00:00Hi Travis. Nice to meet you.
00:01Likewise.
00:02So, talking about Masters of the Universe,
00:05I saw a NASA sticker on He-Man's telescope,
00:08I saw folding space, I saw spaceship battles.
00:12This film was a lot spacier than I expected.
00:15I'm Space.com, so I've got to bring it up.
00:17Sure.
00:17Was this intentional? What inspired this vision?
00:21Well, you know, Masters of the Universe is famously sort of this wacky,
00:26unhinged blend of sci-fi and fantasy and all these kind of crazy things mixed together,
00:31and so sci-fi and space is a big part of that.
00:34Also, a lot of people aren't aware of this,
00:37but He-Man's mother, Queen Marlena, is actually a NASA astronaut.
00:42And so, if you look very, very carefully in the back,
00:45there's a scene very, very early on where Adam is talking with his mother in the royal chambers.
00:50If you look in the background, you will see her NASA astronaut helmet.
00:54Well, I'll have to go back and re-watch it.
00:56Yes.
00:57That's really cool.
00:58So, speaking to that blend, yeah, He-Man, it's sci-fi, it's fantasy,
01:02but also in this film it's 80s nostalgia, it's action-adventure,
01:07it's so many different things, but it feels cohesive.
01:11It feels like a singular vision.
01:13How did you weave that together?
01:15It's a tricky tightrope to walk because these things can very easily become
01:20like a bunch of scraps of crazy quilts sewn together.
01:24And it is.
01:25It's action.
01:25It's drama.
01:26It's comedy.
01:27It's something with incredible heart.
01:29It's got spectacle.
01:30There's a lot of different things that we're trying to hold together.
01:33In the end, it comes down to the discipline of the story that we're telling
01:38and the crew completely buying into the story that we're telling
01:40and working with such incredible actors and craftspeople
01:43that we can all blend it all together in a harmonious way.
01:46It's a tricky thing, but I'm very, very proud of the balance that we struck
01:51because at the heart, it's just a really fun, joyful adventure,
01:55but it does have a real emotional core at the center of the movie,
02:01which is the thing I'm most proud of.
02:02I think the movie has tremendous heart, and it moves people,
02:05which I think is lovely.
02:06Absolutely.
02:07That heart and that core is so palpable, and it really reads.
02:11Now, He-Man as a character, as a universe, is so iconic and so beloved.
02:19As a director, what kind of pressure did you feel taking this on
02:23and giving new life and a new vision to something that is really personal
02:27and meaningful and a part of people's childhoods and their identity?
02:31It is very personal to so many people.
02:34I mean, He-Man has been around for over 40 years,
02:36a huge part of many people's childhood, including myself,
02:39which was to the extent that I feel pressure,
02:41which you always feel pressure when you're doing something like this,
02:43it's I have to put that stuff out of my head because you can get paralyzed by choice
02:47and trying to make so many different people happy,
02:51and there's so many different, like you're never going to be able to please everybody.
02:53In the end, my North Star and my compass was about trying to please the eight-year-old version of
02:59myself,
03:00who discovered He-Man for the first time and whose little tiny mind was blown out of the back of
03:05his head.
03:06That's the child that I wanted to make happy with this movie,
03:09and so I remember what was so unique and so special about it.
03:12I remember why I loved it, and I wanted to make sure that this film would have made that kid
03:16happy,
03:17and I think it would have.
03:18I think it would have, and I think there's going to be a lot of new eight-year-olds
03:22that latch onto the He-Man universe, and I think it's going to give it some interesting longevity.
03:26I hope so.
03:27I hope so.
03:28I hope so.
