’80s Kids Will Adore This Throwback Superhero Nostalgia-Fest

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Amazon MGM StudiosMattel’s Masters of the Universe franchise was tailor-made for young ‘80s boys: a testosterone-y fantasia that synthesized the DNA of DC and Marvel superheroes, swords-and-sorcery adventures, and Schwarzenegger-via-WWE action-fests. It was everything an eight-year-old could want, and it turned its main characters—burly He-Man and his malevolent nemesis Skeletor—into exaggerated icons of good and evil and their battle over the fate of Eternia into the stuff of adolescent legend.Hollywood, naturally, saw fit to bring the toy-based series to the big screen, but despite Dolph Lundgren and Frank Langella’s cheesy performances, 1987’s Masters of the Universe was a washout that helped destroy its production company, The Cannon Group. Nearly four decades later, Amazon MGM Studios and director Travis Knight (Bumblebee) try their hand at doing justice to the property with Masters of the Universe (June 5), an epic that, save for a few minor touches, hews to its source material with the utmost fidelity. Read more at The Daily Beast.