech journalists for decades. Now, we're your hosts of Machine Gods, a new podcast from NPR that makes sense of what AI means for your work, your life, and all of our futures. Twice a week, we'll be exploring the biggest moves in tech and give you unmatched access to the real titans of industry. Listen to Machine Gods from NPR on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.