OK, you're going to read a lot of reviews about how awful this movie is. It's not. For all the people who claim to have read, and loved, Howard's books, and then trash this movie, they obviously suffer from looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, and they obviously haven't read Howard since they were teens.
Howard's books weren't good, they were pulp. And this movie is pulp, and it's pretty good pulp.
Conan is NOT a 'complex', or 'deep and brooding' character; he's a thug with a sword. And Momoa is the first actor to play him even close to Howard's vision. Howard's plots were not 'deep', his target audience was sexually frustrated 15 year old boys. To ascribe any 'literary' qualities to his books is BS. And this movie, true to Howard, targets the same audience.
Is the dialog good? No; neither was Howard's. Is the action good? Yes. Are the women hot and half naked? Yes. And THAT is the soul of Howard's Conan - violence and sex packaged for the 50's audience.
What struck me most about this movie is that for the first time, I saw on screen a movie that was true to Howard's Conan. Not Arnold's Conan, not the Conan from the broadsheet comics or the horrible comics from the 80's, but Conan as Howard wrote him: brutal, grand, violent and only interested in the next piece of a**.
If you love Howard's books, you'll like this movie. If your vision of Conan comes from anything else, you'll hate it; but in that case, you never 'got' Conan in the first place. Kudos to Momoa; he did a GREAT job, and I'll happily pay to see him do it again. One thing - avoid the 3D version, it's positively pain inducing. Rent the video and watch it in 2D.
Howard's books weren't good, they were pulp. And this movie is pulp, and it's pretty good pulp.
Conan is NOT a 'complex', or 'deep and brooding' character; he's a thug with a sword. And Momoa is the first actor to play him even close to Howard's vision. Howard's plots were not 'deep', his target audience was sexually frustrated 15 year old boys. To ascribe any 'literary' qualities to his books is BS. And this movie, true to Howard, targets the same audience.
Is the dialog good? No; neither was Howard's. Is the action good? Yes. Are the women hot and half naked? Yes. And THAT is the soul of Howard's Conan - violence and sex packaged for the 50's audience.
What struck me most about this movie is that for the first time, I saw on screen a movie that was true to Howard's Conan. Not Arnold's Conan, not the Conan from the broadsheet comics or the horrible comics from the 80's, but Conan as Howard wrote him: brutal, grand, violent and only interested in the next piece of a**.
If you love Howard's books, you'll like this movie. If your vision of Conan comes from anything else, you'll hate it; but in that case, you never 'got' Conan in the first place. Kudos to Momoa; he did a GREAT job, and I'll happily pay to see him do it again. One thing - avoid the 3D version, it's positively pain inducing. Rent the video and watch it in 2D.