The toys that once fuelled Masters of the Universe director Travis Knight’s imagination as a child have now become the foundation for one of the year’s most ambitious fantasy spectacles. In Knight’s live-action reimagining, Prince Adam returns to Eternia after 15 years away to find his kingdom shattered under Skeletor’s rule, forcing him to embrace his destiny as He-Man and reclaim not only his family legacy, but his sense of self. Yet beneath the film’s colossal battles, outlandish character names and gloriously maximalist energy lies something surprisingly personal: a story about sincerity, identity and holding onto wonder in a world that often demands cynicism.
When our Peter Gray spoke with Knight ahead of the film’s release, it quickly became clear that he never viewed Masters of the Universe as something to outgrow. To him, the toys and characters that defined his childhood were never “just” playthings, but vessels for imagination, emotion and storytelling itself. That philosophy pulses through every frame of the film – one that fully embraces the absurdity of characters like Fisto and Ram-Man while grounding them in genuine emotional truth. It’s an approach Knight describes as balancing the perspective of the eight-year-old version of himself with the hard-earned nuance of adulthood; a collision of bombastic fantasy, heartfelt sincerity and what composer Daniel Pemberton fittingly dubbed “extreme sincerity.”
I know that you’ve said that these toys were vessels for your imagination as a child. Now that you’ve actually brought them to life, did making Masters of the Universe teach you anything about the difference between the heroes we invent as kids and the kind of heroes we need as adults?
It definitely was a balancing act, because I do believe that kind of a child’s “play thing” is not just a child’s play thing. They become extensions of who we are. They’re vessels for our imagination, for our thoughts, for our dreams, for our hopes, for our fears. I certainly did that when I was a kid. I see it with my own children, how they’re kind of essentially telling stories. They’re working through things with their toys.
Yes, when I was making this movie, I definitely wanted to honour what was unique and special about Masters of the Universe that I felt when I was a kid. I wanted to make the movie that the eight-year-old version of myself would have loved to have seen. But you do look at things somewhat, hopefully, slightly different when you’re a grown man and have some experience. And hopefully some hard-fought wisdom. So there’s complexity, there’s nuance that you try to layer in there so it’s still for the eight-year-old version of yourself. But you’re also saying something that is real and authentic and emotional for the grown version of yourself.
Because one things that I love about the original Masters of the Universe is that it’s simultaneously absurd and deeply earnest. How did you direct actors to play something with complete emotional truth when you have character names like Fisto and Ram-Man?
(Laughs) I mean, look, that is a thing about Masters…, and one of the reasons why we embrace the tone and the spirit that we did, which is that there is an aspect of it that is absolutely silly. There’s an absurdity to it. There’s a larger-than-life, over-the-top, balls-to-the-wall craziness that’s part of this universe. To me, that’s not something to shrink away from. That’s something to embrace. That’s a virtue. But at the same time, we are telling a story that is meant to be about something. We are telling a story that has a beating heart at the centre of it, and with keenly felt emotion, so we take it very, very seriously. We take it sincerely – even when we’re doing something that is objectively silly.
I feel lucky that we have the actors that we have, because they understood what we were doing, and that meant that if we were doing something absolutely ridiculous, they went for it as hard as they could, as if they’re doing something that’s really, really heart-wrenching. I think the film holds together because of the commitment of everyone involved. Cast, crew, regardless…everyone believed in what we were doing sincerely. We put everything we had into it, and I think that that joy and that belief and sincerity comes through in the movie.
Talking about really embracing the feeling, Daniel Pemberton’s score is so gloriously unusual. It’s this Queen-disco-romantic fantasy! Was there a moment where you realised that the music wasn’t just supporting the movie, but was defining the identity of it as well?
I will echo your praise of Daniel Pemberton. Dan’s an absolute genius, and someone I’ve been wanting to work with for some time. He’s also one of the most delightful fellows I’ve ever worked with. Just a dream to collaborate with. I never see music as something that’s strictly just supporting the story that we’re telling, or supporting the action or the emotion. To me, it’s a critical part of the story that we’re telling. I can listen to Dan’s music for the movie, and it makes me feel things, even if I don’t have any visuals whatsoever. Because, in addition to that kind of playfulness and silliness that he brings to the score, there is real earnestness and real sincerity. In fact, the phrase that Dan coined while we were working on the movie was “extreme sincerity,” which I thought was very, very funny. Yet, it becomes a character in the movie. It’s playful, it’s over the top, it’s ridiculous, and yet it makes you cry. That really is essentially the movie in a nutshell.
I was unprepared for the soundtrack! It was so great to hear. It just took me back to watching these kind of movies as a kid. I love that it fully leaned into the cartoonishness of it all, but everyone is playing it so sincerely, which really elevates the film overall. I’m looking forward to everyone getting behind it. Thank you so much for making the film, and for taking the time out to chat with me today.
Thank you. I really do appreciate that. And as a lifelong He-Man fan myself, I look back and I cannot believe they let me make this movie (laughs).
Masters of the Universe is screening in Australian theatres from June 4th, 2026, before opening in the United States on June 5th.
