Conan the Barbarian (2011)

The 2011 remake of “Conan the Barbarian” consists of a fight of people whose vernaculars are restricted to screams, pledges, howls, releases, shrieks, swears, screeches, wails, bellows, yelps and woofs. Roger Ebert admitted in his review, “I'd love to get my hands on the paycheck for subtitling this movie.”

I don’t think I need to say what the plot is. You have these Barbarians, and they kill one another in an endless amount of mindless fights. Ebert said, “I guess Conan is the good guy, but what difference does it make? He has no cause or belief.” He wants revenge against the evil Khalar Zym (Stephan Lang), who stuck Conan’s father under molten iron, tasked young Conan (Leo Howard) to use his little muscles to try to keep it from slanting, and shouts at the old man: “You will watch your child die trying to save you!”

Thankfully, Conan, played by Jason Momoa, survives and grows up with nothing but a graphic scar on his face, where some disobedient molten iron fell. He and his father Corin, played by Ron Perlman, and had before made his sword, from what Ebert said was “at the steel moltery.” However before, the infant Conan was put on a battlefield by an emergency Caesarian done by Corin’s own sword on the kid’s mother, played by Laila Rouass, who survives long enough to say, “He shall be named Conan.” She was hanging on by a thread to say, “Conan the Barbarian.”

The movie is filled with mindless action. Ebert notes, “People who despair of convincing me to play video games tell me, "Maybe if you could just watch someone else playing one!" I feel as if I now have.” Conan stabs, beheads, cuts apart and in every other way kills people of so many different cities, each time in some insane way. The evil Khalar Zym and his daughter Marique (Rose McGowan) show up a lot, saying nonsense, especially towards Conan’s female warrior friend Tamara (Rachel Nichols).

Marique is something else. She has white makeup, blood red lips, and cute little tattoos on her face and insanely sharp metal talons on her fingers. In one part, she blows some magic dust at Conan, and that turns into an army made of sand. This is a nice special effect, but it makes you ask if you turn back to sand when Conan stabs you, what is point then?

Ebert said, “The film ends with a very long battle involving Conan, Khalar Zym, Tamara and Marique, a sentence I never thought I'd write. It takes place largely with Tamara strapped to a revolving wheel above a vertiginous drop to flames far below.” A volcano is said, but never really explained. The entire cave deteriorates around them, large boulders tumbling everywhere except, strangely enough, on them.

Ebert noted, “"Conan the Barbarian" is a brutal, crude, witless high-tech CGI contrivance, in which no artificial technique has been overlooked, including 3-D.” The third dimension once again shows the idea that when a movie mainly takes place indoors in dark areas, the last thing you need is dark glasses.

Wow is this one of the worst remakes to such a great movie. This is nothing more than a mindless action flick that resolves nothing. It was just made for money and that’s it. Don’t ever watch this, especially if you liked the original. You will hate every minute of it, I assure you. I wish I had never even played this piece of trash, and I regret doing that.

Alright, we have now ended “Conan Month.” I hope everyone enjoyed this month, even though we did get worse as the month went on, but that’s not the first time this has happened. Stay tuned for next month to see what I have in store for everyone.