Conan Scriptwriter Ruminates On Failure

[Valksy]

I think that one of the most telling sentences in the article is that there was a reliance on "tracking numbers" and early audience responses. Writers and film makers sometimes need to have faith in their product and not let some poxy bloody group of people essentially create the film by a horrible blend of quasi-democratic committee making. Simple fact - a lot of audience members DON'T know better. And how were the people chosen for these test audiences? Who were they actually trying to tune the film for? My pet fucking peeve is hearing that an ending has been re-written and re-shot, against the original vision, because a group of faceless nobodies didn't like it.

Sounds as if the blame lies in many places. Yes, the cameras should not roll until a script is agreed upon that is not a bucket of rancid shit. But a director with limited vision, producers who are desperate for a little power rush and sample audiences who don't know their arses from their elbows don't help either.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

They picked the wrong guy to be conan, should have been Michael Jai White in a wig.

 

[Studs MacKenzie]

I just don't think the audience was there and the source material itself is "meh" (it's so "meh", I don't even have a proper adjective for it). I don't know anyone who was even remotely interested in this film. Sure, the original Conan had its moment - but I don't think anyone needed this retell.

 

[karamazovnew]

Try to build upon the original Conan, and you're bound to fail miserably. Why? Conan is Arnold, there's no way to get around that. Even worse, the original Conan had so much art pouring through it's pores that no other movie has had any similar feel to it. Cinematography, music and costumes came together to create a masterpiece. Just look at this scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5K3AKl5qpc
Sure, it didn't even try to recreate the books, but it stood on its own.

Now, if you want to make a new Conan... it's easy as cake, you already have the script. It's bloody called "Red Nails"!!!

 

[Frotality]

yeah...i just cant sympathize at all. i mean, if you attach yourself to something that even you believe is certain to fail, then how can you expect sympathy when it does? this guy doesnt exactly have an impressive resume, i assume he's writes for business and not for artistic passion, so what the hell does he expect critics are gonna say about his routine script? your lucky enough to have a job where you barely have to know the basics of narrative structure to get by; there are plenty of hack writers who do just fine (somehow) even though theyre terrible; thats just hollywood culture. yes, hollywood loves to fuck with scripts, but they didnt exactly hire you due to your history of gripping fantasy tales in the first place, did they?

my point being; if you suck at something, i cant feel sorry for you when you fail. suck leading to failure is kind of the natural order of things; i understand you need to eat, but no one is going to fuck with the natural order just for you buddy. count your losses and move on.

 

[quantumsoul]

I really enjoyed Conan in 2D. It had a lot of action and the story and characters were good for this type of movie. It starts really strong but the final act was a bit weak though.

It was much better than Transformers 3 that's for sure.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

I just don't get it. I enjoyed this movie immensely. It was fun, action packed, a great way to escape for a few hours, and loaded with awesome action sequences.

And yet, Transformers is a blockbuster hit, with it's weak characters, difficult to view action scenes, and overall terrible misuse of the property license from start to finish.

This is why I've given up on listening to anyone's opinions about a movie. This movie is JUST as good, if not better than Dark of the Moon in a dozen different ways, yet it's a flop and failure to many. I personally blame nostalgia... too many people get far away glazed over looks in their eyes when they think back to Arnold's run with the character so they automatically go in with their hater shades on. Nothing less than a pure work of art would have satisfied them,and even then, there's still doubt many of them would have admitted openly that the movie exceeded their expectations.

I expect it to become a more "popular" film when it hits dvd, and people will feel more at ease giving it a once, even twice over at a fraction of the cost.
It's like the Mechanic... I thought that movie was badass. Everyone told me it wasn't. Then it hit DVD and everyone was like "This movie is badass."

I just go and soak my head over stuff like that.

 

[ProjectTrinity]

Sorry dude, no sympathy for anyone who doesn't at least make an original IP, which this film is not. Not to mention I should *never* be a better writer than you while you're making scripts for the big screen and I'm poor. Yep. <_<

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

Fankly I could not imagine any possible way to write a good script for a conan remake.

Conan in itself was a crappy movie that just made for a good time because it portrayed vicious fights of Schwarzenegger with the english language.

You can't recreate that.

The entire point of Conan was Schwarzenegger. What's more is that part of what made the role so unique was how stoic and nonchalant he was when he was threatening to kill people. That's what made him a barbarian, it was just business to him. By contrast Jason Momoa came off as trying WAAAAAAYYYYY to hard to be angry and badass. My reason for not seeing the film can be summed up by one line "I want your head". When Jason Momoa says it he's over the top and snarling and it just looks ridiculous. Check out the video, in every scene he's snarling like he has rabies. If someone is angry all the time it becomes utterly meaningless.

http://youtu.be/o1iJZIMddpM

By comparison see the most famous line from Arnold, he's just stating a fact. He's an emotionless killing machine.

http://youtu.be/V30tyaXv6EI

The movie completely missed the mark.

 

[KCL]

The alarm bells should have gone off at "3rd Screenwriter", if a movie is being made by multiple people all of whoch work on it at differet times or simply quit stay the hell away from that movie. This kind of cobbled together design process leads to half-finished scrips by shooting time and abject msyery in the story department.

The best films have a core team in palce from pre-production all the way to the DVD extras and beyond in some cases. Films should not pass though multiple writers hands after they drop out of the project.

You don't understand how Hollywood works. The Godfather had three writers. Spider-Man had four (five with Raimi). Spider-Man 2 had five (six with Raimi). This list goes on and on. It's the norm, not the exception.

The best films do not have a core team in place from pre-production all the way to the DVD extras and beyond. The best films iterate the script over and over and over again until it's good enough, then pray that the director and actors don't screw it up too much.

 

[uzo]

Conan has such potential ... if they'd just taken one of the better stories from even the Savage Sword of Conan they could have made a great movie.

Two particular stick in mind:

1) Featuring a girl we believe is meant to be Conan's daughter. Sure, every damned issue Conan was shagging some nubile fertile minx, and - what? He's shooting blanks? I don't think so. Not Conan of Mother-fucking Cimmeria. Anyway, the whole story is told as a flashback, an older woman telling her headstrong, fiercely independent daughter about her father, and the one night they spent together. Fantastic story; really shows Conan's approach to life. I remember particularly one scene where the young woman says to Conan "Promise me we'll be together forever!", and he just says "No. And any man who promises that is a liar. I promise we'll be together until we are not, because people change. Let us simply enjoy what we have now and not concern ourselves with what the gods only know." Shiiit, even preppy frickin' girlfriends would enjoy that movie.

2) Featuring a young Aquilonian guy, and his dog. They're helping farmers and peasants escape from a Pictish warband, and he happens upon this wild looking Cimmerian who is busily gutting Picts. The young Aquilonian and Conan rush about the countryside, organising refugees and covering their escape, harrassing the flanks of the Pictish advance. Finally, Conan is separated from the young Aquilonian and his dog ... who both die heroically protecting a peasant family. The story ends with Conan swearing revenge upon the Picts, and Crom knows blood would flow.


Both of these stories, just single short episode in the 300-odd issues of Savage Sword of Conan, feature believable, complex, tragic figures - and that's the key thing of R E Howard's Conan stories. Much like his own life, R E Howard's stories all have a creeping, inevitable doom about them. All of the struggles, losses, victories, pain and love that these people go through ... it all doesn't mean a damned thing, because a cataclysm is coming that will decimate humanity and put us back to the stone age. It's like Conan's prayer in the first movie - 'no one will remember, not even [Crom], why we fought, or why we died; what's important is that 2 stood against many,' - no one will remember them, no one will tell their stories. It's romantic and tragic. Much like R E Howard blowing his brains out when his mother died.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

I think the age of Conan is over by now.

I wasn't really born yet when the original was out so i don't know if barbarians was just the fad back then, but to me it seems like Conan is something people think of as not very though through when it comes to plot and though that might be just what some people want for the nostalgia trip it doesn't seem to fly well with those who have no previous attatchment(not sure of the spelling on this word) to the franchise.

 

[Gentleman_Reptile]

"You tell yourself to just enjoy the process," he added. "That whether you succeed or fail, win or lose, it will be fine. You pretend to be Zen. You adopt detachment, and ironic humor, while secretly praying for a miracle."


I cannot agree with this more. I've been on the crew for a really shit movie before (no I'm not going to say its name) and this is EXACTLY how most people felt throughout filming it.

 

[Zer_]

We all need a fun and forgettable action movie for that one weekend where nothing's going on. This year, it was Battle LA and I mostly went because I like Two Face.

Battle: LA uses painted NERF guns as props...

Just thought I'd point that little tidbit out.

EDIT: Actually this might not be true. I'll have to double check.

 

[infohippie]

Offhand the only exception I can think of is Toy Story, which I believe was scrapped and re-written twice. It also had quite a number of writers (at least three). Then again the Pixar team may have been more cohesive - as you've already pointed out having several writers isn't a problem if they're working as a team, it's when people are dropped and new people are brought in to revise their work that the problems start to crop up.

Maybe there's a better exception out there of someone who truly came in and managed to pull off a screenplay that had gone through several writers already.

If I recall correctly, didn't The Empire Strikes Back go through a number of major changes and rewrites before it was made? And at least three separate writers: Leigh Brackett, George Lucas, and Lawrence Kasdan, all of whom worked quite separately on the script.

 

[Hungry Donner]

If I recall correctly, didn't The Empire Strikes Back go through a number of major changes and rewrites before it was made? And at least three separate writers: Leigh Brackett, George Lucas, and Lawrence Kasdan, all of whom worked quite separately on the script.

Brackett passes away shortly after she was brought on, I believe she did complete a rough draft but didn't do any further work. If I remember correctly Lucas didn't use it and started from scratch, so there were really just two screenwriters. Given that it was Lucas' world and he was the movie's producer I suspect there was some degree of collaboration even if Kasdan was technically working on his own and Lucas didn't claim formal credit for the screenplay.

 

[JesterRaiin]

"For the next couple of days, you walk in a daze, and your friends and family offer kind words, but mostly avoid the subject. Since you had planned (ardently believed, despite it all) that success would propel you to new appointments and opportunities, you find yourself at a loss about what to do next. It can all seem very grim."

...Typical Monday.

BTW : At least Conan wasn't played by Idris Elba.

 

[maninahat]

Bad idea to make the film in the first place. What they should have done (if they had to make a remake at all) is play with the idea. Make Conan a scrawny, little, savage man who has huge legendary status. That way, they can treat the previous swartzeneggar films as canon, but as the mythical, hyped up, re-tellings of the real (far less impressive looking) guy's exploits. That would be an interesting direction. Trying to make the exact same film as the first one though? Bad idea.

Also, I think the writer is breaking the unwritten rule of not bitching about the movies you work on. You are not supposed to nay say any film you are involved in. Highly unprofessional. Gives a sense of mercenarism, with a lack of care or investment in the project. I can appreciate why he feels the way he does, but he has to accept that if a film sucks, he is in some way responsible for that failure, as one of the writers. And he should probably kee pthat under his hat, considering the previous projects he has been on.

 

[Moeez]

We all need a fun and forgettable action movie for that one weekend where nothing's going on. This year, it was Battle LA and I mostly went because I like Two Face.

Battle: LA uses painted NERF guns as props...

Just thought I'd point that little tidbit out.

EDIT: Actually this might not be true. I'll have to double check.

Nice to know I guess, but I wouldn't notice since I'm no gun nut ^.^

 

[TheAngryMonkey]

I personally liked the movie, being a big Conan fan and having read the majority of everything that is Conan the movie held true.
True the last 20min was horrible, in the temple.
There were great cinematic shots, good fights, and all the supporting villains were great.
I enjoyed that they actually held true to comics, there were so many scenes and cinematic shots straight out of the pages. The old movies we all love are great, but remember with a main villain being from Kull those movies were as holywood mishmashed as the next.