Conan the Barbarian

Conan the Barbarian is born in war, a product of blood and steel. Thus the film should be a visceral, violent portrayal of a warrior set against the fantasy backdrop of Robert E. Howard's Hyboria. What emerges on screen is a set of one dimensional characters placed in a world that feels half heatedly brought to life.

The film has been accused of being like viewing a video game. I would disagree. The nature of video games, particularly those of the fantasy and RPG genres, is immersion. There is no immersion here. We flit from place to place in a lame attempt to show the vastness of the world through a mediocre CGI backdrop of a castle or slave camp or pirate city. None are ever fully realised before Conan jaunts off somewhere else. The violence itself is the most disappointing. Nispel manages to create fight scenes that lack the kinetic quality of a dance. The camera is misplaced, the editing focusing on the wrong points. You never feel the hits, the power of the blows or Conan's qualities as a warrior. It feels clumsy.

There are more grunts and warcries than lines of dialogue and those spoken feel like the actors are running them in rehearsal for the first time. There is no commitment to the lines so again the audience fails to immerse in their characters. McGowen in contrast overly plays the sorcerer.

Given this is a reboot, the film does not feel fresh, but instead feels dated. It's almost as though Nispel wanted it to feel like the 1982 version, but taking only the worst qualities and none of the charm. Conan reinforces the assertion of refraining from producing reboots where there is nothing original the writers or director bring to the table. Conan is a stale rehash that will offer no reward to its audience.

I'm not going to get into the plot set-up and all that other stuff which has already been prefaced to this movie's release a thousand different ways. Just straight to the review ...

The entire introduction sequence at the beginning of this Conan was great, up until you see the Jason as the adult Conan. The child actor who played young Conan was broodier, and the sequence where he proves himself as a warrior was more dynamic and believable than most of the other action sequences in the movie. I really enjoyed that entire first portion of the movie, but it went down hill after that.

Jason Mamoa can be a really good Conan. He brought some new flare to the character, but I have to say that ultimately I'm split between him and Arnie, with a bit more leaning to Arnie's Conan. The director, and Jason himself, almost made this Conan rather "sun-shiney" and somewhat fluffy. They had all the sequences they needed to really get dark with him, but they kept it fairly light. With the exception of some mild nudity they really didn't take advantage of the "R" rating. With exception to that mild nudity much of this movie felt like a made-for-TV movie more so than something which should be in the theaters.

Plot ... bleh. It was a weak twist on the original movie's plot. Nothing special in any way, shape or form. In watching Conan go through the progression of the plot I felt like I was watching a video game play out where he was just maneuvering through the different level bosses of the game to his ultimate goal. To say the plot was formula is almost an insult to formula plots.

The CGI, especially in the scenics, was entirely too obvious and very light-hearted comic book-ish. I know there was a lot in this movie where they were drawing upon the great Frazetta artworks, but they missed the marks several times. At the end of the movie, as with many other contemporary special effects movies, I was missing the days of mechanical special effects and matte paintings as backdrops. CGI has destroyed a lot of movies over the years and this was another victim of the over-reliance that's been wrought by the movie industry.

The Studios NEED real people standing over their shoulders DURING production of what should be great movies, ESPECIALLY when there's already a fan base for the subject matter. They need people who aren't afraid to NOT be "Yes Men" and tell them straight up that something is stupid, or over-done, or under-done or just plain not right and let's start it over. The Studios don't have the genital fortitude to do this, so this is the kind of disappointment we have to live through 2 hours at a time throughout our lives. This movie could have been a beginning-of-summer blockbuster, but instead it's stuck in the "could-have-been" file.

Well, in general I'm not this master for writing reviews or anything else. But in general, I do agree with 95% of IMDb ratings, besides some special cases. And this is one of them.

Seriously, if we put away the old Conan the Barbarian Movie with Arnie. This movie offers You "A grade" quality of picture, "A- grade" quality of camera angles "B grade" quality of story composition "B grade" quality of actor performance and "A- grade" of sound/music quality. It's not that bad as a movie for DVD/BD @ your home, right? And frankly, many TV movies have much, much higher vote rating as Conan.

For me, I really enjoyed some fights in the movie, I liked how actors were masked up, also enjoyed Conan as a kid and as an adult. As I say, these guys didn't put out any blockbuster performance to Your screen but seriously, it wasn't that bad [5/10] all in all. It really deserves solid 6/10 from a random viewer and from a fan of medieval times and fantasy good 7/10.

Though, this is only my opinion and I fully respect the opinions of whole IMDb community...

I've always been a fan not only of Robert E. Howard's fantasy stories but also of the Marvel Comics or the 1982 film "Conan the Barbarian" with Arnold Schwarzenegger. So when I heard of a new Conan I was most interested. With today's budget and cgi they really could pull it off. Oh Man I was wrong.

Where do I start as everything is wrong in this movie …Words cannot adequately describe how terrible this movie is. It's that bad. However I have come to my senses to provide you with seven reasons why this film is bad.

Number 1 the plot is "shaky". Here is the plot summary in one sentence: Conan witness the destruction of his Tribe and the Death of his Father by an evil Warlord who search the pieces of an ancient mask that is supposed to resurrect his wife, an evil sorceress that could grant him the powers of a God… OK??? Obviously a Conan film isn't built on a Tarkovskian scenario but with this Conan we reach an apogee in terms of bad writing. Writers Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer aren't fit for writing. The least they could have done was to read Robert E. Howard's literature and if as I suspect they aren't capable of reading more than 10 pages, I suggest looking at Marvel Comics who introduced a relatively lore-faithful version of Conan the Barbarian in 1970 written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith. In fact the total lack of understanding the character of Conan not only from the writers but also from Director Marcus Nispel and actor Jason Momoa is the main problem. I am not a Conan fanatic but if you put the word Conan somewhere in a movie title I guess as a Director you need to understand what is the essence of a Conan movie… You owe it to your audience; you owe it to yourself…

Number 2, the script is bad and as soon as Conan's Mother opens her mouth to name his son before she dies we know we are in for a treat of bad dialogs and overall silly script. What follows is ridicule one liners deliver with zero conviction from every protagonist.

Number 3, where are the sidekicks? In a Conan film good sidekicks are mandatory. I remember Subotai (Jerry Lopez) in the 1982 Conan. He was a cool, loyal, and courageous dude. Every fan of this film remembers the crucifixion scene when suddenly Subotai appears in the horizon to save the day. Valeria was also a very likable and an equally strong character, some sort of Valkyrie that impacted Conan's emotions. In this 2011 version female characters are filler. The dialog of the main female character consists in screaming "Conan" every time she is in danger. Moreover there are no charismatic sidekicks or even interesting other characters. The black pirate serves as a pretext for a black character but has the personality of a "playmobil"; the "Arabic" Thief is so common I don't even remember his name or face.

Number 4, a good villain should have depth… Stephen Lang as Khalar Zym does not do the job. Sure there wasn't much to do with the poor script he had in hands and screaming "barbarian!!!" every 2 seconds of his screen time doesn't help. Plus Rose McGowan transformed by either plastic-surgery or bad cgi (couldn't really tell) as his witchy daughter Marique is so outrageously goth that you constantly wonder if you are in a Conan film or in a remake of the Crow. Net net all protagonists are badly written and played even Ron Perlman, as Conan's father, is wasted.

Number 5, there isn't any consistency between the scenes…We watch Conan's Ship being attacked during the night, but the next scene of the battle for the Ship happens during the day… We see the girl go mating with Conan in a rocky cave of what seems to be a cliff environment. In the next morning when she attempts to go back to the Ship she gets kidnapped in what appears to be a Forest. At this stage I kept wondering if the Director was a little bit "special" or if the film editor endured a lobotomy half way during the editing session. Now that I think about it it's probably both.

Number 6, they didn't hire a lead designer and that shows…they should have. Costumes, armors, or even Architecture (by the way you can clearly see the use of models) don't fit the Conan universe and there isn't any vision or unity regarding the design of the film. As a result you don't have a feel that the story takes place in a possible ancient time with tangible ancient civilizations. So basically the production recycled costumes from the last 10 sand & sandals films and the result is catastrophic.

Number 7, they didn't hire a composer and that shows too. I understand that not everyone can be Basil Poledouris the composer of the haunting score from the 1982 Conan but in this 2011 Conan I was forgetting the music as I was watching the film…this is a premiere to me.

As a conclusion there is close to nothing that is enjoyable in this film. There is no sense of adventure that makes a heroic fantasy film worth it. There is no sense of progression that makes a revenge plot efficacious. There is no sense of danger that makes an action film breathtaking. There is no sense of feasibility that makes a film epic. There is no adequate script that makes characters believable and there is no musical soundtrack that draws you into the Journey. Give me 45millions dollars (half of the amount spent on this mockery) and some of the Conan fans from IMDb and we will probably do a better film

Completely flopped at the cinemas and the release on Blu Ray over here was straight to the sale bin. So i could catch it for a few Euros in real 3D, big deal? Yes, because I was surprised by this flick. Don't get me wrong it isn't a masterpiece but it was quit enjoyable. sadly it was released before the main lead done by Jason Momoa was to become a big hit in Games Of Thrones as Khal Drogo.

There are so many well known names to see, Rose McGowan (Grindhouse (2007), Ron Perlman, Stephen Lang that it is strange that this flopped.

Nevertheless, we are stuck with it but the main problem is that many compare it to the original Conan (1982) with Arnold Schwarzenegger a thing I wont do.

I liked the settings and the CGI used, in fact it all reminded me a bit of Games Of Thrones. It also has a bit of nudity here and there and the use of red stuff flying around made it even more interesting.

Don't expect a flick like Immortals (2011) or 300 (2006) or effect flicks like that. If you like good old westerns with the hero riding towards sunset at the end than this is a thing for you.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 3/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5