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Aug. 28th, 2011 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helblingRight, those of you who have me friended on Facebook will know that I have dubbed the latest Conan film with the dubious honour of ‘The Worst Film I’ve Ever Seen In The Cinema’.
In case you don’t, I’ll say it again here – Conan The Barbarian 2011 is possibly the worst film I’ve ever seen in the cinema. It’s not the absolute worst I’ve ever seen point blank, butvit’s close. Now please bear in mind here that Doug and I collect Bad Fantasy films as a genre. We have access to films that the general public – with the exception of our poor social circle – do not know exist. As a film subtype, we are connoisseurs; Van Helsing is considered, to us, to be a wonderful, wonderful film. Dragonheart is original and touching. Ultra Violet, The Black Death and Pathfinder are all solid members of our regular playlist.
If I were to be given a DVD of Conan, I don’t know what I’d do with it, to be honest. It’s beyond bad –I mean, we make our main entertainment out of bad, and we couldn’t with this. Curse Of the Golden Flower we howled our way though – this we mostly sat through it and gaped. It even fails at being offensive; yes, there are misogynistic moments, but they wouldn’t even be something to laugh/rage at if you’re that sort of person...because they made no sense. It’s so bad that I can’t really bring myself to hate it – I wouldn’t expend the energy it would take to set it on fire – but at the same time, it’s so, so, so bad that I might just sit there and goggle at how someone could have spend $90 million on this piece of shit.
So please, please understand how bad this is when I say that it only doesn’t hold the honour of worst film of all time because I still haven’t been able to get all the way through Dragon. It’s currently a solid #2...because it fails at anything.
So, I’ve been pondering how best to get this across. The good ole script format akin to Movies in 15 Minutes is good for laughs, but isn’t sufficient to expand on the true awfulness of it. Similarly, I could rant for a good long while, but that’s no fun to read and has the potential to not actually tell you much about the film if I end up getting side tracked and adding copious footnotes. So, I’m going to do a mashup. Spoilers below folks.
Opening voice over:*Sounds suspiciously like Morgan Freeman. But if it was I can’t find his name credited anywhere. Maybe he had his name taken off this thing. If he did – wise, wise man.*
Opening voiceover: *Is far, far longer than necessary*.
Too much info in all the wrong places is one of the major fuck ups of this film. Literally all this opening needed to establish was that once upon a time, there was an evil empire that was defeated and the mask that had been the centre of their power broken up and each piece given to a different barbarian tribe to make putting it back together more difficult. Was this all that they told you? Nope.
What they did was give you a big long list of all the places these bad guys defeated, and then go spinning off into purple prose. The problem with this? We’re never shown a map at any time. We’re never given reference points for where these places are in relation to each other. From the background we see in each scene, they don’t even appear to be able to decide on what continent and climate they’re in. For all I know about these place names, the narrator might actually have been telling me my mother copulates with three legged donkeys in some obscure language – that’s how much sense it made.
Deep breath. Moving on.
Scene: A battle, somewhere – Ron Perlman isn’t so much chewing the scenery as he is killing his enemies by spitting splinters at them after he takes a bite. It’s worth noting the background is grassy lowlands.
Some woman: *is heavily pregnant.*
Same woman: *gets stabbed in the belly, but it miraculously misses the child.*
Enemy: *dies*.
Ron Perlman:: My love! You are wounded!
Actual script: is not that far off the above, I shit you not.
Same woman: Yes, but I will see my baby before I die.
Ron Perlman: *takes out knife, puts his little finger in the woman’s mouth in a way that is obviously meant to act as a gag, and then performs a caesarean. One handed. With a battle knife. And no training. While battle rages around them. Despite the fact that he’s dressed as a headman and obviously vulnerable, all his enemies kindly leave him alone to perform this task.*
Same woman: *whimpers a little, licks Perlman’s finger a bit, and then...nothing. I’ve seen more pain expressed by my sister when she has a manicure. I had more tears in my eyes than this woman the first time I had my eyebrows plucked. Whatever they spent that damned £90 mil on, acting talent wasn’t it.*
Creepy animatronic baby: *is covered in strawberry jam, and keeps moving in REALLY ODD CIRCULAR PATTERNS THAT MAKE IT REALLY CLEAR IT’S A DAMN ROBOT.*
Same woman: His name is Conan. *dies*
Ron Perlman: *holds baby above head* Roooooooooooarg!
Battle: *continues raging around them.*
No, no, I’m not joking here. In the middle of battle, not one of his enemies were arsing smart enough to notice that the leader of their opposition had paused in his fighting to hold some random baby above his head – at this point, dear readers, I’ll note that he hadn’t cut the umbilical cord, so the overall effect must have been quite something – and was paying shit all attention to them.
Darwin in action.
Oh, and that scripting above? Is pretty much verbatim, at least as I remember it.
Ok. Next scene.
Scene: Some years later – are we told how many? Nope. Because we’re NEVER given time lines in this damn film.
RP: *Gives inspiring speech to a bunch of boys, and giving them each a quail’s egg, which they all put in their mouths.*
Boys: *are all approximately the same age, height and dressed the same – white fur tunics with dark trousers.*
Conan: *crashes the party. He is noticeably shorter, younger, differently dressed and more tattered than any of his fellows – whatever preparations they’ve put into this, he hasn’t bothered.*
RP: *stares at son.*
Boys: *glare, because this isn’t nepotism or anything, oh no.*
RP: And whoever makes it first around the mountain and back without breaking their egg wins. Off you go.
Boys: Holy shit, he’s actually going to treat us fairly. Quick, peg it!
RP: Two seconds later, gives Conan an egg and tells him to catch up.
Boys: Oh FFS!!
Boys: *Run competitively, shoving each other around – some eggs get smashed.*
Conan: *has an inability to keep his mouth closed –there are a couple of slow-mo shots of him running and jumping, showing a COMPLETELY OPEN EMPTY MOUTH. For a second, wonder if he’s stashed his egg somewhere and will retrieve it later, but, as a spoiler, nope, it’s just the actor is shit and the director is hoping we won’t notice. Wrong. *
Spooky dudes: Lurky, Lurky Lurky*
Boys: Oh shit, we’ll go warn the village. *peg it*
Conan: *stands his ground*
I’m going to break out of script there, because this fight was when I kind of started realising that this film was going to attain a level of shittiness rarely managed by any mortal. Nearly never, in fact. That this film would not, in fact, be something we could point and laugh at but rather something we could only gaze in horror at and pray and hope that sometime soon, it would all be over.
So, Conan – by my reckoning, at about the age of somewhere between 10 and 13 – is in a forest with about 6 or 7 bad guys facing him down. He has no armour, no weapons, no element of surprise, and is holding an egg in his mouth. A magical disappearing egg, at that.
Heightwise, he’s either a shortass, or these dudes are HUGE. The top of Conan’s head reaches their nipples. At maximum – for the most part, if he tried to nut these dudes, his forehead would connect directly with the level of their diaphragms. Each of the dudes is bare chested but has armoured leggings, and each of them bear a weapon of some sort.
Got that? Six fully grown, heavily muscled, semi armoured and armed warriors who have one snotty tweenager surrounded. How do we think this fight will end?
Naturally, the tweenager kicks arse. But not well – no, no, there is no finesse here. There are no clever tricks, no sleight of hand, no tactics. It’s an all out brawl and, somehow, the damn tweenager wins it.
He punches them – they go flying back, teeth spraying.
They swing a weapon that must weigh as much as he does and he dodges.
He swings a tree branch that normally wouldn’t be sufficient to brain a chicken and they are skewered through.
He trips a couple of them up, and despite earlier in the fight us seeing him bouncing harmlessly off the soft snow, when their heads impact with the same snow, there is an explosion of blood and a sound like a llama chewing a squirrel.
When he’s done, he coup de graces them with their own weapons – oh god, the sound effects. The only way I can imagine they got these noises was by filling a swimming pool with a porridge mixed with a dangerous amount of silicone based lubricant and then getting an 80 year old woman to pogo stick through it on a toilet plunger with an extra long handle. It’s the squelching sound you’d get if you ever actually managed to remove Nick Griffin’s head from his own arse – that is the noise.
Oh, as extra fun, these enemies appear 100% human in every way – there are no elongated teeth, no odd skull shapes, not even questionable scarring – 100% human, right? But they don’t talk. They make the dinosaur sound from Jurassic Park. What comes out of their completely homosapien throats is pure T-Rex. More proof for my theory that the entire audio for the scene was accidentally wiped and replaced by someone letting their cat first play and then sleep on the sound mixer. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
So then he arrives back to the village with their severed heads – how he severed their heads is another question, as every single weapon his enemies had was a variation on a mace – and everyone draws back in fear.
Let me repeat this – barbarian village. Huge deal been made by Ron Perlman in the thoroughly unnecessary exposition on how this village’s life blood is fighting. Warring. Everyone is a warrior, tougher than the tough, made the 300 look like mewling kittens.
One tweenager dragging a bunch of severed heads, and half of them look like they’re about to faint dead away.
Again – MAKES NO SENSE. And not in the fun way. The only explanation I can give you is that this is a barbarian village with a highly defined sense of etiquette and actually, they’re not horrified, they’re scandalised, because EVERYONE knows you only drag severed heads with your left hand if it’s before labor day.
Oh, and as the topper to that scene, Conan finishes it by spitting the damn egg out at Ron Perlman.
I say it again – MAGICAL DISAPPEARING EGG.
RP: *blather about swords*
Conan:*ignores*
Repeat: *ad nauseum.*
No, that’s it. Essentially, from what I can get of this scene, you’re supposed to develop some sort of attachment to the sword Perlamn is making. But the explanations behind it makes no sense, is jumbled and unremarkable, and you can’t even regard it as something Conan did with his Dad that he remembers fondly, because Conan is forever being a scowly, idiotic tweenager who keeps running off.
Next Scene – one of the only decent scenes in the film, because the bad guys are in it.
Evil dude: Rar, I have beaten your village, give me the piece of the mask.
Ron Perlman: Nevar!!
Conan: Is fighting bad guys outside with far more success than the other warriors.
Black man #1: *has facial tribal scarring that NO ONE ELSE seems to have had.*
Sound effects: Have been attacked by the cat again.
Conan: Finally realises something isn’t right – sneaks into the hut.
Evil Dude: Tell me! Or more ridiculous threats, all of which is in fact just delaying things before I tell you that thanks to my daughter, we don’t need you to cooperate at all.
Daughter: Is Wednesday Adams.
Coolest Character Of The Film: awarded to Wednesday Adams.
Daughter: prowls the hut with wonderfully long claw-like thingys, before unearthing the piece of the mask.
Conan: Attacks, manages to cut the nose off one of the generals.
Generals: Are understandably pissed.
Evil dude: No wait! I like him!
Everyone: ...WTF? And your reason for this is...?
Reason: Is sadly absent.
Evil Dude: So now, I leave in an evil laugh and a terribly situation! Mwahahaha!
Exeunt bad guys pursued by all semblance of good taste. With Ron’s sword, it should be pointed out.
Next Scene.
Overly complicated trap: *is overly complicated.*
Pot of molten metal: *Is suspended over Ron Perlman’s head.*
Ron Perlman: *Has his hands chained to the front of the pot, and both of his knees bashed in.*
Conan: *is holding the other side of the pot – if he lets go, the molten metal will pour onto his father.*
Hut they’re stood in: *is on fire.*
Ron Perlman: encouraging words! I am saying encouraging words to you son! They are about as memorable as this, but ENCOURAGEMENT!
Rob Perlman: *Hauls on chains and kills himself via gargling on molten metal.*
Conan: *Is understandably upset...but rather than taking advantage of his father’s sacrifice, STAYS IN THE BURNING BUILDING.*
The next day: *rolls around*
Conan: *Is still there. Takes a different sword, and then runs off.*
Unneccessary voiceover: So Conan wondered through another whole bunch of countries, stealing and thieving, and generally being a nasty person. But I won’t tell you this in a straight forward manner, and once again, I’m going to give you a LIST OF COUNTRIES YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF AND HAVE NO REASON TO HAVE EVER HEARD OF. And I still sound like Morgan Freeman.
Next Scene: On a rocky outcrop somewhere – looks kind of south Mediterranean, and indeed, everyone is wearing light or little clothing.
Grown Conan: I look suspiciously like a caveman, right down to the prominent headridge. Also, I’m inspecting some old sunbleached bones.
Black man #2: If I’m given a name, it’s never mentioned more than once. Also, these are not the men you’re looking for. And sometime soon, I’m going to tell the story of how I met you, which contains exactly the same information as was in that voiceover, thus rendering it even more unnecessary. Or possibly they couldn’t be bothered to give me any actual lines. Don’t know. Also, I have dreadlocks and a pronounced accent. And my name is Artus.
Conan: Yeah, bit of a shitter that. I’m going to glower at you in exactly the same way I looked at the bones. Say, have I ever shown any emotion towards you?
Artus: Nope.
Conan: So we’re friends why?
Artus: Well, it says on page 3 of the script?
Conan: Any other reason?
Artus: I believe we’re due some buddy buddy arm wrestling later, and I’ll help you get laid, but other than that, you drop me like a sack of shit when I’m not useful and we appear to have very little camaraderie, so...no.
Conan: Hunh. Weird – hey look, slavers!
Artus: And out of fucking no where, we have allies poised to crush them with big boulders – what do you say?
Conan: Let’s fight!
Boulders: *are dropped onto the slave camp*
Slaves: * scatter but some are inevitably hit by large chunks of falling rock.*
Conan: Well, we suck at this rescuing business. To the fight!
Everyone: Fights.
Slave cages: Are for some reason filled only with bare chested, young female slaves. Who, rather than being frightened at the fighting, crowd up to the bars and FUCKING COO AT CONAN AND ARTUS. SLAVES, MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT??
Slavers: Are defeated.
Slaves are freed, but then...
Bare breasted slaves: But where will we go! What will we do! You’ve nicked all the food!
Artus: Well, shit, yeah, I guess we’re bad people. Here, I’ll give you-
Conan: No! Wait! We feel like partying! Come and wait on us and we’ll feed you!
Artus: Out of interest, how does that make us different to the slavers!
Nobody: cares.
Party: Happens.
Bare breasted women: Coo over Artus and Conan as they arm wrestle.
Some guy: Comes and site down and is obviously hiding. Also, he only has one eye.
Bunch of guards, led by a guy with no nose: Are looking fro them.
Conan: Gets himself and the other dude captured. But only having beaten up the guards. Because that’ll make them better disposed to you.
Next scene: In a quarry. This appears to be less than a day later, because no one has changed clothes, we didn’t have any montage of them being part of some sort of baggage train or something, and yet...there’s snow on the ground. But everyone is still dressed like they’re in the Med. WTF.
Conan: Is the only one not chained to something.
Conan: Is also the only one not chained to his hands are above his head or behind his back.
Conan: Is also the only one with chains between his wrists which are SO LONG that he actually has independant movement of his hands.
Conan: Is three times the size of most of these other prisoners.
Conan: Unsurprisingly, breaks into the guards quarters, kills everyone but the no nose guy, who he tortures by shoving his finger actually INTO his nose. And then he makes him swallow the key to everyone’s shackles (because naturally there’s only one), and then throws him to the prisoners and hands them a knife.
Right, I’m hoping that’s enough for everyone to have gotten the jist of how this thing is structured, because just remembering tihs is sapping my will to write. It’s painful – I’d far rather be writing Lottie right now. So, I’m just going to summarise what happens from here.
The guy with the eye patch proclaims that if Conan ever needs anything, come to *some place no one has heard of* and he’ll repay him – he claims he can get into and out of anywhere. Ri-ight, because Conan didn’t break him out of his joint or anything.
Cut scene to some monastery, in what looks like the himalayas. A bunch of girls wearing what appear to be loo rolls for hats are sitting around, giggling at some man and asking them to tell their future. There’s a lot of gasping and awwwing when he tells one girl she’ll meet a warrior and her path will merge with his.
Cut back to Conan who has gone back to Artus and they’re on a boat. For no reason. Also, no time appears to have passed – what does this guy have, a teleporter or something?? Conan asks him to drop him off someplace. Artus says he’ll only be able to drop him off someplace else. God knows where either of these things are. Artus also says he wants to go help Conan, but Conan doesn’t want him to. And sure enough, Artus doesn’t. So far, Artus is coming off like an odd mix of wingman, exposition dealer and taxi driver.
Back at the monastery, Evil dude and his now grown up daughter arrive with an army of other bad dudes – grown up daughter is still awesomely cool and still has talony fingers and awesome hair and outfits. By far the coolest part of the movie.
Girl who was told a prophecy gets secreted away. Daughter inspects the other monks and proclaims none of the girls there are of the bloodline they need – naturally, to flesh out her evil credentials, she kills a couple in unnecessary ways. Evil dude confront s the head monk and reveals that head monk killed his wife by burning her as a witch 15 years ago and making him and his daughter watch. Head monk feels as the wife was going to try to take over the world, this was justified.
Meanwhile, one of the generals is pursuing the carriage with the gril in it through what looks like European forest. What the fuck is up with the geography of this place? General nearly gets the girl, before Conan leaps in and assumes the girl is on Evil dude’s side. Misunderstandings fail to take place, as the girl – Tamara – rather than getting all insulting by Conan’s caveman like grunts, responds intelligently by telling him she has no idea what she’s talking about.
Then there is random catapults. And the scenery chances from European forsts to Arabic background to redwood forest and all the things in between. Tamara has sex with conan for no apparent reason. Artus gets one more fight scene and wingmans for conan some more. Conan defeats the big bad in a lair that collapses for no reason once he’s dead. The only characterisation is between evil dude and his daughter doesn’t actually come to anything. I honestly cannot bring myelf to go on with this. It’s too bad. I just can’t. Don’t ask me to. Just...don’t see it, m’kay? Just...don’t.
Right, I’m now at approximately 2000 words, and I’ve only made it through the first 15 minutes of the movie. It’s also midnight. I’ll post the rest of this thing up tomorrow, because, holy shit, it gets so much worse. Watch this space- I’ll probably edit stuff in rather than make a new post.
Sorry folks. I did about another half an hour, but I just....couldn't. It's too bad. Don't blame me, 'kay? Blame the goddamn writers - apparently it ook 3 of them to create this atrocity.
In case you don’t, I’ll say it again here – Conan The Barbarian 2011 is possibly the worst film I’ve ever seen in the cinema. It’s not the absolute worst I’ve ever seen point blank, butvit’s close. Now please bear in mind here that Doug and I collect Bad Fantasy films as a genre. We have access to films that the general public – with the exception of our poor social circle – do not know exist. As a film subtype, we are connoisseurs; Van Helsing is considered, to us, to be a wonderful, wonderful film. Dragonheart is original and touching. Ultra Violet, The Black Death and Pathfinder are all solid members of our regular playlist.
If I were to be given a DVD of Conan, I don’t know what I’d do with it, to be honest. It’s beyond bad –I mean, we make our main entertainment out of bad, and we couldn’t with this. Curse Of the Golden Flower we howled our way though – this we mostly sat through it and gaped. It even fails at being offensive; yes, there are misogynistic moments, but they wouldn’t even be something to laugh/rage at if you’re that sort of person...because they made no sense. It’s so bad that I can’t really bring myself to hate it – I wouldn’t expend the energy it would take to set it on fire – but at the same time, it’s so, so, so bad that I might just sit there and goggle at how someone could have spend $90 million on this piece of shit.
So please, please understand how bad this is when I say that it only doesn’t hold the honour of worst film of all time because I still haven’t been able to get all the way through Dragon. It’s currently a solid #2...because it fails at anything.
So, I’ve been pondering how best to get this across. The good ole script format akin to Movies in 15 Minutes is good for laughs, but isn’t sufficient to expand on the true awfulness of it. Similarly, I could rant for a good long while, but that’s no fun to read and has the potential to not actually tell you much about the film if I end up getting side tracked and adding copious footnotes. So, I’m going to do a mashup. Spoilers below folks.
Opening voice over:*Sounds suspiciously like Morgan Freeman. But if it was I can’t find his name credited anywhere. Maybe he had his name taken off this thing. If he did – wise, wise man.*
Opening voiceover: *Is far, far longer than necessary*.
Too much info in all the wrong places is one of the major fuck ups of this film. Literally all this opening needed to establish was that once upon a time, there was an evil empire that was defeated and the mask that had been the centre of their power broken up and each piece given to a different barbarian tribe to make putting it back together more difficult. Was this all that they told you? Nope.
What they did was give you a big long list of all the places these bad guys defeated, and then go spinning off into purple prose. The problem with this? We’re never shown a map at any time. We’re never given reference points for where these places are in relation to each other. From the background we see in each scene, they don’t even appear to be able to decide on what continent and climate they’re in. For all I know about these place names, the narrator might actually have been telling me my mother copulates with three legged donkeys in some obscure language – that’s how much sense it made.
Deep breath. Moving on.
Scene: A battle, somewhere – Ron Perlman isn’t so much chewing the scenery as he is killing his enemies by spitting splinters at them after he takes a bite. It’s worth noting the background is grassy lowlands.
Some woman: *is heavily pregnant.*
Same woman: *gets stabbed in the belly, but it miraculously misses the child.*
Enemy: *dies*.
Ron Perlman:: My love! You are wounded!
Actual script: is not that far off the above, I shit you not.
Same woman: Yes, but I will see my baby before I die.
Ron Perlman: *takes out knife, puts his little finger in the woman’s mouth in a way that is obviously meant to act as a gag, and then performs a caesarean. One handed. With a battle knife. And no training. While battle rages around them. Despite the fact that he’s dressed as a headman and obviously vulnerable, all his enemies kindly leave him alone to perform this task.*
Same woman: *whimpers a little, licks Perlman’s finger a bit, and then...nothing. I’ve seen more pain expressed by my sister when she has a manicure. I had more tears in my eyes than this woman the first time I had my eyebrows plucked. Whatever they spent that damned £90 mil on, acting talent wasn’t it.*
Creepy animatronic baby: *is covered in strawberry jam, and keeps moving in REALLY ODD CIRCULAR PATTERNS THAT MAKE IT REALLY CLEAR IT’S A DAMN ROBOT.*
Same woman: His name is Conan. *dies*
Ron Perlman: *holds baby above head* Roooooooooooarg!
Battle: *continues raging around them.*
No, no, I’m not joking here. In the middle of battle, not one of his enemies were arsing smart enough to notice that the leader of their opposition had paused in his fighting to hold some random baby above his head – at this point, dear readers, I’ll note that he hadn’t cut the umbilical cord, so the overall effect must have been quite something – and was paying shit all attention to them.
Darwin in action.
Oh, and that scripting above? Is pretty much verbatim, at least as I remember it.
Ok. Next scene.
Scene: Some years later – are we told how many? Nope. Because we’re NEVER given time lines in this damn film.
RP: *Gives inspiring speech to a bunch of boys, and giving them each a quail’s egg, which they all put in their mouths.*
Boys: *are all approximately the same age, height and dressed the same – white fur tunics with dark trousers.*
Conan: *crashes the party. He is noticeably shorter, younger, differently dressed and more tattered than any of his fellows – whatever preparations they’ve put into this, he hasn’t bothered.*
RP: *stares at son.*
Boys: *glare, because this isn’t nepotism or anything, oh no.*
RP: And whoever makes it first around the mountain and back without breaking their egg wins. Off you go.
Boys: Holy shit, he’s actually going to treat us fairly. Quick, peg it!
RP: Two seconds later, gives Conan an egg and tells him to catch up.
Boys: Oh FFS!!
Boys: *Run competitively, shoving each other around – some eggs get smashed.*
Conan: *has an inability to keep his mouth closed –there are a couple of slow-mo shots of him running and jumping, showing a COMPLETELY OPEN EMPTY MOUTH. For a second, wonder if he’s stashed his egg somewhere and will retrieve it later, but, as a spoiler, nope, it’s just the actor is shit and the director is hoping we won’t notice. Wrong. *
Spooky dudes: Lurky, Lurky Lurky*
Boys: Oh shit, we’ll go warn the village. *peg it*
Conan: *stands his ground*
I’m going to break out of script there, because this fight was when I kind of started realising that this film was going to attain a level of shittiness rarely managed by any mortal. Nearly never, in fact. That this film would not, in fact, be something we could point and laugh at but rather something we could only gaze in horror at and pray and hope that sometime soon, it would all be over.
So, Conan – by my reckoning, at about the age of somewhere between 10 and 13 – is in a forest with about 6 or 7 bad guys facing him down. He has no armour, no weapons, no element of surprise, and is holding an egg in his mouth. A magical disappearing egg, at that.
Heightwise, he’s either a shortass, or these dudes are HUGE. The top of Conan’s head reaches their nipples. At maximum – for the most part, if he tried to nut these dudes, his forehead would connect directly with the level of their diaphragms. Each of the dudes is bare chested but has armoured leggings, and each of them bear a weapon of some sort.
Got that? Six fully grown, heavily muscled, semi armoured and armed warriors who have one snotty tweenager surrounded. How do we think this fight will end?
Naturally, the tweenager kicks arse. But not well – no, no, there is no finesse here. There are no clever tricks, no sleight of hand, no tactics. It’s an all out brawl and, somehow, the damn tweenager wins it.
He punches them – they go flying back, teeth spraying.
They swing a weapon that must weigh as much as he does and he dodges.
He swings a tree branch that normally wouldn’t be sufficient to brain a chicken and they are skewered through.
He trips a couple of them up, and despite earlier in the fight us seeing him bouncing harmlessly off the soft snow, when their heads impact with the same snow, there is an explosion of blood and a sound like a llama chewing a squirrel.
When he’s done, he coup de graces them with their own weapons – oh god, the sound effects. The only way I can imagine they got these noises was by filling a swimming pool with a porridge mixed with a dangerous amount of silicone based lubricant and then getting an 80 year old woman to pogo stick through it on a toilet plunger with an extra long handle. It’s the squelching sound you’d get if you ever actually managed to remove Nick Griffin’s head from his own arse – that is the noise.
Oh, as extra fun, these enemies appear 100% human in every way – there are no elongated teeth, no odd skull shapes, not even questionable scarring – 100% human, right? But they don’t talk. They make the dinosaur sound from Jurassic Park. What comes out of their completely homosapien throats is pure T-Rex. More proof for my theory that the entire audio for the scene was accidentally wiped and replaced by someone letting their cat first play and then sleep on the sound mixer. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
So then he arrives back to the village with their severed heads – how he severed their heads is another question, as every single weapon his enemies had was a variation on a mace – and everyone draws back in fear.
Let me repeat this – barbarian village. Huge deal been made by Ron Perlman in the thoroughly unnecessary exposition on how this village’s life blood is fighting. Warring. Everyone is a warrior, tougher than the tough, made the 300 look like mewling kittens.
One tweenager dragging a bunch of severed heads, and half of them look like they’re about to faint dead away.
Again – MAKES NO SENSE. And not in the fun way. The only explanation I can give you is that this is a barbarian village with a highly defined sense of etiquette and actually, they’re not horrified, they’re scandalised, because EVERYONE knows you only drag severed heads with your left hand if it’s before labor day.
Oh, and as the topper to that scene, Conan finishes it by spitting the damn egg out at Ron Perlman.
I say it again – MAGICAL DISAPPEARING EGG.
RP: *blather about swords*
Conan:*ignores*
Repeat: *ad nauseum.*
No, that’s it. Essentially, from what I can get of this scene, you’re supposed to develop some sort of attachment to the sword Perlamn is making. But the explanations behind it makes no sense, is jumbled and unremarkable, and you can’t even regard it as something Conan did with his Dad that he remembers fondly, because Conan is forever being a scowly, idiotic tweenager who keeps running off.
Next Scene – one of the only decent scenes in the film, because the bad guys are in it.
Evil dude: Rar, I have beaten your village, give me the piece of the mask.
Ron Perlman: Nevar!!
Conan: Is fighting bad guys outside with far more success than the other warriors.
Black man #1: *has facial tribal scarring that NO ONE ELSE seems to have had.*
Sound effects: Have been attacked by the cat again.
Conan: Finally realises something isn’t right – sneaks into the hut.
Evil Dude: Tell me! Or more ridiculous threats, all of which is in fact just delaying things before I tell you that thanks to my daughter, we don’t need you to cooperate at all.
Daughter: Is Wednesday Adams.
Coolest Character Of The Film: awarded to Wednesday Adams.
Daughter: prowls the hut with wonderfully long claw-like thingys, before unearthing the piece of the mask.
Conan: Attacks, manages to cut the nose off one of the generals.
Generals: Are understandably pissed.
Evil dude: No wait! I like him!
Everyone: ...WTF? And your reason for this is...?
Reason: Is sadly absent.
Evil Dude: So now, I leave in an evil laugh and a terribly situation! Mwahahaha!
Exeunt bad guys pursued by all semblance of good taste. With Ron’s sword, it should be pointed out.
Next Scene.
Overly complicated trap: *is overly complicated.*
Pot of molten metal: *Is suspended over Ron Perlman’s head.*
Ron Perlman: *Has his hands chained to the front of the pot, and both of his knees bashed in.*
Conan: *is holding the other side of the pot – if he lets go, the molten metal will pour onto his father.*
Hut they’re stood in: *is on fire.*
Ron Perlman: encouraging words! I am saying encouraging words to you son! They are about as memorable as this, but ENCOURAGEMENT!
Rob Perlman: *Hauls on chains and kills himself via gargling on molten metal.*
Conan: *Is understandably upset...but rather than taking advantage of his father’s sacrifice, STAYS IN THE BURNING BUILDING.*
The next day: *rolls around*
Conan: *Is still there. Takes a different sword, and then runs off.*
Unneccessary voiceover: So Conan wondered through another whole bunch of countries, stealing and thieving, and generally being a nasty person. But I won’t tell you this in a straight forward manner, and once again, I’m going to give you a LIST OF COUNTRIES YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF AND HAVE NO REASON TO HAVE EVER HEARD OF. And I still sound like Morgan Freeman.
Next Scene: On a rocky outcrop somewhere – looks kind of south Mediterranean, and indeed, everyone is wearing light or little clothing.
Grown Conan: I look suspiciously like a caveman, right down to the prominent headridge. Also, I’m inspecting some old sunbleached bones.
Black man #2: If I’m given a name, it’s never mentioned more than once. Also, these are not the men you’re looking for. And sometime soon, I’m going to tell the story of how I met you, which contains exactly the same information as was in that voiceover, thus rendering it even more unnecessary. Or possibly they couldn’t be bothered to give me any actual lines. Don’t know. Also, I have dreadlocks and a pronounced accent. And my name is Artus.
Conan: Yeah, bit of a shitter that. I’m going to glower at you in exactly the same way I looked at the bones. Say, have I ever shown any emotion towards you?
Artus: Nope.
Conan: So we’re friends why?
Artus: Well, it says on page 3 of the script?
Conan: Any other reason?
Artus: I believe we’re due some buddy buddy arm wrestling later, and I’ll help you get laid, but other than that, you drop me like a sack of shit when I’m not useful and we appear to have very little camaraderie, so...no.
Conan: Hunh. Weird – hey look, slavers!
Artus: And out of fucking no where, we have allies poised to crush them with big boulders – what do you say?
Conan: Let’s fight!
Boulders: *are dropped onto the slave camp*
Slaves: * scatter but some are inevitably hit by large chunks of falling rock.*
Conan: Well, we suck at this rescuing business. To the fight!
Everyone: Fights.
Slave cages: Are for some reason filled only with bare chested, young female slaves. Who, rather than being frightened at the fighting, crowd up to the bars and FUCKING COO AT CONAN AND ARTUS. SLAVES, MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT??
Slavers: Are defeated.
Slaves are freed, but then...
Bare breasted slaves: But where will we go! What will we do! You’ve nicked all the food!
Artus: Well, shit, yeah, I guess we’re bad people. Here, I’ll give you-
Conan: No! Wait! We feel like partying! Come and wait on us and we’ll feed you!
Artus: Out of interest, how does that make us different to the slavers!
Nobody: cares.
Party: Happens.
Bare breasted women: Coo over Artus and Conan as they arm wrestle.
Some guy: Comes and site down and is obviously hiding. Also, he only has one eye.
Bunch of guards, led by a guy with no nose: Are looking fro them.
Conan: Gets himself and the other dude captured. But only having beaten up the guards. Because that’ll make them better disposed to you.
Next scene: In a quarry. This appears to be less than a day later, because no one has changed clothes, we didn’t have any montage of them being part of some sort of baggage train or something, and yet...there’s snow on the ground. But everyone is still dressed like they’re in the Med. WTF.
Conan: Is the only one not chained to something.
Conan: Is also the only one not chained to his hands are above his head or behind his back.
Conan: Is also the only one with chains between his wrists which are SO LONG that he actually has independant movement of his hands.
Conan: Is three times the size of most of these other prisoners.
Conan: Unsurprisingly, breaks into the guards quarters, kills everyone but the no nose guy, who he tortures by shoving his finger actually INTO his nose. And then he makes him swallow the key to everyone’s shackles (because naturally there’s only one), and then throws him to the prisoners and hands them a knife.
Right, I’m hoping that’s enough for everyone to have gotten the jist of how this thing is structured, because just remembering tihs is sapping my will to write. It’s painful – I’d far rather be writing Lottie right now. So, I’m just going to summarise what happens from here.
The guy with the eye patch proclaims that if Conan ever needs anything, come to *some place no one has heard of* and he’ll repay him – he claims he can get into and out of anywhere. Ri-ight, because Conan didn’t break him out of his joint or anything.
Cut scene to some monastery, in what looks like the himalayas. A bunch of girls wearing what appear to be loo rolls for hats are sitting around, giggling at some man and asking them to tell their future. There’s a lot of gasping and awwwing when he tells one girl she’ll meet a warrior and her path will merge with his.
Cut back to Conan who has gone back to Artus and they’re on a boat. For no reason. Also, no time appears to have passed – what does this guy have, a teleporter or something?? Conan asks him to drop him off someplace. Artus says he’ll only be able to drop him off someplace else. God knows where either of these things are. Artus also says he wants to go help Conan, but Conan doesn’t want him to. And sure enough, Artus doesn’t. So far, Artus is coming off like an odd mix of wingman, exposition dealer and taxi driver.
Back at the monastery, Evil dude and his now grown up daughter arrive with an army of other bad dudes – grown up daughter is still awesomely cool and still has talony fingers and awesome hair and outfits. By far the coolest part of the movie.
Girl who was told a prophecy gets secreted away. Daughter inspects the other monks and proclaims none of the girls there are of the bloodline they need – naturally, to flesh out her evil credentials, she kills a couple in unnecessary ways. Evil dude confront s the head monk and reveals that head monk killed his wife by burning her as a witch 15 years ago and making him and his daughter watch. Head monk feels as the wife was going to try to take over the world, this was justified.
Meanwhile, one of the generals is pursuing the carriage with the gril in it through what looks like European forest. What the fuck is up with the geography of this place? General nearly gets the girl, before Conan leaps in and assumes the girl is on Evil dude’s side. Misunderstandings fail to take place, as the girl – Tamara – rather than getting all insulting by Conan’s caveman like grunts, responds intelligently by telling him she has no idea what she’s talking about.
Then there is random catapults. And the scenery chances from European forsts to Arabic background to redwood forest and all the things in between. Tamara has sex with conan for no apparent reason. Artus gets one more fight scene and wingmans for conan some more. Conan defeats the big bad in a lair that collapses for no reason once he’s dead. The only characterisation is between evil dude and his daughter doesn’t actually come to anything. I honestly cannot bring myelf to go on with this. It’s too bad. I just can’t. Don’t ask me to. Just...don’t see it, m’kay? Just...don’t.
Sorry folks. I did about another half an hour, but I just....couldn't. It's too bad. Don't blame me, 'kay? Blame the goddamn writers - apparently it ook 3 of them to create this atrocity.
