Conan the Barbarian (Remake) (2011)

Starring: Jason Momoa, Rachel Nichols, Stephen Lang, Rose McGowan, Ron Perlman, Bob Sapp, and the voice of Morgan Freeman
Grade: D+

Arnold would be ashamed.

Summary

Between the years of the fall of Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was the time when the dark empire of Acheron came to be, where cruel Necromancers sought secrets of resurrection. They crafted a mask from the bones of kings and awakened its wrath with the pure blood of their daughters. The mask summoned spirits of unspeakable evil, giving them power no mortal men should possess. Acheron enslaved the civilized world. Only the barbarian tribes were left to rise up against them. After some time, the mask was shattered, and Acheron fell. Each tribe kept a single shard, so that no man might attempt to join them back together and drive the world once again into chaos and ruin. Their pieces were scattered across the land and remained hidden for ages, but prophecy spoke of a man who would someday try to reassemble the mask and rule the world. So came the dawn of the Hyborian Age, a time both bleak and brutal, and so came a child born of battle.

On a battlefield at the dawn of the Hyborian Age, barbarians Corin (Perlman) and his pregnant wife Fialla (Laila Rouass) fight off invaders, but Fialla is wounded. She is close to dying, but she wants to see her baby before she passes away. Right there on the battlefield, Corin grabs his knife and does an emergency c-section surgery in between sword fighting and delivers their son. She names him Conan before she dies in Corin’s arms, and Corin raises the baby Conan into the air and yells.

Years later in Cimmeria, a teenage Conan is running to get to a competition set up by Corin who is teaching all of the other Cimmerian warriors. Corin speaks to them beforehand talking about how when a Cimmerian is thirsty, he is only thirsty for blood. When he feels cold, it is the cold edge of steel. The courage of the Cimmerian is tempered. He neither fears death nor rushes foolishly to meet it. To be a Cimmerian warrior, you must have cunning, balance, speed, and strength. Just then, Conan interrupts to join them. Corin asks about the chores he assigned him, but Conan finished them. Moving on, Corin gives all of the young Cimmerians their objective. Whoever is the first to circle the hills and return an egg placed in their mouth unbroken earns the right to fight with the warriors. The boys are off, and Conan is saddened to not be included until Corin hands him an egg too and allows him to be a part of it. All the boys sprint through the snowy forest and fight each other off. Eggs are breaking everywhere, and Conan is in hot pursuit of the top spot. Everything is moving briskly until an unknown group of marauders are spotted and running towards them in different directions. The boys retreat, but Conan refuses and continues on. Eventually, he is tripped up and cornered by a group of them, but he savagely kills them all. Next, he decapitates them and brings the heads back to the village to show everyone including Corin. Without a word being said, he spits out the egg.

It looks like Conan won.

Following this, Conan is practicing his sword fighting in a barn and Corin enters to speak with him. He takes Conan’s sword from him and says it’s time to forge a new blade. As they make it, Corin says the sword will be his one day, but before he wields it, he must understand it. He explains the mystery of steel being of fire and ice together after he breaks the blade of the sword when Conan says ice is more important when asked. Sometime after, the two are sword fighting together, as Corin tries to give him words of advice every step of the way like how he fights with too much fire, and how he needs to slow down and find his footing. Eventually, Corin grows tired of Conan’s emotional fighting and tells him to cease. Conan still tries to run at him, so Corin uses his sword to break open the ice below his footing and pry it upwards to cause Conan to fall backwards into open water. Before leaving, Corin says Conan isn’t ready for his sword. Later, Conan is practicing by himself in the forest until he is interrupted by invading troops led by warlord Khalar Zym (Lang). Once Conan hides, Zym rides into Corin’s village and a battle ensues. At some point early on, Conan joins the fight and looks for Corin who is in the middle of it all. Unfortunately, Corin is struck in the back with an arrow and is captured. Privately, he is cornered in a hut by Zym. He is flanked by leaders of other tribes he has defeated and taken their lands from. In turn, they have pledged their allegiance to him like Ukafa (Sapp).

“They do so because they know I will one day be a god.”

With Conan watching this unfold secretly, Corin refuses to back down, saying one day the other clans of Cimmeria will gather for vengeance and take Zym down. Unimpressed by his speech, Zym goes on about how he is here for the missing piece of the mask. He demands it immediately, or he will kill Corin and find it himself. Corin prefers death, so Zym stabs him. Because of this, Conan jumps in and tries to fight everyone off. Immediately, Conan slices off Lucius’s (Steven O’Donnell) nose, and the father and son duo attempt a last-ditch effort scuffle. Unfortunately, Corin is sliced in the back, and Ukafa punches teenage Conan in the face and knocks him down. As they both lay on their knees, Corin grabs Conan’s hand. Following this, Zym ties up Corin so that he is standing, but his weight is holding up a bucket of molten fire. Zym’s teenage witch daughter Marique comes over and tells Zym she senses that the bone shard is close. She goes and looks for it on request of Zym. Next, Zym goes on about how Cimmerians don’t pray, this hut of swords is there church, and their weapons of steel is what they worship. The bone shard has to be there. Not long after, Marique finds it in a hidden box. After Zym tells Marqiue that her mother would be proud, he tells Remo (Milton Welsh) to gather the men and burn down the village. To punish Conan, Zym allows for him to hold onto the other side of the chain that holding Corin in the standing position. If he lets up, the lava will pour onto Corin and burn him to death. As the two struggle, Zym completes the mask and is convinced they are halfway to their goal. All they need is a pure blood, and Zym’s wife and Marique’s mother will be resurrected.

As the hut around them is being destroyed, Corin knows he cannot be saved. He forces the bucket to pour on himself as a sacrifice to his son, dying in the process. In the rubble, Conan grabs his sword and lifts it to the heavens, promising revenge.

Conan left Cimmeria and wandered the edges of the world slaying, thieving, and surviving, storming the high walls of Venarium and prowling the dark seas among pirates. However, the now adult Conan (Momoa) doesn’t know the name of the man that killed his father and destroyed his village and has not crossed paths with him since.

As he prepares himself to fight some common slavers in the Zingaran Slave Colony, Conan’s friend and pirate Artus (Nonso Anozie) questions why he’s going to fight them, but Conan insists no man should live in chains. The two lead a group in to fight the slave traders and kill them all off. When they officially free this group of slaves, one former slave points out how Conan’s group has still taken all of their food and weapons. They change the subject when the big-tittied woman interrupts them. Conan and Artus smile. Conan takes her with, Artus grabs another, and all the other former slaves happily follow, as it’s off to Messantia to party. That night, Conan and Artus drink and celebrate, and have an arm-wrestling match where Conan cheats to win by spitting his drink in his face, with Artus responding by punching him. Later, Artus tells one of the women a story about how he found Conan when he was very young and picking pockets in Zamora, though he gives Conan credit for stealing the Elephant’s Heart and slaying the sorceress Yara. Once Artus walks away with two women momentarily, Conan notices a thief named Ela-Shan (Saïd Taghmaoui) sneak in and soldiers look around the party for him. One of them is Lucius, who is now wearing a protective mask to cover his missing nose. Conan angrily approaches Ela-Shan to ask what’s going on, but there’s not enough time to explain. Ela-Shan says there is a chance both of them could go to prison, but Conan welcomes it for some reason. At first, he fights the soldier that tries to grab him but surrenders with a smile on his face as the soldier looks in shock. Later, Conan and Ela-Shan are sent to prison, but Conan is calm and asks the other guards where the captain of the guard is. They tell him he’s occupied, as Lucius as torturing Ela-Shan by putting his hands in a vice. This leads to Conan taking out all the guards in the prison and demanding to know where the captain is by choking the main shit-talker.

Since Lucius will only happen the door for that guy, Conan decapitates him and uses his head to get in when the other guard looks through the peephole to let him in. With this, Conan kills everyone in the room and saves Ela-Shan before reminding Lucius he was the one who cut off his nose when he was a child. Next, he locks Lucius in the vice, with Ela-Shan adding the pressure and Conan taking off Lucius’s mask and sticking his finger directly into his nose hole before demanding to know who killed his father. Without a moment’s hesitation, he names Zym as the guy he’s looking for. However, Conan doesn’t believe this because he knows the man he is chasing is a common bandit, not a king. Lucius explains that he was a bandit then but a legend now, a Shadow Lord. In the Forbidden Forest (there is nothing there but dead bodies and the animals that feed on them), Zym leads his forces through there. His stronghold is Khor Kalba, but he returns by way of ravine at Shaipur. It’s a perfect place for an ambush. Zym is there with a now adult Marique (Rose McGowan) in search of a young girl who is a pureblood. Lucius says Zym is crazy and obsessed with Acheronian sorcery and he has no loyalty to him. Since he held up his end to the bargain, Lucius hopes to be allowed to walk. Instead, Conan puts the key to the prisoners’ cells in his mouth, pours alcohol down his throat to force it down his body, drags him outside to the rest of the prisoners of Messentia, slices his back, and tells everyone listening that the key to their freedom lies within Lucius’s gut. Technically, Conan does hold up his end of the bargain because he didn’t kill him, though he hands a knife directly to a prisoner to do it for him and a whole group attacks Lucius and murders him.

As Conan walks away from the scene, Ela-Shan finally introduces himself and talks about his skills as thief, as there is no lock he cannot break and no vault he cannot enter. If Conan plans on going to Khor Kalba, Ela-Shan tells him to stop in Argalon so he can talk him out of it and to ask for him directly.

At the Shaipur Monastery, Tamara (Rachel Nichols) asks Master Fassir (Raad Rawi) what he sees in her future. Smoking his hookah, he speaks about a journey and a warrior crossing the sands. Their paths will merge, and he will take Tamara to her birthplace. At the same time, Zym and Marique lead their soldiers and another village of people they have just enslaved, with Marique sensing they are getting closer to the pureblood. On their pirate ship, Artus tells Conan there will be rioting for days in Messantia thanks to him. Uncaring, Conan reveals to Artus that Zym is the man who killed his father. Shocked, Artus refers to Zym as the “Angel of Death”. Conan does not care and will leave that night to Shaipur in pursuit of him. Artus says they can sail as far as the bay near the Shaipur Outpost, and he will go with him. Though he appreciates it, Conan wants to do this alone and heads out. Back in Shaipur, the people are invaded by Zym and his forces. In the midst of the attack, Fassir has Tamara go into a carriage to head to the monks in Hyrkania as it is her duty. Tamara wants to stay and fight, but Fassir is adamant she must go. In the forest nearby, the carriage is off and riding. Conan spots it and assumes it contains Zym because of the insignia of the mask. He jumps onto the carriage and breaks through the roof but is surprised to see Tamara. He demands to know where Zym is, but she has no idea who she’s talking about. Just then, they are interrupted by Zym’s troops approaching, and there is a bit of a three-way fight between Tamara’s people, Conan, and Zym’s people. Following Tamara exiting the moving carriage and going to the front to commandeer the horses, Zym’s troops take them down to the ground, but Conan is right alongside her after taking almost everyone else out.

Zym’s soldier Remo tells Conan to stand aside because Tamara is property of Zym, but he says she is his property now. He cuts Remo and kills another one of Zym’s guys before Remo finally asks who in the hell he is. Conan says he is a Cimmerian and that if they ever fight one (boy or not), they should have killed him. Remo is unphased because he’s killed hundreds of Cimmerians, but Conan mentioned his dad and wipes the blood of his sword on his forehead before telling Remo he will hunt him down, freaking Remo out enough for him to ride his horse away. Back in Shaipur, Marique has a bunch of Tamara’s priestess friends and colleagues on the steps of the monastery in front of the townsfolk and asks who out of them is the pureblood. Whoever snitches will live. Using her claws, she kills two of them and tastes their blood but deduces that none of them are pure. They drag Fassir out, and Zym demands to know where the pureblood is at, though Fassir maintains that none of the ancient bloodline remain. He doesn’t believe Fassir but humors him, asking if that were true, why would him and the female monks decide to live in this secluded area for thousands of years. Fassir insists they just want peace. They have no riches and no war. They just value life. Zym balks at this and reminds Fassir what happened in the forests of Ophir. When all the nations of Hyboria hunted a woman as if she were an animal, him and Marique were forced to watch his wife Maliva be lashed to the wheel and set aflame in front of them. Zym says Fassir and his group actually value death, though Fassir argues that the monks there currently took no part in Maliva’s death. Even so, Zym asks again for the pureblood, but Fassir doesn’t respond.

As Marique promises to get the truth out of him, Fassir goes on a diatribe about how Zym’s vain pursuits of the secrets of Acheron is a lust for power, not the love of life. Doubling down, he even talks about how Zym’s wife Maliva wasn’t innocent at all. In fact, she sought to enslave all of Hyboria with her sorcery.

“She deserved to burn”.

Knowing there is no coming back from this, Fassir says Zym will never rule, and Maliva will never rise again. Enraged, Zym cracks Fassir’s head over and over again on the steps of the monastery. A guard interrupts to say Remo is searching for the one that got away. Zym knows that this one that got away is the pureblood they are looking for and he’s sure Remo will capture her for him. In reality, Conan, with Tamara riding with him, chases down Remo and knocks him out. When things calm down, Tamara realizes Conan is the person Fassir told her about, and Conan realizes she is the one Zym is looking for, though she denies knowing why. She still intends on going to Hyrkania on orders from Fassir and asks Conan if he wants to escort her, but he wants to sit and wait for Zym. Since she’s being difficult, he ties her up and they wait around a campfire for Zym to show. Remo is tied up too and is listening in on their conversation. Conan tells Tamara how he wants to look Zym in the eyes when he kills him, Tamara reveals her full name to be Tamara Amaliat Jorvi Karushan, and Conan tied her up to make Zym come to him since Zym is a hard man to find. They continue to bicker because she refuses to listen to him, and Conan is still stuck in his never-ending pursuit of vengeance by any means necessary.

Even so, their journey together has just begun and there will be plenty of more layers involved in their adventure as Conan’s revenge becomes intertwined with a plot to stop Zym’s quest for world domination. Conan may not like the pureblood Tamara at first, but their paths merged for a reason.

My Thoughts:

It was only a matter of time before Hollywood revisited the Conan franchise in an attempt to revitalize some old IP. Instead of waiting on an older Arnold Schwarzenegger to return in a cool legacy sequel akin to Rambo, the decision was made for a reboot in hopes of restarting what once was. Though I have classified 2011’s Conan the Barbarian as a remake on this site, it’s more to differentiate it from the original 1982 movie. However, this isn’t a remake of John Milius’s film. It’s rather a new interpretation on Robert E. Howard’s famous character, which is why it’s so different in comparison. As good as it is with the action and bringing to screen the darker world of a barbarian in a sword-and-sorcery world, it doesn’t capture the imagination of the viewer like the older movies did. It doesn’t feel like you’re watching something special. Now, everything was there to potentially make it succeed. The action sequences align more with the fast-paced modern action movies of today rather than the (at times) cheesy fight scenes of the 80s movies, Ron Perlman brought his grizzled action hero veteran style to make the role of Conan’s father memorable, Stephen Lang is a good enough character actor to play the over-the-top villain that is a staple of the Conan universe, and they even managed to get the voice of Morgan Freeman to narrate to try and make this new film a big deal. Despite all of this, it’s still dull. Instead of an epic that is worthy to represent the screen icon that is Conan, it’s combination of uninspired direction, drab cinematography, and a predictable script makes the movie seem more like a decently produced HBO show in the vein of the much better Game of Thrones rather than a film that reminds audiences what we’ve been missing out on regarding such a legendary character and cinematic world.

Going back to ideas that make sense, casting Jason Momoa was a great choice, at least you’d think so. Unfortunately, the idea of casting him only makes sense in retrospect. Momoa was cast years before he would cultivate his persona, figure out what he’s good at and what he’s not good at, and become more of a star presence. Admittedly, there are glimpses of it here, which is why he got the job, but it’s not enough to endear him to the viewer like the charismatic Arnold Schwarzenegger was able to do years ago. There, he had “It” before he figured out the other aspects of acting, and it helped make the movie such a success and cult favorite. In this remake, Momoa puts on a better acting performance than Schwarzenegger in the Conan franchise (which isn’t very hard), but he doesn’t have that quality as a screen presence to engage you. It is enough for the viewer to get behind him because of the character’s circumstances, and with cool moments like when he wipes his forehead with the blood of his sword before scaring Remo with, “Run from me and I will tear apart the mountains to find you. I will follow you to hell!”. However, he doesn’t do enough for us to want more. Even with all the cool action sequences and gory violence, the movie comes and goes and it’s nothing more than decent, a far cry from the inexplicable aura stemming from the ending of the first Conan the Barbarian. Instead of it being a star-making film and franchise-restarter, it’s legacy will be having the moniker of the “other” Conan the Barbarian movie found on the free movie channels on someone’s cable package that you have to be reminded that it exists.

Regardless, Momoa’s take on the character is a lot different than what we were introduced to in 1982. With the “heart of a king and the loyalty of a bloodhound” as Artus puts it, this Conan is much more of an outright hero. Though he engages in criminal activities, it’s more in the Robin Hood sense or even the Pirates of the Caribbean sense, as Conan seems to be more of a swashbuckler and defender of the innocent rather than a barbarian doing anything he can to survive. He has more honor. In a total contrast from Conan in the original movie, this Conan takes his first loss in stride. Instead of cursing the gods or losing his faith by the day because of his circumstances, Momoa’s Conan doesn’t do any of this. He tells Artus, “Blast the gods. This was not their doing. It was I who failed”. Schwarzenegger’s Conan would have never come to this conclusion. It’s new, but it’s just not who Conan is. He’s supposed to be a barbarian! It’s kind of the whole thing! He fights like one, but he’s too good of a guy. Had he turned into this person in future sequels, it would have made sense, but he needed to be much more rugged in his origin story. With all of this being said, the current Jason Momoa would be a great choice to play Conan the Barbarian in a reimagining of sorts. Though I’d doubt he’d be interested, his turn in the Aquaman franchise has shown he now has this ability to carry a franchise as the star and a weighty role like Conan would align much better with who Momoa is now. The only reason it didn’t work in 2011 is that he wasn’t the Jason Momoa he is currently. It’s not their fault they didn’t realize his strength of comedic timing, though an attempt in the catapult scene seemed like a softball for them to at least try for a trademark Momoa quip. In a re-do, I’m confident when I say he would smash this role.

Then again, the real priority of the franchise should be to bring back Schwarzenegger in the titular role one more time to finish off the series. If they go this route and finally gives us Conan the Conqueror, could Momoa play the villain who challenges King Conan for the throne? That is something I would watch! With the right director and screenplay, it could be a legendary end to the long-running series.

Sadly, this could be a case of what Zym said personally in that, “That was your last chance boy. You won’t get another”.

As previously mentioned, Stephen Lang does a much better job at Khalar Zym than he had any right to. His presentation is much more “old school” sword-and-sorcery evil and was fairly memorable as the warlord hellbent on bringing his witch wife back from the dead. There are times where you can’t help but smile and acknowledge, “This motherfucker” because he does a solid job with what’s given to him like when he bashes Fassir’s head off the ground several times over in a fury after hearing him talk shit about Maliva. He is no Thulsa Doom, but there’s a certain violent madness to him that makes him probably the best villain since Doom. Admittedly, the competition Zym faces in that category isn’t great, but that’s more of the fault of the franchise rather than Lang. He’s got a series of moments that make him shine for such a forgettable movie like when he busts Conan’s ass in their first sword fight and has the audacity of giving Conan’s sword back to him as an invite to try and beat him again. What a shot to the ego! Conan has literally been waiting for this moment to face Zym his entire life and gets his ass kicked when he finally gets him. It’s not totally one-sided either. It’s just enough for you to want to see the comeback, see that it is possible to stop Zym, and how Conan is a good matchup for him. He just needed to feel him out first. This is exemplified when Conan manages to cut Zym early on in their first dual. Since Zym has never lost a fight and we can assume has taken very little damage over his battles, this is enough for him to ask immediately after the cut who Conan is. It’s minor, but it’s a strong detail to show Conan is different and demands to be acknowledged, as Artus reminds Conan that he might be “The only man in Hyboria to fight Zym and win”. Of course, he says “win” because he sees Zym as the one who has failed since Conan got away. I like how he has no backup plan either. When Marique tries to suggest one in case things fail, he immediately cuts her off with, “It will not fail”. It’s cool to see how he’s just as determined in his endeavor as the hero is to stop him.

At any rate, besides this and his cool boomerang sword, Zym still falls into the role of stereotypical sword-and-sorcery antagonist. His speech of how Maliva’s powers will make him a god and “We will cast all rivals into oceans of blood!” was a cut-and-paste of Doom’s “They should all drown in lakes of blood. Now, they will know why they are afraid of the dark. Now, they will learn why they fear the night” in the original Conan the Barbarian. There was nothing unique whatsoever regarding Zym’s dialogue.

The character design of Marique made Rose McGowan unrecognizable, and she looks to be reveling in the strange role of Zym’s daughter. Even so, she isn’t given all that much to do. It’s very one-note, with most of her actions just being tasting the blood of women to find the pureblood and doing whatever Zym says, so they do kind of waste an intriguing opportunity to do something different with her character. The only thing out of the ordinary she does is the aforementioned scene where she mentions herself as the backup plan since she has Maliva’s powers, could potentially uncover the secrets of Acheron herself, and sit at the foot of her father’s throne. It gets a little weird, with her alluding to some Electra complex issues and flirting with her father Zym. He responds in kind by teasing Marique and putting his finger on her lips adding, “You are like your mother in so many ways”. In this moment, you have no idea how far they are willing to go to show to the audience how evil these two can be, as a pedophilic relationship isn’t out of the question for this genre. Before it goes further, Zym decides against it and tells Marique she is not her mother. It’s an interesting development that could have been a much bigger plot point, but it’s strangely over and done with in this one scene, which begs the question why it was inserted in the first place. It is said from McGowan herself that she came up with the idea for the character and acted in this manner, but the studio freaked out over it so a lot of the dialogue her and the writer came up with had to be taken out. As odd as it may sound, this was a shame. Not that we’re advocating for some seriously freaky shit between this evil sorcerer father/daughter duo, but delving into such a complication would have added a lot of character depth to two characters who desperately needed it, especially Marique who had a lot of potential.

Had she struggled with these internal feelings, and the jealousy stemming from this almost consuming her, could have given her a chance to rise into the hierarchy of characters by the time the third act came around. Marique could have become a threat to Conan, Tamara, and Zym. A tertiary storyline of her trying to prove herself to her father by going overboard with her witchcraft and deviating from his plan could cause Zym to reprimand her. With this, you could have many unique options to boost the movie’s “B” story. She could either fall in line and become a soldier with daddy issues, a witch who realizes she is too powerful for all the bullshit and is angered enough to attack both men, or she could turn into a minor hero on her deathbed and aide in Conan’s final fight on the bridge with Zym, so Zym misses out on a chance to bring Maliva from the dead to take her place. Marique could have even gotten obsessed with Tamara. In their singular private scene together, she compliments Tamara about how she looks in her mother’s gown to the point where Tamara has to remind her that she’s not Marique’s mother. What if they took this a step further and Marique becomes obsessed with the idea of this happening and tries to bond with Tamara in captivity a little too much? Do you see what I’m saying? There’s so much potential with Marique and her weirdness, but they chose to go down the most mundane road possible. Even her powers as a witch are underutilized. The fact that she was able to conjure up soldiers out of the sand to fight Conan shows us her powers know no bounds, so what else can she do? I’m not sure. She seems to rely on her fake claw rather than the ACTUAL supernatural powers she has that no one else in the movie possess. How idiotic is that? Now doing any one of these things with Marique could have tiptoed the lines of being a tad too convoluted for a Conan movie, but it would have at least given the characters some depth rather than the one-dimensional people they came off as being.

The only one who came off as dynamic in character and performance was Pearlman as Corin. Even Conan seemed like too clean of a hero, despite technically being a pirate and viciously torturing Lucius by sticking his finger in the hole where his nose used to be in that great prison sequence.

I know the opening was supposed to be the fabled beginning of Conan’s story to show how he was bred for combat because of his literal birth on the battlefield, but it aligned more with a parody movie rather than a Rated-R action drama because of how fake the baby looked. It took you out of the movie before it even got started and made you realize how ridiculous this all was rather than forcing you to invest in the traumatic backstory of the main character. Maybe it’s the idea that less could have been more, as Artus telling Tamara privately, “Most men are born to mother’s milk. His first taste was of his mother’s blood” was enough to put things in perspective of what our hero has been through. Though there are cool ideas like the giant tentacled monster in Khor Kalba’s dungeon or Bob Sapp being one of the villains Conan has to mow through, there are so many details added to the story that are never capitalized on. The movie lacks imagination in look and style. Argalon is described as the “City of Thieves” and could have been a fun, bizarre-looking city filled with weirdo criminals, sorcerers, and monstrous-looking people. It gave them a chance to do something different, but it just looked like an outside bar in New Mexico. Making the ultimate destination for the climax happen in Skull Cave could have given the film a chance to dip into He-Man territory or a homage to the old Conan movies, but they decide to go AGAIN to the dreary look of just a large, dark cave. Even the all-important mask that is supposed to give Zym this incredible power of Acheron is a missed opportunity. Zym cutting Tamara and having her blood drip to the inside of the mask was a great start. It creepily comes alive and clasps onto his face like the xenomorph in Alien or Starro’s babies in The Suicide Squad, and it’s uncomfortable to see, but then it relaxes, and Zym just looks like he’s wearing a fucking catcher’s helmet. I don’t understand why they take so little risks and work extra hard to make this such a grounded, colorless, and derivative tale devoid of creativity or vision.

Why in the world would studio heads be disappointed in the box office? They should have seen it coming.

Ela-Shan does the plucky sidekick thing well, but if you want to see Saïd Taghmaoui do a better version of it, just watch Wonder Woman. It’s almost the exact same thing, but the character is worth a shit there. Here, Ela-Shan is known as a lock picker. That’s his whole thing. However, is he really a lock picker? He just has a set of keys that happen to work with anything. Is that really a skill? He doesn’t pick shit! Once he drops the keys in the water during the dungeon sequence, he’s rendered useless. When Conan deduces that there are no more locks in Skull Cave, he sends him on his way. What a waste of space! He did nothing to prove his worth at all! If anything, he could have just saved time and gave Conan the pair of keys he had, and Conan could have just kept using each key on the ring until one of them worked. That’s essentially all Ela-Shan does. Nothing would have changed had he been included in this movie or not. The time it took to establish Ela-Shan, Argalon, and all of his shtick in the heat of their fight with the serpent could have been used to develop Marique as a character. On the other hand, Ela-Shan’s contributions as comedic relief could have been established more instead since the movie needed it. His line of “She must be really pretty” when Conan says he’s breaking into Zym’s fortress for Tamara was the only chuckle-worthy statement of the movie. Speaking of which, Rachel Nichols as Tamara was decent, but she would have benefitted with more banter between her and Conan. I like how you can tell from their first interaction that she loves bad boys but is trying to fight it, which makes Conan’s basic ass line of “I live, I love, I slay, and I am content” so funny. Immediately following this, where he is basically talking about how he doesn’t give a fuck, she’s floored and kisses him. He knew what he was doing.

I’m starting to think that when he says he “slays”, he meant pussy.

John Milius’s 1982 sword-and-sorcery epic was imperfect, but it was iconic. When the bearded Conan sits on that throne in almost a moving portrait existing years into the future, you felt like you just watched a legend before your very eyes. In 2011’s Conan the Barbarian, Conan raises his sword from the bottom and into the air in triumph, but it comes off as stupid. This should tell you all you need to know. The idea was there, and there are flashes of what could be. Nevertheless, considering all the material they could go off and a serious knowledge of what was successful previously, this “remake” of Conan the Barbarian was a failure. It tried its hardest to avoid anything related to the previously popular movies in an effort to make something technically new but average, disappointing considering the budget they were working with, routine in its characters and story beats, and just plain ordinary. Above all else, it wasn’t fun, and it’s noticeable.

Fun Fact: Mickey Rourke was in negotiations to play Corin but ultimately chose Immortals over it. Apparently, Dolph Lundgren spoke to producers about an unspecified role, but it never happened. It has been said that may have also been for Corin. Also, the producers sought out Brett Ratner to direct, but the timing never worked out.