Conan The Barbarian(2011) -- Discussion/Grading ***Spoilers***

I haven't read any of the Conan books for over thirty years. I should remedy that.

 

I think I vaguely recall seeing that quite a few characters and themes were borrowed from Kull the Conquerer.

 

The whole "Riddle of Steel" thing was made up for the movies, it wasn't in any of the REH stories.

That whole thing about Conan growing up a slave was made up too.

 

I'm not saying that the 1982 film or this film were particularly faithful. But I personally don't think you can win over the purists with a Conan movie. Look at the old Marvel comics. They're pretty darn faithful. But purists criticize them as well. Purists also criticize the great Conan books by Robert Jordan and other authors. They'll find a way to criticize ANYTHING Conan that's not by Robert E Howard, I guarantee it. So basically, they could come out with the greatest Conan movie ever made and they'd criticize that too.

 

^But isn't that true of the hardest of the hardcore fans of anything?

 

I think if the movie was patterned after the comic book version of Conan, it may have came off better on screen.

In the comic version of Conan, he was huge, vulgar, violent and funny.

The movie (all three) portrayed him as silent, grim and serious.

There was a TV series that got cancelled that really watered the character down-besides not casting someone that didn't have the look of Conan.

A cartoon also was canceled for generally the same reasons.

The character from the cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian captured that essence the best. As far voice, language and mannerism.

I think the lack of interest comes from disappointment-they expect to see a comic or book version of Conan, and they get a different interpretation.

 

Yeah, it's best to always ignore the fanboys when making a movie since they will never be happy. Just make a good movie, which this movie didn't seem to be, and it would have done better.

 

Except they havent't really made the greatest Conan movie ever yet. (I know...sarcasm. I missed it last time!) Have Conan's people survive, living on mountain tops, Conan climbing the mountain with his father, getting captured....then we can talk. It's not really that hard. They adapted 4 Tolkein books to near perfection(Im guessing on The Hobbit, but with the same production team, really? How can we go wrong?), I just wish there was someone out there who could give Howard the same respect. Real Cimmerians from the books would've slaughtered all of Zym's army, and Zym himself from the beginning. They don't live in a village like setting, they lived on mountain tops. I laughed when Zym's lackey tells Conan he killed hundreds of Cimmarians! Hell, Cimmarian newborns are tougher than this guy. Seriously! The way Conan is supposed to act, really The Rock would've done the character justice. However with the lack of a story that would've been worthy of Robert E Howard, his cast would've been the only shining light in the movie, as Arnold's was in the original Conan.

Ok. One more thing on this movie and Im done. Honest!

Valeria. Valeria was Conan's equal in the original. That's why Conan fell for her. (Im still going through the books, does she pop up in the novels at all?) Valaria's fingernail has more substance, and mystique than Tamara's entire character had.

Spoiler alert, only because I know there are a few people that havent seen the original here.


When they killed Valeria it stung big time. It was a shock. They didn't usually kill main characters back then. There are very few films that hit me every time with a scene like this(The Lion King's Mufasa is another one. Oddly voiced by Thulsa Doom himself!) The way Conan looks back at the Mountain of Power it's like he could see it on fire like at the end. The whole way he lit the body on fire. He didn't have to say anything. We knew how he felt, we knew what he was gonna do about it.

Tamara was a sucky, sucky love interest. Add to that no sense of chemestry between the two. Conan and Valeria meet in mid thieving, apparently after the same thing. Subatai is distrusting, while Conan is like, 'heeeelloooo.' while still keeping his guard up. Tamara is basically Jenna 2.0 from Conan the Destroyer. Instead of going after the jewel, SHE is the jewel. Valeria was the other part that really made this movie. So the triangle woud be - Arnold Schwarzenegger, Basil Poledorus, and Sandhal Begman. Remove any of that, which they took all of it out, and the movie is doomed to faliure.

In conclusion(Honest, like I said!), they should not have called this movie Conan the Barbarian. It should have been, Mask of the Ancients, or Blade of the Warrior, or hell, The Barbarian and the Mask of Zym!! If you're gona call your movie Conan the Barbarian, you're gonna have to do three things -- 1. Write a story worthy of the character, and author. 2. Cast an actor big enough to match the title. It'd be like making Hercules, and casting an average built guy in the part....oh wait! 3. You have to use basil Poledorus' mian title Anvil of Crom at least in the beginning, and emulating that theme throught the movie. The music in the original propels you into the world of Conan. If someone can top this music, then that would be welcome as well! But you have to do all three of these things, not just one or the other. Nispel did none of these. It's like they had this Sword and sorcery flick, and they dicided to make it Conan. Pitty. Hyboria deserves better.

 

The only details Robert E. Howard ever gave about Conan's time in Cimmeria were the following:

1. He was born on a battlefield (this referred off-handedly in a letter to some fans, the particulars of the birth or the battle being not mentioned).
2. As a fifteen year old, he helped sack an Aquilonian settlement called Venarium, which had been built in Cimmerian lands. This is also just mentioned off-handedly in the Conan story "Beyond the Black River", where ironically he is now helping to defend Aquilonian settlements against the barbarous Picts.

Nothing is known of Conan's family, and no Cimmerians other than Conan ever appear in his stories, nor are any of the stories actually set in Cimmeria. Cimmerians are referred to as gloomy in "The Phoenix and the Sword" (with Conan, apparently, as an atypical Cimmerian), and in Howard's overview history of the Hyborian Age their role amounts to being the survivors of Atlantis who slipped back into barbarism and dwell in the far north, against whom invasions tend to be unsuccessful, and who are the cultural and racial predecessors of the Celts. That's really about it.

 

Any future film needs to feature #3 from this list:



http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/18/conan-comic/

 

It wasn't just that Valeria was a fantasticically cool in her own right (the Dungeons & Dragons character I've been playing for the last 20 years has elements based on Valeria), Thulsa Doom was a brilliant nemesis. He probably had more dialogue than all of Conan's helpers combined. He was just so... hypnotic!

This is why I think they missed a trick by not making Rose McGowan's character smarter and deadlier than her rather pedestrian father. A few more magical obstacles could have livened up the proceedings and leaving her alive at the end instead of having to put us through yet a another tiresome girl-on-girl fight could have led to a sequel element in the next movie (assuming there is one).

The only girl on girl fights that didn't feel like a cheesy story contrivance were in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (where I had no idea how the fight was going to end) and Ripley vs the Alien Queen!

 

Just saw this one.

I kinda liked Jason Momoa's stare - it reminds me somewhat of the Buscema Conan - him of the "sullen eyes". I kinda liked the random boobage. But then midway thru the movie, I felt that the boobage/nudity might have affected the teen crowd somewhat - I have this impression (erroneous perhaps) that people in the US are more careful about teens watching nudity than violence/gore. Conan *should* appeal to kids. By sheer virtue of it being one of the well-known Sword 'n Sorcery characters in modern day literature.

I liked most of the CGI/locations and stuff. I thought Rachel Nichols reminded me of Alexa Davalos a bit (from The Chronicles of Riddick).

However, Khalar Zym needed more "weight" behind him. He's a shadow lord that nobody's heard of, but evidently everybody has (seeing that Conan's black friend knows all about it). The movie needed more maps - it was weird seeing people shift effortlessly between Shaipur, Khor Kalba, Messatania and so on. Also - why not go with some of the names from REH's maps? No Aquilonia, No Vendhya, No Corinthia, No Kush, No Stygia, No Khitan, No Shadizar the wicked, no Aghrapur... It just seemed not Conan. Just some random stuff. Also things didn't seem to have any sense of distance. Conan tells Khalar Zym to meet him at X (I forget where) by mid-day and there it is. He has to first go to pick up a thief (who's weirdly like an add-on to the story) and then travel to Khor Kalba and it's done in an instant, it seems like. Evidently Tamara hasn't been sacrificed as yet since they seemingly are waiting for Conan to show up. A throwaway line like "The time for the sacrifice has to correspond with the lunar eclipse which will happen in the month of xxx" would have worked to set things up. But that isn't done.

Tamara and Conan are loose ends too. She's a monk. But does nothing remotely monk-like. She plans to follow her master's advice to go to Hyrkania (I used to always say that as Hir-kain-ia - the way Tamara says it was Higher-Kain-ia which took me a moment to figure out. But that might be purely me). What exactly is her master's plan/recommendation for her. Also it was weird how they are taken by surprise by the arrival of Khalar Zym's troops. Take a look at the Shaipur monastery matte painting and explain to me again, how any army would be able to sneak up on such a place unobserved. Tamara's good with a knife which is strange for somebody who probably lived her entire life in a monastery (unless the place was like Shaolin but no establishing shots of that nature are ever made). Also she's uncommonly good with a knife - unless Khalar Zym's army men belong to the storm-trooper standard of ineptitude. Which they do. None of the henchmen even tho' they are given awesome looks actually end up being a problem to Conan (unlike the 82 Conan movie - which was much better in that way, even tho' it was not remotely the Conan we know from REH's books). And things were not helped, when I thought that they used a body double for Tamara in the love scene. Ugh! Why do it, if you are going to be tacky about it....

Khalar Zym is a total loser. How he can become from a petty warlord to a Shadow Lord is beyond me. His daughter's powers are a mystery. Why she doesn't bring up her sand-warriors when they would have really helped (in the climax) was a mystery to me.

And the whole Khalar trying to resurrect his witch of a wife (who was killed at the stake) was so much hokum. How boy Conan is able to watch the events in that hut without being detected...

There are so many plot holes in this.

Also - for some reason, Jason Momoa and the other actors did not give a feeling of "hugeness" like one got from Arnold's Conan. It's weird how movies work - Jason is much taller than Arnold and should have looked bigger but didn't. Conan needs to be physically imposing (at least as Buscema drew him).

Plus there is one shot, of a helmet with the characteristic horns. Helmets were missed in this movie.

 

I agree with this.

 

Also, does Conan ever swear by Crom in the movie, at all?! It's like having an Avengers movie without using the words "Avengers Assemble". Does anybody swear by Mitra, even?

 

Yes, for some reason, Violence is usually favorable to our Fundamentalists then sex.

They'll watch Soap Operas filled to the brim with Infidelity, Drug Addicts, Prostitution, lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering, but, boy, you put a Gay couple on kissing, and they're screaming at the top of their lungs about "What if my 8 year old walks into the room, when that's on" (Although they fail to notice, it's rated TV13 and they have no business allowing their child to see any of it, without properly approving of it in advance.

But, yea, you're more likely to get the Fundamentalists up in arms over nudity or sex, then you are for violence

 

Hell, people here were having a fit as soon as The Playboy Club was announced. We didn't even know anything about the story, or characters or anything and they were upset, just because it involved Playboy.

 

I'm curious - has there ever been a movie in actual theatrical release which had an adult version (with nekkid chicks) and another PG-13 version (with no nekkid chicks)?

Part of what made this Conan attractive was the randomnudity - which is now all the rage (Spartacus and a bunch of other cable-pay-channel shows). However, they flattered to deceive! I expected it to continue and suddenly every female started showing up clothed. The scenes with Conan making love to what definitely seemed to be a body double of Rachel Nichols, was the only other "nekkid" portion.

My question stems from whether it would have been more fun to have kids check out Conan. Besides the other literary achievements of REH, one of his great achievements is writing absolutely thrilling testosterone-driven material. Seems ideal for a teenage boys audience. But the random nudity kinda took care of that with parents (in the US) probably refusing to let their kids see such a movie (and yes, I'm generalizing).

The thing that bothers me *now* is that the movie should have succeeded. There should be more Conan in movies (in general). And this will prevent Conan from appearing for a few more years (possibly another decade or so). Unless they do a direct to DVD version. Which would be pointless.

The whole point is that CGI is now at the stage that most people can do unbelievable stuff (monsters, high fantasy) in live-action movies. And yet, nobody is going to do that with Conan?! Aargh!

 

No. No, no, no. Hyboria is not meant to be a family-friendly setting. It's dark, it's grim, it's cruel, it's unforgiving. Conan was raised in a land that's considered harsh and savage even by Hyborian standards. He is not a role model.

 

Nowhere am I stating that a Conan movie needs to be "family friendly". This is not the Goonies. And shouldn't be. However, I was talking from two perspectives - nekkid chicks (which parents in the US *typically* don't want their kids to see) and to a lesser extent gore (think Pathfinder with the eye bouncing around). I *think* you can still make a movie that's fully REH-conformant without those two items.

And, yes, I'm a full-grown adult now who posts about Conan on an internet forum. But I came across him when I was still growing up. I read REH's stories when I was a kid too. It wasn't "family-friendly" literature but it greatly caught my fancy. Conan in many ways is an "ideal" - REH's ideal man to survive a decadent, morally compromising, corrupt ancient world. His code of conduct is that of a realist but with a dash of idealism thrown in too.

 

Late to the party as ever. I finally saw it, and in some ways, it was just what I wanted and expected in a Conan movie.

Jason Momoa inhabited the role more convincingly than Ah-nold ever did (okay, that's not a high hurdle since Ah-nold was playing Ah-nold). The production design looked like what the Hyborian Age is supposed to look like, and there was some zip and humor to some of the dialogue. The villains being father and daughter, with daddy motivated to restore his long-lost love (and also become a God) was not the expected thing, so that's good.

But the script was pedestrian, the direction was, I dunno, off, and the overall look was often cheap-ish, like they knew what they wanted to do but didn't have the budget to pull it off. I'd gladly see Momoa in more Conan movies, but it's not the quality production that I was hoping for.

One of the bad guys noted that Cimmerians don't pray (which would be futile since Crom doesn't listen) and I think Conan's dad mentioned Crom? And Conan's pirate friend said something along the lines of "By Mitra!"