Stuntman & Actor JOHN MACDONALD was Cast as the Evil Warrior “STRONGOR” a.k a. Strongarm but was cut from the movie before filming began (in “Masters of the Universe: Deleted Scenes & Alternate Content – Part Two!)

Back on June 5th, “Masters of the Universe” began its theatrical run in 3,677 movie theaters nationwide.

And now that most theater chains have phased the movie out almost seven weeks later, we are continuing our series discussing what could have been… reports on exciting content that was cut from the finished He-Man film as early as the pre-production phase, and as late as in the editing room.

And today we are looking at a character that was so close to being in the Travis Knight directed film, an actor was actually cast to play the role. Yes, we are talking about “Strongor”, originally known as Strongarm to the Masters of the Universe fan community, a character that first appeared in the 1983 Filmation classic cartoon series “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe“.

Strongarm was a robotic, possibly cybernetic looking villian with a robotic arm and was an early incarnation of the evil warrior Jitsu.

Appearing in only a single episode titled “She-Demon of Phantos“, when Strongarm’s debut went into production, Mattel hadn’t settled on a design or name yet for Jitsu, a character that would ultimately become a great evil counterpart to Fisto.

Once Jitsu’s name and design was settled upon over at Mattel, Strongarm never appeared in the series again. Still, with that one episode, Strongarm solidified his place in MOTU lore and is now considered a beloved addition to the character roster, especially to fans of the classic Filmation cartoon.

And we know based on interviews and seeing the finished film that director Travis Knight was clearly one of those Filmation fans, so much so that he intended to include Strongarm in his film!

Adopting the name change from Strongarm to “Strongor” (modified from “Strong-Or”) and originally changed due to a copyright conflict that was discovered during the characters’ plastic debut in the “Classics” action figure line…

…Travis Knight was so close to putting Strongor in his movie that none other than stuntman and actor John MacDonald was cast to play the role.

And thanks to production content revealed during a set visit that some lucky fans were able to attend including the Andre Meadows from Black Nerd Comedy, the German based Planet Eternia, Jay from Geeked Dad Life and more, we know how “Strongor” might have looked in the film.

So why was this evil warrior cut from the “Masters of the Universe” movie roster before cameras started rolling? We don’t know, but we were able to confirm with people who worked on the movie that stuntman & actor John MacDonald did film some test-run fight choreography and action sequences for “Masters of the Universe” as part of the stunt team (before moving on to a different job.)

Hopefully one day we can find out from director Travis Knight why he chose to give “Strongor” the chop, ultimately removing the character from appearing in the final film.

Special thanks to the very awesome Anthony for spurring this entire article!

Stay tuned for Part Three!

We’ll see you next time.