My friend Leo Grin is fan of film as well as an expert on Robert E. Howard and Conan. He saw the new Conan movie last night. Here’s his snap review (sent by email):
Saw Conan the Barbarian last night. Revoltingly stupid, incomprehensibly plotted and edited, and overflowing with the kind of quasi-erotic torture porn (seemingly pulled wholesale out of a serial killer’s wet dreams) that’s become a staple of both fantasy literature and Hollywood films this century. Easily one of the worst films I’ve seen during decades of painfully slumming through mediocre genre fare — I daresay even Uwe Boll (the ham-fisted director commonly seen as the modern era’s answer to Ed Wood) has never made anything this irredeemably rotten. As you know, the best of Robert E. Howard’s pulp tales of the 1930s — which in recent years have been reprinted everywhere from academic presses to Penguin’s prestigious Modern Classics imprint, and which the various silly comic books and movies resemble not a whit — cry out for the cinematic talents of a Akira Kurosawa or a Sergio Leone, men possessed of the same operatic poetry, grandeur, heroism, and thematic depth found in Howard’s original stories. Perhaps someday. Until then? Well, the audience I saw the movie with seemed to have cheerfully low expectations, yet even they didn’t so much leave the theater as recoil from it. You’ve been warned.
Yikes!
Grown men...
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse-C.S. Lewis
I guess you didn't like it much then, eh Leo?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCaught the original on AMC the other night for the umpteenth time. It's no great piece of art either, but it's hard to overstate the perfection of Arnold's casting. Trying to replace him is futile.
(Oh, and, hey, Verizon? I would really, really LOVE to "Switch to FiOS" as the stupid worthless Captcha keeps telling me to do. So hurry up and make it available in my neighborhood. 11215. Make it happen.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI disagree. I think the original is a classic, although its strengths are not in the plot or in the acting but more in the production and direction. The settings and sets are gorgeous, the action sequences are well choreographed and shot, James Earl Jones and Max Von Sydow together lend it dramatic heft, and the costuming and general presentation of this fantasy (yet familiarly Mongolian/Nordic) world are top notch. It is a movie that is just chock full of wondrous images, images that are alternately beautiful, fanciful, dreadful, and brutal. Definitely see it in letterbox or on a big screen if you can. It is a movie that is to be WATCHED like an animated Frazetta painting than consumed like a plot or character-driven movie.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOther than that, it was great.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBoris Vallejo is a fantastic artist. Still, the monothematic 'muscle man with sword, wispy girl in bikini' covers signalled to me that there was never much of substance in the Conan books, so I never spent money on them, nor watched the movies.
As an aspiring author who has some ideas that would make pretty good movies, I shudder to think about what Hollywood would do to the subject matter, no matter how many whacks they take at it.
Oh, and Verizon FIOS guy? You're going to be waiting a long time - Verizon guys are on strike. You see, the ObamaCare law they wanted so bad turns out to be not so good to the rank and file, and therefore the strike.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHa, yeah, I know - it's extra frustrating because they've been steadily making FiOS available in my neighborhood for the past couple years, literally going block-by-block, so folks who live two streets away can get it, by I'm stuck with horrible Time Warner as my only choice. Good times.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCaptcha: in the green
This is why I don't get cable (or satellite, etc.) Free TV for me. Anything I really want to watch is downloadable by the producer.
Besides, if I paid for it, I'd feel obligated to watch it. Life is too short.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBoris Vallejo is indeed a fantastic artist, but the Conan covers were done by Frank Frazetta. And I don't believe any of them have a woman on them, but I may be wrong about that. In any event, a Frazetta woman is very far from wispy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFrazetta. Yes. Truly an unmatched talent. Nothing about Frazetta's work could be described as "wispy".
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse" ... and which the various silly comic books and movies resemble not a whit ..."
I don't think Roy Thomas and John Buscema deserved that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOr Barry Windsor-Smith. Agreed!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCertainly Marvel Comics "Conan The Barbarian" color comic and "Savage Sword Of Conan" black-and-white comic had duff moments, even in their 1970s heyday when Roy, John, and (very early on) Barry were at the wheel. But these were far outweighed by their cleverness, attentiveness to detail, humor, and ability to capture the essence of Robert Howard's character and the world he lived in for a new generation weened on television and superheroes.
In short, we wouldn't be debating Hollywood depictions of Conan today if not for them.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDitto - Roy's run on the Marvel Conan book was great. Also, check out the Dark Horse Conan books form about 2005 to present, just superb. You may be interested to know that Roy Thomas is currently writing the current run of "Conan: Road of Kings," sort of as a homage to the 40th anniversary of the original Conan comic.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI have really enjoyed what Dark Horse has done with the property - particularly when Cary Nord was penciling. That was beautiful stuff. Nothing "silly" about it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHollywood is good evidence in support of the overall Steyn thesis. Hollywood stopped creating new stuff somewhere in the 1980's. Since then it is just recycling of old ideas to the point where they are recursively remaking their remakes which were remakes of remakes....
If you look at Hollywood as the madras blazer of American culture, the garish exaggeration of our creative side, things look grim for our people. To continue the metaphor, our wild side is a steroidal meathead in leather chaps, lying unconscious amongst a litter of broken crack pipes.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHonestly, Kurosawa? Conan the Sumo warrior/wrestler? Why not go for something more attainable, like Chris Nolan, who gave Batman a new lease on life? On the other hand, I'm bored of the comic book recreations.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseConan isn't a 'comic book recreation'. The comics, like the movies, are attempts to adapt the books/stories.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI knew the movie would be bad when I saw the trailer and actors in the film were pronouncing the main character's name as "Conin" instead of "Conan". I kept waiting for Conan O'Brien to appear, as his fist name is commonly pronounced as "Conin". Was the director so afraid of the actors in this movie that he could not say "okay everyone, it's Co-NAN, not Co-NIN"?
On a related note, there are so many bad movies these days Hollywood should send me all of their screenplays and pay me $50,000 per screenplay to say "Yes" or "No". They would save millions. Though it seems to me many of their mistaken productions are so obvious that lots of other people could perform that service, too.
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