Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Movie Review: Conan: The Barbarian (2011)

Today my blog is going to be a little bit different from the norm as i really wanted to take some time to review the reboot of the Conan series that originally start Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1982. The original movie series wasn't much to write home about in my personal opinion, it was a cult classic to some and developed a rich pre-midevil (earlyevil?) world and clearly drew the lines in the sand between the warring factions enough to create an MMO that funcom proceeded to screw up in there classic style of messing up wet dreams.

The reboot to the series, like the originals weren't much to write home about. The story was dramatically different and took a completely different turn, however the landscapes were clearly and obviously chosen for their resemblance to the MMO's locations. Certain scenes and certain story points were obviously made to emphasize why the world of Age of Conan is the way it is.

All in all i truly felt that the movie was just cliche ridden and was a $90 million B-movie. I did not see any lush story or character development that merited an additional $70 million tacked on to the original cost of producing the original movie. The cast had a few big players such as Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Hellboy2) and the lesser known Stephen Lang (Avatar, Men Who Stare At Goats) but the rest of the cast is B-movie material at best and hence why the movie plays out like one really expensive one.

If the new Conan is to show the shape of things to come for the long slew of Schwarzenegger reboots that hollywood plans to usher out like waste from their colons, i am going to be highly disappointed. It's incredible that the screenwriters guild stiked for raises so they could just reboot old bad movies with potential, rescreen old good movies in 3d and write new scripts that aren't worth the time it takes to write them.

Have you seen this movie? What were your thoughts on it?

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