Masters of the Universe review – Amazon’s He-Man adventure is a weak big-budget misfire

A laboured attempt to resurrect toy IP very few people still care about is a $200m-budgeted waste of everyone’s time

It’s not just that He-Man himself is from the 80s that gives 2026’s Masters of the Universe such an aggressive throwback vibe. It’s that trying to assemble a film around the haphazard mythology of a toy and dusting off IP that precious few still care about feels like something Hollywood has slowly been doing a bit less of, especially on a scale such as this.

This year, hits have relied on either properties that audiences do have passion for (Scream, Michael Jackson, Mario, The Devil Wears Prada) or, radically, original ideas (Obsession, Backrooms, Goat, Hoppers). We haven’t endured an Underworld sequel or a Tarzan reboot since 2016, a Terminator film since 2019, a Dolittle reboot since 2020 or a GI Joe spin-off since 2021. Mattel might then have struck gold with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie in 2023, but that was both an unconventional, auteur-led one-off and based on a product millions were still buying on the regular (the year before release, the brand made more than $1.4bn). Various directors, from John Woo to Jon M Chu, have been loosely attached to a He-Man movie over the years and various studios, from Sony to Netflix, have tried (the latter streamer having spent a reported $30m on a failed attempt) but, as with many long-gestating projects in Hollywood, those involved forgot to remember Jeff Goldblum’s evergreen Jurassic Park line: “So preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”