| I really wanted the new "Conan the Barbarian" flick that opened in the USA, last Friday, August 19th, 2011, to be something terrific. After listening to the interview with the star of the movie, Jason Momoa, on the BBC Friday film program, this past Friday, I was rooting for a winner Well, Jason Momoa is a likeable actor. According to Box Office Mojo, for the August 19-21, 2011 Weekend, Conan, with its $90m budget, dragged in to fourth place, behind "The Help," with its $25m budget and its second week out, "Rise o the Planet of the Apes," in its third week, and newcomer, "Spy Kids: All the Time in the World," with its $27m budget I'm not saying that this new Conan flick is not an entertaining movie. I'm saying it, for all its trying, doesn't offer much of anything different. I know one should look to the source material, to Robert E. Howard, the writer of the Conan books. Mr. Howard was no J.R R Tolkien, and his characters lack Tolkien's depth, and his stories lack the kind of ideas and vision found in the best fantasy adventures. One hopes that film makers and screenwriters would have the courage to go beyond the source material. This trailer, CONAN THE BARBARIAN - When Blood Is Spilled (Red Band Clip), is what drew me to watch the movie. In the movie's second scene, following his birth on a battlefield, the young Conan, played by 13 year old Leo Howard, a man-child, not much bigger than a Cimmerian sword, opens the movie with the promise of something entertainingly different. The producers are probably tied into sequels with Mr Momoa playing the adult Conan, but a young Conan series, staring an actor with young Mr. Leo Howard's skills, and focusing on an intelligent examination of the relationship between father and son, might just make a winning cable series. The flick also has Ron Perlman,, Rachel Nichols, and Stephen Lang.
|
Posts
