Conan the Barbarian Review: So Bad, the Credits are Burning

Sometimes the most frustrating experience of watching a movie can be when you realize how much just one more draft of the script could’ve really helped the final product. You can see glimmers of a better film hidden in the story, and a few uneasy elements that could be reworked into something grander. But sometimes a movie is just crap. This week, that movie is Conan the Barbarian.

From director Marcus Nispel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre/Friday the 13^th remakes) and a trio of writers whose biggest credits include Dylan Dog and a Halloween sequel, Conan the Barbarian tells the origin of Robert E. Howard’s pulp hero while aiming to set up a new franchise.

Set in the pre-Christian Hyborian Age, the story, not a retread of either Schwarzenegger film from the 80s, follows Conan (Jason Momoa, Game of Thrones), a Cimmerian who starts a quest to avenge the murder of his father by the warlord Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang, Avatar). Khalar happens to be on a quest of his own to re-forge an ancient mask and fill it with the fabled “pure blood” so that he can resurrect his murdered wife and become something of a god. Along the way, Conan becomes the captor/reluctant protector of Tamara (Rachel Nichols, GI Joe), who may hold the secret Zym seeks, and runs afoul of Zym’s witch daughter Marique (Rose McGowan).

From the minute the voiceover started at the beginning, detailing the past events that set up the mask macguffin, I already felt kind of silly for dragging my friend to it. It only goes downhill from there. The R rating is easily earned in the first 20 minutes when an eager young Conan (Leo Howard) seeks to earn a place among the warriors and impress his father, played by genre staple Ron Pearlman. Several beheadings and slaughters later, we flash forward and catch up with a now adult Conan and join the aforementioned quest.

Momoa does his best to breakthrough for big screen audiences, and he’s a fully capable action star. I could see a Dwayne Johnson-esque career in his future, minus all the Disney family films. Lang and Nichols both have tragically little to do with their screen time, though the latter doesn’t end up wearing a ridiculous starfish crown near the climax and manages to try and build some dramatic tension all on her own. I’ve always thought of Nichols as an underutilized talent, ever since her stint on Alias, and wish she’d land a role that lets her stretch a little.

McGowan, whose performance I was most looking forward to, wears crazy like runway couture, but is also victim to lack of development that sidelines her, her steel claws, and strange hairdo for most of the picture. Still, her disturbing relationship with her father is one of the creative highpoints of the script, particularly since the role was written originally for a male. One minute, he’s knocking her across the room, while the next morning they’re waking up in bed together. I won’t even go into the disposable henchmen and their roles.

The chief problem I think I have with this movie is there’s both too much and too little happening all at once. We don’t really get to spend adequate time developing any of the characters. There are monsters that pop up, probably just for the sake of giving Momoa something to slay, which wouldn’t be so bad if I cared whether or not he lost. His character’s not really built up as a hero, antihero, or crusader. Zym’s wife is an afterthought, only mentioned briefly near the end of the film, and probably gets more empathy on screen than Zym himself. Creepy as it may sound, I wish they’d pushed the envelope a little farther with the Electra complex between Marique and Zym. While the concept was chilling, she seems a little too quick to help to get her mother back. The real loser with screen time is Nichols, who really is the metaphorical object everyone seems to need.

Somewhere near the middle I felt like a hostage going through Stockholm syndrome, trying desperately to find something to like just so I could make it through with a positive. But, it’s just not there. It’s so bad, the credits literally smolder and burn as if to wash all memory of the experience away. I wouldn’t hold my breath for Conan 2 anytime soon.

Images courtesy of Simon Varsano and Lionsgate