Masters of the Universe (2026)
Few toy franchises have had as stubborn a grip on popular imagination as Masters of the Universe. What began as a Mattel action figure line in 1982 snowballed, almost immediately, into an animated television series that became a Saturday morning institution for an entire generation of children on both sides of the Atlantic. He-Man, Skeletor, Castle Grayskull: these were not just characters but a shared cultural shorthand for a certain flavour of bombastic, sword-and-sorcery adventure that the 1980s delivered with cheerful abandon. The franchise's first live-action outing, the 1987 film starring Dolph Lundgren, is one of those fascinatingly imperfect artefacts of its era, a film made on a shoestring that somehow became a cult touchstone precisely because of its limitations. Hollywood has been circling a proper revival for the better part of two decades, with various scripts, directors, and casting announcements cycling through development hell before the project finally landed at Amazon MGM Studios, with Mattel Studios and Escape Artists co-producing. The finished film runs to a generous 141 minutes, which, for a fantasy adventure aimed at a broad audience, is a commitment that wants justifying.
The director charged with bringing Eternia back to the screen is Travis Knight, best known for Kubo and the Two Strings and the surprisingly warmly received Bumblebee. Knight comes from the Laika animation stable and carries with him a genuine visual fluency that is hard to dispute. Whether that sensibility translates to large-scale live-action spectacle, with all the franchise expectation and studio pressure that entails, is a reasonable question to ask going in. The screenplay picks up with Prince Adam, separated from Eternia for fifteen years before the Sword of Power draws him home to a world broken under Skeletor's rule. It is a premise with plenty of potential, the kind of reluctant-hero-returns-home story that fantasy does well when the script gives it room to breathe. The budget, while not officially confirmed, is visible on screen in the production design and the heavily rendered CGI landscapes, which is both an asset and, depending on your tolerance for digital world-building, a potential point of friction. For a sense of how similar big-budget action fantasies have landed on this blog recently, it is worth glancing at our thoughts on Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw and The Suicide Squad, two films that approached the problem of crowd-pleasing spectacle with very different degrees of success.
The cast assembles with some genuine marquee weight behind it. Nicholas Galitzine takes on the physically demanding dual role of Adam and He-Man, bringing the kind of polished but unremarkable leading-man presence the studio was clearly looking for. Camila Mendes plays Teela, and alongside O'Reilly's Duncan (Man-At-Arms) she is tasked with providing the emotional grounding the story needs. Idris Elba appears in a supporting role, and Alison Brie rounds out the ensemble in a part that remains vague in pre-release materials. The casting conversation that has generated the most genuine intrigue, however, is Jared Leto as Skeletor. Leto is an actor who polarises opinion reliably and at scale, but voicing one of animation's most iconic villains, a character defined by theatrical menace and a cackle that lodged in the memory of every child who watched the cartoon, is the sort of role where commitment to oddness can actually be an asset.
I was there for the original cartoon series, and I wore out the VHS tape of the 1987 movie so many times the tracking lines practically became part of the aesthetic. Going into Travis Knight’s 2026 live-action Masters of the Universe, I was hesitantly hopeful.
I desperately wanted it to be great, even if the early critical reaction had me sweating. I kept telling myself it might just be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles situation, you know, where the hardcore fans absolutely eat it up while general moviegoers scratch their heads in confusion. But after sitting through this bloated, baffling mess, I have to admit the harsh truth: it’s just bad.
The picture is a visual treat, as to be expected. Knight, coming from a legendary animation background, clearly knows how to make things look spectacular, and the heavily CGI-drenched realms of Eternia are undeniably fantastic to look at. I expected nothing less. However, that is exactly where the positives end, because a pretty coat of digital paint cannot hide a script that completely loses the plot.
The most baffling decision here is forcing the main character to spend a massive chunk of the runtime just wandering about on Earth. It drags the pacing to an absolute crawl and completely strips away the fantastical escapism we actually paid to see. It's basically a retelling of Superman.
Then there is the matter of the cast, which only deepens the frustration. Idris Elba, an actor I’m already not the biggest fan of, essentially just shows up to play Heimdall from Thor: Ragnarok all over again. It is the exact same performance, right down to the cadence, which honestly made me feel like I was watching a Temu knock-off of the Marvel blockbuster. The film is plagued by this desperate, "we're trying so hard to be funny that it's cringe" mentality, resulting in jokes that land with a thud rather than a laugh. Fair play to Jared Leto, though, whose fantastic voiceover work as Skeletor provides a rare glimmer of genuine menace and quality in an otherwise hollow production.
This is a profoundly disappointing revival that completely misses the magic of the source material. Knight had the keys to one of the most beloved toy lines in history, but instead of delivering a cracking, sword-and-sorcery epic, he gave us a visually glossy, narratively confused slog that tries entirely too hard to be a quirky superhero romp. It’s a massive letdown for anyone who grew up wielding a plastic He-Man sword in the garden, and for everyone else, it’s just a colossal waste of time. It’s an absolute chore to sit through.
A 2.0 rating from Macca is not a verdict anyone connected with this production will be framing on the wall, and it places Masters of the Universe in uncomfortable company. What makes a result like this sting particularly for long-term fans is that the raw material was always there: a richly designed world, a genuinely iconic villain, and a premise that, handled with confidence, could have delivered exactly the kind of sword-and-sorcery blockbuster that modern cinema has largely left unexplored. Knight's background suggested he understood spectacle and character in equal measure, which makes the apparent misfires here feel less like bad luck and more like a production that lost sight of what it was actually trying to be. Whether the film finds a more forgiving audience on home release, in the way that some misunderstood franchise entries quietly do, remains to be seen. For now, though, it seems the power of Grayskull was not quite enough.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2026 | Watched: 2026-07-23
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Masters of the Universe (2026) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Physical: Amazon US
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