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Masters of the Universe Director Reveals How Faithful New Movie Is to Classic Cartoon (And the One Major Change)
Masters of the Universe made a fantastic first impression with longtime franchise fans after revealing character designs and costumes that felt, in many ways, directly pulled from the classic cartoon. That has only continued to be a strength with each passing footage reveal, including the most recent CinemaCon footage that showcased that classic Skeletor laugh. Masters of the Universe director Travis Knight expounded on that footage and revealed how faithful the film is to the classic cartoon, though there is one major change.
In a Q&A attended by ComicBook, Knight discussed how they arrived at these more iconic looks. “Generally, I was always telling the guys like whenever we were at some kind of a crossroads, just go back to the source. Even though we take liberties for some of that stuff, and we want to make things look modern and cinematic, we always went back to the Filmation cartoon. So there are a lot of nods, the color palette, actually, when Adam transforms for the first time, we see the spirit of Grayskull right behind him. It’s kind of a blink and you’ll miss it moment, but it’s there. And like, I think that level of kind of devotion to the original source material is something you’ll find all throughout the whole movie,” Knight said.
Masters of the Universe Director Reveals One Major Change From The Cartoon
So many of the costumes feel directly tethered to the original designs from the cartoon, though they still feel properly cinematic and updated just enough. Skeletor, Man-At-Arms, Teela, Trap Jaw, and more all balance those aspects well, but Knight revealed that with He-Man, there were some elements that they just couldn’t bring over.
“In some cases, we were pretty faithful to that stuff. In other cases, it didn’t kind of make sense for the overall design that we were bringing to the movie. You know, for instance, you can see with He-Man, there was a lot of debate going on in the art department, in the production design team, in the costume department, like, can we really have a guy with like, furry hot pants and furry boots? And we couldn’t do that,” Knight said.
“We thought about it for a moment, but then we explored like, okay, what if we go somewhere else? And then there was like a leather trousers moment where he looked like Jim Morrison. And so ultimately, we landed on something that was evocative of the original He-Man costume, but also just brought it to a modern era,” Knight said. “So he’s got like a gladiator skirt instead of the furry knickers. It’s still got the same silhouette, but it’s just got a different prism attached to it.”
The He-Man design still evokes the classic design, and even without the fur on the boots, it’s hard to argue that it’s He-Man through and through. That’s also true of characters like Mekaneck, Ram-Man, Beast Man, and more, and we can’t wait to see all of these characters make their long-awaited return to the big screen.
Masters of the Universe is set to hit theaters on June 5th, 2026.
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