Conan the Barbarian

[Super Pony]

It wasn't good all the way through, but I had fun watching this movie. However I have also been known to collect cheesy action movies and hold Raw Deal in high regard so...weigh my claims of 'fun' accordingly.

I couldn't help but feel that the theatrical version has been cut differently from what was intended because it was so choppy in parts. That makes me look forward to alternat cuts of the film that could be in a blu-ray or dvd offering.

The scenery shots were really killer though, and I thought the costuming/wardrobes were quite spot on. Plus there was enough bloody bits and exposed epidermis to create a spectacle worth sitting through.

Failing interest in any of the above, you can always see this at a beer-theater (or your own home) and drink every time Conan somehow has a new horse, or looks through his bangs at the camera.

 

[Jack7]

I went to see Conan today and can say I really liked the preview they showed for John Carter (of Mars).

And the last few minutes of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes when I went to get my wife from her film.

 

[Water Bob]

I went to see Conan today and can say I really liked the preview they showed for John Carter (of Mars).

I was getting a bit geeked for JCoM until I saw the preview. Now? Not so much.

And the last few minutes of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes when I went to get my wife from her film.

Apes is a good film. They did a really good job on that one. Nice reimagination. Hope the series continues.

 

[Argyle King]

I highly enjoyed Conan; I'm baffled by the poor reviews. There were a few Hollywood cliches which snuck in, but, overall, I was pleasantly pleased. The movie got many of the small details right; I was able to tell that the leading lady was Hyrkanian before the movie stated such, and I was also able to pick out that the henchman using the maul was a Pict. Another small detail they got right was Conan's attitude and demeanor.

Was the movie perfect? No. However, I highly enjoyed the movie both as somebody who is an avid fan of the original Howard stories and as someone who loves tabletop rpgs (a lot of great encounter ideas to use.) In my opinion, the movie felt like a motion picture version of something I would read in Weird Tales. I enjoyed it.

 

[rgard]

I highly enjoyed Conan; I'm baffled by the poor reviews.

I'm with you Johnny3D3D. I enjoyed this version immensely.

Some thoughts:

With all the background shots this one really felt more like Hyboria than the originals.

I wasn't certain about Mamoa when I heard he would play Conan, but I feel he nailed it, blue eyes or not.

Lang was brilliant as Zym. Great bad guy. Too bad the character dies. Would have been fun for Conan to duke it out with him again in a later installment.

I was not in any way annoyed by the job Rachel Nichols did. That said, any Conan heroine will forever pale in comparison to Sandahl Bergman.

Ron Perlman is fantastic as Conan's dad. I really like this guy's work over the years and he didn't let us down in this one.

Like others I didn't get the ship as the villian's bedroom suite, other than the bad guy drags his ship around, because 'he can'. I'm hoping that will get cleared up in the director's cut.

The only thing that I felt slightly let down by is the cliche 'bad guy kills protagonist's dad so protagonist's motivation in life is to kill the bad guy'. Yea, homage to the Arnold version maybe, but not needed. I figure they worked that in for the whole Cimmerian steel thing from earlier version. Howard's Conan didn't need that motivation.

We sat in the seats that shake and move with the action on the screen. Kinda fun, but would have been fine watching this in normal seats and 2D.

I hope this version does make money for them eventually. I'd hate to wait another 27 years for another Conan film. Maybe an HBO series? I'd be happy with that.

Was the movie perfect? No..

Agreed, but perfect is difficult to achieve. Only two movies ever achieved perfection in my opinion: Raiders of the Lost Ark and Casablanca.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

We sat in the seats that shake and move with the action on the screen. Kinda fun, but would have been fine watching this in normal seats and 2D.

I think that the 3d was utterly wasted on this (just like most other movies), and I really wish I could've caught it in 2d. But alas, all the theaters showing it in 2d were on the other side of the District, and inconvenient to get to. At least I went to a matinee.

I did enjoy it, though it wasn't terribly good. I'd like another one, too, though.

Really, though, if you've stripped the Mask of Eldritch Power off of the Big Bad and broken it into 8 pieces, who says you have to keep them in one piece? How about, I dunno, grind it into powder? Break it into more pieces? And why keep your piece in your smithy-temple? Put it at the bottom of a pond instead!

Brad

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

One more thing....

Oh...and one more thing.... Isn't that Morgan Freeman doing the honors as narrator? Uncredited?

Hrm...I was just listening to the end of Scary Movie 4 on Comedy Central.

I kinda think they should've gotten James Earl Jones to do the narration for Conan.

Brad

 

[Orius]

I finally got around to seeing this.

It wasn't a bad film, I think it was truer to Howard's Conan than Arnie's films. Momoa did fairly well in the roll, and Perlman and Lang had good character moments too. But the film felt too long, somewhere after the halfway point I started getting bored with it, and honestly, nothing about Conan should be boring at all. There were some points I liked: young Conan was great, the cities felt like they fit the setting, and the tentacle monster thing in the dungeon below the temple or whatever it was were all good.