Conan the Barbarian as a franchise has been around for quite a long time and stands strong throughout fiction. The long haired, sword wielding barbarian that kills anything that gets in his way has had a series of well written novels & comics, TV shows and movies and from one adaptation to another its been a mixed bag.
When it comes to Conan as a movie however, everyone is a aware of the 1982 Conan starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and the amount of critical praise. Yet as enjoyable as that film was it was not 100% Conan, it was just a movie that had his name attached to it and completely inaccurate to the stories Robert E Howard wrote so many years ago.
Fast forward many years later to 2011, news started to grow of another Conan the Barbarian movie and I was very excited to see which direction it was going, Honestly the final result of this movie was that it was a very enjoyable, incredibly violent, beautifully made and 100% loyal Conan the Barbarian film.
The film is directed by Marcus Nispel, a director who has been known to direct one bad remake after the other with very few good films, but seeing the style of this film when it comes Conan...Marcus was a very good choice for directing this movie in that his early works like Pathfinder and how dark and gritty the film was worked perfectly for this movie in that Conan has always been a dark and gritty high adventure fantasy epic.
Casting wise with an exception of people like Stephan Lang as the main villain Khlar Zym and Rose McGowan as Marique - Zym's daughter they were fine choices and even though there roles were over the top, they were well casted for the parts they have.
The one actor who was the most accurate of all was Jason Momoa as Conan the Barbarian for a couple of reasons, Momoa looks more like Conan as described and behaves and acts as Conan is described more so than Schwarzenegger ever was. I really feel Momoa was perfectly casted as the lead role and delivered the role very violently and very over the top and it was fun to see Momoa play the icon Barbarian.
So when it boils down to it, This movie is and will always be far more loyal to the original source material that E Howard wrote than the Conan that came out in 1982, the film was decently made and the enjoyable to watch and really helped revive Conan to the big screen in the 21st century, is the film perfect? No but that is nothing a sequel cant fix, I really feel the negative reception was uncalled for when this film was very good. So I would highly recommend this movie to fans of the Conan the Barbarian franchise, novels and all and to any cinema goers altogether.
I am holding out hope a sequel will be made but sadly as the movie going public is, it's hard to see sequels made to movies that really deserve & need them.
When it comes to Conan as a movie however, everyone is a aware of the 1982 Conan starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and the amount of critical praise. Yet as enjoyable as that film was it was not 100% Conan, it was just a movie that had his name attached to it and completely inaccurate to the stories Robert E Howard wrote so many years ago.
Fast forward many years later to 2011, news started to grow of another Conan the Barbarian movie and I was very excited to see which direction it was going, Honestly the final result of this movie was that it was a very enjoyable, incredibly violent, beautifully made and 100% loyal Conan the Barbarian film.
The film is directed by Marcus Nispel, a director who has been known to direct one bad remake after the other with very few good films, but seeing the style of this film when it comes Conan...Marcus was a very good choice for directing this movie in that his early works like Pathfinder and how dark and gritty the film was worked perfectly for this movie in that Conan has always been a dark and gritty high adventure fantasy epic.
Casting wise with an exception of people like Stephan Lang as the main villain Khlar Zym and Rose McGowan as Marique - Zym's daughter they were fine choices and even though there roles were over the top, they were well casted for the parts they have.
The one actor who was the most accurate of all was Jason Momoa as Conan the Barbarian for a couple of reasons, Momoa looks more like Conan as described and behaves and acts as Conan is described more so than Schwarzenegger ever was. I really feel Momoa was perfectly casted as the lead role and delivered the role very violently and very over the top and it was fun to see Momoa play the icon Barbarian.
So when it boils down to it, This movie is and will always be far more loyal to the original source material that E Howard wrote than the Conan that came out in 1982, the film was decently made and the enjoyable to watch and really helped revive Conan to the big screen in the 21st century, is the film perfect? No but that is nothing a sequel cant fix, I really feel the negative reception was uncalled for when this film was very good. So I would highly recommend this movie to fans of the Conan the Barbarian franchise, novels and all and to any cinema goers altogether.
I am holding out hope a sequel will be made but sadly as the movie going public is, it's hard to see sequels made to movies that really deserve & need them.
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