Conan the Barbarian

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Review by Anthony Morris

Remakes only really make sense if you think that movies today can do things better than the movies of yesteryear.

Remaking Conan the Barbarian makes no sense whatsoever, after all, how are you going to outdo one of the most awesome films of all time?

You might not think the original Conan the Barbarian is any good, but that's because you don't like barbarian films; the first Conan is pretty much the pinnacle of the genre, the best barbarian film ever made, and remaking it is up there with trying to repaint the Mona Lisa.

So, having established that on that level at least this film is doomed to fail, how badly does it fail? Not all that badly really.

This time around Conan is a hot-headed killer straight out the gate – or straight out of his mother's womb, as he's born via battlefield caesarean at the blade of his father (Ron Perlman) after she suffers a fatal wound (don't ask why she was fighting in the first place – she's a barbarian, dammit).

So when his village is wiped out by an evil warlord (Stephen Lang) and his motley crew he's not forced into a decade of slavery until he turns into Arnold Schwarzenegger like the original, he just runs off and grows up into the almost as muscle-bound but slightly more conventionally handsome Jason Momoa.

The resulting vengeance plot – Conan tracks down and takes out everyone who killed his village, hooking up with the “pure-blood” priestess (Rachel Nichols) the warlord needs to sacrifice to pull off his evil scheme – makes next to no real sense; its barbarian times where everyone's hacking up everyone else, so even once Conan's got revenge it's hardly like he's going to become a farmer or anything.

Still, there's loads of CGI blood, no-one even owns a shirt, heaps (literally) of people die in unpleasant but badass ways, there's a fair amount of slave girl nudity and a few semi-cool monsters rear their ugly heads.

What is lacking though, apart from variety as the second half of the film starts to get a little samey, are any quotable lines of dialogue.

When you think of Conan, you think of "the riddle of steel" and "what is best in life?" and plenty of mentions of pagan god Crom; without that, this was always going to be an also-ran.

It's still better than Conan the Destroyer though.

DVD Special Features

Despite a lot of hype leading up to it's release at cinemas - the film struggled at the Box Office. Costing close to $90M, the flick took less than $22M in the USA and less than $35M worldwide. If you know how to make the noise of an exploding bomb, do it now.

There are some  decent extras on offer here none the less, they include :

• Two Audio Commentaries

• History of the Conan franchise Featurette

• "The Man Who Would Be Conan: Robert E. Howard" Featurette that looks at the creator of the famous character

• Two additional featurettes that examine the action and fight scenes

Conclusion: Movie 70% Extras: 70%