Conan The Barbarian

I do have mixed emotions about how this thing appears , but at least the studio is doing a lot to try to get some positive traction with the fans out there. The recent trailer that was released seemed to at least have the gotten the feel of the world right, but it still seemed like something was missing.

Other than Ron Perlman pretty much phoning his performance in, I like this clip even though the action seems a little outlandish. It kind of reminds me of those Child's Play movies at one point, but I can't complain with the buckets of blood.

Conan The Barbarian

The Guardian has a piece about the race and gender issues some might have with Robert E. Howard's pulp fiction of the 1930s.

From the story...

Basically, these stories are pure pulp fiction, and all the more enjoyable for being unashamedly so. Rather than, as I've been doing, devouring several of them in one sitting, I think it would be better – less repetitive – to read them as they were originally published in Weird Tales; I can imagine them working brilliantly in regular instalments, garish art and all. They're the work of a young man, in his 20s – Howard committed suicide in 1936, at the age of 30 – and they clearly came tumbling from his pen at full speed. Stephen King is quoted on my edition, saying they "seem to almost fall over themselves in their need to get out".

For all that, though, there are elements that jar horribly today. Villains are usually dark-skinned; the darker the eviller. The more lily-white a woman's skin, the more prized she is. Howard might be a product of his time, but so am I, and it's impossible to read sentences such as "in this accursed city … where white, brown, and black folk mingle together to produce hybrids of all unholy hues and breeds – who can tell who is a man, and who is a demon in disguise?" without cringing.

Howard's women, too, get me down. Conan is obviously written for boys, but why oh why are the ladies such wimps? Even the spirited Valeria in Red Nails – "as quick and ferocious as a tigress" – is popped on Conan's knee and caressed – against her will, but later, as "a chill crept through her veins", she will "unconsciously" lay her "white hand on her companion's muscular brown arm" for reassurance. And she's one of the good ones.

Robert E. Howard's most famous creation gets resurrected in this Marcus Nispel-directed Nu Image/Millennium production, starring Stargate Atlantis' Jason Momoa as the cunning Cimmerian brute Conan. Mickey Rourke co-stars as the hero's father.

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When his mother and father are killed in a raid by the evil sorcerer Thulsa Doom, Conan is sent to a slave camp. As the years pass, he develops into a powerfully-built man, still determined to get revenge for his parents' death and solve the riddle of steel.

He learns that Thulsa Doom is the head of a mysterious snake cult and in his attempts to get closer to the evil sorceror Conan makes some powerful friends and many deadly enemies.

This film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Erik Holmey, Gary Herman, Leslie Foldvary, Franco Columbu, Luis Barboo, William Smith, Valérie Quennessen, Mako, Gerry Lopez, Cassandra Gava, Ben Davidson, Sandahl Bergman, Max von Sydow, James Earl Jones.

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