Masters of the Universe (2026) Is a Beautiful, Buff, Ridiculous Mess

A young man on Earth discovers a fabulous secret legacy as the prince of an alien planet, and must recover a magic sword and return home to protect his kingdom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X21JsHLHnY8

There are movies you watch with your brain, movies you watch with your heart, and movies you watch like an eight-year-old who just drank a two-liter of Jolt Cola and found a broadsword in the garage. Masters of the Universe is mostly that third kind, and buddy, I mean that as a compliment. Travis Knight’s new swing at the old Mattel kingdom plants Nicholas Galitzine in the center of the madness as Prince Adam, with Camila Mendes and Idris Elba flanking him while Jared Leto skulks around the place as Skeletor like the ghost of every community theater villain who ever discovered contouring. It is PG-13, two hours and twenty minutes long, and absolutely determined to drag a toy-box fever dream back onto the big screen.

The basic setup is clean enough to fit on the back of an action figure card, which in this case is a plus. Adam discovers that his life on Earth is connected to a much grander destiny, winds up pulled back toward Eternia, and has to recover the power and purpose needed to stand up for his kingdom. That mythic foundation works because He-Man was never supposed to be Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. This is not a franchise that should behave like it has a graduate degree. It should look you dead in the eye, hand you a glowing sword, and dare you not to grin. On that level, the movie gets the assignment more often than not.

And yes, I liked a lot of this thing. First, the Dolph cameo. Bless whoever made that call. It is brief, funny, affectionate, and pitched at exactly the right frequency for people who still remember when the 1987 movie stomped onto VHS like a barbarian at a mall food court. It does not hijack the film, it just tips the crown to the past and moves on. That is how you do nostalgia without turning the whole enterprise into a museum gift shop. The movie also knows its roots are gloriously cheesy, and instead of apologizing for the plastic-fantasy DNA, it leans into it with the kind of smirk that says, “Relax, we know what aisle this toy came from.”

Then there is the action, which is better than I expected. Not revolutionary, not a tectonic shift in the annals of cinematic sword-swinging, but solid, energetic, and occasionally genuinely cool. Knight has said most of the movie lives on Eternia, not Earth, and that turns out to be the right instinct because the fantasy world is where this thing breathes. The movie is at its happiest when it quits trying to be clever for a minute and just lets warriors, weirdos, and monsters stomp around in a fully committed comic-book opera. That is when it feels less like content strategy and more like someone finally opened the toy chest and let the monsters out.

The score is also a beast. Daniel Pemberton understood that a movie called Masters of the Universe cannot sound like restrained prestige wallpaper. It needs brass, propulsion, myth, and at least a little electric lunacy. Bringing Brian May into the orbit of “Eternia” was already a dead giveaway that the soundtrack department came to play, and the title song from The Darkness tells you all you need to know about the movie’s preferred flavor profile. This soundtrack does not sip tea. It roundhouse-kicks the door, lights a fog machine, and asks where the nearest battle cat is parked. For me, the music is one of the movie’s biggest wins, full stop.

Now, the stuff that drove me nuts. The biggest offender is the way the film sometimes handles Adam. I understand the filmmakers wanted to explore masculinity, empathy, and the difference between brute strength and actual manhood. Fine. Noble even. But somewhere along the way, the needle occasionally swings past “emotionally human” and lands on “did we really need to make our hero this much of a knucklehead?” There is a difference between humility and himbo overload. He-Man can have a heart without being written like he wandered into the wrong room while looking for snack crackers.

Then we get to the jokes, and this is where the script starts stepping on rakes. Plenty of critics have already noticed that the humor does not always land, and I felt that in my soul. Some lines feel like they were written by a committee trapped inside a focus group with a broken air conditioner. When the movie lets the camp happen naturally, it is charming. When it tries too hard to assure you that it is in on the joke, it gets that strained, synthetic blockbuster banter that makes you want to file a noise complaint against the screenplay. There were stretches where I honestly wondered if a five-year-old had been given final punch-up responsibilities and then rewarded with a Capri Sun.

Jared Leto is another mixed bag for me. To be fair, some reviewers found his Skeletor delightfully diva-ish, and I get why. He is certainly not timid. Timid left the building around the second vat of eyeliner. But for my taste, he goes too big too often, as if the performance had been inflated with a bicycle pump and then sent into the room unsupervised. Skeletor should be theatrical. That is baked into the character. But there is a fine line between gloriously evil ham and a guy trying to win “Most Likely to Lick the Scenery” at the Villain Prom.

I was also not crazy about the movie’s urge to start pitching tomorrow’s products before today’s movie has fully paid the check. Without spoiling anything, let me just say the film cannot resist hinting that the cinematic cul-de-sac is already being rezoned into a larger subdivision. I get it. Everyone wants a universe now. Nobody can just finish a meal, they have to hand you a brochure for dessert in 2028. But sometimes a movie should just be a movie and not a shareholder presentation with swords.

Still, for all my griping, I had a good time. That matters. This thing ticks the nostalgia boxes, gives Mendes and Elba enough juice to keep the ensemble moving, throws enough fantasy pageantry at the screen to satisfy the old-school crowd, and remembers that Masters of the Universe should be at least a little ridiculous or else what are we even doing here. It is too long, too cute with its own jokes, and occasionally allergic to decent dialogue, but it also has heart, muscle, and a soundtrack that could bench-press a Volvo. I laughed, I rolled my eyes, I sighed at the franchise bait, and I walked out entertained. Sometimes that is the whole ballgame.

My ranking: 6.5/10. Big nostalgic energy, a fantastic score, a fun Dolph nod, and enough decent action to justify the ticket, but the forced jokes, shaky dialogue, overcooked villainy, and sequel fishing keep it from becoming the kind of Grayskull classic it clearly wants to be.

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