Conan the Barbarian

This past Tuesday, Evan and I saw Conan the Barbarian (I must confess, I haven't seen the original. I've seen bits and pieces, and particularly enjoyed the part where Ahnold punches out a camel, PETA be damned). Anyway, we got to the theatre fairly early for a movie that only made $10 million on its opening weekend, and settled in for the preview. Evan got two, and I got one, and neither of us got Immortals, since the trailer opened with the words Immortals. Kinda defeats the purpose of the preview game.

The movie itself opens with the logos of four different companies, which is probably not a good sign, but as the years past, more and more companies get involved in financing movies. In ten years, half the movie will just be company logos. Anyhow, after a brief narration explaining the animated backstory of a mask that bestows magical powers (and how it was shattered), we cut to live action, where Conan is born via improvised C-section during the middle of a battle. His mother names him and dies, and his father holds him up to the sky and roars his approval (as if to say “Gaze upon the fruit of my loins. That’s right. I got it on.” Or possibly "please Lion King, don't sue us.")

12 years later, Conan (and the ‘a’ is definitely emphasized, like the name Nancy. Basically, stretch your mouth as wide as you can whilst saying his name, and you’ll pronounce it correctly) and the other older boys in his tribe are trying to prove themselves men. During the trial, they’re set upon by barbarians (not Conan’s barbarians. Different barbarians, who apparently learned to communicate from elephants, because they tend to roar like Chewbacca instead of yell or shout). The other boys retreat, but Conan takes them all on himself, eventually bringing their heads to his astounded father after a vicious fight.

Soon, though, their entire village is set upon by more evil people, led by that evil general from Avatar (with the scars on the side of his head, and the irrational hatred of native Pandorans). He’s got a different haircut this time, and he’s after the last piece of the magic mask. His daughter, a witch (and when was the last time we saw a young witch outside of Harry Potter, hmmmm?) manages to find the part without needing to torture Conan’s father, or Conan himself. The village is slaughtered, Conan’s father is killed, and Conan is abandoned inside a burning blacksmith.

A number of years later, and we finally get to see grownup Conan (he’s 6 foot 5 with red hair and a late night talk show … no, wait). After attacking some slavers to free the slaves, he parties hard with his comrades at the local bar (you know, what everyone does after freeing slaves). While there, he sees one of the men who was with General Evil (not his real name) and learns he’s a prison warden. Starting a bar fight and then turning himself in, he’s able to infiltrate the prison, then question the warden. And off we go on the epic tale of revenge, with an accidental rescue thrown in for good measure. After all, what would a barbarian movie be without a little love interest, or the obligatory sex scene? Oh yeah – tasteful. And you just can’t have that.

This is almost the perfect mindless movie. Shut your brain off, and enjoy for two hours. There’s plenty of action. I think the longest time without any action at all was about 15 minutes, and that was broken up by the obligatory sex scene (“Hey, if we’re going to be rated R, we may as well deserve it). So if there’s not action for us, at least there’s some for Conan (snigger).

The acting is about what you’d expect. Jason Momoa borrows Christian Bale’s Batman voice a lot. General Evil is sometimes hammy, but most of the time alright. His daughter is uncomfortably evil, and possibly incestuous (I know. Ew). The rescuee (the second half of General Evil’s plan, the first half being the acquisition of the mask) is often just eye candy, but gets in a few licks of her own when she can pull herself together enough to swing a sword or wield a dagger. When she’s finally captured by a group, she kills one of them before the rest drag her away, which is so clichéd it’s perfect for this movie.

The fight scenes weren’t as well choreographed as some, but I might be too used to Martial Arts masters going at each other with direction from Yuen Woo-Ping, so there’s that. Plus, the lack of quality is made up for by the abundance of quantity.

The music is serviceable. I didn’t notice it at all until the credits, which means it did its job, but wasn’t spectacular. It didn’t take away anything from the movie, or change the tone of scenes to something worse, but I doubt I’ll buy a score if I didn’t notice it.

One thing I really liked was that I finally saw a fight between dual-wielding people. Two people, each with two swords. Never seen it before. Now I have. I would have liked to see it in Star Wars, but I’ll take it here. So well done on that. Especially with the plentiful use of reverse grip.

All in all, this is definitely a theatre movie. Quite a bit of action, enough humour, borders on campy a few times. A bit too much time for me spent in the Younger Conan time period, but they were smart about it and kept his lines to a minimum. And it also gave us time to appreciate Ron Perlman in a fantasy movie not butchered by Uwe Boll.

The one thing the tended to overdo (besides the action, but I think it's impossible to overdo that) is the holding things up to the sky and screaming. Babies, swords, whatever. Man, they're going to get sued.