Enter an age of undreamed of… with awful pacing, cliché characters and arcs, bare minimum character dynamics, and pure randomness.
Conan the Barbarian stars Jason Momoa as adult Conan, Leo Howard as young Conan, and Ron Perlman as Corin, and honestly those are the only ones I feel deserve much credit.
This has to be one of the most bland and clichéd stories I’ve ever watched, definitely top five. Conan’s main mission is to avenge his father’s death by killing a generic villain while helping a sort of damsel in distress along the way.
I’m not analysing the plot in this review because there’s barely any. But I’ll start with the only good thing about this movie, the opening.
The opening scene with Ron Perlman and Leo Howard was actually well done and gave me hope for the film. Their chemistry was immediate, and I understood both characters and their dynamic perfectly. Leo, for being a child actor, does a really good job in this sequence, so much so that I wish we’d followed his version of Conan instead of Momoa’s. The pacing here felt solid, and I liked that the dad wasn’t just a bad or strict parent, he actually cared for his son. Unfortunately, that’s where my praise ends.
All the present day characters are bland and forgettable. By the end, I couldn’t tell who anyone was because they all lacked personality. It felt like watching a kid play with action figures, a revenge story with no heart.
The pacing is atrocious. The film jumps between scenes at a rapid pace, never letting anything breathe or giving the audience a chance to care. Because of that, the stakes and fight scenes never land.
The sense of geography is also a mess. Characters just appear in new locations without logic. One moment Conan and the damsel are on a cliff, then suddenly in a cave, then she steps outside into a massive forest. There’s no sense of space or continuity, it’s jarring.
The villains are poorly developed, with a failed attempt to make them sympathetic. When Conan finally avenges his father, it doesn’t feel earned or satisfying, especially since he wins by trickery rather than skill. That could have worked if the story was about him learning to use his mind over brute force, but it’s not. No one changes or grows in this film.
Overall, this is a bland movie that desperately needed either a shorter runtime or deeper characters. The only reason I’m giving it one star is because of the strong opening, I genuinely wish the film had followed Leo Howard instead of Jason Momoa.
1/5 stars.
Enter an age of undreamed of… with awful pacing, cliché characters and arcs, bare minimum character dynamics, and pure randomness.
Conan the Barbarian stars Jason Momoa as adult Conan, Leo Howard as young Conan, and Ron Perlman as Corin, and honestly those are the only ones I feel deserve much credit.
This has to be one of the most bland and clichéd stories I’ve ever watched, definitely top five. Conan’s main mission is to avenge his father’s death by killing a generic villain while helping a sort of damsel in distress along the way.
I’m not analysing the plot in this review because there’s barely any. But I’ll start with the only good thing about this movie, the opening.
The opening scene with Ron Perlman and Leo Howard was actually well done and gave me hope for the film. Their chemistry was immediate, and I understood both characters and their dynamic perfectly. Leo, for being a child actor, does a really good job in this sequence, so much so that I wish we’d followed his version of Conan instead of Momoa’s. The pacing here felt solid, and I liked that the dad wasn’t just a bad or strict parent, he actually cared for his son. Unfortunately, that’s where my praise ends.
All the present day characters are bland and forgettable. By the end, I couldn’t tell who anyone was because they all lacked personality. It felt like watching a kid play with action figures, a revenge story with no heart.
The pacing is atrocious. The film jumps between scenes at a rapid pace, never letting anything breathe or giving the audience a chance to care. Because of that, the stakes and fight scenes never land.
The sense of geography is also a mess. Characters just appear in new locations without logic. One moment Conan and the damsel are on a cliff, then suddenly in a cave, then she steps outside into a massive forest. There’s no sense of space or continuity, it’s jarring.
The villains are poorly developed, with a failed attempt to make them sympathetic. When Conan finally avenges his father, it doesn’t feel earned or satisfying, especially since he wins by trickery rather than skill. That could have worked if the story was about him learning to use his mind over brute force, but it’s not. No one changes or grows in this film.
Overall, this is a bland movie that desperately needed either a shorter runtime or deeper characters. The only reason I’m giving it one star is because of the strong opening, I genuinely wish the film had followed Leo Howard instead of Jason Momoa.
1/5 stars.
