Bringing He-Man and Masters of the Universe to life is something that would be a challenge for any filmmaker. The dense world and complex characters coupled with a hardcore fanbase that has proven to be incredibly protective of its mythology are among some of the trickier barriers said filmmaker would need to navigate through. Fortunately for Amazon MGM Studios, they found the perfect filmmaker for the job with Travis Knight.
Since 2009, Knight and his team have been responsible for some of the most brilliant animated films to come from his Portland-based stop-motion studio, Laika, including Coraline, ParaNorman, and Knight’s own Kubo and the Two Strings. The amount of detail, craftsmanship, emotion, and passion he and his teams infuse into every single one of the stories they’ve produced is palpable, with the results demonstrating themselves plainly on screen through the beauty and quality of their work. All of this carried over to Knight’s live action directorial debut, 2018’s Bumblebee, as it gave the Transformers franchise some of its most positive reviews to date.
As such, given the strength of his work, and his passion for the material, Knight became a naturally perfect candidate to bring the world of Eternia to life. His approach: to lean into some of the campiness of the source material, while still treating it with love, reverence, sincerity, and full conviction. From there, Knight’s selection would lead to the pitch perfect casting of the film’s stars Nicholas Galitzine (Red, White, and Royal Blue) and Camila Mendes (Riverdale) as He-Man and Teela, respectively. The rest, as they say, is history!
With officially less than two months out until the release of Masters of the Universe, and with the well-received release of the trailer and initial looks at the film, it looks like Knight, Galitzine, and Mendes, as well as all involved, have officially crafted a film adaptation worthy of the beloved source material that inspired it. And now, during CinemaCon, we are pleased to reveal that The Nerds of Color had the esteemed honor of being invited to a screening of about 20 minutes of footage from the new film, followed by a rousing conversation with Knight, Galitzine, and Mendes to see how it all excitingly and serendipitously came together. Knight and team showed us three scenes from the new movie and an extended trailer.
Knight wanted to kick off the film with the hypothetical question, “what would it look like if the evil Skeletor had actually succeeded in conquering Eternia?” The first scene addressed this question, as it showcased the opening minutes of the movie, depicting a young Adam having to flee from Eternia as it falls under the siege of Skeletor’s forces. The opening sequence showed some truly incredible John Wick-level action from Idris Elba’s Man-at-Arms, as he attempts to protect Prince Adam, and his parents, King Randor and Queen Marlena, from the likes of Skeletor’s soldiers and the villainous Trap Jaw, and his ever-changing arm of weapons.
There are some terrific cameos from classic MOTU heroes like Mekaneck and Fisto during the battle. Unfortunately Randor is captured by Skeletor, Spikor, and Evil-Lyn, and Marlena and Adam must escape before either of them can be killed. The introduction sets the tone for the entire film, balancing some tongue-in-cheek humor (particularly between Skeletor and Evil-Lyn) with genuine thrills and top notch action!
The second scene showcases an adult Adam, years later on Earth, getting arrested by two police officers for attempting to steal his own Power Sword back. They are stopped by what appears to be a traffic accident on the freeway, but discover the area is under attack by a feral-looking Beast Man, who attempts to find and destroy Adam. To the best of his abilities, Adam grabs the Power Sword and tries to make a run for it, but Beast Man catches up to him and pounds him into a truck. As he’s about to deal the final blow, a laser blast hits the villain. Adam looks up and sees Teela wielding, what looks like, the Staff of Ka, and using it to beat the crap out of Beast Man, knocking him off the freeway overpass. She sees Adam and asks him if he recognizes her. To his disbelief he does, and they decide to get into her ship and head back to Eternia.
The final scene they showed us was easily the money-shot of the whole presentation. On Eternia, Teela, Man-at-Arms, and Adam are taking cover from Trap Jaw and his forces. Still in his mortal form, Adam decides he’s going to try to de-escalate the situation by using his words and skills at conflict resolution, which Teela and Man-at-Arms are understandably, hilariously confused about. Adam tries to talk Trap Jaw down, which goes about as well as anyone would anticipate, as Trap Jaw disregards his words and attempts to beat him mercilessly. Teela pushes Adam to use the Power Sword. He unsheathes it, and instantly receives visions of The Sorceress of Castle Grayskull, who tells him to say “the words.” Falling into a trance, Adam says the all-famous catchphrase “By the Power of Grayskull! I Have the Power!” as he transforms fully into He-Man and engages in battle with Trap Jaw! The scene was handled with such reverence and sincerity, standing out above everything we saw at that point as an absolute crowd pleasing moment that fans are going to lose their minds over.
We then received an extended sizzle reel showcasing more of Skeletor and some terrific action sequences of He-Man wielding his sword and taking out villains left and right with his wits and super strength. Galitzine’s deliveries of every one-liner feel incredibly organic. Mendes showcased a wonderful balance of humor and emotion. And everything we saw felt like Knight understood the perfect balance of knowing when to inject humor into the film, and when to treat everything with absolute conviction and sincerity. The footage was met with an incredible response among all of us in the audience.
Following the footage, Galitzine, Mendes, and Knight came out to discuss the film with all of us with a mini-press conference.
The first question was for Knight, who was asked about how the transformation sequence from Adam to He-Man came together.
“Whenever we were at some kind of a crossroads, we would just go back to the source,” stated Knight. “So even though we took some liberties and we wanted to make things look modern and cinematic, we always went back to the Filmation cartoon, and so there are a lot of nods. You can see the color palette… when Adam transforms for the first time. We see the Spirit of Grayskull. It’s kind of a blink-and-miss it moment, but it’s there. And I think that level of devotion to the original source material is something you’ll find all throughout the whole movie. For me, seeing Adam transform into He-Man, was a really moving experience. It sounds strange to say that, but I’ll never forget the day that we were on set, and Nick did that incantation for the very first time, and I had chills. It was actually very emotional for me. And it’s because of what this stuff means for me. And so as we go through the movie, I think the whole experience — to see him become this person, after all he’s endured — is actually a very emotional thing. And I think we wanted to try to do that visually to showcase how what was inside of him was finally coming out to the exterior.”
Galitzine was asked about what the transformation scene was like for him, and whether or not he had to rehearse or prepare for it in any way.
“It’s one of those things that you see on the schedule and you’re like, shit, that’s the biggest scene. And I was very conflicted in my mind as to whether I wanted to rehearse it or really just feel it on the day, which was actually something that I landed on. Because as Travis says, it was emotional for him. It was emotional for me. I mean this is someone who’s been put down their entire lives and told by his teachers that he’s crazy. And really this sort of moment — this incantation — is just completely empowering him and vindicating his life of struggles. I didn’t want to have something so prepared in my mind. I wanted it to feel it in my core and my gut. It’s one of those things, again, where there’s various iconic iterations of it now. And you want to bring your own sentimentality to it. And I think we both really connected to the emotionality of this character and his sort of soft core, as well as his hard exterior. And so I didn’t prepare it at all. We did it the first time. But luckily, I think we were happy with it.”
When asked about the design of the film, and whether he had to make any significant changes to the look of the characters or elements from the source material, Knight stated, “We always started with a source material, and so in some cases, we were pretty faithful to that stuff. In other cases, it didn’t make sense for the overall design that we were bringing to the movie. For instance, you can see, with He-Man, there was a lot of debate going around… Can we really have a guy with hot pants? And, no, we couldn’t do that. We thought about it for a moment, but then we explored, what if it goes somewhere else? And there was a leather trousers moment where he looked like Jim Morrison. So we landed on something that was evocative of the original He-Man costume, but also just brought it into a modern era. So he’s got a gladiator skirt instead of the furry anchors. He’s still got the same silhouette, but it’s just got a different prism attached to it. Teela’s costume was very different. Although, again, it’s one of those things where if you really study that the costume, you can see that it’s got nods to the classic design. And we brought some additional things to update it. It didn’t make sense to us that a goddess would be running around the whole movie in a swimsuit. So we made some modifications throughout, but overall, we tried to remain as faithful as possible. So the things that we loved about the the cartoon and the toy line.”
Mendes and Galitzine were asked about what it was like to find out they got the parts of Teela and He-Man, and whether or not they watched the original cartoons.
“I did not grow up watching it,” stated Mendes. “I was born in the ’90s. My family in Brazil were all huge fans of He-Man, and they grew up watching it. They were telling me all the names of the characters in Portuguese, which was really cool. But obviously, when I got the part, I immediately watched every single episode. I read every single comic. I was just like trying to immerse myself in this world as much as possible and it’s so rare that you get to be a part of something that has that kind of lore. So to be able to take little notes and take away little details of the character for yourself to have a launching pad, and build on the character is really fun.”
“Yeah, similarly to Camila, I grew up in the ’90s as well,” stated Galitzine. “But really Masters of the Universe has always had an internet presence, whether it’s in memes or the iconic song. And so that was my in. And I think the fact that the movie is able to skirt the line between absolute sincerity — being in on the joke and and being tongue-in-cheek camp at times — I sensed that immediately when I read the script. And then it made me want to absorb as much as I possibly could. [Camila and I] spent a considerable amount of time… every day when we were training. We’d come in and there’d be something that we’d watched. Some obscure character we came across. And it was this beautiful kind of organic thing of really getting to dip into history, nostalgia, and pop culture in a really original way that was very gratifying.”
The final question was for Knight, in regards to how he assembled the rest of the ensemble. “Fundamentally, for the movie, you have to make a choice in terms of what things to focus on,” he stated. “So the core really is Adam’s story, but the film is also called Masters of the Universe. So there’s a whole cast of characters that we wanted to bring to life. For me, it was a great joy. I felt like I was a kid in a sandbox… And so I tried to put as many of my favorite characters in the movie as we possibly could. Some didn’t make it along the way. They got cut. But we’ve got some great, fantastic characters. Morena Baccarin plays The Sorceress. She is extraordinary. And then for those of you who know some of the lore from the cartoon, I wanted to make sure that when the person I would cast for (because [Nick and Camila] were the first people [we cast]) came on board… we built the rest of the cast around these two. And knowing what you might know, I wanted to make sure that Morena and Cami looked like they could plausibly be related. And they do. But I think we got… extraordinary actors. The third part of the triangle here was Idris Elba, who may be the coolest guy in the world. When I met him he just got on his motorcycle, he was wearing his leathers. He walked in slow motion. Had doves flying behind him! He’s just so cool! And he’s also, as we all know, an extraordinary actor, a great action hero, and he’s really, really funny. And I think that’s something that’s going to be quite surprising, because he genuinely doesn’t do those types of roles. But we asked everybody to bring all those different layers to the film, because there is great sincerity, and there’s emotion, there’s heart. But it’s a lot of fun, too. And I think hopefully that comes through, because there’s a lot of character comedy. It comes from a true place, and everyone had to be able to pull all those levers, and we were so blessed in the actors that we got.”
While the Q&A concluded, there was still much more Masters of the Universe left in the day, with Amazon MGM’s coverage of the film during their presentation.
We will dive a lot more in depth into the studio’s CinemaCon presentation soon, and we have a lot more Masters of the Universe coverage coming your way! Stay tuned to The Nerds of Color for that very soon!
Masters of the Universe hits theaters everywhere, June 5!
