Masters of the Universe Cutting He-Man’s Iconic Furry Pants Officially Explained

In a little under a month, He-Man’s return to the big screen will be complete with the release of Masters of the Universe, almost exactly forty years after the Cannon Films adaptation that launched a thousand snears (and then gradually grew a bit of an affectionate cult around it). We know quite a bit about Nicholas Galitzine’s blonde bombshell hero already, thanks to an enthusiastic marketing campaign, and one thing that was established early – and to the collective disappointment of lots of fans (for some reason), was that he wouldn’t be wearing his festively furry pants in the new adaptation

As MOTU Costume Designer Richard Sale told us, “our major goal was to try and be true to the original, and that’s what we’ve done whilst moving things on a little bit.” Seemingly, the balance between fidelity and nostalgia didn’t have room for He-Man’s furry underwear. But this wasn’t done on a whim. With the same level of dedicated discussion that went into deciding whether we’d see He-Man’s nipples, the original, iconic costume was ruled out. When ComicBook’s Chris Killian was invited to visit the Masters of the Universe set in London, Sale was one of the creatives he spoke to, and he revealed the process:

“We went through lots of iterations of, like, levels of stuff. I mean, I don’t know where Adam’s board is, but we went through, like, 80 variations of, like, trousers. Is he wearing trousers? Is he wearing armour on top? Is he, you know, you keep looking at it, and you’re going, like, well, it’s not quite He-Man. And… I mean, the fur, on the whole, was kind of nixed quite early on. And, yeah, the furry pants would have been just too difficult. Although, to be absolutely fair, we did tease Nick at one point saying that he was going to be wearing that. And also the Adam look of, like, the really tight tights and just a furry pants. We teased him for a long time to say that he was wearing. But, sadly, we didn’t get that. We got something else.” That something else was a leather gladiator skirt, and mercifully, Sale also confirms there are “no upskirts” in the movie.

Why Masters of the Universe Changed Skeletor’s Look

Sale also spoke to us about changing Skeletor’s look after he chose to leave out the crossed straps from Jared Leto’s villain‘s chest in order to avoid him looking like the dark mirror of He-Man he was originally: “Yeah, I mean, and interestingly, one of the choices I made early on when we designed Skeletor was to not have the cross strap… You know, the cross strap with the bones. Because it was like, well, we’re trying to keep the two… They became too similar in a way. They just became a negative of each other. And it’s like… Again, we were trying to move away slightly from the bone idea. Just for Skeletor and more… You know, he lives in Snake Mountain. So, he should be more snake-like. But then we used a lot of Snake Skeletons in the design, so we’re keeping the bone thing alive. But just having it a little bit more referential to his, you know, his detail. He’s got a belt, which… again [has] a bit more of the kind of snake intertwine thing going on.”

So, does this mean we’ll never get to see the iconic costumes in live-action? Well, not necessarily. Sale leaves the door open to more faithful costumes in future, provided a sequel is greenlit:

“But that’s not to say that these costumes are it. Mattel-willing, if we come back and do something else – a similar one – there’s nothing to say they can’t have evolved into something closer… And that’s with all of these characters. We’re not saying this is the first time out of the box for any of this. They had history before our film, and they’ll probably have a history after our film. So they could always develop. As He-Man’s power gets bigger, maybe his costume changes for the next one. And that will allow them to make more toys…”

So fingers firmly crossed. Masters of the Universe is released on June 5 globally. Maybe if you watch it enough times, you too could influence us all getting to see Nicholas Gaziltine in furry knickers as God – and Mattel – intended. What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

Masters of the Universe Movie Might Have Finally Teased Its Biggest Missing Character