While Millennials had the original 1980s cartoon, the 2000s reboot, and their respective toy lines to become fans of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, today’s youth probably have only a passing familiarity with the franchise thanks to Skeletor memes and that one YouTube video.
Now that a new cinematic adaptation is about to be released, does the brand have the power to attract a whole new generation of fans? Director Travis Knight believes it can.
Just one day after the red carpet premiere of Masters of the Universe transformed the TLC Chinese Theater in Hollywood into the iconic Castle Greyskull, Knight sat down with stars Nicholas Galitzine, Camila Mendes, Idris Elba, Morena Baccarin and Alison Brie, along with President of Mattel Studios Robbie Brenner and producers Jason Blumenthal and Todd Black for a virtual press conference hosted by Kevin McCarthy.
Aside from being a fan of the toys and cartoons since childhood, it turns out this isn’t Knight’s first time directing a “He-Man” film.
“I made my own ‘He-Man’ movie when I was a kid,” Knight shared. “I commandeered my dad’s video camera, and I was He-Man, of course. … I had the haircut, but I didn’t really look the part.”
Knight said that while the whole experience of creating a “Masters of the Universe” film was “very moving,” his favorite moment was hearing Galitzine recite the “By the power of Grayskull, I have the power” incantation to transform from Prince Adam into He-Man for the first time.
That moment was impactful for Galitzine as well. He and Knight shared the goal of exploring and embodying the character’s emotions and physique. For the British actor, who shared his experience coming to Los Angeles on work visas with no set prospects and sleeping on couches, the moment was like a personal encapsulation of his acting career.
“The thing that Travis and I really connected on was how do we find the human of this larger-than-life character?” Galitzine said. “What does it mean to have the power? … That moment is so many moments of rejection and earning it, earning the right to say that line.
“I was thinking of every casting director who ever rejected me,” the actor joked. “For a lot of people, especially with a movie like this, they kind of assume you kind of burst onto the scene, but this is thirteen years in the making.”
Given the pivotal moment, Galitzine felt a lot of pressure and was reluctant to over-rehearse the scene.
“Generally, as an actor, if I feel like something is too ‘in me’ it doesn’t feel raw, which is what [the transformation] certainly is that time,” he said. “It was certainly daunting. It was the biggest sound stage I think I’ve ever been on in my life, and I just was looking out and seeing a wave of expectant faces.”
The rest of the cast then made jokes about Galitzine rehearsing the line in the shower or in front of a mirror.
Camila Mendes and Idris Elba also discussed the emotional aspects of their characters, Teela and her father, Duncan, aka Man-At-Arms.
“For me, what really made Teela’s storyline so interesting was her relationship with her father, and that really informs who she becomes when she’s older,” Mendes said. “Duncan becomes disconnected from himself in a way, and Adam still hasn’t found his power, so Teela, in the beginning, really is leading the charge.”
Aside from the mustache, which he called a “big old sprawling thing across my face,” what helped Elba connect with Duncan’s character was speaking with Knight about their own dads.
“We spoke about fatherhood a lot and that sort of old-school machismo that lives in cowboy characters, that sort of ‘not-very-good-at-my-feelings’ type thing,” Elba said. “I think both our fathers had that sort of air to them. The heart of my character – he’s a dad who loves his kid, and he sort of has this sense of loss the whole time. I really leaned into that. … It gave a character that ordinarily just kicks ass a lot of depth to play with.
“By the end of it, I’m not old enough by the way, but I felt like Camila’s real dad. She’s like ‘What’s up, dad?’ and I’m like ‘What up? Did you brush your teeth today? Did you eat?’”
When McGrath shifted the press conference’s focus to the film’s antagonists, he was reluctant to frame Alison Brie’s character, Evil-Lyn, as a villain, but Brie was all about it.
“I like the term villain, and I think Evil-Lyn does too,” Brie joked.
But even among the villains, what excited Brie the most about her role was the relationships.
“What I was really excited about by this character is the relationship between Evil-Lyn and Skeletor and how contentious it is and how funny it is,” she said. “[Jared Leto and I] had so much fun on set mining the Skeletor/Evil-Lyn relationship, and it’s just so juicy. It’s very complicated.”
Brie and Baccarin also discussed how, rather than wearing a performance-capture suit, Jared Leto performed while wearing Skeletor’s blue muscle suit, robe, and hood.
“We were looking at that every day,” Brie said. “He did have red blood on his face so that he still looked terrifying to all of us.”
McCarthy also took time to laud the guitar solos on the soundtrack, which Knight regarded as a character in itself and was heavily influenced by Queen’s score for the 1980 film Flash Gordon.
“There was just something that was fantastic and theatrical and operatic about it, but like all Queen’s stuff, there was a real sincerity underneath everything,” Knight said. “[Composer Daniel Pemberton] and I talked about that, and I couldn’t have imagined that a year later we’d be sitting in Brian May’s home studio watching him record guitar solos for our score.”
At this point, Elba jokingly told Knight to “stop showing off.”
He did not.
Knight also shared that after a full day of recording with the Queen guitarist and astrophysicist, May pulled out boxes of his son’s old He-Man figures.
“He was pulling out Skeletor; he knew Castle Greyskull,” Knight gushed. “I could not believe that Brian May knew He-Man. It was an incredible experience.”
While there were many on-screen moments and production aspects, like the costumes, that made the cast feel immersed in the world of Master of the Universe, the group universally agreed that the intricate design of sets like Castle Greyskull really impacted them.
“A lot can be said about what it is to perform next to green screens … and the pitfalls from the performance side of it,” Galitzine said. “I never, ever felt that on this job because the sets that were made for us were, I mean, truly, you could have been on location somewhere. You could really chart a journey through these sets.”
Elba said that walking on set and being surrounded by the costumes felt like being at a “He-Man comic con.” For Baccarin, this film represents the pinnacle of her longtime fandom.
“I spent a lot of time in my childhood playing He-Man and She-Ra with my brother,” said actress Morena Baccarin, who plays The Sorceress. “I had … the history, I knew everything about them, so it wasn’t hard to drop into this world. … You could literally walk through [the set], go down the steps, see the sword resting where it should be.
“I know I wasn’t supposed to, but I took a picture of it, and I sent it to my brother like ‘Can you believe this?’” she said. “We were texting back and forth. He was like ‘I know you’ve been acting for 20 years, but now you’ve made it.’”