Review of Conan the Barbarian

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By comparison to John Milius' Conan the Barbarian (1982), I consider this not only a superior Conan film, but a superior film overall.

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I mean this may be good, but I don't see how that is possible.

I have yet to see the movie, but I had a couple of thoughts about it up front that I'll toss in:

When I first heard they were remaking Conan I was very skeptical. From the moment I saw Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo on Game of Thrones I thought he would make an incredible Conan. A few weeks later I saw the trailer and was sold.

I didn't like that they were advertising with modern "rock music" and I hope that didn't make it into the film. I'd much prefer an instrumental score similar to the original.

I remember watching the original Conan movies and thinking that they were great movies but just suffered from an overall lack of production value. Considering this seemed like a big production I can see how the new Conan could outshine the original in some ways.

It was worth the lost sleep.

As a public service, I'm going to post my review here, and I hope my review will save you.

Conan the Barbarian Edgar in Shakespeare's King Lear boldly states, "The worst is not / So long as we can say 'This is the worst.'" Somewhere along the way, I picked up the idea that Conan was to be a big movie, one of those classics of adventure that come along only once every couple of years. The facts that it opened the week after school began and had not one decent actor should have tipped me off.

If there is anything redeeming about this movie, it's that the lead actress is not butt ugly. Besides that, this movie is nothing more than gore, violence, cheap CGI, and a terrible, terrible script. I don't even know if I should attend to this movie any longer, even if it is to give it a thorough berating. Let's first discuss the scenes. Holy marshmallows and attention deficit disorder. The writer must have intended for this movie to go on for five hours. Mercifully for us, it was chopped down to less than two, but all the scenes in part survive. As a result, we are on a non-stop journey through borrowed scene after borrowed scene. We go from Season of the Witch to Pirates of the Carbs to the Lord of the Rings to Indian Jones within three minutes! Chop, chop, Suey! We travel from kingdom to kingdom like we're changing scenes in Seinfeld. Like being thrown into a genealogy in Genesis, we're flooded with an undue mass of names, legends, and places. And the dialogue, my God, my ears were bleeding. "She must be pretty" - that's all that can be said of the lead lady, whose beauty is supposed to be great. I kid you not.

None of the characters matter. They are all caricatures: Conan: a child man set on revenge. The bad guy with the crown: a man driven by ambition. The witch: a woman who jealously wants to be her mother. Her outfits look like the design department raided the costume aisle at Walmart the day after Halloween. There was the possibility to make her character interesting, but the director, I think, was not intelligent enough to see it. Instead, we get characters that mean nothing. Even in the movie's one sex scene, there is not an iota of emotion. It's wham, bam, thank you sir. And yet the audience is expected to believe that these characters are so bound to each other that they will risk all to save the other! After an interesting opening scene where the character of a boy is building, I could not say a single scene in the rest of the movie mattered in character development. All was vain and empty.

Whoever made this movie, and let's pray he's not allowed to make another movie, must have a fetish for blood because in the end, all this movie is about is revenge and blood. And even the blood scenes are terribly dark and quickened so the viewer cannot see how poorly the scenes are acted and made. A formulaic film that tries to be monumental, it fails on every level. It's easily the worst remake since Russel Crowe's Robin Hood, and likely, a lot worse. Is it the worst action adventure movie ever made? If I said it is, would that mean it isn't? 1/10

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Whoever made this movie, and let's pray he's not allowed to make another movie, must have a fetish for blood because in the end, all this movie is about is revenge and blood.

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What did you expect from the guy who directed the remakes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th?

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See, now what?

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I say this only half jokingly: Mr. Ghetto of Wally Wally Wally World fame could have written a better score than the one we get in this Conan. The sound effects, in addition, were so bad I began laughing any time the spirit guides of the witch began doing their thing as she searched for the pure blood.

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See, now what?

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People have different opinions. Who knew? I scored it at a C and he gave it an F. FWIW, I give the 1982 film a C-.

So why would he risk his life for her? That is where the incongruity exists. The movie tries to paint a budding romance where she transforms from a monk to a warrior, gaining his respect and love. They seal their relationship through passionate love making, and then she slips into the night without saying goodbye. It's one thing to paint him as a barbarian without any virtuous feelings, but in their relationship there is some virtue, or at least the director attempts to show that there is, but then in the next scene completely turns on what he had been building. If the writer or director had Conan leaving her after the intercourse, I might try to give the writer/director the benefit of the doubt, and offer that Conan is a conflicted character who is capable of love, but cannot escape his past. But the woman who is a monk? She's the one who leaves a man after sharing love? I know I've already put more thought into this relationship than the writer and director. Writing so poor doesn't even deserve to be analyzed. I'm wasting my time.

I'm sure some people will enjoy the movie, but for me it was an unpleasant time.

I'm a huge Howard fan so my take on this movie has to pass through the filter of my fandom.

Costuming was great with the exception of the witch. Mamoa really does bring to mind Conan's visceral adrenaline fueled personality. In this respect he is a much better Conan than Arnie. The movie is pretty with some nice sweeping vistas that I enjoyed.

On to the bad.

Pacing sucked. It felt like a 5 hour movie that had been chopped down to the highlights. The story hops from city to city and country side to country side with no sense of distance or time. They are just all of a sudden there. Throughout the movie you are given tantalizing hints of a deep back story concerning several of the characters both good and bad, but those stories are never ever told. Instead the characters are simply two dimensional archetypes.

Nitpicky stuff about the film:
There were six Barbarian chieftains who surrendered to serve Zim, but only three of them are seen and dealt with by Conan.

Come on a sword slicing through a womb and passing inches next to a fetuses head? That's how you open the movie.

Conan was once again supposed to solve the riddle of steel, but he never learned a damn thing about ice did he?

Secondary characters are just there to get Conan somewhere or open a door. None of them are treated like Mako or Gerry Lopez's characters were and actually given something to do.

The hopping around from place to place drove me batshit crazy.

I don't think I'm too picky. This movie coud have been good and Jason Mamoa could have been this generations Conan, but poor writing/editing and direction killed this movie.

They should have focused on one small story and not tried to make an epic. Conan was never about epics. His stories were small, close, gritty and personal.

And another thing... Why does Conan's family always have to die in the movies and why is his Father's sword this big deal. That was never ever in any of the stories.

I think I put 1982 Conan the Barbarian above this one.

Oh and why in a story that is completely non canon do you mention the events that take place in the "Tower of the Elephant"?