Editor’s note: The following is an editorial and contains opinion and analysis.
If you’re a He-Man fan and you came away from Entertainment Weekly’s new Masters of the Universe cover story worried, you’re not overreacting.
The piece makes the movie sound less like a bold fantasy epic and more like a modern studio remix built to chase Barbie heat, copy Guardians of the Galaxy’s tone, and turn Prince Adam into another fragile outsider searching for himself.
A lot of fans didn’t want to hear that pitch.
Barbie and Guardians are the first warning signs
One of the biggest red flags is how openly the movie is being framed through Barbie.
EW says the project finally clicked after Barbie’s success, with producers praising Amazon MGM film boss Courtenay Valenti for seeing He-Man as a four-quadrant play and basically helping Mattel try to bottle that lightning again.
On top of that, Nicholas Galitzine directly compares the script’s tone to James Gunn’s first Guardians of the Galaxy, while producer Robbie Brenner says people may not know what the movie is because it has a “weird, crazy tone.”
It doesn’t sound like confidence in He-Man. It sounds like executives trying to reverse-engineer another toy-brand hit.
They don’t seem to trust He-Man to work as He-Man
The most telling part of the article is how director Travis Knight talks about the character.
He says the movie uses He-Man to explore masculinity, vulnerability, and changing cultural attitudes from the 1980s to now.
Then he describes the character as a “bronzed empathy coach in furry underpants.” That line says a lot.
Instead of treating He-Man as a mythic hero played straight, the movie sounds like it is already winking at the audience and trying to explain the property away before critics can mock it first.
Prince Adam sounds weak before he ever becomes He-Man
EW’s description of Adam is another problem.
The piece says young Adam would rather dance than train, and writer Chris Butler describes him as “a bit of a weed” in a society full of buff warriors.
As an adult on Earth, he works an unfulfilling corporate HR job (using pronouns), talks so much about Eternia that people think something is wrong with him, and is described as depressed, isolated, and basically a shadow of himself.
You can build a hero’s rise from hardship, sure, but this reads less like classic Prince Adam and more like Hollywood’s standard broken modern male template.
Teela is being set up to outclass Adam from the jump
Then there is Teela. Knight tells EW that at the beginning of the movie she is a better fighter than Adam, more acrobatic, smarter, and more strategic.
Mendes also says Teela is shaped by being “affected by toxic masculinity” and by adopting masculine traits to survive.
The article goes further and even says the men in the film are also being affected by toxic masculinity. What???
The comedy angle sounds like another bad fit
EW also says the movie is packed with humor, is “in on the joke,” and takes a self-aware, self-deprecating approach to character names and personalities.
That is exactly the kind of thing that works for Guardians and exactly the kind of thing that can wreck Masters of the Universe.
He-Man does not need the movie apologizing for the property. He needs conviction. Eternia should feel huge, dangerous, epic, and sincere. Not as a Skeletor meme.
Once the studio starts bragging that the movie does not take itself too seriously, fans have every right to brace for the worst.
This sounds like a brand strategy, not a passion project
To be fair, Galitzine clearly put in the work physically, and Travis Knight has made good movies before.
Masters of the Universe could still surprise people when it hits theaters June 5, 2026.
But based on EW’s own reporting, the red flags are obvious: Barbie comparisons, Guardians-style humor, masculinity lectures, a depressed HR Prince Adam, Teela outshining him early, and a whole lot of self-aware comedy layered over a property that should be played with total confidence.
Fans want He-Man not P-ssy-Boy
What EW just described sounds like He-Man filtered through the same Hollywood mindset that keeps sanding the edges off legacy franchises, as it has done for Star Wars, Marvel, Doctor Who, you-name-it. How’d that work out?
Masters of the Universe sounds like it was put together by producers who are My Little Pony sympathizers and a director who appears to project his own childhood struggles onto the material and who was likely picked on, reshaping He-Man through the lens of a kid who had trouble making friends.
Oh, and get this, the article ends with this line: “Maybe he should be called HeHeHe-Man.”
Are you f’n serious???
