HORROR ADJACENT: Masters of the Universe (2026)

Masters of the Universe is basically what happens when you make Barbie and Battlefield Earth the *same* movie.

Masters of the Universe tries its best to resurrect eighties kitsch

Most people would argue that Masters of the Universe ISN’T a horror property. My response? It’s a franchise that’s literally about an evil skeleton who wants to kill everybody in existence, with like three million different kinds of monsters in it. If it’s not horror property, it’s at least living a few doors next to it in the same subdivision … hypothetically speaking.

Yes, it does seem more than a bit odd that we’re getting a He-Man reboot in the year 2026. Let’s be real, Masters of the Universe is one of those franchises that lost any and all cultural relevance once the eighties ended. It isn’t Ghostbusters or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the sense that it has an outsized pop culture pull that extends far beyond the Reagan years. You really can’t reinvent or reintroduce the He-Man mythology every ten years or so and expect it to sell like hotcakes. Like smoking inside McDonald’s and Members Only jackets, I’m afraid Masters of the Universe is something forever stuck in the past — even if a small but vocal fan base has kept its memory alive for the last 40 years, unlike I.P.s that are truly dead a’la BraveStarr and Dino-Riders.

It’s pretty obvious what the studio’s intentions are. They’re hoping they can resurrect the brand the same way Transformers was brought back in the late 2000s. There is no doubt that the executives were seeing dollar signs on this one — but would today’s TikTok, 6-7 and liminal horror loving masses even remotely buy into it?

One thing is for sure; it’s certainly a much, MUCH more reverential Masters of the Universe film than the one Cannon made in the late 1980s. You kind of get the idea that the people who wrote this movie actually knew what the He-Man canon was and actually cared about staying faithful to it. Of course, you have to take a LOT of creative liberties for the He-Man mythos to work in a 2026 context, and just setting everything up is the kind of thing that would give most Hollywood screenwriters nightmares. 

That becomes evident by the opening scene, which hammers the audience over the head with no less than 20 minutes worth of upfront exposition. To give you an idea of just how much procedural background is included in this thing, we don’t even hear Skeletor speak until nearly the one hour mark of the movie. I understand staying true to the lore of the franchise, guys, but don’t you think you could’ve cut out about half an hour of prologue here?

Weirdly enough this movie actually employs the same conceit as the 1987 MOTU flick by placing a large chunk of the movie in our real world. Even weirder, of all possible places the film is set in Oklahoma City, which is simply proof that the screenwriters threw a dart blindfolded at a map of the continental U.S. and said “good enough.” The He-Man we’re introduced to here is something of a blithering dolt who spends all his free time trying to track down the fabled “sword of power,” which — conveniently enough — just so happens to be housed at a local comic book shop. The odds, huh?

It’s actually pretty amazing how much of this movie parallels 2023’s live action Barbie adaptation. Indeed, it’s almost the exact same plot machinations, albeit with a fair amount of Battlefield Earth thrown into the mix for good measure. This is a movie that never abandons an opportunity to get its referential points and meme credentials in, whether it’s a VERY on the nose cameo from Dolph Lundgren or a police chase scene scored to that one 4 Non Blondes song. It’s so meta and full of itself that it almost becomes a self-parody — as if the idea of making a He-Man movie in 2026 wasn’t self-parodying enough.

It’s a contradictory (if not self defeating) mess of a movie. On one hand, you DO get virtually every major character from the ‘80s cartoon and corresponding toy line represented here, to the point somebody actually gets a voice actor credit for playing Moss Man. Ram Man, Fisto, Lockjaw, Beast Man, they’re all in here, and for better or for worse they look identical to their animated and plastic counterparts from 45 years ago. The problem, though, is that pretty much EVERYBODY in the movie is miscast, beginning with our leading actor Nick Galitzine. Sure, he’s got the blond hair and he’s got the pecs, but in virtually every scene he stares wide-eyed into the camera as if he’s totally confused by the whole movie-making process. There’s a fine line between awkward and distractingly awkward and you don’t need me to tell you which one fits Nick’s performance to a T. The rest of the cast is also stuck in roles that they simply don’t understand (or else they were given very bad direction on how to play said roles.) Idris Elba, Kristen Wiig, Alison Brie, Jared Leto — all of them feel completely lost here, and really, who can blame them?

The action scenes hardly make up for the lack of, well, everything else in the picture. There’s a decent one-on-one battle scene about halfway through the movie, but from there the movie goes into CGI overdrive, complete with a painfully artificial-feeling multi-spaceship chase sequence that might as well be culled from a Playstation2 cut scene. And don’t even get me started on the supposed final confrontation between He-Man and Skeletor; how studio execs even green lit the last 30 minutes of the movie is simply beyond me, kids.

Ultimately, the biggest problem with the movie is that there’s just too much movie in the first place. The film almost hits two and a half hours in run time, which is at least an hour longer than it should’ve been. Bits in this movie drag on forever and add nothing to the narrative. And unless you have your eyes peeled open for every second in a fruitless attempt to spot a non-existent cameo appearance by Stinkor, I get the feeling this movie is going to have you hopelessly bored for long intervals.

As I write this I have no idea what the opening weekend receipts look like for Masters of Universe. Maybe it performed respectably or maybe it bombed big time — it doesn’t seem like there would be a happy financial medium for a movie like this. Of course, the studio is hedging its bets that it’s going to be another tent-pole, sequel-birthing franchise brand name with practically endless tie-in merchandising opportunities. Unless you are an insanely hardcore He-Man fan who thinks 2016’s Ghostbusters reboot was too subdued for its own good, though, I have a hard time imagining anybody enjoying every second of this movie. Frankly, I think I’d have more fun playing with its tie-in popcorn bucket for two and half hours than rewatching the film itself … with or without the refills.

GIVE IT A WATCH IF YOU LIKE: The eighties, that one Thor movie, the taste of rubber action figures

Director: Travis Knight

Writer(s): Chris Butler, Adam Nee, Aaron Nee, David Callaham, Alex Litvak, Michael Finch

Starring: Nicholas Galitzine, Jared Leto, Kristine Wiig, Idris Elba 

Studio: MGM/Mattel Studios/Escape Artists

Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios

Runtime: 140 Minutes

Language: English 

Release Date: June 05, 2026