Review of Conan the Barbarian (2011) by Phil H — 12 Feb 2015

What happened here?! I was really looking forward to seeing this as I do have love for these sword n sorcery fantasy adventure flicks of old and had high hopes for this remake/reboot. Yes I accept the obvious cheese factors and possible over the top silliness of the whole concept, if you love the old 'Conan/Red Sonja/Dragonslayer/Beastmaster' type films then you surely do, but I was amazed at the lack of imagination used for this new film.

I really feel disappointed with this in every aspect, Momoa certainly looked the part but he wasn't quite big enough for me, not enough muscle tone, he played the part OK but there was too much needless sword twirling and fancy pointless showmanship. Lang and McGowan didn't really thrill me either, they both looked like characters outta Star Trek and were simply dull, much like all the characters, just your run of the mill faceless baddies with silly haircuts. Poor old Perlman looked like a flipping Wookie or Neanderthal in his get up, the abominable swordsman.

I just felt a real lack of inspiration throughout the film, the location and sets were drab, nothing really exciting actually happened and the finale was a mess of bad bluescreen, poor models and poor CGI. Throw into the mix a very lackluster giant octopus monster thing (terrible CGI again) which didn't really do anything, totally mediocre and has been done before over and over *sigh*.

Yes the film sticks to original source material by staying violent with plenty of blood and gore (although the blood was again bad CGI in places), but the film just felt like it lacked care, just tossing together all the old cliches and old ideas and throwing out yet another lame reboot/remake...whatever.