Jared Leto is incredible in this. I hate that, I have to say that. I’ve spent years watching him make choices the method-acting stunts, the Joker, the various attempts to announce himself as a particular kind of movie star, and I’ve spent most of that time unconvinced. Then he shows up here inside a CGI skull, purring about a man’s “big, shiny sword,” and I laughed out loud in a way I wasn’t prepared for. He’s got the Tim Curry thing going. The real one. Where the villain is having more fun than everyone else in the film combined, and you can feel it radiating off the screen. Whatever else I’m going to say about Masters of the Universe, and I’ve got some things to say, Leto is the reason to see it.
We’re living in the Barbie aftermath. Mattel watched Greta Gerwig turn a doll into a cultural event and immediately started optioning everything in the toy box, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Thomas the Tank Engine, you name it. Masters of the Universe is the first one out of the gate, and it at least has more to work with than most. Eternia gives you sword-and-sorcery, laser guns, giant talking tigers, a skull-faced villain with a bone to pick. There’s mythology here.
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A built-in audience that grew up on the cartoon and still has something like affection for it. The question is what you do with all of that, and director Travis Knight, who made the lovely Bumblebee and several genuinely beautiful stop-motion films at Laika, has decided to do what everyone in Hollywood does now when they’re not sure how seriously to take their own material: make it into a joke before anyone else can.
The template is Thor: Ragnarok. Lean into the kitsch, wink at the ’80s, keep the irony thick enough that no one can accuse you of sincerity. When it clicks, it actually clicks, this is a real adventure with some real momentum, and the production design leans into the glossy-playset quality of Eternia in ways that are genuinely fun. When it doesn’t click, you’re sitting there watching a movie that keeps laughing nervously at its own jokes before the punchline arrives. So many lines in this script have the shape of comedy without the substance. Characters say things in the tone of funny. Nothing lands.
“Every time this film leans into something real, it flinches. You can actually feel the moment it decides to go safe.”
Except Leto, who somehow missed the memo about hedging. Nicholas Galitzine plays Prince Adam, the man who will become He-Man, and I want to be fair to him: there’s a real idea in the casting. He’s got a Tom Hanks in Big quality, a kid rattling around inside a body he doesn’t know what to do with, overwhelmed by the expectation of it.
The film hides his physique under bulky button-downs, which doesn’t quite work when you can see those pecs straining against the fabric anyway, but the instinct is right. The problem is that Galitzine goes adrift whenever he’s sharing a scene with someone who actually knows where they are. Idris Elba, playing Man-at-Arms with the casual authority of a man who has calibrated himself to exactly the right frequency, makes Galitzine look like he’s still reading the room. Camila Mendes as Teela does the same thing. They’re playing the movie. He’s still figuring out which movie it is.
Kristen Wiig voices a homicidal battle-bot sidekick. I mention this only because she barely registers, which tells you something about how the film handles its supporting material. The action sequences are fine. Competent. They won’t bore you, and they won’t stay with you. Daniel Pemberton’s rock-guitar score keeps things moving, and Brian May’s “Princes of the Universe” plays over the climax in a move that should feel earned and mostly feels like a licensing decision someone got excited about in a meeting.
Here’s what keeps nagging at me, though. Masters of the Universe is released at the start of Pride Month, and that’s not nothing. He-Man has always been a queer icon, the harness, the loincloth, the foppish pink-wearing alter ego who only became himself once he let the secret out. The film knows this. It winks at it. Skeletor purrs about Adam’s muscles and his sword, and you can feel the screenwriters congratulating themselves on the subtext.
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But the actual argument the film is making is about competing ideas of masculinity, Adam has spent fifteen years on Earth working in HR, absorbing a more empathetic model of strength, and the film sets this up as both his hidden advantage and the butt of the joke. Therapy-speak as superpower. HR training as punchline. It wants to have it both ways, and it doesn’t have the conviction to choose.
The climax, predictably, involves punching Skeletor very hard in the face. Whatever the film said about a different kind of strength, we still need to settle this the old way. I don’t begrudge it the punch. I begrudge it the pretense that the punch means something different than it always has.
There’s a version of Masters of the Universe that commits to its own weirdness, that embraces the campy, gay-coded, ’80s-metal absurdity of this property and makes something genuinely alive out of it. Travis Knight has the sensibility for it.
Leto certainly has the energy for it. But the film keeps pulling back from the edge, choosing the safe laugh over the uncomfortable truth, the crowd-pleasing pivot over the interesting mess. It’s a movie that knows what it wants to be and talks itself out of it, scene by scene, until you’re left with something entertaining enough and empty in a way you can’t quite shake.
Like Adam himself: all the power, not quite sure what to do with it.
Masters of the Universe 2026 Parents Guide
Masters of the Universe is Rated PG-13 for fantasy action violence, some suggestive humor, and brief strong language. Broadly appropriate for ages 12 and up; fine for mature 10–11 year olds with a parent.
Violence & Intensity: Frequent fantasy combat, swords, laser weapons, large-scale destruction. Characters are struck hard and defeated. A villain subjects a character to a surreal mind-torture sequence. No blood or gore. Intense but not disturbing for most kids over 10.
Language: Mild profanity throughout. One harder word. No slurs. Tone is comedic rather than aggressive. Nothing that’ll shock a teenager, and probably nothing a younger kid hasn’t heard before.
Sexual Content / Nudity: Suggestive wordplay: Skeletor makes several innuendos about swords and muscles that adults will clock, kids probably won’t. He-Man’s loincloth is revealing but played purely for camp. Brief romantic subplot, nothing physical beyond a kiss.
Drugs, Alcohol & Smoking: No drug use. Alcohol briefly visible in background, not contextualized. No smoking. Nothing that glamorizes or frames substance use in any way.
