MovieBob said:
HyenaThePirate said:
I'm reasonably certain that I've read through the majority of Howard's original "Conan" stories, and here and there of the "official" ones by other authors. Whatever else the new film may be, it's NOT any closer to the source material than the older one. It borrows the "you killed my people"/"I want my father's sword" revenge angle which was invented for the first one, and the rest of it's story is a hodgepodge of sword & sorcery cliches - peppering a screenplay with name-drops to places and events from the Howard stories does not a faithful adaptation make.
Really? How is it NOT like Howard's work?
Tough, grizzled Barbarian youth who still towers over other men twice his age with a grim face and smouldering eyes? - Check
"Man of few words" hero who prefers to punch faces and gut suckas for disrespecting him? - Check!
Women dressed in barely anything at all waiting for a wild-thing of a human being who bucks all civilizations trappings with his own gruff moral code? - Check!
Evil warlord/sorcerer who makes the mistake of crossing Conan and then dismisses him as a mere annoyance, barely noticing that a revenge-driven, murder machine in a loin cloth is slowly carving a gory path towards a final showdown until he's practically standing in his throne-room? - Check!
Hero speaks little, mumbles tough, direct phrases that get to the point and lack "tact" or "politeness" when speaking with pompous men from "high society?" - Check!
Ancient evil horror monster unleashed upon a mortal world sent back screaming into the abyss from which it arose by a man who only puts his trust in himself and his ability to slay things really really well? - Check!
Basic plot of a story which basically consists of "wizard/swordsman wrongs Conan... Conan lives to make wizard/swordsman rue the day he ever set foot anywhere near Conan's life.. Conan brutally pwns wizard/swordsman in awesomely bloody revenge? - Check!
Conan taking punishment in stride that would kill a lesser man even just thinking about enduring such punishment? - Check!
Conan bedding hizzos left and right and pretty much being the poster boy for every man's secret fantasy of a life unrestrained by modern civilized convention? - Check!
Yup... just about everything is there. Hyboria looks remniscent of what I could accept in a Conan novel, and the only things really missing are his over the top misogynistic/chauvinistic attitudes towards female folk and the questionably racist elements that were products of the times Howard himself lived in (and neither of which would have been received well whatosever by today's fickle, easily offended audiences), what was it missing that WASN'T lifted part and parcel from Howard's books? Hell that movie could have been a short story from Howard's tales of the Cimmerian as simplistic as it was. Howard's Conan stories weren't deep or fundamental except in that NOBODY else was writing like that at the time. It was the WAY he told the story that caught on in style, much as Tolkien didn't invent Dwarves but everyone thinks of Fantasy Dwarves as being stubby little miners of ore thanks to Tolkien's stories.
But even ignoring all that, and if someone wasn't a fan of Howard at all, the movie is great. It definitely ranks up there with the BETTER offerings this summer and stood head and shoulders far and away better than Transformers 3 to me and MOONS over Green Lantern.
I only hope that we see a NUMBER of Jason Momoa sequels for Conan. Heck, if Clash of the Titans can get a sequel so should Conan. I just hope the next time out they say, "screw it, we're going full bore on this one" and make him even more surly and more like his literary counterpart.