Movie review: Conan the Barbarian 3D

Robert E. Howard, the founding father of sword and sorcery literature, is also the creator of one of the most iconic characters in modern literature. Conan the Cimmerian, since the first Conan story was published in the weird tale magazine back in the 1930's. 80 years after the author's death, Conan has appeared in hundreds of different media productions: books, movies, comic books, video games, TV series, and even board games.

In 1982, John Milus directed the movie "Conan the Barbarian", starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although Arnold's Conan movie was not faithful to the original material, and was somewhat dull. The movie is considered as a cult classic today. The 1984 sequel "Conan the Destroyer", once starred by Arnie was, to be honest, a joke of a movie that was almost not watchable.

Almost 30 years later, big Hollywood studio decided to throw in big budget to reboot the Conan franchise. After a few would-be directors dropped out of the project, they finally settled with Marcus Nispel to direct a new film for the world's most legendary barbarian.

In order for me to review this movie, I will have to talk about Marcus Nispel a little bit more. To be brief, this man's entire movie directing career consist of remakes of horror movies. And so far, Mr. Nispel has yet to come come up with a movie that is even half decent.. I remember seeing an action epic movie, "Pathfinder", directed by Marcus Nispel, and I have to say that although the movie is action packed, but it bored me to death. So when I first heard that Marcus Nispel was going to direct the new Conan movie, immediately I thought the movie was going to be nothing short of a disaster. So having introducing this background, now I can go into the actual review.

The story of Conan the Barbarian is a very simple one. The bad guy is looking to re-assemble an ancient, evil relic that will give him power to rule the world. He comes to young Conan's village with his lackeys to seek a piece of that relic. They slaughtered the entire village, and killed Conan's father in front of him. Young Conan escaped, grew up big and strong, and by chance stumble upon the bad guy again. Vowed for revenge, tracked down the baddies and his lackeys, and killed them all.. barbarian style..

As a promotion strategy, the movie studio even released the movie novel a month before the movie's release. I happened to have read the movie novel of Conan the Barbarian, and I thought it actually had a half decent story. Therefore, my expectation about the movie went up a little bit despite the fact that Marcus Nispel was the director.

Then I saw the movie in the cinema, in 3D... and guess what? Being a Conan fan, I am very disappointed at how the movie turn out to be. No, it is actually not a very bad movie, but it certainly wasn't a good movie at all. From my opinion, there are only two redeeming qualities about this new Conan movie, with everything else bad, so let me talk about the good stuff first:

Firstly, the new actor who plays Conan (Jason Momoa), has done a terrific job portraying Conan. I am glad that they finally chose the right guy to play Conan. Gone is the brutish blonde haired, blue eyed, body building, viking (Northern European) look alike Arnold with unnatural sized biceps, clumsy sword play with awkward immobility problems.

Instead, the new Conan (Jason Momoa) is almost exactly what Robert E. Howard described Conan to be in his books. Black haired, bronze skin, powerfully built but athletic with incredible agility. Jason Momoa portrayed Conan as an anti hero who is dark, brooding, intelligent but not overly sophisticated, barbaric yet not primitive. Just like Robert E. Howard wanted Conan to be when he created Conan in front of his typewriter in 1932.

The second thing I like, are the action scenes and the aesthetics of this movie. The action scenes are very well done, the sword fights are great. This is attributed to Jason Momoa's physicality and the well rehearsed choreography. Conan moves with great fluidity, and the action scenes really brought to life Howard's description in his books that "Conan moves with the speed of a panther and strikes like a wounded lion". The aesthetics, although with heavily CGI effect, looks great in this movie.

Other than choice of actor, action scenes and aesthetics. Everything else about this movie is bad..

Marcus Nispel, has talents when it comes to directing action scenes and has a good taste for aesthetics. However, he has no idea how to make a movie flow smoothly. This two hour long movie has non-stop actions, but jumps from one battle scene into another, with a formulaic 30 seconds dialogue in between to connect the fight scenes. The result is an extremely fragmented, choppy movie that has zero character development, and laughable story progression.

All of the character development, background stories and character interactions present in the movie novel (pre-released by the movie studio) are all absent in the actual film! This movie feels like a 1980's video game with 30 second dialogues between boss fights that serves as mission debrief! Personally, I think Marcus Nispel is coming very close to Edwood in terms of bad directing.

Or perhaps, the movie studio has decided to cut out all the story stuff so they can make the movie shorter and fit into the standard 2 hours running time. Hence more screening time and more sales turn over.. if that is the case, I hope they will release the uncut version because I am willing to give this movie another chance.

In terms of violence, sex and nudity. This movie has some sex scenes and nudity, but it is not very bad. However, in terms of violence, it is definitely quite heavy. In Australia, this movie has MA15+ rating. However, I think it should have been R-rated due to heavy violence. There are a lot of bloood and gore as Conan engages on his personal vendetta. So I don't think this is a movie for everyone, especially if you are very sensitive about heavy violence.

Important things to think about:

There is one thing that I think is worth mentioning. In one of the scenes in the movie, Conan's romance interest asked Conan if he thinks the gods have purposes for people in this world. To Conan replied, he is not concerned about after life, and said "I live, I love, I slay, and I am content".

Now let's think about what Conan is saying here for a moment. Do you really believe that human beings serve no higher purpose other than to "live in the moment"? Note that existentialism and Nietzsche's philosophy is heavily embedded in all of Robert E. Howard's original Conan stories. Although I am a Conan fan, but I have always disagreed with Howard's view of existentialism. This is because I am a Christian, and I believe that the Bible says human beings are created by God with a special purpose, which was lived out to the full in the life of Jesus Christ in his 33 years on earth. So if you are reading this, do you really think that we have no special purpose in this world other than being content with all the material things of this world and our own works? See, Robert E. Howard, a master story writer with excellent command of English, created Conan, the world's most legendary Barbarian. Their works and stories are stuff of mythical proportion, yet both Howard and Conan will not be here forever. They are like flowers that blooms and will fade away into the sands of time, one day be forgotten. Just like this attempt to reboot the franchise will eventually fade in a few years time.

So where do you invest your life in? In the material things of the present? Or will you invest your life in the things that are eternal? Maybe it is time to think about this question before it is too late.

Final verdict:

Story 3/10: Marcus Nispel, is pretty close to Edwood as a terrible director. The plots are so choppy and fragmented that the film feels like a 2 hour long UFC pay-per-view. The only redeemable part of the story is Jason Momoa's portrayal as Conan.

Cinematography 9/10: The action scenes are great, once again attributed to Jason Momoa's ability to carry the physical role of Conan. The aesthetics are beautiful, the color contrasts, designs, production values are all top notch. In terms of cinematography, this is one of those style over substance movie. There is probably no need to watch this movie in 3D, as the 3D effects are not spectacular.

Sex and nudity: medium - There is about 30 seconds of sex scenes, and some nudity scenes, but it is not very explicit, compared to many modern day films.

Violence: Very high - There are a lot of blood and gore, the violence level is pretty high and the body count is high. If you don't like movies with a lot of violence, then I would suggest skipping this one for your own good.

Final score: 6/10 - Conan the Barbarian 3D, is a really average movie, a typical action flick and a classic example of how the movie producer, studio and the director has ruined great potentials of a concept in favor of capitalizing cash earning. Only Jason Momoa's acting, the action scenes and the aesthetics saved the movie from being a total disaster.. A sequel is probably coming in a few years time, I sincerely Mr. Nispel won't be the director again.. until the day when Hollywood decide to grow up and make a Conan movie worthy and faithful to Robert E. Howard's books, I would remain to be a fan of Conan because of those 80 years old Robert E. Howard tales.