The trailers for the new Masters of the Universe movie had me hooked. The film looked to be aiming for a 2000s-to-2010s big-budget, speculative fiction vibe (think early MCU), and as a huge fan of that era, I headed out to theaters opening weekend.
While the movie hits the requisite sci-fi/fantasy/action beats of the early 21st century, it doesn't quite reach the heights of the era's best. If the film had been released as is in, say, 2011, we would be looking back on it fondly as an example of a solid genre pic of its time. In 2026, however, it rarely rises above emulation and pales in comparison to the best of its ilk.
The film's failures can be traced in part to the filmmakers' approach to the source material. Most of the best "nerd" property adaptations begin with one particular premise: If this fantastic story/characters/world existed in real life, how would they work? It's the approach that yielded the great comic book superhero movies of the 2000s like X-Men, Spider-Man, and The Dark Knight.
With Masters of the Universe, director Travis Knight and company take a different route: Since what passed for seriousness in an '80s children's cartoon would come off ridiculous in a modern live-action movie, let's include and call attention to all the crazy stuff and employ the absurdity of it all as the thrust for the film's humor.
It works fine but also likely could have been executed better. And I'm confident a more serious approach would have yielded a better film.
As for the cast, Nicholas Galitzine, whom I loved in Sheep Detectives, is serviceable as Prince Adam/He-Man. He looks the part and plays it as it's written in this iteration. Knight should have "Tobey Maguire'd" him, however….
Cole Powell is an arts and media commentator and award-winning singer/songwriter from Jayess, Mississippi, USA, with degrees in computer technology, liberal arts, and theology. Host Random Reactions, Words Like That, and Film Nerd by Night. https://colepowell.net