Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Masters of the Universe’ on Amazon Prime Video, an Annoying, Dopey, Soulless Slab of IP

By John Serba Published July 22, 2026, 5:00 p.m. ET Here’s a primo opportunity for fandorks to pretend to enjoy a movie and therefore justify their decades of franchise devotion: Masters of the Universe (now on Prime Video), the nigh-endlessly-in-the-works movie adaptation of the 1980s IP that, as The Toys That Made Us so eloquently detailed, began as a toy line, expanded into a TV series that was a thinly veiled syndicated after-school commercial for said toys, and made billions for Mattel. Oh, it also became a widely reviled 1987 movie starring Dolph Lundgren as the hero He-Man, who’s pretty much a wussier version of Conan the Barbarian. The considerable creative and commercial failure of said film — a notoriously cheap peesacrap from Golan-Globus, who were masters of the universe of not