Original subtitles

The fact that most people don't know is that

when we started this picture,

I didn't know it, but I found out very

quickly.

We had a studio that was going out of

business.

We had a toy company that had just lost

$400 million on the He-Man toy line, and

we didn't know that either.

And so we had

two very desperate entities hoping that

this picture was going to solve all of

their problems. And I

had to direct

this picture

under the most extreme circumstances you

could imagine.

Every day

was

a crisis of some kind.

And some of those crises were even,

we're shutting you down today.

This movie's over.

And I kept saying, it's not over.

We're going to keep going.

Somehow we're going to get through this.

And we did.

From a distant galaxy,

they have come to work.

Dolph Lundgren as He-Man,

Frank Langella as Skeletor.

Only they have the powers to be.

Masters of the universe,

live the

adventure.

About 1986, we started to

develop a live action movie.

My group, me, an executive by the name of

John Weems, went around and talked to a

bunch of studios.

Universal Studios was interested.

And then Cannon came to us and

made an offer on a deal that we felt was...

the right thing to do at the right time.

And Cannon worked out this deal with

Mattel.

The deal was that

Cannon would put up half the money and

Mattel would put up half the money.

And Cannon told Mattel, okay, you put up

the first half.

So Mattel put up the first half

and we very quickly burned through that money.

And so Mattel said, okay, you know, time

for you to kick in the second-half.

And Cannon said,

no.

So Mattel had to pony up the rest of the

money if they wanted to see their film made

and they were desperate to have it made

because they were hanging their

next year's toy line on the success of that

film and generating publicity for their toy line.

In the end I think

Mattel released them from like a payment

that was due that we released them from so

that they could finish the film.

Mattel had heavy say, they had approvals

over everything, over costumes, over

the script, everything.

We had veto rights more than approval

rights.

If something was not appropriate for

He-Man,

we could say that.

And Mattel is, now listen, you know,

He-Man can't kill anybody.

He-Man can't really hurt anyone, not

really.

It's like,

okay guys, we're making an action movie

with an action hero.

This is live action filming, not a cartoon. So

one of the reasons we created these

generic, and everyone said, Oh, they copied

Star Wars. No,

we created generic

robot warriors so that He-Man could smash

and fight and blast them

because he couldn't actually do that to

anyone living

because that would have been a no-no.

At the start of production, He-Man was at

his peak.

By the time we were about halfway through

the movie,

the decline had started in the toy sale big time.

It had just suddenly dropped.

And

I'll never forget, I'm not going to tell

you the executives' names, but

I got this call one day and I had said,

in an earlier conversation with guys,

go see what action movies are right now.

you want to do an action movie, He-Man's

got to kick some ass.

He's got to really be up there.

We've got to see him

battling,

blasting guys, you know.

And

so

I got a call one day, they said, we have to

meet with you right away.

They came down the set

and they pulled me in the room.

They go,

Toy sales are down.

Everything's on this movie.

I said, well, we're doing the best we can.

We can, you know, but you know, we're also

trying to obey all these rules.

And one of them goes, we don't care what you do.

We don't care what you do.

Have them kill people.

Have them blood, guts, gore, sex.

Do whatever you have to.

Just make sure this movie's a hit. It

was a low-ball

budget for us, so we didn't

have that much money to work with.

We'd gone on

a location scout that was up in Idaho, this awful

lava pit, extraterrestrial looking place

with all kinds of caves

and lava rock formations and everything.

They ran out of money, so we wound up

shooting at Vasquez Rocks.

Everybody knows the location so well

because they've seen it in so many movies.

Where is your strength?

Are you ready to

kneel

now,

proud

warrior?

I sought out Frank Langella to play

Skeletor.

I knew there was gonna be an actor behind a mask.

I want an actor of enough power and stature

that his performance would come through

that mask.

I put a lot of emphasis on Skeletor once I

had Frank Langella in the role.

I wanted him to carry the picture.

I was accepting of the fact that Dolph came

with the picture.

I was concerned that Dolph would be able to

carry the scenes.

He was

brand new. He'd

only done the Rocky movie.

I did my best to

restructure the story almost through the

eyes of Skeletor

so that the backbone and spine of the

project was carried by Skeletor.

which was fine anyway because he's the

villain, he's pulling all the strings

anyway.

Frank Langella is a consummate performer.

When we all heard that he was going to be

playing Skeletor, it was like

there isn't anybody else in the world

that is going to do the job that Frank will do.

And that's why really I don't think anybody

objected to all the input he put into it.

because what he pulled in, he was going to

give back out again.

And he did.

In creating Skeletor, I took photographs of

Frank Langello.

We had already cast Frank as Skeletor and

started working over his face,

designing

the makeup

that would go into that.

Frank was very particular about what he

thought would work, what he thought

wouldn't work.

And

his ideas were always right on.

He was very conscientious about the cloak,

for example.

It had to move just right.

We kept designing and building different

cloaks until he got one that just moved

perfectly.

And it was really Frank Langella who made

that character come to life.

And I also was aware, I may hate to say

this on camera, but I was aware that Dolph

was his second picture.

I wanted to surround him with a good

company of actors that would

that would

keep the screen alive and would also help

him to bring his performance up too. I saw

the rough cuts, I listened to Dolph

Rundgren's voice

and I just about had a heart attack.

Now why are you so important to Skeletor?

I wanted him to

redub his voice, get someone else to speak

for him.

In his contract he had the right to do it

two or three more times and he finally got

it to where it wasn't too bad.

I said, It's okay if He-Man has a little

bit of an accent, but you gotta be able to

understand him.

Right.

I was concerned with the picture, and I

wanted to make the picture as it could be.

We actually brought in a few actors and did

loop as a test

to show the studio.

One of them was flawless.

One of them was flawless. I mean,

to this day, I wish we'd have done

it.

But

Manahem

was like, Nope,

gonna

stick with all if we're gonna go with him.

This is ultimately their call.

He-Man,

if I kill him, I make him

a martyr,

a saint,

no.

I want him broken.

One of the reviewers pointed out that

the villains, meaning Meg

and Frank,

to some degree were more compelling

characters, that you're more interested in

them than the heroes.

And to something that was true, because

they both

gave great performances, and we gave them

some great lines.

We gave them some great scenes.

Kevin, you all right?

He's bleeding.

What happened?

The other interesting casting choice was,

we were looking for the lead girl,

and

we got introduced to Courteney Cox.

And Courteney Cox had just done the

Springsteen video.

In fact, that was how she was,

this is the girl who's in the Springsteen video.

That's how it was, this is the girl in the

Springsteen video.

You gotta see her.

She was good, but I just didn't feel she

fit the part because she had actually done

what a love actresses do.

She put on a lot of makeup.

She wanted to look very

sexy.

But this role was more of an all-American girl.

And my casting director actually was the

one who said, I want to bring her back in

one more time.

I want you to look at her one more time.

So I have to give credit to her as well,

Vicki Thomas.

So Vicki said, let me bring her back in. And she

called Courtney and said,

ditch the makeup,

come in jeans, just be yourself.

Courtney came in the next day in jeans, no

makeup,

as herself.

We got along great.

She had such a great personality and she was

beautiful.

And

she just nailed

it that day.

And I knew right then, okay,

she's the one.

I told Vicky, I said, you're right, I'm

glad you brought her in again.

She was a fine, but she had great

natural ability and

I think she did a great job.

Frank did a great job.

I'm

very happy with the cast overall.

It was

an extraordinary time to be working for

Cannon.

You have to understand that at this point

in time,

The most films that any of the major

studios had in production was Warner

Brothers, and they had six films in

production.

Cannon had 84 films in production.

There were three times during the make of

the film where

literally the payroll didn't arrive that

day, and the crew was all gonna walk, and I

had to get them all together and say,

You're here, let's finish the day, and if

at the end of the day there's no money, I

understand, but meanwhile, Elliot, Elliot

shook our producer, he's gonna go get the money,

so I can't promise you

but I can tell you we'll do everything we can.

I think we'll have your money by the end of

the day.

So you don't hear all these stories making

a movie.

What you have to do as a director to keep

things going.

And the guys said, okay, well, you're right.

We're here.

Let's do it.

Let's do the day.

So we'd get through the day

and

somehow or other,

Elliot would get to Cannon and somehow they

would find the money and they would get

their payroll and we

kept going.

So Cannon

was really pressuring Gary and

They decided to pull the plug.

They didn't want to do the huge battle

sequence at the end of the set.

Yeah, they shut me down on the set in the

middle of the battle.

And, I mean, literally, with someone

picking up a card and putting it in front

of the camera and saying, You're done,

in the middle of a shot.

So that was kind of crazy.

And I said,

We don't have the end. We

don't have the final comfort.

We have the setup.

We did the clash.

We had the

moment where

P-Man and Skeletor clashed with the sword,

right?

And on the set that day, I had an idea,

because

I knew we were running short on time.

And I knew they might do this to me.

So I had them do that clash once.

And I told the DP,

I want you to

basically kill the lights in the soundstage

and just let them fade to darkness.

Because

if I'm not able to finish this battle,

then I'm going to do a thing.

I'd thought through that when they go

the power is so much

that it saps the power from everything, and

then we're in this dark void.

And that's where I can do whatever I got to

do to get us to the end.

So that night, I got them to let me do some random

battle footage.

Even though we shut down the set,

I kept Skeletor and Dolph and the DP and

this, and I got them to let me

shoot

some footage of them battling.

It wasn't very well choreographed.

It was a very quick choreographic job.

We

kept the lights out.

We backlit them, which is what you see in

the film.

And we had everything now, so I had enough

that I could piece together the battle, but

we did not have

the end.

That moment where he hits the sword, it

slides, he reaches for it, grabs it,

all that last bit, none of that was shot.

I said, Okay, we're done,

we're

done, and we're gonna have to come back and

get this other stuff.

It was a shame because I had really

designed that set

for sword fighting.

I made sure that there were ups and downs

and overs and unders in all kinds of ways

it could be used.

to get the most out of this battle.

We came back about

three or four months later

and we got one day, Kevin gave me one day

at the boss studio

and we boarded it very carefully

and every single shot, every cut, every

close-up, everything you see there was all

done in one day and

we got it

and we were able to

put the ending on the movie.

was very, very, very touch and go.

And at one point, the cannon guys, you

know, Golan Globe was like, it doesn't

matter, it doesn't matter, we're just, you

know, they'll fight, they'll just fight and

then we'll just, we'll fade out.

I was like,

you can't fade out.

Based on a modern legend, complete with

heroes,

warriors and villains.

Stop it!

Masters of the Universe, the motion picture

required the talents of hundreds of

artists,

technicians and performers.

A shooting schedule of several months

and a multi-million dollar budget.

This is the story of how the legend was

brought to life.

Find

them.

We wanted to show

kind of

mythic characters in a contemporary time.

So the story that we tell

really starts with

an epic struggle

in this world called Eternia, far, far away from

our planet.

One of the greatest challenges for the

filmmakers

was creating an alien world and its

inhabitants, including the most powerful

man in the universe, He-Man,

portrayed by Dolph Lundgren,

Sylvester Stallone's co-star from Rocky IV.

Basically when I

first met Dolph, he is He-Man, you know, he

smiles and he has

charm and charisma and all those things

that make him a friendly person.

He-Man is

the

hero of the 80s, he's a very

clean hero.

a very kind

of an old-fashioned good guy who

is not excessively violent.

He is

intelligent, has a good sense of humor,

and

he always saves

the good people from the bad people.

The ultimate bad guy is the film's villain

Skeletor,

played by Frank Langella,

the Tony Award-winning actor

best remembered for his Broadway and movie

portrayals of Dracula.

He doesn't walk into rooms, you know.

He enters rooms.

And when he enters, you know he has

entered.

I dare anything! I

am

Skeletor!

He is definitely a villain that you will

love to hate.

Other familiar characters include

Skeletor's henchmen, Beast Man,

Blade,

and Evil Lynn.

Fighting on the side of good are

Man-at-Arms,

Keela,

and the Sorceress of Grayskull.

We've kept those key characters and one or

two others,

but really we've created a whole new world

of characters that support

them.

The new creatures for the film began as

artist sketches, which were made into scale models

from which the actual makeup was created.

Find the key.

Tear this place apart.

Among the new characters are Saurad, the

lizard man,

Karg the assassin,

and Guildor, the inventor.

I call it

the Cosmic Key.

Once all the characters were cast and the

sets were built, the filming itself began.

This shoot actually was

much, much harder than Rocky IV,

physically much harder.

Jumping up buildings and going through

glass windows and

my hair caught fire one time.

I got a few sword hits in my head.

For two weeks, I was standing in this

disc.

One was on the side of a truck

and there were cameras rigged and it was

sitting on some kind of swivel

like this.

And the truck would run down the main

street of this town at 40 miles an hour.

They'll stop you in the ski boots, but

there's nothing to hold on to.

So it's a little scary

because you can't, you know, you have to

keep your balance just by using your body

weight.

You have to get into it and feel like

you're there and it's real.

That is hard.

The final touch was put on the film by

Academy Award-winning special visual

effects wizard, Richard Edlund,

famous for his work on Star Wars, Raiders

of the Lost Ark,

and Ghostbusters.

Action, stunts,

wire work,

you name it, it's in this film.

It's like a textbook of

everything that can go into a film.

Really, the only limitation is your

imagination. I

have

the

power!

Let

this be

a fight!

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