There are some films you review with your head, some with your heart, and some with that very specific part of your brain that still remembers sitting in a New Zealand lounge in the 1980s, parked in front of one of only three television channels, absolutely locked in on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe like it was high culture.
That was the thing about being a Kiwi kid back then. There was no endless scroll, no streaming menu, no algorithm feeding you a thousand options. If He-Man was on, you watched He-Man. You watched him with total commitment. You watched him as if Castle Grayskull was the centre of the universe and Skeletor was the greatest villain ever conceived by man. And for a lot of us, he was.
The figures helped too. They were chunky, strange, colourful things, all muscles and weapons and impossible names. Even if you only had a couple, the mythology expanded in your head. A tiger could be cowardly, then heroic. A skull-faced villain could be funny, frightening, petty, and somehow magnificent. A barbarian with a pageboy haircut and a metal harness could be the most powerful man in the universe. That all made perfect sense when you were seven.
So walking into Travis Knight’s new live-action Masters of the Universe, I was carrying a very particular kind of baggage, the good kind. Nostalgia, affection, a fair bit of caution, and a genuine love for the 1987 Dolph Lundgren movie, which I will defend until the day I die. That film is cheesy, awkward, half-glorious and half-bonkers, and I still enjoy it enormously. On a modern rewatch, as a middle-aged adult who can clearly see every bit of its budget strain and tonal weirdness, I still have a terrific time with it because it understands one key truth. Masters of the Universe should be fun.
This new version gets that too.
Quick verdict: Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe is a vivid, overstuffed, highly entertaining blockbuster that honors the toy line, the Filmation cartoon, the wider mythology, and the 1987 movie with surprising confidence. It runs long, some emotional beats land harder than others, and a few effects look shaky, but the film’s spirit is dead right. It embraces the absurdity of Eternia, treats the lore with respect, and delivers a crowd-pleasing fantasy action film that knows exactly how colourful and strange this universe should be.
Castle Grayskull looks exactly like the kind of place a 1980s kid would have dreamed of visiting.
A big, bright blockbuster that remembers what the property is
One of the smartest things Knight does here is refuse to be embarrassed by the source material. That sounds obvious, but it is amazing how often modern franchise filmmaking ties itself in knots trying to "fix" older pulp material by sanding away the very things people loved in the first place. Masters of the Universe avoids that trap.
The film gives us Prince Adam, the Sword of Power, Castle Grayskull, Skeletor, Teela, Duncan, Evil-Lyn, Beast Man, Ram-Man, Fisto, Trap Jaw, Mekaneck, Roboto, Cringer, Snake Mountain, King Randor, Queen Marlena, the Sorceress, and a whole parade of names and concepts that would sound ridiculous in a po-faced fantasy epic. Instead of shrinking from that silliness, the movie leans into it and finds a workable tone somewhere between old-school toybox fantasy and modern effects-driven spectacle.
That is where the film feels closest to the better Transformers and G.I. Joe movies. It understands that this material comes from an 80s commercial machine built out of action figures, cartoon logic, fantasy archetypes, laser fire, and impossible musculature. So it plays like a blockbuster built from bright plastic memory, then upgraded with a much larger budget and a stronger sense of visual momentum.
And yes, Travis Knight turns out to be exactly the right director for that job. His work on Bumblebee already proved he could take a toy-based property and find the human angle without draining away the fun. The transition here feels seamless. He brings the same clarity, affection, and sincere genre energy to Eternia. You can see the hand of a filmmaker who likes this stuff, understands why people like this stuff, and has no desire to apologise for any of it.
That matters because Masters of the Universe has always been a weird cocktail. It is sword and sorcery, science fantasy, superhero origin story, cosmic fairy tale, monster mash, toy catalogue, and heavy metal album cover. The new film succeeds most when it remembers that the blend is the point. Eternia should feel like Conan wandered into Star Wars, then got chased by a skull wizard through a toy aisle.
The old 1987 movie still matters, and this new one knows it
I have a deep soft spot for the 1987 Masters of the Universe. It is one of those films that lives in the overlap between genuine fantasy adventure and accidental camp classic. Dolph Lundgren looked the part. Frank Langella devoured the scenery as Skeletor. Meg Foster’s Evil-Lyn had the stare of someone who could curdle milk from across the room. The Earth setting was a budget compromise you could feel in every frame, yet the movie still had a strange sincerity that made it stick in the memory.
That is why this new film’s relationship with the 1987 version matters. It treats that earlier movie like part of the living history of the franchise. The most delightful example is the inclusion of Karg, the hook-handed, bat-like commander from the Dolph Lundgren film. Karg was originally played by Robert Towers in 1987 and was one of Skeletor’s oddball screen-only minions, operating alongside characters such as Blade, Saurod, Beast Man, and Pigboy. Seeing Karg acknowledged here is a proper deep-cut fan reward.
Karg is more than a random name-drop. He represents a very specific strand of Masters of the Universe history. The 1987 movie had to invent or alter several elements because it was adapting a massive toy-and-cartoon mythology into a constrained live-action production. Karg became part of that strange cinematic branch of the franchise. Bringing him back in 2026 says this film is not only honouring the cartoon and toy line. It is honouring the oddball film detours too.
The film also works in Pigface, another nod to Skeletor’s grotesque 1987-era henchmen. That sort of thing will go over the heads of casual viewers, which is fine. For the fans who know why a hook-handed monster named Karg matters, it is gold.
There is also the Dolph Lundgren cameo, which lands with more warmth than a simple wink. His appearance as a gym figure who offers Adam a lesson about strength gives the moment a passing-of-the-sword quality. It is not just "look, there’s old He-Man." It connects directly to the film’s larger idea that muscles alone do not define heroism. For a franchise built around one of the most famously muscular heroes in 80s pop culture, that is a smart little bit of self-awareness.
Nicholas Galitzine, Jared Leto, and a cast that understands the assignment
Nicholas Galitzine makes for a very effective Adam and a convincing He-Man. That matters more than it sounds, because the role demands two things at once. Adam has to carry some uncertainty, some awkwardness, some sense of displacement. He-Man has to feel mythic the instant the power kicks in. Galitzine handles both sides well. He has the physical presence for the action and the self-awareness needed for the film’s lighter beats.
The film’s Earth setup helps him. Adam Glenn is no swaggering warrior when we first settle into his adult life. He is a man stuck between planets, stuck between identities, and hilariously stuck in human resources. That HR detail is almost too on the nose, but it works because this Adam’s great strength is not merely punching things. He listens. He mediates. He tries to understand people. His heroic power is built around empathy as much as muscle.
Camila Mendes gives Teela solid presence, even if the character sometimes feels underwritten compared to Adam’s arc. The film gives her a strong warrior edge and keeps her rooted in the Duncan and Sorceress side of the mythology. Teela’s costume is also doing clever franchise work. It blends the classic cartoon silhouette with the tougher, gunslinger-like feel associated with Chelsea Field’s Teela from the 1987 film. That is exactly the kind of design compromise a movie like this needs.
Idris Elba brings worn authority and a little emotional heft to Duncan, also known as Man-At-Arms. His arc gives the film some of its most grounded dramatic material. Duncan is the old soldier who has to rethink what strength means. He is useful in battle, naturally, but his real journey is internal. In a film full of laser rifles, magic swords, and warrior nicknames, Elba gives the movie a human anchor.
Alison Brie’s Evil-Lyn is one of the film’s most entertaining ingredients. The movie leans into the wicked theatricality of the character, and the Earth-side identity of Evelyn Powers gives the name a cheeky in-universe logic. Evil-Lyn has always been one of the franchise’s great villains because she is more than Skeletor’s assistant. She is a sorceress, a schemer, and someone whose loyalty always feels conditional. This version keeps that edge.
Morena Baccarin (Firefly) gives the Sorceress the right mythic calm, while James Purefoy and Charlotte Riley bring King Randor and Queen Marlena into the story with a useful mix of royal authority and family grief. The Marlena material is especially interesting because MOTU lore has long played with the idea of Adam’s mother having Earth connections. This film folds that into Adam’s exile and identity crisis in a way that makes the Earth material feel less random.
Then there is Jared Leto’s Skeletor, who turns out to be one of the film’s strongest assets. The performance is playful, vicious, petty, theatrical, and gloriously heightened. Skeletor should never be generic. He should feel like the kind of villain a child would invent after reading three fantasy comics, seeing a horror poster, and deciding skulls are cool. This version gets there. He is dangerous, ridiculous, charismatic, and very funny in spots.
Jared Leto’s Skeletor is theatrical, sneering, and fully committed to the madness.
The lore and trivia are where the film really starts to flex
The film’s biggest surprise is how dense it is with MOTU lore. A weaker version of this movie might have stopped at Adam, Skeletor, the Sword of Power, and Castle Grayskull. Knight’s version goes much deeper. It feels built by people who know that Masters of the Universe is a whole ecosystem of heroic warriors, evil warriors, weird vehicles, cosmic locations, toy-line variants, cartoon morality, and contradictory mythology.
That last part matters. MOTU has never had one perfectly clean canon. The early mini-comics, the Filmation cartoon, the 1987 film, The New Adventures of He-Man, the 2002 series, the Netflix shows, the collector lines, and the later comics all shift details around. Sometimes Adam is more secretive. Sometimes the Sorceress is more central. Sometimes Skeletor’s origin as Keldor matters deeply. Sometimes the story is pure toybox chaos. This film treats that inconsistency as a strength. It pulls from across the shelf.
Karg returns from the 1987 movie
Karg is one of the film’s sharpest deep cuts. He was created for the 1987 live-action movie as a hook-handed, bat-like commander in Skeletor’s army. He had no major Filmation cartoon legacy, which makes his return feel especially targeted at fans of the Dolph Lundgren film. For anyone who grew up with the 1987 movie on VHS, this is a surprisingly affectionate nod.
Pigface and the 1987 henchman tradition
The appearance of Pigface reaches into the same grubby corner of the franchise as Karg. The 1987 movie gave Skeletor a gallery of practical-effect weirdos, including Pigboy, Blade, Saurod, and Karg. This new film understands that those characters belong to the franchise’s cinematic DNA, even if they were never as iconic as Beast Man or Trap Jaw.
Dolph Lundgren as the old guard
Lundgren’s cameo works because it is thematically placed. He does not simply appear for applause. He gives Adam a piece of wisdom about strength, which turns the moment into a bridge between the old movie’s bodybuilder fantasy and the new film’s more emotionally aware version of heroism.
Adam Glenn and the Earth exile twist
The Earth material is a smart update of a recurring live-action problem. The 1987 film sent He-Man and friends to Earth through the Cosmic Key. This new film makes Earth part of Adam’s identity. Adam grows up away from Eternia, carrying fragments of memory, drawings, obsession, and destiny. That makes his return home feel like both a fantasy quest and a delayed coming-of-age story.
The Sword of Power as destiny and joke
The Sword of Power is treated with the expected mythic weight, but the film also has fun with the absurdity of a grown man looking for a magic sword on Earth. Finding the sword through the world of toys, collectibles, and pop culture is a witty move because Masters of the Universe has always existed in that zone between sacred object and plastic merchandise.
Castle Grayskull gets its mythic due
Castle Grayskull has to feel like more than a spooky green skull playset. The movie presents it as a seat of cosmic power, a source of mystery, and the visual symbol of Eternia itself. The best thing about the film’s Grayskull is that it still looks toyetic. It feels ancient, magical, and faintly ridiculous, which is exactly right.
Snake Mountain becomes a proper action arena
Snake Mountain is one of the great villain lairs of 80s toy culture. The film uses it as a physical and symbolic counterweight to Grayskull. Its best action beat gives He-Man a brutal, large-scale fight that tests whether Adam can control his power rather than simply unleash it. That is where the movie’s action and character work click together.
Roboto gets a comic reinvention
Roboto is a classic Heroic Warrior who could have looked absurd in live action. The film solves that by giving the character a comic personality and letting Kristen Wiig’s voice performance bring bite to the mechanical body. The idea of a battle-ready robot reduced to menial service also gives the movie one of its funniest pieces of background world-building.
Ram-Man and Fisto survive their own names
Ram-Man and Fisto are exactly the sort of characters that expose the challenge of adapting MOTU. Their names sound like playground jokes. The film handles them by admitting the joke, then letting the characters still function. Ram-Man rams. Fisto punches. The movie laughs, then gets on with the battle.
Mekaneck proves the film knows the toy shelf
Mekaneck is one of those characters who tells you how deep the adaptation wants to go. His extending neck gimmick is pure toy-line madness. Including him shows the movie is willing to embrace the mechanics of the old figures rather than replace them with generic fantasy soldiers.
Trap Jaw gets his cyborg menace
Trap Jaw is a key example of MOTU’s science fantasy identity. He is part pirate, part robot, part weapons platform, and part skull-faced villain-adjacent nightmare. The film’s use of him helps keep Skeletor’s side from becoming a bland army of anonymous dark soldiers.
Beast Man remains wonderfully literal
Beast Man is funny because the name is so blunt, but the character is essential. He brings the monster-movie side of Skeletor’s faction into the story. The film knows the name is silly and still lets the character have physical impact.
Goat Man and the weird outer edges of MOTU
The use of Goat Man is a nice nod to the franchise’s deeper bench. He is exactly the sort of character casual viewers will accept as another Eternian oddity, while toy-line fans recognize the pleasure of seeing a less obvious figure pulled into the film.
Tri-Klops sharpens the evil warrior roster
Tri-Klops is another smart inclusion because his design instantly sells the hybrid world of Eternia. He is a swordsman, a spy, a tech-enhanced villain, and a visual gag all at once. That is MOTU in one character.
Cringer and the Battle Cat problem
Cringer is one of the hardest elements to make work in live action. A cowardly green talking tiger who can become a battle mount is perfect cartoon logic and difficult photoreal cinema logic. The character’s personality works better than some of the effects, but the film is right to include him. Leaving Cringer out would have been cowardice of a different kind.
The Sorceress and Teela connection
The film leans into the long-running mythology around Teela and the Sorceress. That relationship has always carried a hint of destiny, secrecy, and inheritance. It gives Teela more significance than simply being "the warrior friend" and ties her directly to the power structure of Grayskull.
Queen Marlena and the Earth link
Marlena’s Earth connection is a useful piece of lore because it makes Adam’s exile feel less arbitrary. In older versions of MOTU, Marlena has often been linked to Earth and space travel. The film uses that idea to connect royal Eternia, human Earth, and Adam’s divided identity.
Keldor matters beneath Skeletor
The name Keldor carries franchise weight because it points to Skeletor’s pre-Skeletor identity in several versions of the mythology. Even when the movie mostly enjoys Skeletor as a skull-faced tyrant, that name gives him a deeper MOTU lineage.
The Staff of Havoc gets its due
Skeletor’s staff is one of those props that has to look both dangerous and absurd. The film understands its value. It is a weapon, a status symbol, and a piece of villain branding. Skeletor without his staff would feel strangely underdressed.
The Fright Zone nods toward She-Ra mythology
The Fright Zone reference is one for fans who know the wider universe. In She-Ra lore, the Fright Zone is tied to Hordak and the Evil Horde. That name quietly opens a door beyond Eternia and toward Etheria, Adora, and a much larger mythological map.
She-Ra and Adora enter the conversation
The credits material teasing Adora is a major lore move. Adora is Prince Adam’s twin sister and the alter ego of She-Ra, one of the most important characters in the wider franchise. Her presence points toward Etheria, Hordak, the Evil Horde, the Sword of Protection, and the possibility of a much bigger cinematic mythology.
Orko brings back the Filmation moral
Orko’s stinger is a perfect Filmation wink. The original cartoon often ended with a moral lesson, turning wild fantasy adventures into little after-school messages about courage, honesty, friendship, or responsibility. Bringing Orko in to echo that tradition is both silly and oddly sweet.
Fabulous Secret Powers gets a wink
The film’s musical and credits choices also nod toward the internet afterlife of He-Man, including the famous viral "Fabulous Secret Powers" meme. That matters because MOTU has lived several lives: toy line, cartoon, VHS movie, rerun memory, meme culture, collector obsession, streaming reboot, and now modern blockbuster.
The action is energetic, readable, and sometimes genuinely inspired
One thing that surprised me most was how much I enjoyed the action. Modern franchise cinema too often drowns itself in noise, grey digital sludge, and editing that treats visual coherence like a minor inconvenience. This film is much better than that. Knight stages the action with a clear sense of geography. Fights have shape. Chases have momentum. Set pieces build toward payoff.
The best sequences really do feel like a child’s idea of the coolest fantasy battle ever filmed. Spaceships tear across Eternian landscapes. Laser fire mixes with steel. Warriors crash through beautifully silly production design. The movie remembers that Masters of the Universe was always an odd hybrid, a barbarian fantasy fused with science fiction, toy-commercial excess, and comic-book melodrama. When the film commits fully to that blend, it is very hard to resist.
The Snake Mountain battle is the standout. It gives He-Man the sort of overwhelming physical showcase the character needs, but it also places a question underneath the spectacle. What happens when Adam finally gets the power he has been chasing? Does he become heroic, or does he simply become dangerous? That is a better dramatic question than "can the strong guy hit harder?"
The chase work is also strong, especially when the film turns Eternia into a moving battlefield of ships, forests, weapons, and impossible geography. There is a clarity to the way Knight handles motion that feels connected to his animation background. He understands bodies in space. He understands silhouettes. He understands that an action scene should be readable at a glance, especially in a universe where half the characters look like they escaped from a toy catalogue designed during a fever dream.
Where the movie stumbles
The film is fun, though it has real flaws. The biggest issue is length. It feels overlong, and there are stretches where the pace sags slightly as the screenplay reaches for emotional depth that it does not always fully earn. Adam’s arc broadly works, especially in relation to identity, belonging, and the burden of destiny, but a few dramatic scenes carry a more generic fantasy-movie flavour than the surrounding material deserves.
Some of the visual effects are also inconsistent. The world of Eternia often looks rich and inviting, especially in the brighter outdoor sequences and the more overtly stylised production design. A few creatures and digital environments look less persuasive, with Cringer being the most obvious example. He is charming as a character. The effect itself occasionally wobbles.
That said, the practical design work, costume work, and creature concepts do plenty of heavy lifting. The film’s visual identity remains one of its strengths, largely because it never tries to drain the colour or weirdness out of the franchise. Knight and his team understand that Eternia should feel excessive.
The emotional material also lands unevenly. The film is at its best when it lets sincerity and silliness sit side by side. It strains when it pauses too long to underline a theme that the action and characters have already made clear. The message about strength, empathy, and self-acceptance is right for He-Man. The delivery sometimes needs a lighter touch.
Evil-Lyn brings attitude, menace, and a welcome streak of comic-book wickedness.
The credits scenes are not throwaway fan bait
The credits scenes deserve attention because they show how confidently the film is thinking about the larger MOTU universe. The Adora tease is the biggest one. For longtime fans, Adora is not just "He-Man’s sister." She is She-Ra, Princess of Power, the heroine whose mythology opens the door to Etheria, Hordak, the Evil Horde, Swift Wind, the Sword of Protection, and the Great Rebellion.
That is a huge expansion point. It also changes the emotional shape of Adam’s family story. Queen Marlena’s sadness over Adora’s absence gives the mythology a missing-child wound that can carry into future films. It suggests that Adam’s return is only half the restoration. Eternia’s royal family remains incomplete.
The Evil-Lyn and Skeletor tease is more pulpy and exactly right. A skull-faced villain should never feel permanently finished. Evil-Lyn retrieving Skeletor’s skull is classic serial logic, classic toy-line logic, and classic MOTU logic. The bad guy can lose today and still cackle his way back into the next adventure.
Then there is Orko. His appearance matters because Orko belongs to the Filmation soul of the franchise. He is goofy, magical, annoying, beloved, and deeply tied to the cartoon’s kid-friendly rhythm. Using him as a moral-lesson stinger is almost absurdly specific, but that specificity is why it works.
Final thoughts
As someone who grew up in New Zealand when television felt smaller, stranger, and somehow more intense because you had fewer choices, this film hit a very specific nostalgic nerve. He-Man belonged to that era. He was part of the ritual. The toys, the cartoon, the old Dolph Lundgren film, the whole oversized fantasy of it all, those things still carry a lot of affection for people of a certain age.
Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe earns that affection. It could stand to trim a few minutes. Some effects are rough. A handful of emotional beats feel a bit thin. Even so, it is a lively, generous, smartly mounted blockbuster that understands the joyous nonsense at the centre of the franchise.
More importantly, it embraces that nonsense with style. It gives us spectacle, lore, big personalities, deep-cut references, heroic transformation, Karg, Pigface, Orko, Adora, Snake Mountain, Grayskull, Roboto, Evil-Lyn, Trap Jaw, Ram-Man, Fisto, and a world that still feels like a child emptied a toy chest onto the floor and built a universe out of pure excitement.
That, in the end, is exactly what a good Masters of the Universe movie should do. By the power of Grayskull, this one actually pulls it off.
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