Conan The
Barbarian
Verily, the God
of Bad Cinema doth hate us so.
During a summer of mediocrity he opened up the seventh seal and sent us
plagues of lycra-clad pussies (Captain America, Green Lantern, Thor, X-Men:
The Wonder Years), Shia
the Beef shilling for the indestructible robot toy franchise, more crappy 3D (Priest,
Pirates of the Caribbean 4, all the superhero movies, Cars 2) poking its way out of a screen near you
than a William Castle retrospective and then there were The Smurfs, Sweet Baby Jesus the horror of The
Smurfs, possibly the
most cynical, culturally and intellectually bankrupt 103 minutes you’ve ever
spent in a cinema.
But lo, the Lord
of Cinematic Excrement was merely toying with us, for now he has unleashed the
greatest weapon in his arsenal, a film so devoid of any cultural or artistic
merit you will weep for the future, preferring nuclear holocaust just so the
sightless, pus-filled eyes of the deformed, mewling, mutant babies brought up
in the radioactive ruins of our shattered civilisation will never have to look
upon the horror, the horror that makes you realise that the
sooner an asteroid hits this planet and wipes humanity from its face the
better, at last giving some other species its turn at dominance. That horror is Conan The
Barbarian.
The cinematic
equivalent of eating lead paint chips during a back alley handjob from a crack
whore, Conan The
Barbarian is a film that
you will actually feel lower your IQ while it leaves you feeling empty,
dissatisfied, used, soiled, guilty about the precious moments of life you spent
watching this garbage and poorer, financially and intellectually, as it reaches
into your pocket and relieves you of your hard-earned. Yet another Hollywood reboot, and,
let’s make no mistake here, by reboot I mean ill-judged, thought-free attempt
to kick some new life into a dead franchise as cheaply as possibly. Future
generations will one day look back upon Conan The Barbarian and recognise it as the tipping point, the moment when our
culture started to gain momentum as it rolls downhill towards the waiting
idiocracy.
Scrawled in
crayon by the idiots who brought us such cultural high-water marks as Sahara (Thomas Dean
Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer) and one of The Crow
sequels (Sean Hood), the
plot of Conan is simple. After a ludicrous Morgan Freeman-voiced info-dump (all sepia
maps and random carnage) which basically tells us “This all happened before
Atlantis sank, you know, A LONG, LONG TIME AGO,” we are dumped into the middle
of a barbarian battlefield where baby Conan is delivered in a DIY-Caesarean by
his father (Hellboy). Conan grows
up to be a sulky adolescent (Leo Howard) and just as he and Hellboy are getting
to spend some quality time smelting swords (well, it is supposed to be some
kind of Iron Age) and cuffing each other manfully, evil warlord Khalar Zym (the
shouty scenery-chewing bad guy from Avatar) rides into Conan’s village looking
for the missing piece of a magic mask that will give him the power of a god or
something. After torturing Hellboy,
killing everyone in town and setting fire to the village, Zym rides off to
conquer the world and generally hang around waiting for Conan to grow up,
become that model guy that used to be in one of the crap Stargate spin-offs and
come looking for revenge.
Cue Morgan
phoning in another info-dump, some freeing of slaves, some saving of topless
wenches (WTF? He’s supposed to be
a barbarian. Surely he should be
enslaving those topless wenches?) and some more manly cuffing before the now
adult Conan (Jason Momoa) suddenly remembers he meant to kill that guy who
killed Hellboy and sets of on a quest for revenge, saving (and deflowering)
sacred pure-blood virgin priestess Tamara (Rachel Nichols) from Zym and his
creepy, sexy, incestuous, witch-daughter Marique (Rose McGowan, who else?)
along the way. Cue some really
boring hack-and-slash swordplay and some disappointing monsters against a
series of CGI backdrops.
Directed by
Marcus Nispel (the hack who also gave us lacklustre reboots of The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre and Friday
the 13th), Conan isn’t a film; it’s a video game in
waiting. Conan fight baddies. Conan win. Conan fight boss.
Conan win. Conan
level-up. Conan fight more
baddies, Conan sneak, Conan fight next boss, level-up. There’s no scene that can’t be ended
with either some manly cuffing or holding a sword/baby/severed head aloft and
howling at the camera as it cranes above you. And why is it in fantasy films like this that the characters
that attain godlike powers never actually bother using them, preferring instead
to go toe-to-toe with some muscle-bound oaf with a sword? Brutal and crude, this Conan lacks the wit, intelligence and sense of
fun of the 1982 Arnie movie.
Written by Oliver Stone and directed by Hollywood maverick John Milius,
the original Conan
The Barbarian was an
adult fantasy, steeped in cod-Nietzschean philosophy, it was an ambitious attempt at
myth-making which at least credited its audience with more intelligence than
its protagonist who’s, well, an oaf with a sword. It’s doubtful that the team behind the reboot could even
spell Nietzche. Which is worrying
when the director’s German.
According to
popular myth, at the premiere of the Victor Mature-starring Samson and
Delilah, Cecil B.
DeMille asked his friend Groucho Marx what he thought of the film. “Well, there's
just one problem, C.B.” said Groucho.
“No picture can hold my interest where the leading man's tits are bigger
than the leading lady's.” As an
actor, that pretty much sums up Jason Momoa; fantastic bosoms. The best in the film in fact. No small achievement in a film that
seems to feature every beautiful woman in Bulgaria with her puppies out
(seriously, check out the end credits, you’ve never seen so many women billed
as ‘Topless Wench’). A model-turned-actor
who’s own hair once gave him whiplash (google it), Momoa spends much of the
film with a constipated frown on his face and looks more like he’s on a quest
for a mirror than revenge. Better
at butchering dialogue than bad guys, he alternates growling his lines with
GROWLING his lines and has none of the charisma of the Governator. He doesn’t even have the charisma of
Kevin Sorbo. And just how can you
take seriously as Conan a guy whose own hair is capable of incapacitating him?
As Zym, Stephen Lang just chews the scenery much as he
did in Avatar while Rachel Nichols manages to be
both simpering and prissy as the damsel-in-distress. You’d be hard pushed to describe the 1982 Conan as a
feminist film but at least Sandahl Bergman’s Valeria had a job. She was a barbarian warrior and thief
in her own right who even takes a bullet (ok, a magic snake arrow) for Conan.
Perhaps the only thing worth seeing Conan for is Rose
McGowan. Always the best thing
about whatever she’s in, Rose doesn’t disappoint, vamping it up in white
pancake make-up, cute facial tattoos and blood-red lips, clicking her Freddy
Krueger-style talons and cuddling up to daddy in a silk-draped bed, an image
reminiscent of Serge & Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Lemon
Incest video.
Creating an instant Goth pin-uo girl as the evil witch Marique, McGowan
injects some much needed camp and humour into a film that despite being
wall-to-wall boobs and blood, succeeds in being stupefyingly boring.
Completely lacking tension, wit, entertainment or any
form of artistic, intellectual or cultural merit, Conan
The Barbarian is profoundly depressing, a moronic, cynical triumph
of corporate film-making. It’s all
downhill from here folks.
David Watson
Director
Marcus Nispel
Cast
Jason Momoa, Stephen Lang, Rose
McGowan, Ron Perlman, Rachel Nichols, Said Taghmaoui, Leo Howard
Country
USA
Screenplay
Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua
Oppenheimer, Sean Hood
Running time
112min
Year
2011
Certificate
15
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