Before I begin again on this movie, let me state that one of the trailers for this movie is easily the most unnecessary, sickening remake that does not deserve to exist.
They are remaking John Carpenter's The Thing. Instead of a great suspense film, it looks to be more like a typical monster movie, and the Thing itself seems to have its own regular form...which means the creators did NOT see the original fucking movie. I have never had one of those moments in the theater before when I was literally saying, audibly, "no...no...they didn't!" I am fearful of this trend.
Back to slaying! So, big bad villain man is apparently looking for someone that has "pure blood," and his freakish daughter, aside from being able to sense bits of that mask, can somehow taste the purity of another woman's blood by pricking them with her goofy, Freddy-esque metal nails. So, they raid some place called the Shaipur Monastery, where apparently the "peaceful monks" learn how to defend themselves Shaolin style. Bring tha' Ruckus, I guess. Suffice to say, they get their asses kicked while Conan comes searching for the big bad. Yet, the monks somehow secure a friggen wagon with the mask's emblem on it for some random chick, and cart her away in the middle of the battle. Conan, seeing that emblem, immediately uses his first daily use of Barbaric Rage to get on top of the vehicle, only to find some chick in there. Then some evil dudes come and kill the monks that were supposed to protect her, they all die, and then Conan gets a pretty cool horseback scene and kills every one of them.
Except where he knocks out the commander to get information out of him. The woman, in true Conan fashion, is relatively helpless. And annoying. BUT, at least she has spunk, and won't take shit from the barbarian in the ruins. Mind you, during the last fight scene of the movie, the little bitch will not shut up, and nearly kills the scene entirely. When tattoo-face wakes up, he tells Conan that the woman is worth a ton of money, and he will show Conan where the caravan will be so he can turn her in. Conan, showing his pension for creativity, decides to wad the bad guy's face with cloth, after writing a message concerning where to meet him, and promptly launches the bad guy into the weird land-boat thing while strapped to a chair.
Entertaining.
So, apparently there's some abandoned city where Conan wants to meet the big bad, and when he arrives, Conan tells him he wants no money, just his head. He brought along his weird daughter- there's some implication of incest in the film- and she promptly summons what I can only call sand elementals in the shape of humans to fight Conan. One thing great about this scene is how it shows, once again, that Conan is quite a climber, and has the agility to fight unnatural things. Eventually he kills them all, and fights the big bad. The choreography is fine, but the main villain's weapon is rather strange. It's one of those katana-like swords with two blades side by side so you can't stitch it up, but in the hilt is a screw or something to either whip one end around, or separate them. Seems like a lot of effort when the man could just use two swords...and he does. Anyway, his daughter poisons Conan, and he promptly gets high as hell, and has to retreat with the girl in tow, by jumping off a cliff where his friends are waiting for him.
After they're on the ship, they all go to sleep, and the ship gets raided by a bunch of henchmen. Two things: why the fuck were they not very far along the coast, and why in the nine hells was no watch posted when you have the one thing keeping the main villain from world domination? But the chick gets woken up, screams like the bitch she is, then Conan bursts through the fucking wall to get him off her. They eventually repel the attack, and Conan decides he's had enough shit, and will go after the bad guy again, so long as his buddy takes the girl away.
However, when Conan goes ashore, his buddy gives a map to the chick so she can go say "bye," albeit with her lady-parts. Somehow they found a shack on the beach, which I'm pretty sure was in the perfect position to get fucked by the tide daily, and start to go at it, Cimmerian style! I'll admit the scene was pretty tasteful, yet when the girl wakes up she goes into the freaking forest...away from where the ship was, and immediately gets captured. I know Robert E. Howard didn't depict women as all that sensible in his stories, but they must be channeling his spirit for all this damsel in distress crap. Conan comes upon the aftermath of the kidnapping, and with the most random horse in the frame that trots off, Conan decides to run off towards the huge skull cave. Honestly, I wanted some good footage of Conan running, if only to show off his barbarian stamina. Those that have read The Frost Giant's Daughter know what I'm talking about. Except that that particular story was creepy in its own way, since Conan attempts to ravage a woman against her will, which is contrary to later when Robert Jordan (read: God of fantasy) wrote Conan books.
So, Conan comes upon the ritual in which the blood of the damsel has to be drained into the mask to activate it, since she has the blood of ancient necromancers flowing through her veins. Apparently, the big bad wants to use her blood and body as material components to bring back his dead wife of a bitch, whom is a sorceress that tried to conquer the world. Then the mask starts wiggling with the blood inside, and I actually thought he might get a Cthulhu face or something weird like that, but no, even though Conan is pretty much in continuity with the Lovecraftian lore, you never get the feeling that there are things in the world that are beyond the stars and understanding. Conan, remembering that he can sneak like a boss, snaps a neck, steals a cloak, and makes his way to the place where the chick is dangling above a lake of lava...which is too reminiscent of Temple of Doom to be a coincidence.
So, he halts the ritual, the weird wheel-thing the girl was on falls down the strange, cylindrical shaft, only to be caught. Conan goes to get her, and the villain jumps down, and there's a bit of a topsy-turvy fight scene on the wheel thing. Then everybody ends up falling down. The girl runs off to hide, and Conan stalks around, while the bad guy calls out after him "rawr!!! barbarian!!!!" Freakish daughter then tries to kill the girl again, only to find Conan, whom immediately chops her damn hand off, then throws her off a ledge to get impaled on a piece of railing. Big bad then comes across her, and I thought that the ANCIENT NECROMANTIC HELM OF VECNA would be able to bring the little bitch back, but no.
There's a quick fight scene where Conan and the mask-wearer fight, he gets his father's sword back (LAUUULL, YOU TOOK MY FATHERS SWORD, YOU KILLED MEI PEOPLE!), so he knocks him back and takes off.
So, we come to this bridge, the chick falls down, and Conan catches a chain to hold on to the girl. The bad guy then comes along the bridge all smug-like, and immediately summons the soul of his dead wife to supplant the one in the love interest. Bad man then tells Conan that all he has to do is let go of the chain, and it's over. Hell, even the woman tells him to let her fall so she can die and destroy the last vestige of "pure" necromancer blood, whatever that means. But, Conan destroys the planks beneath the bad guy, he falls down, Conan takes the girl to her destination, and Conan goes off to find more adventure.
While I didn't go into much detail with Conan taking his thief buddy up on his offer to sneak into the baddie's castle, wherein lies some squid-thing, some of the action sequences blend together so they're hard to distinguish.
So, that's Conan The Barbarian, and there are two real problems I have with it, the first being that Conan never really learned what it means to use fire and ice to make steel- like knowing when to be a cold killer or hot headed-, and that damn necromantic artifact never paid off. How dare they build up something like that, only to make it not import any powers on the main villain, and then he just dies like a bitch? Really?
Tell you what they did do right, even when continuity is suspect, and the girl is practically railroaded into the plot to give Conan some tail, and that is that I think Conan, the character, was done pretty well. Physically he strikes me more as barbaric over Arnold, and he certainly doesn't come off as stupid.
As such, if you like action films, or the Conan character, go see this movie, it ain't bad.
He didn't swear by Crom much, but I will, Ishamael
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