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Jared Leto's unreal Skeletor transformation for 'Masters of the Universe' only took '15 minutes' (interview)
'He was a joy to work with on set, he really was. He was a lot of fun and there was this charismatic presence every day.'
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Emmy Award-winner Barrie Gower has helped created some of the most memorable beasts and creatures in the entertainment sphere, including "Stranger Things"' Vecna, "Game of Thrones"' chilling White Walker, the Night King, and the freaky fungus mutants of HBO's "The Last of Us."
For director Travis Knight’s sci-fi fantasy film, "Masters of the Universe," Gower called upon all of his veteran skills to provide special makeup and prosthetic applications for Jared Leto's Skeletor and his entire band of weird henchmen, plus He-Man's gang of crazy companions. From iconic characters like Spikor and Moss Man to Goat Man and Trap Jaw, Gower’s ace crew was tasked with bringing these monsters to the big screen.
"We got contacted a few years ago about 'Masters of the Universe' in 2018 or 2019," Gower tells Space.
"It was with a different director at the time and a different studio. It was two writer/directors, the Nee Brothers, who co-wrote the screenplay for this latest integration."
"The project changed studios two or three times and eventually they came back to us and the timing was bang on," explains Gower. "They’d enlisted Travis Knight and his vision was quite different to the original take, which was very high tech, very clean, very Marvelesque. Travis was a huge fan of He-Man and the '80s cartoon, the toy line, and the whole IP and franchise. His passion and love was really trying to do this film project justice and make it as true as possible."
The master plan was to still give the $200 million feature a fun modern spin, but Knight was interested from a character perspective of creating full-sized human equivalent action figures.
"He wanted the world to be ultra colorful, ultra bright, and have this sense of awe and eye candy. We went through the characters to decide what would be practical, what would be purely digital, and what would be a combination of the two. Because of Travis’s background with Laika Studios he was very much into the practical techniques."
That was all music to Gower's ears and his BGFX team began the process of bringing the menacing egomaniacal antagonist called Skeletor to life.