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%
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