Topic: "Conan The Barbarian 2011" Review by Kyle.
Fuck Lord of the Rings.
There, I said it. Fuck Lord of the Rings, fuck Peter Jackson, fuck Howard Shore. We need to get that RIGHT out of the way before I can even start to review Conan, because if you don't accept the fucking of LOTR, then you're never going to get my defense of this movie. Full disclosure: the Lord of the Rings trilogy comprises my favorite three films of all time. I like them more than Star Wars. I can't rank them by how much I like each one, they simply occupy my top spot together as one, high above anything else. No other movie I've ever seen has stirred my spirit as much as any of those films does even upon the umpteenth viewing to this day. And yet, FUCK LORD OF THE RINGS.
See, Lord of the Rings is so unfairly good that no other fantasy movie or TV show can do anything without being compared to it. One of the latter episodes of season 2 of Game of Thrones features a siege battle, and I've read reviews from cumfarts on the internet complaining that it was a ripoff of Helms Deep. Which is interesting, because everyone involved said they specifically tried to make it NOT Helms Deep. But it's a fantasy series, and it featured people with swords stabbing one another near a wall, so it was inevitable that the comparison was going to be made. But not every fantasy franchise, be it film or game or television or novel, is Lord of the Rings. Some were even made BEFORE Lord of the Rings, believe it or not, and therefore don't even owe a single damn drop of influence to Tolkien's work. And indeed there were also fantasy movies before LOTR was adapted, and some of them were kind of awesome.
Conan the Barbarian as a character came before Lord of the Rings, and Conan The Barbarian's 2011 remake is a film made as though the Lord of the Rings films were never made. And that's good, because there's a difference between Lord of the Rings and Conan: the former is High Fantasy, the latter is Sword and Sorcery. It's a film in the vein of 80's S&S films like Fire and Ice or Arnie's own take on Conan. It's a straightforward tale of a man done wrong who really wants to stab some fellas, with a couple mystical villains with baffling motivations and unclear powers. It has boobs, it has sex, it has gore, and it has action out the ass.
Yes, there are parts of this movie that are dumb. There are also parts that are quite clever. Both dumb and clever parts are just an ASSTON of fun to watch- and that's the point of a Sword and Sorcery tale. This is not a movie designed to make you ponder the notion of good and evil, to wonder if mankind's industrialization has lead to the loss of magic and wonder in the world. This is a movie designed to make you want to tear your shirt off, decapitate some bandits, steal their slavewomen, and then fuck their slavewomen. Jason Momoa embodies the literary Conan more than Arnold did in my opinion, and there are several supporting characters, good and evil, that are just fun to watch do their thing.
There are some fun visual references made in the film- I think I counted three horses getting knocked out either on purpose or by accident, and when there was a need for a monster in the film they made damn sure it was as lovecraftian as possible (Conan is generally accepted to fit into the Cthulhu mythos).
I'm getting worn out trying to explain what this movie is and why I think by Down in Front's standards it absolutely qualifies as a perfect movie. Conan the Barbarian is the fantasy movie that jerks off us dorks that were fans of fantasy movies before Lord of the Rings came in, classed up the joint, and made it okay for y'all to know who Elrond is. Before that happened, the greasy haired sword collecting weirdos like me had Conan, and we had Fire and Ice, and we even had Gor, and we ate that shit up. Hell, we gobbled up Xena and Hercules, said thank you, and meant it. Conan the Barbarian (2011) was made for us, and I personally want to find whoever was responsible for that and sing them songs of battle around their turgid penis.
Last edited by Kyle (2012-09-06 00:12:13)