Conan the Barbarian (2011)-review

One, two, Freddy's coming for you...

            I am a fan on the original movie staring Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This movie has none of the same feel. The script feels rushed. There are so many plot holes you could mistake it for Swiss cheese.  The acting is awful. Even the editing feels a bit off.  While there are tons of action scenes you can barely tell what the hell is happening or to what character.

            Let me start with the dialogue.  The constant garbage that is spewed out at us as an audience seems like a guise used to create a catch phrase worthy  t-shirt.  Lines like “Barbarian, I don’t like you,” as the evil warlord squares off with Conan.  Is that supposed to be funny?  How about the romance of Conan coming up to his love interest and saying “You look like a harlot.”  Somehow in Hyborian times, this line must work since a couple scenes later he ends up in bed with her.

Barbarians have great dental plans.

Plot holes abound in this cinematic turd.  The evil warlord, Khalar Zym, played by Stephen Lang (who many will remember as the evil Colonel in “Avatar”) has his slaves haul him around in a giant boat.  I don’t know why; it’s never explained.  Also, Conan is apparently able to summon a catapult out of thin air.  That is convenient, to say the very least.

We dwarves are natural sprinters! Very dangerous over short distances!

Zym’s daughter, an oddball little witch named Marique, played by  Rose McGowan, seems to at least be having fun with her part.  Strange enough, her main weapons of choice are the finger blades of Freddy Krueger. She even elects to use those more often than spells for some damn reason.  They also decided to give her an almost incestuous fascination with her father.  Thanks movie. 

I guess even Hyboria has a South.

            Jason Momoa, who plays Conan, is straight-up boring and Rachel Nichols (who you might remember as Scarlett in “GI-Joe: the Rise of Cobra” or as the green girl Kirk is hooking up with in the “Star Trek” movie), the love interest, is easy on the eyes but cannot act at all.  The movie easily doesn’t make you give a crap about anyone in it and so you are not invested in whether they live or die.  The original was a lot better. Hell, “Conan the Destroyer” was a lot better.   This movie sucks.