10 Actors Who Knew Their Action Movie Was Doomed From Day One

In the mid-eighties, He-Man was one of the most popular children’s toys on the market, and Masters Of The Universe (1987) was the ultra-cheesy movie adaptation created to follow on from the success of the tie-in cartoon series. The film tapped into the popular sword and sorcery fantasy movies of the time (Conan The Barbarian, Willow, etc) along with sci-fi action inspired by the likes of The Terminator and space fantasy in the vein of Star Wars.

Dolph Lundgren was hired to play Masters Of The Universe's lead role of He-Man but was a relative novice at the time, having only appeared in two previous movies; a supporting tole in James Bond’s A View To A Kill (1985), and his breakthrough appearance as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV (1985). Dolph certainly had reservations about taking on the He-Man character and the impact that playing such a role would have on his career, and he also reportedly felt the pressure of carrying the movie during challenging shoots in a costume that left little to the imagination.

In a 2014 interview with Yahoo!, Lundgren noted, “It was weird playing a toy. In those days, comic strip characters were not looked at as big movie franchises. They were like little offshoots that people did, you know?”

Masters Of The Universe, although looked back with fondness from a certain point of view by many these days, ultimately crashed and burned at the box office, with Lundgren seemingly proven right about how he imagined the film was going to be perceived.