’80s Kids Will Adore This Throwback Superhero Nostalgia-Fest
MASTER OF HIS DOMAIN
‘Masters of the Universe’ is a faithful and boisterous old-school spectacular.
June 2 2026
Mattel’s Masters of the Universe franchise was tailor-made for young ‘80s boys: a testosterone-y fantasia that synthesized the DNA of DC and Marvel superheroes, swords-and-sorcery adventures, and Schwarzenegger-via-WWE action-fests.
It was everything an eight-year-old could want, and it turned its main characters—burly He-Man and his malevolent nemesis Skeletor—into exaggerated icons of good and evil and their battle over the fate of Eternia into the stuff of adolescent legend.
Hollywood, naturally, saw fit to bring the toy-based series to the big screen, but despite Dolph Lundgren and Frank Langella’s cheesy performances, 1987’s Masters of the Universe was a washout that helped destroy its production company, The Cannon Group. Nearly four decades later, Amazon MGM Studios and director Travis Knight (Bumblebee) try their hand at doing justice to the property with Masters of the Universe (June 5), an epic that, save for a few minor touches, hews to its source material with the utmost fidelity.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and fans are apt to overdose on it with this rollicking live-action affair, although tween and teen newbies are also likely to be won over by the filmmaker’s boisterously cartoony summer spectacular.
With a target demographic of men over 40 and under 20, Masters of the Universe takes a corny animated-TV approach to its inherently goofy premise about the magical land of Eternia and its gaggle of colorful heroes and villains.
In this world, King Randor (James Purefoy) is disappointed by the weakness of his son, Prince Adam (Artie Wilkinson-Hunt), who tough-guy general Man-At-Arms (Idris Elba) can’t transform into a warrior. When the kingdom is attacked by Skeletor (Jared Leto) and his coterie of outlandish henchmen, Adam is spirited away to Earth by the Sorceress (Morena Baccarin) of Castle Grayskull. Fifteen years later, he’s a kind-hearted oaf (played by Nicholas Galitzine) who works in human resources and won’t stop embarrassing himself (including on Hinge dates) by talking about his wild ancestry.
That origin story (and the fact that Adam is destined to be the bumbling alter ego of indestructible He-Man) lends Masters of the Universe its Superman echoes. He-Man’s armor-and-loincloth outfit, on the other hand, makes him a Conan knockoff, and his Sword of Power—a weapon that’s the vessel for Castle Grayskull’s power—marks him as a King Arthur-style protagonist.
During the course of this saga, Knight faithfully channels the series’ hodgepodge-y spirit, comprised of bits and pieces of numerous spiritual “inspirations” (like Star Wars), and that kitchen-sink tack is married to a witty tone that self-consciously echoes its two-dimensional television predecessor.
Beginning with Adam’s narration during a CGI-enhanced, exposition-heavy prologue, Masters of the Universe diligently avoids taking itself seriously. Its tongue-in-cheek gleefulness is well-suited for a tale involving baddies like Trap Jaw (Sam C. Wilson) and Beast Man (Gary Martin) and do-gooders such as Ram-Man (Jon Xue Zhang) and Fisto (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), whose on-the-nose monikers are humorously explained away (and mocked for their sexual connotations) by Chris Butler, David Callaham, and Aaron and Adam Nee’s rambunctious script.
Jokes and references are littered throughout, some aimed at middle-school moviegoers and others at adult die-hards, with the latter highlighted by Skeletor’s habit of behaving awkwardly (such as cackling maniacally at his own bad quips) and then berating sycophantic minions led by Evil-Lyn (Alison Brie) for not responding appropriately.
Unrecognizable as the skull-faced madman, Leto gives a big, extravagant, spot-on performance, and so too does Galitzine as the strapping He-Man, combining clumsy comedy (pratfalls, bug-eyed expressions) and peerless muscularity. Knight casts them as diametrically opposed forces in a story that champions physical strength (laced with compassion and understanding) as the highest ideal, not because brawn is an inherent virtue (although, in this case, it basically is) but because it’s the surest means of protecting loved ones.
In that regard, the film celebrates gung-ho ‘80s might while sprinkling a bit of 21st-century sensitivity on top, and to underscore its old-school conception of what it means to be a man, it presents Skeletor as a scoundrel with thinly veiled homoerotic interest in his blond-haired, blue-eyed adversary.
Upon retrieving his sword, Adam is rescued by childhood friend and chaste romantic interest Teela (Camila Mendes) and returned to Eternia, which has been laid to waste by Skeletor, and where he must prove himself to his homeland’s in-dire-straits heroes, beginning with Elba’s Man-At-Arms, who’s turned to drink to cope with his prior failures. Learning to deal with adversity and stand up for friends are core elements of Masters of the Universe, as are appearances by the franchise’s many unique characters, be it the porcupine-ish Spikor (James Apps), the giraffe-y Mekaneck (James Wilkinson), or the towering Roboto (Kristen Wiig), a battle bot who’s been reprogrammed to function as a domestic servant and who has long-standing beef with Man-At-Arms.
Knight crafts his film with just the right measure of high-flying digital fancifulness and wink-wink silliness, epitomized by a climactic shot of He-Man’s comrades laughing, hands-on-hips, for an uncomfortably long time. He doesn’t skimp on the combat-heavy mayhem, with skirmishes on land and in the air that are all suitably elaborate and intense. Still, there’s something slightly off about their level of violence; the stabbings and impalings seem a tad much given the general childishness of this mythological universe, no matter that its hostilities are PG-13 bloodless.
Masters of the Universe is as authentic as an adaptation of this property could be, and in that regard, it’s a rousing success. The more pressing question, however, is whether it will be of interest to a modern generation weaned not on Hulk Hogan, The Lord of the Rings, and The Terminator but on Pokémon, Minecraft, and TikTok.
The inherent ’80s-ness of He-Man is both central to his enduring charm and a potential hindrance to his current mainstream appeal, and the director’s doting devotion means that there are occasions when his latest feels like a would-be blockbuster out of time.
Whether today’s youth warm to these larger-than-life good and bad guys as their parents did remains to be seen. Yet as an exercise in pure, undiluted throwback exuberance, Knight’s film has the power.