It’s no secret that I’ve been skeptical of a number of the projects released during the 2011 Summer Movie Season, but the biggest red flags and loudest warning bells came from Conan the Barbarian. When I previewed all of the films that were going to be released over these past few months, I questioned the choice to remake a film that was made nearly thirty years ago with an unknown actor taking up a character synonymous with Hollywood legend Arnold Schwarzenegger. Jason Momoa may have fans from his work on Stargate: Atlantis and Game of Thrones, but he was nowhere near famous enough to carry of summer blockbuster, especially when there were no other truly bankable actors present in the supporting cast. Needless to say, I had absolutely no desire to see Conan the Barbarian, but I knew that I couldn’t legitimately claim a thorough and diverse analysis of the Summer Movie Season without reviewing this likely train-wreck. Still, there were a number of films this summer that should have been disasters but ended up being fantastic, so maybe the trend started by Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Fright Night could continue with this sword-and-sorcery adventure.
After the high quality of some films that I was certain would be failures, I feared that my film instincts might be deteriorating, but thankfully, I can now be vindicated, because Conan the Barbarian is horrible in every way imaginable. Loud, crude, and shockingly tasteless, this newest “blockbuster” was absolute torture to sit through, and as hard as I tried, I could not identify a single redeeming quality. Jason Momoa proves he can scowl, but that’s where the acting quality stops, with the leading man and the rest of the cast choking through mind-numbing dialogue and a thoroughly ridiculous story. I know what you’re thinking, maybe there were some cool 3D fight scenes to keep the audience entertained…hate to break it to you, but any action sequences that weren’t lazy were absolutely destroyed by shoddy cinematography and shamefully poor editing. Completely unnecessary and shockingly bad, Conan the Barbarian borrows from much better action films of the past, but the film is only able to execute enough in order to earn the title of worst film of the 2011 Summer Movie Season.
For more information, please read the full review.
Overall Recommendation: Very Low
