Conan Part 2

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

Conan The Cimmerian

Last evening I went to go see the new Conan the Barbarian movie. It was my first experience with the new 3d technology that has been becoming more and more saturated in just about everything. 3d is decent, but it gave me a small headache, and I think that it takes one out of the film, since it's trying to impress you by having things on the screen pretend to have depth. But anyway, time to start my first real movie review, which is about one of the most iconic sword and sorcery characters ever!

Before we start on the movie, let us consider the character of Conan. Contrary to movies, his people were not killed by a raiding run, he just got the wanderlust to go see the world, and took off from the rough lands of Cimmeria. The only real skills he had was the capacity to stalk and kill anyone that got in his way, and he turned that into a career. Being a mercenary, warlord, rogue, pirate, and, like in The Phoenix on the Sword, a king. The character is everything, in my opinion, that youthful men want to be, especially in a game like D&D. There are so many places and people that he encounters, and while he picks up on civilization's rules, he still has a core of barbarian principles. The foremost of which is: don't insult a man unless you want him to attempt to kill you. The man is pure adventurer, and let's see how the movie went.

The film begins with some back story concerning an ancient necromantic artifact that held the power of some ancient horror long before humanity crawled from the oceans. The wielder of this mask enslaved the people of the lower country, and eventually the barbarians of the north banded together, killed the sorcerer, and broke the mask into several pieces to be hidden so that such a horror could not be visited on the world again. This set up is not bad, given that Stygian wizards were generally the bastards that summoned evil terrors to do their bidding in the story, and ancient items of Power are also part of the mythology. Why the barbarians didn't just...I don't know, toss the damn mask in a volcano, or simply throw the pieces in the sea. Having an INT of 10 didn't help them there.

This movie then moves on to Conan's birth, which is something I was not expecting in this movie. I can only assume the village was under attack, and Conan's mom fought against the invaders, and takes a stomach wound. Conan's father, as played by RON FUCKMOTHERING PEARLMAN has to cut the child out in the Cimmerian version of a C-section as his mother dies. I gotta admit that putting this small scene in was pretty awesome for the movie, given that Conan's birth during a battle was referred to a few times in the stories. We are then treated to a scene later when he is a young boy. There is a competition going on where the boys of the village that want to fight must run a large lap around the hills with an egg in their mouth. To "win," the egg must remain unbroken, and you have to fight off the other little bastards that want to win. The movement of these boys, and especially Conan, is nice to watch, since it will help later with what Howard described as Conan's feline grace when moving. So, eventually some enemy scouts catch up withe boys, and on reflection I wonder if they were supposed to be the Picts. The other boys turn back, but Conan fucking guns forward, and proceeds to take out all four, decapitate them, then take the heads back to the village to show his father, and then spit out the egg that never broke.

Pretty cool scene, but little Conan was apparently told that he still lost the race, and has to content himself with practicing surprisingly sophisticated Cimmerian kata shortly thereafter. I'll comment on Conan's swordplay later, it's something specific I want to address when he's an adult.

So, at this point in the movie little Conan is nothing but a little fireball, and Daddy Pearlman wants to teach him...the mystery of steel. Everyone will remember this from the first movie, which they called the riddle of steel. I still have no idea what the hell that meant, other than iron and carbon together is badass. What we get is a rather nice scene of Pearlman advising Conan on tempering himself, and uses the blacksmithing analogy of "fire and ice must go together to make a proper sword that will not fail you." That's actually one of the "cool" things things about Conan- the man can switch from fire to ice to both in mere moments.

But, since this is a fantasy film, someone's village is going to get razed.

Some southern lord comes looking for the last piece of that headdress from earlier, and captures Ron Pearlman. Little Conan finds the smithy where they're holding him, and, like a boss, waits but a few seconds before hopping in there, hacking off a man's nose, and giving a scar to the main villain. But, he gets caught, and the lord's freaky-ass weird daughter, who can somehow sense the necromantic helm's bit's presence, finds it beneath the floorboards of the smithy. See, I thought it was going to actually be IN the forge, under the furnace. In barbarian fashion, Ron told the villain to go fuck himself, and gets set up with one of the most painful Bond Villain-like deaths I've seen. His hands are chained to a pail used for pouring hot iron into the forge, suspended above his head. Then his legs get cut. There is another chain on the other side of the pail, and little Conan escapes the villain to hold the other end while his father slowly gives out. The smithy and forge then gets torched while the villain leaves. When Ron Pearlman decides to pull the liquid iron onto himself for Conan's sake is surprisingly heart-wrenching. The man's acting combined a father and chieftain quite well, and it makes Conan's desire for revenge more heartfelt to the audience.

Now we transition to Big Conan, whom we are told has done some of his thieving, reaving, and pirating, and has companions that he adventures with. Also, he likes to fuck with slave traders and raid their caravans to free them. At least it's something I could see Conan do. So, we get our first look at Conan's movements and swordplay in the film. I personally find his swordplay a bit too fancy, but you believe that the man is a professional killer, and his movements are light enough that I can also believe that Jason Momoa pulls of Howard's description of Conan well. After freeing the slaves and getting plenty of titties in the face, Conan and his buddy, whose name I forget, dude looks Stygian, go to get drunk and have fun with the ladies they saved. Here we are treated to Conan's boisterous drinking, as well as his mirth.

Then the fat fellow from the beginning, the one Conan took the nose from, comes in with men looking for an escapee that sits next to Conan. He then decides to piss the guards off then turn himself in so he can get into the prison where fatty tortures people. I have a couple problems with this, the first being why the hell Conan turned himself in in the first place, when he could just follow them, do some actual sneaking- they DO mention the story of The Tower of the Elephant- so the man does know how to sneak around like a boss. Second, after he gets captured, every single man around him is chained to the wall, yet the GIANT barbarian in the room only has hand shackles on, and those are so damn long it could be a flail. I guess since he was compliant he was given leeway? Bullshit either way, even if he was next in line. Suffice to say, he breaks free, and tortures fatty for information concerning the man that killed his people. He then promptly takes the master key, sticks in it fatty's mouth, then washes it down with wine, takes him outside, and tells the slaves that the key to their freedom is in his belly. So yeah, pretty fucking cruel.

Apparently the one-eyed escapee from earlier is some famous thief, and he tells Conan that he can call upon him when needed before taking off.

Guess I should change this to a Part 1 type deal, because there's more movie and annoyance on its way, mainly in the form of a damn broad.

I live, I love, I slay, and I am content, Ishamael