How Hollywood Destroyed The Best 80s Franchise By Turning It Into DMV Star Wars

By Jonathan Klotz
| Published 52 seconds ago

The 1980s were the golden era for Saturday Morning Cartoons. Half-hour animated spectacles that were commercials in disguise, carefully constructed to get kids to beg their parents to buy them a new action figure every week, were gold mines for toy companies. 

It all started in 1983 with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a syndicated series so prolific that it aired 130 episodes in only two years, on the way to becoming one of the most popular franchises of the 80s. Along the way, Mattel had the idea to make it a live-action movie, and in 1987, they unleashed it on the unsuspecting public, creating one of the biggest flops of the entire decade.

Their He-Man movie failed so hard; it destroyed the franchise, damaged careers, and took down an entire movie studio. This is why Masters of the Universe failed.

Turning He-Man Toys Into Tom Paris And Monica Gellar

He-Man was always going to be a tough cartoon to bring to live-action. The character designs are over-the-top and designed for animation. Who would even play the role of He-Man since Arnold Schwarzenegger was already Conan? The answer was Dolph Lundgren, fresh off a career-making role as Russia’s greatest boxer, Ivan Drago, in Rocky IV. 

The Swedish strongman certainly looked the part, but who could play his arch-enemy, Skeletor, the muscular skeleton sorcerer? Why, Frank Langella, of course? The Tony-winning actor was as odd a choice for Skeletor as Raul Julia was years later for the Street Fighter movie. The results were the same. 

Langella took the role because his son loved He-Man, and he treated his role as the skeletal sorcerer with all the seriousness of Shakespeare. Years later, Langella would refer to Masters of the Universe as one of his favorite performances, and to be fair, he rocks in this movie. 

Rounding out the cast are the two most popular characters from the Masters of the Universe cartoon, Thomas Paris and Monica Geller. That’s right, the live-action He-Man takes place on Earth with the future Star Trek: Voyager star Robert Duncan McNeil as the musician Kevin, and Courteney Cox as Julie. No one knew these two would go on to bigger and better things. In 1987, they worked cheap. 

He-Man Goes Shopping In The Real World

Masters of the Universe didn’t fail because of its cast. It failed because of money. Or rather, the complete lack of money.  The production company Cannon Films had picked up the rights to He-Man on the cheap. Who wanted to make a movie about a cartoon and a toy line? Nobody. 

Trying to adapt the over-the-top character designs of He-Man to live action proved difficult. Orko was so hard to bring to life that he was scrapped completely and replaced with Gwildor, an inventor who later appeared in the cartoon reboot. 

Worse, Battle Cat was cut from the film. A giant green cat may have been a little too much for audiences to handle, but again, this is the same franchise that also includes Beast Man. 

The comparatively small budget, ranging from $15 million to $22 million depending on who you ask, also impacted the story. He-Man’s battles on the planet Eternia? Gone. Instead, he gets to fight on the streets. Castle Greyskull gets maybe 15 minutes of screen time. 

A large part of He-Man’s appeal is Eternia’s mixing of high-fantasy with sci-fi. Putting Dolph Lundgren in a store doesn’t have the same appeal. It would be like watching Conan the Barbarian wait in line at the DMV. 

Cannon’s budget ended up running out and almost added one more casualty: Master of the Universe’s climatic fight between He-Man and Skeletor. With no money, the movie shoot ended a few days early, forcing director Gary Goodard and the team from Mattel to scramble to get the money at the very last minute. 

They were able to get two more nights of shooting out of Cannon, enough to get the final battle, significantly stripped down from what the original script had called for, but good enough for the dire straits they were in. What would a He-Man movie be without a final knockdown, drag-out fight with Skeletor? 

Cannon Films Goes Bankrupt, Masters Of The Universe Goes Flop

Masters of the Universe overcame the bankruptcy of Cannon Films and finally saw the light of day on August 7th, 1987. That first weekend, it made $5 million dollars. 

That isn’t nothing, but it’sfar below what Cannon Films expected. Masters of the Universe ended its theatrical run with a total haul of only $17 million, failing to earn back its production budget and becoming one of the most notorious flops of the 80s. 

One of the biggest reasons Masters of the Universe failed was right there in the release date: August, 1987. 5 years after the debut of the toy line doesn’t sound like a lot, but it meant that the kids who were into He-Man were also 5 years older, and He-Man wasn’t cool compared to Transformers or G.I. Joe. Next to Optimus Prime and Snake Eyes, a shirtless guy shouting I HAVE THE POWER isn’t fun; he’s weird. 

The cartoon wasn’t even airing when the movie was released. New episodes stopped airing in 1984. Action figures were staying on the shelves, and there was another, subtle sign that He-Man was losing popularity: the 1985 animated movie He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword. The debut of She-Ra also flopped, earning back only half of its $12 million budget. 

That’s the saddest part of the 1987 Masters of the Universe movie: every reason it failed had nothing to do with the work of the cast and crew. The movie itself is incredible. It’s ridiculously campy; Dolph Lundgren’s overacting fits perfectly, and even with a small budget, you can tell they tried to cram in as much of the cartoon as possible. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s a lot of fun, and today it’s a cult classic. 

History Repeats Itself

That could change with Masters of the Universe 2026. The new film, starring Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man, Jared Leto as Skeletor, Alison Brie as Evil Lyn,, Idris Elba as Man-at-Arms, Camilia Mendes as Teela, and everyone’s favorite companion, Morena Baccarin as the Sorceress. 

History could repeat itself again: the rebooted cartoons, both She-Ra and The Princesses of Power, Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe series, and the He-Man CGI cartoon, have all come to an end. At least this time, the budget’s not a concern, but then again, Jared Leto is box office poison. 

If nothing else, the best part of the new Masters of the Universe movie release has been fans acknowledging that the 1987 film is a lot of fun. Dolph Lundgren has been given the red carpet treatment by fans, even handing off the sword to Nicholas. Nearly 30 years after he was laughed out of theaters, Lundgren is finally being appreciated. 

He-Man paved the way for a generation of cartoons and live-action adaptations, never quite reaching the height of those who came after, but it set the standard and blazed a trail so others could follow. 1987’s Masters of the Universe is one of the best-worst movies you’ll ever see. It deserved better, and never should have failed.