Day 17: Conan the Barbarian

I cannot think of a more exemplary example of the classic Barbarian character, or class for us Dungeons and Dragons addicts, than Conan.  He is epic.  The legend began with some short stories, then moved to comics, onto video games, and eventually became immortalized in the 1980s film.  For those of you that haven't been to the movies in months, you most likely didn't know that a new film recently hit theaters in the states.  As a fairly avid movie-goer I noticed the previews immediately as they hit the big screen, and they were amazing.  I thought that it couldn't get any better than Conan in 2011.  Well, I was wrong.  Horribly, horribly wrong.

The start of the movie gave a long and boring story.  Sure, I need some backstory to involve myself in any fantasy movie, but I don't think that I've sat through quite that much bullshit in a long while.  My only solace for the first ten minutes or so was Morgan Freeman's soothing voice.  Unfortunately that peace is quickly taken away by a sword jabbing into the belly of Conan's mother.  I want to point out here that I have no problem with action, violence, and gore so these scenes don't really affect me in that way, they just suck like there's no tomorrow.  Right, back to the birth.  Conan's father rushes over and cuts the baby out and he receives his namesake before his mommy dies, fantastic.  For whatever reason, the transition through to the next stage of life for the young hero is preceded by his father pulling a Lion King in the middle of a brutal battle without so much as looking around to check for enemies.  Yeah, right, and no one would rush up to kill the moron staring into the sky holding up the most fake baby ever.

So Conan rushes through life to somewhere around 10 or 12, pre-teen, whatever.  To be a warrior you have to run around a hill without breaking an egg or some shit, I really couldn't pay much attention since the loss of any action at all.  After some agonizing scenes of kids running, Conan gets attacked by some crazy, growling natives...I think.  He ends up killing all four or five and taking the heads back without his egg being broken.  Pretty cool I have to admit, but I'm not impressed.  I want to see the grown-up Barbarian legend, not some weird little boy with homicidal tendencies!  So whatever, you sit through another half hour of Conan making a sword, some crazy guy with a bone mask who wants to be a god, and the death of the father.  Skipping ahead 20 years Conan is some Fabio lookalike reject killing slavers with an African-American pirate or something, which just makes me think of Sinbad in more ways than one.  After freeing about a million slaves in two different areas, we realize that Conan is consumed by revenge for his father's death.

This is an example of a Shadow Lord.

The man who killed him is now some Shadow Lord or something and Conan essentially goes through all of the man's five generals while protecting some innocent, "pure" woman from being abducted to wake up some necromancer.  The story really doesn't matter here, it's well put together but it's executed very poorly so it's easy to lose interest and just beg for Conan to fight some more.  Long story short, the woman gets abducted by mask guy who plans to cut her up and become a god.  Conan shows up at the last minute and a battle ensues that lasts for waaaay too long.  Conan wins and takes the lady home and wanders off for more hijinks.


I was so sorely disappointed in the movie that I didn't even want to finish my popcorn, and that is unheard of.  So in any case what I found is that this film was too difficult to care about.  We were never in one place long enough to really learn about what's going on.  I thought I was just being dumb about how this movie progressed until I had a revelation today that explains the whole thing.  It's all really just a big Mardi Gras party.  Yeah, get this there were like 7000 topless women, flashy outfits all over, violence, alcohol, and this giant boat/float thing.  It was exactly like the Mardi Gras celebration, no different whatsoever.  You don't even remember anything happened afterwards they're so similar.  I feel like I went to New Orleans rather than a movie theater.  Well, at least that's one thing I can check off of my to-do list.