In the pantheon of great hero and arch-villain pairings, He-Man and Skeletor are up there with the best. So it’s no surprise that, for the first live-action Masters of the Universe movie in almost 40 years, Skeletor makes his glorious return – and he’s badder than ever.
Played unrecognizably by Jared Leto, the latest rendition of Skeletor is a cartoon-faithful take on the character with a twist: at the outset of the movie, he wins, plunging Eternia into 15 years of tyranny. Not that it makes the famously petulant Skeletor any happier.
“We loved [Skeletor] and we wanted to make sure that those things that we loved about him came through on the screen,” Knight tells GamesRadar+. “He was funny, he was strange, he was scary, he was menacing, he looked cool. He was deeply insecure. He was always insulting his underlings. He had a very distinctive voice and a distinctive laugh. And so making sure that we had all of those things in the character was really important.”
Much like Knight, a He-Man fan dating back to childhood, Leto had his “own history” with He-Man, before signing up to play ol’ skullface. “He loved He-Man when he was a kid, just like I did,” Knight says. “And Skeletor was his favorite character. So he really wanted to create a distinctive villain that honored everything that came before, while at the same time putting our spin on it. And he gave an incredible performance. I just think he’s so fun to watch.”
Unlike the main star behind a certain masked Mandalorian, Leto gave a full physical performance as Skeletor, donning a prosthetic suit each day on set. Though the final result was achieved using an impressive mix of filmmaking techniques, including a full-CG skull face.
“Ultimately, it comes down to collaboration of disciplines, because he’s wearing this incredible muscle suit that was put together by our prosthetics master Barry Gower. He has this incredible costume made by our costumers led by Richard Sale, so he’s on set completely performing for his fellow actors, and the only thing that wasn’t there on the day was the skull of the face.
“Jared’s face was replaced by CG animation,” Knight continues. “And the animators did an extraordinary job of capturing the nuance and the personality that Jared brought to the physical and the vocal performance, and so the face is really emotive. You wouldn’t think that would be the case for a skull, but there’s a lot of personality and a lot of emotion in that skull!”
For Knight, there was no question that Leto needed to be present on set. Leto’s vocal performance, meanwhile, needs to be heard to be believed, and lands somewhere closer to Tom Hardy’s Bane than Thanos.
“It was important to me, because it’s not just the voice or the facial performance. So much of what we love about an actor is what they do with their body. How they physically move, it can communicate so much, so many different types of emotions just based on someone’s bearing, how they walk across the room. Jared understood that the physical performance was a big part of it. There’s so much that he brings to that aspect of it that has nothing to do with what you’re hearing or what you’re seeing in his face.”
Masters of the Universe stars Nicholas Galitzine, Jared Leto, Camila Mendes, and Idris Elba, and reboots the classic Filmnation cartoon. If you’re wondering how the new movie reckons with He-Man’s “wildly internally inconsistent” mythology, Knight told us all about that, too.
Masters of the Universe releases in theaters on June 5. For more, check out our list of upcoming movies, or plan out your year with our 2026 movie release dates guide.
