I had had high hopes for this one. Jason Momoa has the right look an he is a much better actor than Arnold, able to show actual emotion in his face. In an interview on one of the talk shows, he talked well, said all the right things, and seemed like a bright hope for a franchise. He talked about future films going back to the source material which he’d read and respected.
Then the movie came out.
Not likely to be any more films. It was a huge failure at the box office, pretty much insuring no future offerings. In Hollywood, the money boys look at the bottom line first, thus insuring the end.
Probably a good idea after watching the movie.
The plot.
Standard revenge fare. A villain, Khalar Zym(Stephen Lang), that wants to be a God. A daughter(Rose McGowan) that’s a sorceress. He’s gathering the pieces of the Mask of Acheron. He intends to use it to bring his dead wife back to life and have her make him that God. he needs a pure blood descendant of the Sorcerers of Acheron for that. Naturally there is only one left, Tamara(Rachel Nichols), who’s been raised in a monastery.
The seventh, and last piece, happens to be guarded by Corin(Ron Pearlman, wasted in the role), Conan’s father, and the warlord’s forces leaves the village destroyed, most of the people dead. Except for the young Conan.
A mistake.
You can figure how the plot goes. Khalar Zym spends twenty years looking for the pure blood. Conan spends that same time looking for him.
The sword work was good, the film was appropriately bloody, the supernatural creatures decent.
It just wasn’t Robert E. Howard.
As little an expert as I am, I could recognize that. The only thing they took from Howard was his name, his character’s name, a few tropes established i the stories, and then made up their own story. They did make passing reference to a couple of the stories in passing. That’s about it.
One dimensional characters(Tamara shows good fighting ability in some scenes, but spends an inordinate amount of time screaming for Conan), crap dialogue, unnecessary 3D effects just to have them(I will be glad when this fascination ends; I’ve never watched a film in 3D, won’t wear those damn glasses).
And whoever put this one together did a piss poor job of it. And the one in charge of continuity missed the mark. There was a sequence early in the film where Conan attacked a wagon in which he thought the warlord he sought rode, but instead held Tamara, fleeing from the destruction of the monastery, and was also being assaulted by a band of Zym’s men. As he leaped aboard from his horse, it was obvious he wasn’t wearing a sword.. After a bit of fighting, killing the warlord’s men, he jumped back to hs horse. He suddenly had a sword in hand with which he dispatched more of the attackers. Next shot he’s bearing down on another group and we hear the hiss of him drawing his sword from it’s scabbard!
Can’t really recommend this one.
The trailer, included below, was the best part.
Not The Baseball Pitcher 
I watched it and just disengaged my critical facilities while I watched the scenery and action. Some of the action was pretty cool and I liked the settings. I thought Momoa did a pretty good job. Very predictable story, though. I probably liked it a bit more than you but certainly won’t be needing to see it again.
I liked it more than I expected to, but less than I hoped to. Definitely had its weaknesses, but was still enough fun for 90 minutes or so of escapism.
Charles, Chris, it could be I didn’t like it as much was because I saw Momoa, as mentioned, talking it up. I know he was promoting the thing and wouldn’t say it was crap even if he thought so, but it seemed there was a lot of enthusiasm there and his mention of “source material” for later films got me believing. I don’t know.
It was mindless fun in the theater, but I promptly forgot it a day later. Which was a shame. It was still much better than the Clash of the Titans remake.
I thought it was an OK Sword and Sorcery film, but it was not a Conan film. If it had another name and never mentioned Conan we would have probably liked it.
I was so disappointed in this one.