One of the biggest challenges facing any live-action Masters of the Universe movie isn’t just bringing He-Man and Skeletor to the screen. It’s figuring out which completely insane characters actually make the cut.
This franchise has over 40 years of lore packed with warriors, monsters, cyborgs, wizards, mutants, and some of the greatest action figure character designs ever created.
Fans all have their favorites, and every single person walking into this movie is going to hope their beloved Eternian oddball appears on screen.
The good news is that Travis Knight sounds exactly like the kind of fan who spent years imagining all of these characters existing together in one giant fantasy universe.
The bad news is that even he couldn’t fit everybody into the movie. While talking about the upcoming Masters of the Universe film, Knight opened up about the difficult process of deciding which characters deserved screen time and which ones had to be left behind for the sake of the story.
“Film is a time-based art,” Knight explained. “You only have so much time to tell the story that you want to tell. And it does have to be focused. I believe in the adage of ‘The trimmer the vessel, the more it can carry.’
“You want to have a really focused point of view on the story that you’re trying to tell… and then everything is built around that. And so, because this really was Adam’s story, it meant that all the other things had to be in service of his story.
“You find nuance, you find depth, you find complexity in all those other characters. But it’s obvious, the more people, the more characters you stack in there, the less you can do with them. And so at some point I felt like it was just I was just being a ridiculously irresponsible fan boy as a filmmaker.”
Every Masters of the Universe fan can probably relate to that problem. Once you start going down the rabbit hole of Eternia lore, it becomes impossible not to want everybody involved.
You want Battle Cat, Trap Jaw, Beast Man, Man-At-Arms, Teela, Sorceress, Mer-Man, Orko, Tri-Klops, and about thirty other lunatics all running around Castle Grayskull at the same time.
Knight clearly tried. Thankfully, a few fan-favorite characters officially made their way into the movie, including some deep-cut choices longtime fans are going to love.
“But the thing about this universe and these characters is that it’s so rich, it’s dense, it’s got over 40 years of history and mythology, and so we really just scratch the surface of the kind of things you could do in this world,” Knight continued.
“And it was incredibly fun. I’m lucky. I feel very fortunate that I was able to get some of my favorites in there. Ram Man, Fisto, and Mekaneck. I really wanted to get Mer-Man in there. I couldn’t make it work.
“But if you look in the background, my prosthetics guy did me a solid. There’s a dude who looks exactly like Mer-Man wandering around in the crowd. So there are a few of those things in there just because we weren’t able to properly get them in the movie. But for the keen-eyed fan, they’ll see some cool stuff.”
The fact that Ram Man, Fisto, and Mekaneck are making appearances honestly says a lot about the type of Masters of the Universe movie Knight wanted to make.
These aren’t safe choices designed only for casual audiences. These are classic toy-line weirdos fans grew up loving specifically because they looked outrageous. Ram Man literally launches himself headfirst into battle. Mekaneck has a neck that stretches like a telescope. Fisto is exactly what his name suggests.
That’s Masters of the Universe at its absolute peak. The Mer-Man detail is the kind of stuff franchise fans eat up. The idea that Knight and the prosthetics team slipped a background Easter egg version of the character into the movie because they couldn’t properly fit him into the story feels like something made by people who genuinely care about this universe.
It also sounds like Knight fully understands something many adaptations miss. Fans don’t expect every character to receive massive story arcs right away. Sometimes they just want to know the filmmakers appreciate the mythology enough to acknowledge it exists.
That approach could go a long way toward making Eternia feel massive and lived-in. At the same time, Knight appears determined not to overload the movie just for fan service. As tempting as it must have been to throw every toy and cartoon character onto the screen, the movie still needs to function as an actual story first.
That balancing act becomes especially difficult with a franchise this dense. There are decades of cartoons, comics, toys, and spin-offs pulling from every direction imaginable.
But hearing Knight openly admit he became an “irresponsible fan boy” while trying to cram characters into the film kinda feels reassuring.
Because if you’re making a Masters of the Universe movie, being a little irresponsible about how much you love these ridiculous characters might actually be a good thing.
Via: io9
