The planet of Eternia is in ruins under the diabolical rule of Skeletor (Jared Leto), usurper of the throne of King Randor (James Purefoy); the act of which led to the abscondment of Prince Adam (Artie Wilkinson-Hunt, later Nicholas Galitzine) with the Sword of Power from the realm. Fifteen years after Skeletor’s accession to power, Adam returns to Eternia with Teela (Camila Mendes) and her father, the King’s ex-man-at-arms, Duncan (Idris Elba), now a disgraced drunkard, to take his rightful place on the throne and return Eternia to her former glory.

Travis Knight brings He-Man out from the rubble of Castle Grayskull and onto the silver screen for Amazon MGM from a script penned by the screenwriting team Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, and Dave Callaham. After rights and intentions for the franchise have cycled through various hands across the decades since the Gary Goddard-helmed stab at the intergalactic barbarian prince in 1987, Knight’s film cuts right to the chase, forgoing any subtitle and simply opting for Masters of the Universe on the marquee. He leads his creative team to walk the line of taking the material just serious enough to support the – admittedly, daunting and eventually overlong – 140-minute runtime, while also reveling in the inherent campiness of this absolute hodgepodge of an IP.

This is a film that hinges on the synergy between Galitzine and Knight, who are thankfully on the same page, but held back by some front matter that, while in the moment mostly lands, in the scope of the film as a whole, makes the work feel quite shaggy. For the opening 20 minutes or so, Wilkinson-Hunt is our wide-eyed, ill-suited prince who can barely hold a wooden sword. It is a rather standard approach to a first act, laying the ground work and introducing us to these characters who we will spend more time with later on, but while we are patiently waiting for He-Man to hit puberty, the crafts team are pulling out all of the stops to imbue the frame with bold and vibrant colors that seem quite alien but are quite welcome in the thankfully weaking grey-scale edict sent down to modern blockbusters from the powers at be at the Marvel Universe. While Fabian Wagner’s camera movements and Paul Rubell’s edit may not push too many boundaries, the slight stillness that they impose only gives Richard Sale and Dominic Capon more leeway in costumes and set departments, respectively, to shine. The colors are allowed to pop, the sets do not look alien to everything else on screen, and most of all, the cast actually seems like they are having a lot of fun. There is an exuberance in Wilinson-Hunt who, yes, essentially is asked to do a TikTok dance, but it all adds to the fabric of absurdity and the limitlessness of imagination that deep within the molten core of Eternia.

Like a splash of cold water to the face, Act 2 finds us transported to Earth; more specifically, we find our earth-bound prince floundering on a Tinder date which creates for a charming transition even if that same charm gets let out faster than the helium of a popped balloon. Soon after, we cut to our hero dead-eyed in a cubicle of the opprevily flouresnt-lit HR office where Adam, now Galitzine, works. As could be assumed, this middle act is a real drag on the film, especially having been snatched out of the fun and campy atmosphere created in the first act. Further, since the majority of this film is set in a fantasy world, this is the only chance that Amazon can really work in all of those lucrative product placement ads. The most egregious one, however, is not so much selling a product but an idea; though, a more benevolent reading of this sequence can be seen as a self-dealt ad for a Prime subscription, but alas, there is no benevolence in the gross stage of capitalism which is at the heart of how Amazon and the rest of the technology oligarchs are slowly trying to shape our world. Thankfully for Bezos, his influence can more freely shape the world of Masters of the Universe as this film not so subtly promotes the dismantling of the USPS through the smashing down of their blue public boxes in favor of privatized delivery, as seen through a Prime van zooming in to cause a distraction and allow for our hero’s a split second to make an escape. Much in the same way that James Bond’s cell phone is from whichever manufacturer shelled out the most money, Bezos is making sure that his brand is only being used here for powers of good, twisted of a reality as that may be once we consider the source.

Thankfully, we can quickly make our exit from Bezos’ grey and drab utopia and return to Eternia, albeit now slightly desaturated from the vibrancy after twenty-odd years under Skeletor’s rule. As the film teeters around its halfway point in a faceoff between Adam and Trap-Jaw (Sam C. Wilson), the prince finally unlocks the power of the sword and transforms into the iconic barbarian we recognize as He-Man. Wagner and Swain’s camera moves quickly around our hero but still manages to take in every bulging muscle of Galitzine’s frame, having traded the frumpy, salmon-colored button-down for an iron-studded leather harness and loincloth. The film can finally be fun again, and we have a campy protagonist to cheer for as he faces off against an equally campy antagonist in Leto’s Skeletor, though Castle Greyskull is still quite some distance away and there are no less than two major set pieces and another stint in prison to go before Adam can fight to reclaim his rightful seat.

Masters of the Universe should not work nearly as well as it does, and while its time on Earth is overlong, it does come back into play at the end in a surprising and exciting way not dissimilar – though not as fully formed – as what Greta Gerwig asked audiences to imagine when she opened up Mattel’s toybox. Barbie (2023) presented an existential quandary for audiences, asking them to imagine for a while what it would be like for Barbie (Margot Robbie) to be lifted out of Barbieland, the pink, popping land built around her very existence, and instead be placed in our world. Adam does not get to work through that same crisis of self during his time spent outside of Eternia as his Mattel colleague had, but the montage that posits Skeletor’s influence on his human life is still interesting all the same. A different film would have tipped into exploring those themes a little more instead of simply just showing it in quick succession at the end of the film as a way to wrap things up, but its inclusion in this way not only gives Masters of the Universe a little more intellectual caloric value than it otherwise would have, it helps it to maintain its status as an incredible feat of pacing.

This is a long film – 26 minutes longer than was afforded to Barbie, though, to be fair, the 134-minute Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) serves as a better comp – and each frame is packed to the edge with characters, settings, colors, and lore that have all been well established thanks to decades-running IP, but the scriptwriting team seldom go out of their way to explain what all of these things are. They are there for the fans, but newcomers to the franchise can follow along just as well. This allows the film to move at an almost breakneck clip, especially in the back half, so that its runtime is never felt like a drag on the film. For a less engaged audience, some of this runtime may feel repetitive – as mentioned, multiple stints in jail cells, an overarching hunt for Skeletor guides the narrative, and the transformation sequences do add up – but it all helps to mimic the serialized nature of a Saturday morning cartoon. The fact that the film can return to these beats while never feeling like the narrative has gotten away from the characters who are left circling as ancillary pieces fall into place is a testament to a smart script that seems to be missing in many contemporary blockbuster, action/adventure films. Looking at Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026) from a few weeks prior, Knight’s film is a true salve, course-correcting every single bland and boring decision that Jon Favreau made as he sent an intergalactic bounty hunter and his small alien counterpart across the brown and grey planets in search of information. Through its flaws, Masters of the Universe can and should be praised as it is as easy to consume as a big bowl of allegedly healthy-for-you cereal with an equally bright color palette to match, and it reminds us what it means to have fun at a big summer blockbuster again.