Movie Review: Conan the Barbarian
No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, there are some people that are born to play a role; these actors become such a part of our cultural memory that they are the standards by which others are judged. Sean Connery as James Bond. Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade. Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. And Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan. He may not have been the world-traveling, charismatic, humorous fellow that Robert E. Howard envisioned in the 1930s, but Schwarzenegger’s 1982 and 1984 presentation of the character still resonates strongly even today. It was an uphill battle from the start, and while the new Conan the Barbarian does make an impression as a classy grade-B action adventure, it also makes the mistake of loosely following the original’s plot…and does a weaker job of it.
Conan was born on the battlefield…literally. The opening scene shows us fetus Conan being untimely ripped (to quote Shakespeare) from his mother’s womb. Raised by his father Corin (Ron Perlman) to his teenage years, Conan then is witness to his village being burned and destroyed by mad power monger Khalar Zim (Stephen Lang), his eerie witch daughter Marique (who grows up to be Rose McGowan), and a gang of assorted cronies. Zim pushes the envelope, however, when he sets up an overly elaborate death trap for Conan and Corin, which results in one of them dying. Guess who.
Anyway, Conan (Jason Momoa) becomes an adventurer, who, after years of wandering and getting into all sorts of trouble, finds out who Zim is and what he’s up to: he’s been gathering pieces of a mask that will give him unlimited power. How exactly is not explained fully (somehow it’ll resurrect his dead wife who’ll give him all the knowledge he could possibly want about the afterlife), but the ritual also requires the host body from a descendant of one of the original creators of the mask, a young monk named Tamara (Rachel Nichols). As you’d expect, Conan just happens to stumble across her first, and he must keep her safe while exacting revenge for his destroyed village.
Which leads us to the good of Conan the Barbarian. There is absolutely no attempt here to make Conan family-friendly. There is plenty of blood and wenches all around (and very little of it CG, as far as I could tell), and there are some particularly gruesome moments as well as some entertaining action sequences. The particular standout is Conan fighting a group of warriors created out of sand by Marique. Director Marcus Nispel made a wise choice of using real actors to portray the monsters (except when they crumble to sand, which is done to excellent effect) and their hopping into and out of solid ground is handled beautifully…it’s been a long time since I’ve seen any special effects in a movie and left wondering how it was accomplished. There’s plenty of wide-open fantastic vistas, one of the few things the original film lacked with a mostly desert landscape, and to be honest, Jason Momoa does a fine job in the title role. He never tries to emulate Arnold, and quite frankly, he doesn’t need to. When he shows up in the film, he steers the ship as well as he can, and his portrayal left me hoping to see more of his adventures. Sure, he has a few laughable lines, but hey, so did Arnold. McGowan is also delightfully creepy, taking relish in playing the bad girl to the hilt.
But as strong as these moments are, the film also has some glaring weaknesses. The biggest offender by far is the 3D conversion. Not only is it not necessary, but one flyover shot in the middle of the film was quite possibly the single worst thing I’ve ever seen in 3D, as revealed background elements actually move around and stretch as the camera pulls them into view. For comparison, imagine the classic Poltergeist “extending hallway” scene, only unintentionally hilarious. Only one shot in the whole film looked good in 3D, and it’s not worth the price of admission; see it in 2D and enjoy.
The second is the entire prologue of the story. I said the film does well when Momoa shows up; this is the reason why. This scene is necessary to set up both Conan and Zim’s motivation, but is handled clumsily, vacillating between sheer camp and the worst kind of action choreography. American Indian-esque warriors growl like tigers for no reason, the battle for the village is the noisiest, least comprehensible fight this side of The Expendables, Perlman and Lang aren’t allowed to cut loose and do what they do best, and Conan’s most tragic moment is handled with a death trap Dr. Evil would consider a little too silly. I know it sounds weird, but the Schwarzenegger version was subtle compared to this. Plus, if you have Morgan Freeman narrate your opening sequence and it sounds ridiculous, you’ve committed some sort of crime against cinema.
Jason Momoa in Conan the Barbarian.
Photo by Simon Varsano – © 2011 – Lionsgate.
Thirdly, everyone outside of Conan and Marique is far too underdeveloped. Lang plays a generic evil villain…the fact that I can even write that sentence shows how little fun he’s allowed to have with the role. He may be a competent villain, but compare him with James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom, who had less worldly ambitions and far less screen time, yet left a much bigger impact that Zim doesn’t come close to replicating. And that really goes for nearly everyone else too…they’re not bad in the roles they play, just very generic. Even Marique gets the shaft in the end…with all the talk of her being a witch with growing powers, she uses them appropriately once and then forgets she has them for the rest of the movie. Then there’s an action scene that exists solely to get rid of two henchmen that the screenwriters probably should have written out completely, knowing there wasn’t enough time for them to be get a proper back story. Even the quest for revenge feels undeveloped; by the time we meet Conan, he’s already had a pretty adventurous life, so unlike the original film, there is no sense of the hero going, “Well, that’s done; what now?” We get the sense he’s going to be just fine whether he wins or loses.
In 1982, the original Conan the Barbarian deviated from the source material and created a film that, though perhaps dated, told a tale where Conan and the villain spoke little in the way of dialogue, but still said so much about the search for vengeance and the power of evil. In 2011, we get a Conan truer to the material with lots of bloody fun, but hollow on the inside. It is a B-action picture at heart, but compared to its predecessor, it doesn’t quite measure up. Momoa makes a decent enough Conan, and if anyone should take up Schwarzenegger’s sword, it might as well be him; if the film does well, he certainly deserves a much more thought-provoking sequel. And Robert E. Howard fans, rejoice: It’s not another Kull the Conqueror, and that’s something to be excited about.
Seth Paul
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