Conan The Barbarian Review

• 21st Nov 2011

Even before I watched Conan the Barbarian I had an idea I wouldn’t like it. I think the initial warning signs were Marcus Nispal as Director and Rose McGowan acting in it. All in all my instincts were right, Conan isn’t a good film. It’s not the worst film I’ve seen, it had the potential to be a good film. However, the thin plot, poor continuity and questionable casting choices certainly rank it in the top ten.

I’ve not particularly got anything against Marcus Nispal, he’s done well to go from music video’s to feature films. However, every film I’ve seen by him has left me disappointed in one way or another. He has a habit of adding to source material and nearly destroying franchises in the process. For example, in his remake ofFriday the 13thwhen Jason kidnaps a girl instead of killing her. Being a fan of Friday the 13th, this will always haunt me and has made me wary of any Marcus Nispal film.

Let’s start with the plot, or what I gathered about the plot without resorting to wikipedia for help. The film begins with some background from Morgan Freeman; a group of evil Necromancer’s made a mask that enslaved the entire world except for a group of barbarian tribes. The tribes eventually defeat the Necromancer’s and destroy the mask, scattering them across the world. Enter Zym (Stephen Lang) and his daughter Marique (Rose McGowan) who want the last piece of the mask which Conan’s father (Ron Perlman) has. Long story short, Zym killed Conan’s father and leaves Conan to die. Twenty years later Zym is hunting for the final piece of the puzzle, the pure blood daughter of the Necromancers, Tamara (Rachel Nichols). Meanwhile, Conan is looking for revenge and ends up joining with Tamara.

The problems with the film are too many to list but the likes of the cast, a weak script, a flimsy story and terrible structure are a few. Whoever had the idea of a twenty five minute introduction was an idiot. It was dull and unnecessarily long. Only around ten minutes of the opening bore any relevance to the story. The rest only served to hammer the point home that Conan can kill people and show off some gratuitous violence. In fact, the violence is probably the only consistent aspect of this film.

One annoyance was the casting, it felt wrong. I like Jason Momoa a lot, he was excellent in Game of Thrones but he was badly cast as Conan. The same goes for Ron Perlman and Stephen Lang, both good actors but, for some reason, felt badly cast in their roles. Without a doubt though, the worst cast character was Rose McGowan. I felt like she had a completely different script to everyone else, her performance was like a bad caricature of a Disney villain and she simply didn’t fit in. The scenes with her in were quite painful to watch. However, I can’t place all the blame on her. The story and script was weak and characters motives (bar Conan’s) were flimsy at best. Her character especially served little purpose and was under used which was a shame because the character had the potential to be a great villain.

One thing I did enjoy is that they Morgan Freeman did the voice over at the start. I’ve no idea why but this made me think two things; one being that “maybe the film won’t be too bad if he’s narrating”, the second being “he must need apay check”. It seemed like such a random addition to the film and so out of place but was possibly the only redeeming factor about the film.

The continuity was simply unbelievable. So many errors and dodgy cuts made me honestly question how this ever got released. Weapons would change hands, limbs that were cut off reappear and costume changed radically between shots. In one scene a man is thrown through a wall in one shot, and then said wall in intact in the next.

All in all if there is no paint left to watch dry, watch this film. It’s terribly made, terribly acted and had about as much depth as a puddle. Avoid at all costs.

Michael Wharton