As somebody who was a kid in the 1980s, I won't pretend I haven't been supremely curious about the upcoming Masters of the Universe movie. I watched the original cartoon and had many of the toys. I watched the first live-action movie and convinced myself I liked it even though it was mostly terrible.
When I saw the first teaser trailer for the new Masters of the Universe, I was surprised at how much the new film really did look like the old cartoon brought to life. However, the thing that had me the most curious wasn't what was in the trailer; it was what wasn't there. While we got brief glimpses of Jared Leto's Skeletor, the first teaser never had him speak. I was sure this was an intentional marketing decision. I was certain the voice, when we heard it, was going to be divisive. Now we know how Skeletor sounds, and I am certainly surprised.
Jared Leto's Skeletor Has Spoken, And He Sounds...Fine?
This morning, we got a brand new trailer for Masters of the Universe, and it does include a few lines of dialogue from Leto's villain. The most surprising thing about the voice of Skeletor is that there's nothing particularly noteworthy about it at all. It's a fairly generic sound. This voice would be perfectly at home being the next villain of a Paddington movie as much as it belongs in Masters of the Universe.
When Jared Leto is involved in, well, anything, you can almost guarantee things are going to get weird. His characters are often polarizing, but they are rarely boring. His take on franchise characters, like The Joker and Morbius, has been the stuff of memes.
Especially since Skeletor doesn't look like Jared Leto in this movie, I fully expected the actor's performance to come out in the voice, so I'm shocked that the voice is so normal. It's far less crazy sounding that the tone voice actor Alan Oppenheimer took in the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon series.
I'm Glad The Voice Is So Subdued
I'm curious about Masters of the Universe, but that's not the same thing as saying I'm particularly excited for it. Yes, I was a fan as a kid, but I haven't been a kid in a long time. And, weirdly, studios have been making movies aimed at me for my entire life, when they really should be making movies aimed at younger audiences.
Whoever's decision it was to not go crazy with the voice, I'm glad that decision was made. Even if most people saw the voice as "good," there was a decent chance that anything particularly unusual would have the chance to suck all the oxygen out of the room and become the only thing that anybody talked about. Now we can all focus on everything else. Jared Leto probably won't be what we're all talking about with this film, which is unusual for any movie he's in. It's a nice change of pace.
