Masters of the Universe reached wide release in North America on June 5, and the first full day of public scores lands the He-Man reboot in familiar reboot territory: warmer with audiences than with critics. A DraftKings Network roundup published the morning of release puts the film at 88 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes audience meter against a 69 percent critics rating.
The rest of the day-one card reads as mixed-to-positive. The film sits at 7.1 out of 10 on IMDb, 53 out of 100 on Metacritic for critics, 7.4 out of 10 with Metacritic users, and 3.2 out of 5 on Letterboxd. CinemaScore had not yet posted an opening grade at the time of the roundup. Converting the available scores to a single 100-point scale, DraftKings pegged the average at roughly 69.8.
Critic reactions ran both ways. Glenn Kenny of the New York Times wrote that Nicholas Galitzine wears Prince Adam’s “mild goofiness loosely, the better to shake it off when the impressive action sequences start,” and Amy Nicholson of the Los Angeles Times said Jared Leto gives “the best performance he’s done in years.” David Fear of Rolling Stone was less sold, writing that “the sarcasm-and-saga methodology is being applied to something that’s too thin to support it.”
For context, the 1987 Cannon-produced Masters of the Universe holds a 21 percent critics and 41 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, so the 2026 film clears its predecessor on both counts. Whether that audience enthusiasm converts into the word-of-mouth legs the reboot needs against its reported $200 million budget is the open question heading into the opening weekend.
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