Masters of the Universe on film
He-Man has been on screen in one live-action film, in 1987, and in decades of attempts to make a second.
Masters of the Universe started as a toy line from Mattel in the early 1980s and became a phenomenon with Filmation’s animated series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which began in 1983. A film followed almost inevitably. What arrived in 1987, though, was not quite what fans of the cartoon expected.
The 1987 film
Produced by Cannon Films and directed by Gary Goddard, Masters of the Universe starred Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor. Rather than staying on the fantasy world of Eternia, the story sends He-Man and his allies to present-day Earth, where they spend much of the film in a small American town, joined by two local teenagers, one of them played by a young Courteney Cox.
That choice was widely seen as a way to save money, and it disappointed many viewers who wanted Castle Grayskull and the sorcery of the cartoon. The tone was different as well: darker, more like a space opera than a children’s adventure, with an epic score and imposing designs for Skeletor’s forces. Commentators have often noted how much the film’s look owes to cosmic comic books of the 1970s. The film did poorly at the box office and was mostly dismissed at the time.
It has since become a minor cult item. Langella’s Skeletor is the main reason. He plays the role with complete conviction, as a tragic tyrant rather than a cackling cartoon, and his scenes are frequently singled out as the best in the film. Lundgren, in an early lead role, has a sincerity that suits the material.
The reboot attempts
A new live-action Masters of the Universe has been in development, in one form or another, for most of the time since. The rights moved between studios, and over the 2000s and 2010s a series of directors and writers were attached, each with a different idea of how serious, how funny or how faithful to the toys the film should be. At one stage a version with Noah Centineo as He-Man was announced, and it later moved to a streaming service before being dropped. Amazon MGM Studios eventually took the property forward, with Travis Knight directing and Nicholas Galitzine cast as He-Man, aiming for a 2026 release.
Part of the difficulty is the same one the 1987 film faced. The franchise’s appeal rests on a fantasy world whose absurd charm is easy to love in animation and expensive and risky to stage in live action. Filmmakers have to choose between taking it seriously and winking at it, and each attempt has seemed to stall somewhere in that choice.
Animation kept the flame
Meanwhile, the franchise kept finding life in animation, from the 2002 series to Netflix’s Masters of the Universe: Revelation in 2021. The 1987 film remains the only live-action version for many fans, flawed and a little strange, and better remembered than it has any right to be.
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