“What is best in life?”
“To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of the women.”
Of the many florid exchanges in John Milius’ 1982 version of Conan the Barbarian, that’s the one most frequently quoted, eternal fodder for third-rate Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonations. Scripted by Milius and Oliver Stone — a team that suggests the prose equivalent of attaching a hammer to an anvil — the film could fairly be labeled cheesy and overwrought, but no one could accuse it of lacking purpose. Through Robert E. Howard’s fantasy stories, Milius found in Conan the perfect vessel for his career-long obsessions with war, power and the essence of masculinity.
Cut to nearly two decades later, and Conan returns, just another property in need of a reboot, shoehorned into a marketplace that’s already overstuffed with barrel-chested warriors and murky 3-D fantasy realms. Directed by Marcus Nispel, the music-video maestro responsible for similarly pointless remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th, the new Conan the Barbarian doesn’t have a fresh take on the material — or any take at all, for that matter. There are swords and sorcery, pirates and monsters, taxed bodices and taxing mythology. In other words, there’s the bare minimum necessary to summon this dismal movie into existence.
Via voice-over narration by Morgan Freeman — who may at this point be available to narrate your morning commute — we learn that Conan was literally born on the battlefield, forged in blood and conflict much like a blade in fire and ice. After witnessing his father killed and his village razed as an impressionable boy, the grown-up Conan, played by Hawaiian beef slab Jason Momoa, wanders in exile with sword in hand and revenge in his heart. His target: Khalar Zym (Avatar baddie Stephen Lang), a sneering warlord intent on world domination.