When composer Daniel Pemberton agreed to score this year’s Eighties throwback Masters of the Universe, he decided there was only one way to deal with the “fantastical nature… and over-the-topness” of the adventures of He-Man and company. ”‘I don’t really wanna do a generic superhero score because it doesn’t really interest me,’” Pemberton recalls telling director Travis Knight. “‘I would like to score this film as if it was written by a rock band like Queen. That would be a lot more fun.’ And he was like, ‘Great, that’s exactly what I want, too.’”
From the beginning, Pemberton (who also scored one of 2026’s biggest blockbusters, Project Hail Mary) and Knight (who also directed the recent animated Wildwood) had a dream musical collaborator in mind. “We were just like, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing to get Brian May to play on this?’” says Pemberton, who loved Queen’s indelibly campy score for 1980’s Flash Gordon, as well as their work on 1986’s Highlander.
Pemberton spent months trying to reach May, without success. He was already deep into work on a bombastic, hummable score for the film when he learned that he and the guitarist would be at London’s Abbey Road Studios at the same time. He sent a note to May, who was busy mastering the recent Queen II reissue: “Look, I’ll be here downstairs working. If you ever get a chance, pop down.”
As it turned out, May had his own fond Eighties memories of Masters of the Universe. “He-Man was a big thing with my son,” the guitarist says, “and everything that my son got into, I got into, obviously. It’s all, for me, great memories, great nostalgia.”
So May signed on to the project, and over three or so intense days at his home studio, with both Pemberton and Knight on hand, “I played on every single cue we could put our hands on,” he recalls. “And it just worked. Obviously, we kind of fitted like a glove ’cause he’d already written it in the style to which I was accustomed. It’s like we didn’t even need to explain to each other. It just all happened very easily and with great joy.”
If the score’s style is a bit of a pastiche of Queen’s own Eighties soundtrack work, the guitarist didn’t mind, since the band were already working in an ironic vein back then. “Flash Gordon itself, of course, is quite consciously retro, tongue-in-cheek,” May says. His unmistakable lead guitar ended up anchoring multiple key moments for Masters of Universe, most notably on the pop-Wagnerian “Eternia.” The film’s score’s melodic flamboyance has won it fans in its own right, with two newly announced vinyl versions due next year: a standard edition from Lakeshore Records in January, and a deluxe version in February from Mutant.
“I always wanted the Eternia theme to be slightly camp,” says Pemberton, “but with huge power. A big sort of disco banger, but with a lot of rock elements in it as well… I feel the electric guitar is a fantastically emotive and powerful sound and instrument that doesn’t get used a lot [in current film scores], because of the connotations with the past. But He-Man is over the top, in the Eighties, so we could get away with it.” Another touchstone for “Eternia” was a disco remix Pemberton loved of a track from Jeff Wayne’s 1978 musical version of The War of the Worlds, a Richard Burton-narrated prog-rock album that was big in the U.K. and less known in America.
But he kept coming back to Flash Gordon. “That main theme is so powerful and memorable,” says Pemberton. “And there’s a lot of incidental stuff. Some of it’s great, some of it I’m not so sure about. You can tell they just bought a new synthesizer on that score. But again, that’s stuff I love…. I really like it when bands score films because they don’t always get it right. Scoring films is a lot trickier than you think it is. But what I always like about those is you get bits which are kinda terrible, but you also get bits which are brilliant and really unexpected.”
In the studio, Pemberton wasn’t afraid to put some pressure on a rock legend. “I’ve probably wound Brian up a bit in the recording process,” he says. “When I do recording, I’m so used to trying to get this vision across. So I’ll push quite hard, which sometimes can be quite annoying. But also Brian’s got very strong opinions as well. It would be tiny things, like moving to a note a bit earlier, or cutting a bar out in a longer version. I’d push Brian, and sometimes he’d be like, ‘No, no, we’re not doing it. This is right.’ Every time Brian pushed back, he was always right.”
“He was like, ‘More, more, more,’” May says. “I was very happy with that.” The guitarist got so into the process that he surprised his collaborators by digging up his son’s old He-Man toys and bringing them into the studio to preside over the session.
May would often sit and think for a few minutes before picking up his guitar and playing fully formed parts. “That’s the way I tend to be,” he says. “If I can’t hear it in my head, I can’t play it. ‘Cause to me, the guitar is a voice, and if you don’t know what you’re gonna say, it’s pointless opening your mouth, really. I always wanna hear it in my head, whether it’s the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody‘ solo or it’s a piece of Eternia which we haven’t visited before.”
“It was one of my favorite experiences as a composer, working with him, just hearing your music played by someone who has a sound that is so unique and deep-wired in all of us,” Pemberton says. “During this process, I sort of realized Brian’s guitar, the Red Special, is the equivalent of the Sword of Power in He-Man. Which sounds ridiculous, but it’s really genuine. Only one person can wield this power, which is Brian.”
The final step was recruiting the Darkness for a theme song, “Masters of the Universe,” also featuring May — which ended up sounding not unlike one of Queen’s Highlander songs, “Princes of the Universe.” “It’s remarkably hard to find a band today that has the sort of virtuosity but also the humor we needed,” says Pemberton. Most of the band’s members — including drummer Rufus Taylor, who happens to be the son of Queen drummer Roger Taylor — also played on the score’s final track, “The Legend of Eternia,” a full rock-song version of the Eternia theme. “I love the Darkness,” says May. “They’re very upfront about being Queen-influenced, and they take some of our stuff to a new place, which is a great compliment and very satisfying to hear.”
As lifelong Queen fans, Pemberton and Knight were overwhelmed by their experience in May’s studio. “We were both being like, ‘How fucking crazy is this?’” Pemberton says. “We had this amazing day, and we were going down this motorway at midnight, just Queen cranked up to full. It was a great moment.”
