The only way Daniel Pemberton, who elects not to work on many franchise films or sequels, was going to get on board with scoring the new “Masters of the Universe” film was if he could create Queen and ABBA-inspired music.
Thankfully, not only was that the exact sound director Travis Knight wanted, but while recording some of the early “Masters of the Universe” tracks at Abbey Road Studios in London, Pemberton happened to run into Queen co-founder and guitarist Brian May, who was working on a newly mastered version of “Queen II.” After telling him about the project, May was enthusiastic to collaborate with the “Project Hail Mary” composer.
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Musically, everything in the studio clicked into place when May pulled out his famous Red Special Guitar, which he built out of repurposed household materials as a teenager and used in Queen’s live performances.
“As he was playing it, I was like, ‘This is actually the equivalent of the Sword of Power from the Master universe because it’s an instrument forged in flame,’ so to speak,” Pemberton tells Variety of the crucial guitar amp featured in the film’s triumphant theme song. “He’s the only person who can play it and has the power to play it, and it’s a tool that has saved many people’s lives, I think. If you look at it as a weapon, it has put so much hope and love in the world.”
Based on the “Masters of the Universe” world, which was born out a 1982 toyline, Knight’s take on the story maintains the silly, ‘80s tone of the original live-action film. Set on the planet Eternia, Nicholas Galitzine plays He-Man, who starts off the film as a young kid named Adam. After the evil Skeletor (Jared Leto) snatches his parents, Adam is plucked out of Eternia and returns years later from the human world to assume his true identity as He-Man and save the planet.
To match He-Man’s transformation from average young man to all-powerful being — somebody that wields a sword nobody else can — Pemberton and May collaborated on the theme song “Electrica,” a three-minute ballad featuring a 100-piece choir, an 80-piece orchestra, rock band and plenty of synthesizers.
“I wanted a grown man to feel like a small boy again, and I wanted a small boy to feel like a grown man,” Pemberton says. “I wanted something that had the weight and seriousness of a hard-rock track mixed with the color, campiness and slight cheese of a poppy Euro song. The influences around [the ‘80s] were very pop-driven. I wanted it to have that sensibility that as soon as you start the movie, it tells you you’re in for something fun. That’s the most important thing about this film — it’s unashamedly fun.”
Dedicated fans will be familiar with the theme from the “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” animated show — and perhaps expecting, or at least hoping, to hear it. While Pemberton teases fans to listen out for it toward the end, he says incorporating Shuki Levy, Haim Saban and Lou Scheimer’s original music into the theme song didn’t work out: “The thing that’s interesting with He-Man is, for me, the baggage is really the aesthetic. Obviously you have the theme song, which is phenomenally catchy and such an iconic part of people’s childhoods, but we tried it elsewhere in the film and it was very difficult to make it work within the action beats of the movie. At its core, that theme is played for 10 seconds at the beginning of every cartoon, it doesn’t sustain in the same way for longer.”
To compose the entire 140-minute film, which features 35 tracks, Pemberton leaned into making a “maximalist” score, writing it with “more rock and pop sensibility. The big thing about this film is even though at its core it’s kind of ridiculous, it’s incredibly sincere, and so we’re writing this music that’s very flamboyant, theatrical, over the top and quite fun … It really means everything it says. It’s not ironic.”
The release of “Masters of the Universe” comes after a particularly busy season for Pemberton, having scored “Project Hail Mary” and “The Drama,” two of the year’s most acclaimed films. As a composer who has dabbled in multiple different genres of music, including composing the “Spider-Verse” films, Pemberton has come to notice — and intentionally move away from — the traditional way blockbusters sound.
“Music has become less and less outwardly emotional and it’s hard. If you want to write incredibly emotional music and incredibly powerful music on a film, it can feel ridiculous in the modern idiom,” Pemberton says. “You look at something like ‘Star Wars,’ which has phenomenal scoring, but I always wonder if that happened today, would studio execs throw it out in two seconds? Would an audience throw it out in two seconds?”
Pemberton isn’t shy about his thoughts on what superhero and big franchise pictures get wrong: “When you look at the Nolan ‘Dark Knight’s, they took themselves very seriously but the films were very serious, so it worked. But I think that led onto this idea that all superhero films have to be incredibly serious. At its core, most superhero films, for me, are somewhat ridiculous. And they’re often scared of admitting that, whereas I think He-Man is aware. He’s called He-Man, one of the characters is called Fisto and Ram Man!”
Ultimately, he credits Knight for giving him a “very clear vision” of his “Masters of the Universe” film from the start: “It can’t be understated how important the director is to a good score, who supports and trusts you and allows you to go crazy. Travis definitely let me go crazy!”
