By Jennifer Asencio
| Published 1 hour ago
As a kid in the 1980s, my weekday afternoons after school were filled with the all-important consumption of a trilogy of fantasy cartoons that dominated kids’ culture back then. The trilogy, which included She-Ra, Princess of Power and Thundercats, started with the phenomenon that was He-Man & The Masters of the Universe.
In yet another bid to revive 80s nostalgia, the first trailer for a Amazon’s new Masters of the Universe has been released.
The Story Told By Amazon’s First He-Man Trailer
The movie trailer begins with a voiceover explaining that the fantastical elements of the world of Eternia are real, while CGI shows its structures, spaceships, and magic. The voiceover is from Adam, who is shown as a youngster in this CGI universe, then as a young adult in a perfectly drab, normal Earthling bedroom. He was sent away, according to the trailer, by his mother, to a place where he wouldn’t be found.
Naturally, that place is Earth, where we are treated to a montage of dreary things, like Adam’s office job (complete with a nameplate bearing pronouns) and the disapproval of a co-worker, who seems to be his boss, over his “obsession with nerd stuff.”
Adam is apparently tracking down the Power Sword, which he finds in a hobby shop.
It draws Teela in a spaceship to come get him and bring him home to save the planet.
We are then treated to a spectacle of action scenes and urgent explanations from the queen about why she sent Adam away. Villains Skeletor and Evil-Lyn are shown, too, lurking as menacingly as ever. We’re even shown the famous transformation and a few shots of He-Man himself, proving that this origin story is not just Surf Dracula, and we’ll see plenty of the superhero in the movie.
Wait, We’re Doing The Real World Thing Again?
The first, most glaringly noticeable thing about Adam in the trailer is that he’s not overly muscle-bound, even though Prince Adam is. In the glimpse of He-Man we get at the end of the trailer, he’s a little wiry, but nothing like the Mattel toy that the cartoon was designed around.
Rather than being the spoiled, lazy prince that creeps Teela out as he was on the show, this Adam is a Chosen One who eagerly awaits his Big Destiny.
With a world as rich as Eternia obviously is, I have always wondered about the obsession filmmakers have with shoehorning “our world” into the mix. The Dolph Lungren version of Masters of the Universe in 1987 also did this. When we sat down to watch the cartoon, we wanted to be taken away from the real world. It was a disappointment that the Dolph Lundgren movie did it, and it’s disappointing that they’re doing it again.
Special Effects That Deliver
Some of the CGI is overwhelming and looks cartoony, but I’m not going to lie: some of it looks really cool. The trailer shows us fantastic vistas and futuristic cities, ancient castles and feats of magic. Unlike a lot of CGI that looks like that animated sequence in Mary Poppins, the effects in Masters of the Universe look like they’re part of the world.
The trailer does a great job of obscuring the better-known names in the cast, with only Idris Elba showing up as Man-At-Arms. Also hiding behind newcomers Nicholas Galitzine as Adam and Camila Mendez as Teela are Morena Baccarin as the Sorceress of Greyskull, Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn, and Jared Leto as Skeletor.
Speaking of Skeletor, his makeup is also really cool, much better than when Frank Langella played him in 1987. Instead of a bumbling cartoon villain, he looks like the frightening tyrant he is supposed to be.
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for Battle Cat, who looks like a reject from Jon Favreau’s “live action” take on The Lion King.
He-Man Has He/Him Pronouns, Is It A Joke Or Activism?
I cannot let Adam’s nameplate at work go without further mention. I don’t know if the point of his clearly displayed “He/Him” pronouns was tongue-in-cheek. It’s either yet another sign of activism injected into storytelling, or Masters of the Universe is lampooning it.
The movie’s hero is called “He-Man,” after all. He-Man was who all the boys wanted to grow up to be, an icon of masculine heroism and might makes right, which is why the inclusion of his pronouns stuck out to me so strongly.
However, Masters of the Universe might just be poking a bit of fun at pronouns and the banality of corporate life by including them on Adam’s desk. He-Man makes a great counter to the “modern hero” because he is unapologetically all the good things about masculinity. If Hollywood is ready to make jokes about its activism, maybe it’s a sign that movies will return to being about story rather than “the message.”
However, the trailer doesn’t really hint at any messaging, preferring to dazzle audiences with special effects and fight scenes. Other than the warping of Prince Adam’s backstory and some of its graphics, there’s nothing bad to say about what we have been shown so far. Therefore, there’s hope that Masters of the Universe won’t be yet another franchise ruined by modern Hollywood.
How He-Man Started
In its original form, He-Man was about Prince Adam of Eternia and his secret, superhero-like identity as He-Man, a muscle-bound, shirtless barbarian figure who wielded a magic sword. He-Man defended Eternia with the help of his friends, Battle Cat, Man-At-Arms, Teela, and the Sorceress of Castle Greyskull, from the evil machinations of the terrifying skull-faced Skeletor and his supervillain minions.
The show was interesting because it combined all the best stuff about fantasy and science fiction of the era: magic swords, sorceresses and evil wizards, ray guns, spaceships, and alien planets. He-Man, as a character, was a classical male fantasy hero, full of muscles and prophecy. His backstory was that he was the spoiled son of the king and queen of the planet that was granted the magical Power Sword to defend it and the universe from Skeletor’s evil magic, turning him into a better man.
The movie Masters of the Universe is being released in theaters on June 5, 2026.
