In 8 Mile’s climactic rap battle, Eminem’s B-Rabbit wins by dissing himself before his opponent gets the chance. By unloading a full clip of insults at himself, his rival has nothing left in the chamber to fire back. As he declares his life’s a mess and he comes from nothing, B-Rabbit wears his origin story like a badge of honour, shielding himself from an attack on his trailer-park roots.

So let’s keep it real. Beloved as it may be, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was conceived as a series of half-hour toy commercials for Mattel. A bunch of middle-aged men designed the toys and then shoehorned in the bonkers mythology — that’s how you end up with an action figure/supersoaker hybrid named Snout Spout.

He-Man wasn’t born out of a labour of love, but children around the world still grew to love him. So how does a filmmaker faithfully adapt a Masters of the Universe IP that never took itself seriously in the first place? The film’s director Travis Knight has the answer: you pull an 8 Mile.

Knight’s Masters of the Universe reboot plays like a live-action version of the original series. It’s colourful, wacky, ridiculous, and unabashedly off the rails. The trick here is that Knight treats these qualities as a feature of He-Man, not a bug. By acknowledging all the juvenile names and arcane lore, the film accepts the baked-in silliness, while still treating the source material with reverence. 

As a child, Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) grew up as the prince of Eternia, a far-off planet inhabited by talking animals, powerful mystics, and sentient robots. When the evil sorcerer Skeletor (Jared Leto) lays siege to the capital city Eternos, The Sorceress (Morena Baccarin) whisks Prince Adam through a portal to grow up in the last place his enemies will ever find him: Earth. To return home, all Adam has to do is wield the Sword of Power. There’s just one problem: he lost the sword the night he crashed to Earth.

Flash forward 15 years, and Adam’s all grown up, working in human resources, and obsessed with getting back home. After finally tracking down the Sword of Power, he inadvertently sets off a beacon alerting Skeletor’s forces to his whereabouts. Suddenly, Adam’s thrust back into the fight for Eternia’s freedom alongside childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes) and grizzled mentor Duncan/Man-At-Arms (Idris Elba). Adam must learn to harness the power of Grayskull and become the most powerful man in the universe to overthrow Skeletor and bring peace back to Eternia.

Masters of the Universe delivers the big-screen He-Man experience fans waited more than 40 years to see. It’s so faithful to the source material that diehards may even forgive Gary Goddard’s infamous 1987 disaster. The film captures the program’s fantastical action-adventure tone, and characters look and behave like their animated counterparts, right down to lovingly recreated costumes. 

The story feels like the ultimate episode of the show, delivering adrenaline-fuelled action sequences and a steady helping of self-aware comedy. Knight makes a visual feast out of He-Man’s fantasy/sci-fi aesthetic, unleashing a delightful barrage of monsters, robots, and wizards engaging in everything from swordfights and spellcasting to spaceship dogfights. By not shying away from He-Man’s Saturday morning cartoon quirks, the film’s off-the-rails tone becomes its greatest strength.

Masters of the Universe is a popcorn flick, first and foremost. However, Knight is most interested in using these musclebound action heroes to interrogate the “He” in He-Man. He explores competing ideas of masculinity through a playful lens. The film treats Adam/He-Man as an all-powerful goof, whose superstrength is less impressive than his empathy. 

The film frames performative acts of strength and toughness as cudgels weaponized by insecure men incapable of expressing their authentic selves. While the film’s examination of masculinity lacks nuance, it’s still an intriguing thematic throughline to explore through one of the most macho toy lines ever created.

There’s no arguing He-Man launched with meagre production values and a fleet of one-dimensional characters. But for me, that’s where the magic started. The best part of He-Man wasn’t the show itself; it was the way it kindled my imagination, igniting my lifelong passion for genre-bending sci-fi and fantasy stories. What the show represented in theory was always more compelling than what it delivered in its execution. And it took forty years for the franchise’s execution to finally match its ambition.

Masters of the Universe isn’t a perfect He-Man movie, but it perfectly embodies all the action, adventure, imagination, humour, and heart that won over millions of fans. Knight doesn’t apologize for the series’ toy-commercial roots, instead doubling down on its absurd pleasures. In doing so, he finally unlocks the potential buried in the heart of the franchise, delivering a transportive summer blockbuster proving the key to adapting a He-Man movie isn’t elevating the material for modern audiences; it’s celebrating everything that made it kitschy in the first place.

Masters of the Universe opens in theatres June 05.