Gil MaciasFor nearly 40 years, He-Man fans have been waiting for a properly realized Masters of the Universe live-action movie: one that fully embraces the wild and fantastical world of Eternia. Bumblebee director Travis Knight has been waiting for that film all his life, too, but as fate would have it, he’s the one actually helming it.
Ever since 1987’s Masters of the Universe flopped at the box office, there have been countless attempts to get Eternia’s blond, musclebound champion known as He-Man back on the big screen. Between 2004 and 2023, the project languished in limbo, cycling through different studios and a revolving door of directors including John Woo, John Stevenson, Jon M. Chu, and McG. For a while, Adam and Aaron Nee got close to making their movie, but when that failed, Amazon MGM swooped in and the Power Sword was passed to Knight — a lifelong He-Man fan who clearly understood the assignment.
With his all-new Masters of the Universe, opening in theaters this Friday, June 5, Knight honors nostalgia while boldly breaking some of the rules. The film — starring Nicholas Galitzine as Adam Glenn/He-Man — proudly embraces the camp and the wackiness of the original 1983 Filmation cartoon. It is appropriately cheesy when necessary, balancing a big heart and occasional grounded drama with high-tech, sword-and-sorcery action that’ll leave your inner child bouncing off the walls.
Travis behind the scenes with Galitzine and Mendes (Amazon MGM Studios)
The eye-popping look of Eternia is as colorful and vibrant as its bizarre roster of scantily clad heroes and villains. The costume designs impeccably lean into the goofiness of the source material, making most characters dead ringers for their animated counterparts. And what’s a great Masters of the Universe movie without its scene-stealing Skeletor, brought to menacing life by Jared Leto, who gives the skull-faced warlord a flamboyant Shakespearean edge.
If all goes well, we could be in for more He-Man movies — and Knight already has some big ideas (wait until you see those post-credits scenes). Just days ahead of the film’s release, the Gen X-born director chatted with LA Weekly about crafting the Masters of the Universe story he wanted to tell and the many “pinch me” moments along the way, such as working with Queen guitarist Brian May on the film’s sweeping rock-opera score. He also opens up about the Skeletor origin story he hates with a passion, a scrapped underwater action sequence that would’ve introduced Mer-Man, and why his He-Man has no problem killing a bad guy during a brawl.
Masters of the Universe was in development hell for over 20 years. Adam and Aaron Nee were the last directors to have it, but fate ultimately brought it to your hands, and I am glad it did, because you nailed it. Can you talk about how much of their story was retained, and what you changed or added to it to make it your vision of Masters of the Universe?
Yeah, this thing has been kicking around for a long time. People have been struggling to make the movie. Like you, I’m very glad they failed because it meant I got to make it. Amazon’s producers approached me about two and a half years ago. I was really surprised that I got the script because nobody knew I was a He-Man fan. This is not something that you shout through a bullhorn or mention at cocktail parties.
And so the script came my way, and it was one that Aaron and Adam Nee had written with David Callaham. It was a really fun script. But it was not the He-Man movie I would have made. I read it, and I said, “Oh, they did some really fun, playful things here.” And we retained some of that stuff. There’s some dialogue. There’s some story beats from what they had written that we held on to because it was really well done.
But it wasn’t the He-Man that I knew and loved. And so, I was excited by the opportunity to tell a story in this world. But I said, “Look, this is what I want to do with it.” I told the studio and the producers, “This is my vision for it.” And, shockingly, they went along with it. I seriously still cannot believe that I got to make this movie.
Man-at-Arms (Idris Elba), Adam (Nicholas Galitzine), and Teela (Camila Mendes) in ‘Masters of the Universe.’ (Amazon MGM Studios)
Obviously, the main source of inspiration is the 1983 Filmation cartoon. But you have Dolph Lundgren in there, and characters like Karg and Pigboy appear, which are nods to the 1987 movie. But did you and the screenwriters also look at the 2002 Cartoon Network series or Kevin Smith’s recent Netflix version for any ideas or inspiration?
No, we didn’t really. When I came aboard, the first person that I brought onto the team was my creative partner, Chris Butler. He, like me, was a contemporary. He grew up in Liverpool, and I grew up in Portland. Very different upbringings. But we both loved He-Man. I knew that — because he grew up in that same era — he understood it and loved it just as much as I did. So it was the two of us shaping the story over the course of time.
Whether it’s a book, a comic book, a video game, a toy line, or a cartoon, I think anytime you’re doing an adaptation it’s important to go back to the source. We always went back to the source. Like, what was special about it to begin with? And it was about trying to channel our inner 8-year-olds, why we loved it so much as kids, and really hold onto that and wrap our arms around it. So, we did pull references from other iterations. This thing’s been around for over 40 years, so we took some stuff from the 1987 live-action movie. We took some stuff from some weird, obscure newspaper strips. But the center of it was the toy line and the Filmation cartoons.
I want to talk about some of the creative liberties and changes you made to the lore. In your version, Adam transforms into He-Man in front of everybody. In the cartoon, he had to hide all the time. His absence was also a constant conflict between him and Teela in the 1983 cartoon, too. But you stripped that element away.
Look, I’m a big comic book fan, as you might guess. But, even as a kid, I thought, this is ridiculous. Nobody can tell that He-Man and Adam are the same person? When he’s Adam, he’s utterly jacked. He’s got those huge deltoids. He’s got biceps, glistening hams. He’s just fucking huge. The only difference is when he transforms into He-Man, he’s got an all-over tan and fewer clothes. I thought it was just silly. And we actually referenced that in the movie. At the end of the movie, he still thinks he’s got this alter ego, but pretty much, everybody knows who he is.
Travis Knight behind the scenes with Nicholas Galitzine and Camila Mendes (Giles Keyte/Amazon MGM Studios)
In the original cartoon, He-Man is a moralistic hero. Like Batman, he doesn’t like to kill. In your movie, I got the impression that certain characters were goners. Is there a reason you did away with He-Man’s no-killing rule?
He kills plenty of people in the movie [Laughs]. But I think the interesting thing is you’ll see when Adam becomes He-Man and when he is his most violent, it’s also when he’s sort of lost the run of himself. He’s behaving in a way that’s not consistent with who he is internally, and I think that when we see that, there’s a cost to him doing that, and then he learns through that failing and becomes the better version of himself. One of the things I loved about He-Man in the cartoon from the ’80s was that he was a guy who looked like a classic action hero with the giant muscles and everything and the lantern jaw. But he didn’t throw a punch unless he had to. He tried to find common ground. He talked about kindness, empathy, and friendship. And that’s an aspect that we held on to with Adam. Now, when push comes to shove, he will fight, but he would rather not.
Some fans are complaining that Skeletor doesn’t sound like the classic Alan Oppenheimer version. I think some people get trapped in that nostalgic bubble and don’t realize that there have been several iterations of that character since 1983 and he’s sounded different each time. Did you toy with different variations of the voice before you landed on the final Shakespearean take?
We played around with different versions of the voice. Jared would send me little voice memos. But we knew we did not want to do an Alan Oppenheimer impression. We did not want to engage in mimicry. And there’s a reason why that voice was that silly nasal voice: It was just to take the edge off a character who looks scary in a kids’ cartoon. So to make him sound silly, it made that palatable. For us, we just wanted to come up with a voice that was distinctive, that felt consistent with the character of Skeletor. And there is a theatricality to Skeletor: He puts on a show, he wants to be noticed, he wants to be adored and beloved, and so there’s a showiness. There’s a performative quality that we wanted to bring to the voice. Even though it doesn’t sound like the original Skeletor, it has the same characteristics of something that’s distinctive, but also something where he’s trying to perform to be theatrical.
The Masters of the Universe franchise has very inconsistent origin stories for a lot of its characters depending on where you look. There’ll be one backstory in the mini-comics that came with toys, and it’ll totally contradict an origin story from the 1986 comics or even the 1983 cartoon or 2002 series. So may I ask what version of Skeletor you went with? Is he an interdimensional demon or is he Keldor, Adam’s uncle?
He’s absolutely not Keldor. I fucking hate that. When I discovered that, I would have flipped my desk over had I had the upper body strength. I was so outraged. No, he’s not Keldor. He’s a demon from another dimension. I definitely have thoughts on, moving forward, how we could give a nod to the Keldor thing, but he’s not Randor’s brother. He’s not He-Man’s uncle. I hate that. We don’t need yet another sci-fi thing where every single goddamn main character is related. No, he’s definitely not Randor’s brother, for sure.
Jared Leto as Skeletor (Amazon MGM Studios)
I also want to touch on the score, which features Queen guitarist Brian May. Did you know right away that you wanted to go with that Flash Gordon-esque electronic rock sound?
Music’s a huge part of my life. It’s a huge part of every movie I’ve ever made, and so, for this movie, I really wanted to craft something that felt distinctive and fun, playful, and emotive. And so I reached out to Daniel Pemberton, whom I’m a huge fan of. He’s absolutely brilliant and a lovely human to boot. And the very first conversation I had with Daniel about the score, I evoked the ’80s Flash Gordon movie, which I love. I adore it. I wore it out in my parents’ Betamax. And one of the reasons I loved it was that iconic score by Queen. And so that was the feeling that I wanted to get. Something that was big and theatrical and operatic, but also really playful and fun. And underneath had some sincerity to it — which is Queen in a nutshell — but I could not have imagined that we would have been able to work with Brian May.
And so, fast-forward a year later and we’re in Brian May’s home studio and he’s rocking out with his Red Special and his sixpence and you’re hearing those incredible Queen sounds come out of the speaker. It was such a pinch-me moment. Daniel and I kept looking at each other, eyes agog. We could not believe what we were both experiencing together. It was incredible. And he’s like the coolest dude in the entire world. So it was a joy.
I’d hate for you to be pigeonholed as the go-to guy for these ’80s franchise movies, but you nailed Bumblebee and now this one. Would you like to become the Kevin Feige of the “HCU”: the He-Man cinematic universe?
The Kevin Feige of He-Man? [Laughs]
Maybe you could. Do you already have ideas for other sequels or an overarching plan for a series of films?
Look, I approach every single story that I tell, every movie that I make, as if you only ever get one chance to do it. And so we put everything we had into this movie. We wanted to make sure that we told a complete story from beginning to end, which we do. I think the movie has an incredible heart. It’s a lot of fun to watch. It’s a blast. I’m really proud of the movie that we made.
(Amazon MGM Studios)
But, we suggest where that could go with these little buttons that we have at the end of the movie that, even if we never get another chance to make another movie in this universe, I’m very proud of what we made. But if we were to be so lucky to be able to tell more stories, I would love to be able to tell them. And I have very, very clear ideas on where it would go. And there’s just the tiniest suggestion of what that might be at the very end of the movie.
I know you couldn’t overstuff the movie with all the fan-favorite characters, but you did really well with the characters you did use and gave everyone their little moment. Off the top of your head, are there characters that you really wanted to put in the movie, but you just couldn’t squeeze them in?
I really wanted to get Mer-Man in there. I loved Mer-Man. In my mind, I had this whole amazing action sequence that would take place at sea. It was going to be amazing. And then Mattel looked at the price tag and said, “Go fuck yourself.” [Laughs]
Look, you have to be responsible. Film is a time-based art. There’s only so much you can tell in the time that you have. And this was a very focused story. And so, as much as I wanted to put every single thing that I loved from Masters of the Universe into this movie, you do have to be responsible. So Mer-Man was one of them. I would love to be able to put him in a future story. Snout Spout was in the movie for a good long while and then we had to pull him out. It was going to be too expensive to bring him to life in the best way. So there are a bunch of characters that I deeply love that I would have loved to put in the movie. It was just outside the bounds of the story that we’re telling — including one that is suggested at the very, very end of the movie.
“Masters of the Universe” is in theaters this Friday, June 5.