Masters of the Universe

On Eternia, Skeletor has seized Castle Grayskull and captured the Sorceress, and he means to drain the castle’s power when the Great Eye of the universe opens. He-Man, Man-At-Arms and Teela rescue a tinkering locksmith named Gwildor, whose invention, the Cosmic Key, can open a doorway to anywhere. A botched escape flings the heroes, and the Key, across the galaxy to a small town on Earth.

There two teenagers, Julie and Kevin, find the Key and mistake it for a synthesizer. Evil-Lyn’s mercenaries come hunting it, Skeletor follows, and the back half of the film becomes a chase through parking lots and music shops before the survivors fight their way back to Grayskull for a final stand. Skeletor absorbs the power of the universe, transforms into a golden god, and demands that He-Man kneel. He-Man, of course, does not.

Notably absent: Prince Adam, King Randor, Orko and Battle Cat. Orko was planned but proved too hard to realize, so the new character Gwildor, played by Billy Barty, took the comic-sidekick role. Courteney Cox, the year before Family Ties, plays the Earth teenager Julie.

David Odell’s early script was far more faithful to Eternia, with more time on the home planet, Snake Mountain, a speaking Beast Man, and a thread linking He-Man’s world to Earth. The budget had other ideas. As money tightened, the production pulled most of the story off Eternia and onto Earth, where a contemporary California town was a great deal cheaper to shoot than an alien world.

What survived of Eternia was striking: a redesigned Castle Grayskull set in a city, and an army of armored Centurions whose helmets owe an obvious debt to Star Wars and Spaceballs. The climactic Grayskull battle was scaled back from the epic on the page, and the film leans hard on Bill Conti’s thunderous score and Frank Langella’s gravity to carry the spectacle the money could not buy.

The film opened in August 1987, after the toy line and cartoon had already crested, and it underperformed: roughly $17 million against a budget near $22 million. The loss deepened the financial troubles that would soon sink Cannon. A sequel was planned, hinted at by Skeletor’s post-credits promise that he would be back, but Cannon balked at Mattel’s licensing fees and quietly repurposed the standing sets and costumes into the unrelated 1989 action film Cyborg.

And yet it endured. Frank Langella’s committed, almost operatic Skeletor is widely regarded as the best thing in the picture and one of the great comic-book-movie villains of the decade. Over the years the film slid from flop to beloved cult oddity, the kind of earnest, flawed swing that fans defend with real affection. For nearly four decades it stood as the only live-action He-Man ever made.