Conan the Barbarian

Foreword: I will consciously avoid comparing Conan to its 1982 predacessor in this review. I have seen a few reviews complain about how this movie isn't like the Schwarzenegger picture (ignoring that both of them are loosely based on Robert E. Howard novels), but I think each movie is a product of the contemporary Hollywood culture surrounding it. The question with this newer one shouldn't be "is it better than the old one?", but rather "is it worth seeing?"

Conan is a torn movie. It can't quite decide if it wants to be a dark fantasy revenge flick about a barbarian who is hellbent on taking bloody vengeance to the murderers of his father one by one, or a sword-and-sorcerery quest movie about a barbarian teamed up with a nun trying to save the world from an evil overlord. I'm probably wrong about this, but I feel that the latter element was forced into the script by executives who realised that the teens who made Pirates of the Caribbean big are now young adults. The result is a film that dares to take more chances than Sherlock Holmes did, but ends up being just a tad too formulaic and conventional toward the end to be really ground-breaking or memorable in the long term.

You know that age-old cliché about the rough, manly action hero who has to escort a snarky princess or other higher-class girl, and ends up falling in love with her despite the fact that she spends half her time telling him what to do and the other half bitching? Well, when the aforementioned nun is introduced into the plot and starts complaning to Conan about how important it is to put her safety above his goals, he tells her to shut up and stuffs a rag in her mouth. In Conan, the "princess" has to learn to take on the ways of the man, instead of the other way around, which is one of the chief examples of it not being another cookie-cutter adventure movie. It's a shame that near the end of the movie, the subplot goes way too near to chivalric save-the-damsel territories for my liking.

The action is a mixed bag. Early in the movie, the outdoors battles are well shot and coreographed, but all the action indoors is made up of jumbled, quick edits and confusing camera angles. Later, the action settles somewhere in the middle, though the swordfighting remains very well acted throughout. There's a big action scene right before the action climax which I think was really annoying and unentertaining. It was like the scriptwriters were told to add in something that'll make a cool boss fight in the video game adaptation. Luckily, it was made up by the real emotion that the final confrontation has.

The look Conan should have had.

And that leads us to acting. Let me tell you something: Jason Momoa freaking owns this movie. From the trailers, I was afraid he'd just look weirdly girly and spin around with his sword like a ballerina for the whole movie, but I was proven 100% wrong. Momoa doesn't just do a good job: he sells the role, and the whole movie. I never got the feeling of acting from him. The only time he loses his credibility at all is when he's doing "love scenes", but luckily those are few and far between. Ron Perlman as Conan's father is good enough, but I know he could do better. He looks oddly confused most of the time, like he wasn't quite sure what he was doing. Stephen Lang as the main villain is pretty basic, but he manages to be menacing and gives the simplistic character a good shot.

This is another one of those movies where Finland doesn't get a 2D showing. Not only is the 3D in Conan pointless, but the movie has those dark scenes where it's hard to tell what's happening due to the 3D, and in one sweeping shot of a city, both me and my brother noticed the buildings moving at different paces, looking like cardboard cutouts being moved poorly across the screen. I'm tired of having to write a paragraph saying: "the 3D is pointless, see it in 2D", but that's the sad truth again. I have nothing against 3D, but I wish I was at least given a choice to spare my money and not have to get it.

With that out of my system, the sum-up: I recommend this one, I really do. At points it may feel a bit too much like a remake of The Scorpion King, but it's got its heart at the right place, and it's not entirely without balls. The sets and costumes are great, as should be expected from any movie that tries to sell its world to you this bad. It's fun, pure and simple.

It's just a shame that they wrecked the Phantom's hideout. Where will the Ghost Who Walks stay now?