{"id":1001222,"date":"2026-06-02T20:55:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T20:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1001222\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T20:55:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T20:55:19","slug":"masters-of-the-universe-review-roundup-what-critics-are-saying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1001222\/","title":{"rendered":"Masters of the Universe Review Roundup: What Critics Are Saying"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHe-Man lands in theaters Friday, and reviews for Masters of the Universe<\/a> are now in.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film, a live-action adaptation of the Mattel franchise from director Travis Knight, follows Prince Adam of Eternia, who crash-lands on Earth as a child and is separated from his Sword of Power. Raised as an ordinary man named Adam Glenn, he eventually recovers the sword and returns to save his homeland, where he faces off against Skeletor.<\/p>\n

\n\tNicholas Galitzine<\/a> stars as He-Man\/Prince Adam\/Adam Glenn, while Jared Leto<\/a> plays the villain Skeletor. The cast also includes Idris Elba as Man-at-Arms, Camila Mendes as Teela, Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn, Morena Baccarin as Sorceress and Kristen Wiig as Roboto.<\/p>\n

\n\tMasters of the Universe celebrated its Los Angeles premiere last month, where the original He-Man from the 1987 film, Dolph Lundgren, praised Galitzine\u2019s performance while speaking with The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>: \u201cYou need a guy who is a leading-man type, and the muscles and the strength are secondary. You can always create that, and I think Nicholas did that. He built himself up. When I did it, it was a little more like I had the physique and had to access my boyish side to find the character.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs of Tuesday, the movie holds a 74 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. To find out what critics are saying, read on.<\/p>\n

\n\tTHR\u2019s Frank Scheck wrote<\/a>, \u201cThe film winds up feeling so much like one of those fringe festival musical theater parodies that you find yourself waiting for the characters to burst into song \u2026 Masters of the Universe\u00a0touches all the fan-serving bases, with a fun cameo by a certain star of a previous film incarnation and enough post-credit sequences to guarantee several sequels. But it all comes off as terribly forced, as if everyone involved was already trying to figure out exactly how much they\u2019ll earn signing autographs at future Comic-Cons.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tIGN\u2019s Clint Gage wrote<\/a>, \u201cMasters of the Universe\u00a0is so much funnier than I expected, and the fight scenes are choreographed and photographed in a way that gives the sequences just enough flair to make them stand out (even if they\u2019re not revolutionizing superhero style fisticuffs on screen). While Nicholas Galitzine and Idris Elba provide the thematic structure to the film, Jared Leto\u2019s Skeletor gives a delightfully weird and cartoonish energy to every scene he\u2019s in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYouTube critic Jeremy Jahns also highlighted Leto\u2019s performance in his review,<\/a> \u201cStandout performance and character in Masters of the Universe: Jared Leto\u2019s Skeletor,\u201d Jahns said. \u201cHe was the most fun happening on screen at any given time.\u201d He also added, \u201cIt does feel like a few different movies crushed into one. A few different ideas of what a Masters of the Universe movie should or would be. And most importantly, it had these moments of heart and life lessons that I actually liked that didn\u2019t always land because sometimes the comedy is just there to eclipse it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tInverse\u2019s Ryan Britt wrote<\/a>, \u201cThe idea of navigating your childhood hopes and fears, and incorporating those things into your adult life, is \u2014 somewhat appropriately for a movie based on an old cartoon \u2014 at the heart of the film. Not everyone who goes to see\u00a0Masters of the Universe\u00a0will have grown up with\u00a0He-Man, but this film will make you wish that you did. And, at the same time, it\u2019ll make you feel grateful that he\u2019s back and quite literally, better than ever.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Guardian\u2019s Benjamin Lee had a less favorable take on the film, writing in his review<\/a>, \u201cAmazon\u2019s head-scratching $200m-budgeted misfire fails to explain why so much time, money and effort has been wasted on a movie based on a toy that kids just don\u2019t play with any more \u2026 There\u2019s just too much distracting confusion here \u2014 from Galitzine\u2019s unsure performance to the script\u2019s swirl of competing tones to the very question of why this needed to exist \u2014 for it to transport us as we both hope and expect.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He-Man lands in theaters Friday, and reviews for Masters of the Universe are now in. The film, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1001223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3935],"tags":[1479,77,147885,57068,3943,132621,16,15],"class_list":["post-1001222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-amazon-mgm-studios","tag-entertainment","tag-jared-leto","tag-masters-of-the-universe","tag-movies","tag-nicholas-galitzine","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116682511239245087","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1001223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}