For those of you who may not know, there is a new Conan The Barbarian film in the works. As a huge Conan the Barbarian fan I'm definitely stoked for this movie but at the same time I'm also a bit concerned:
What little information there is available on it states that it'll be released in 2011. The directer of the film is one Marcus Nispel; known mostly for his work in advertising and music videos. The few films he has done haven't been considered all that great. He directed the weak remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the "historical fiction" film called The Pathfinder which is about a Viking boy who is left behind after the Vikings raided a Native American village (he grows up raised by the Indians and ends up fighting the very Vikings who left him there to defend his new home; it was critically panned but I enjoyed it on a pure "action-fest" level), and also the most recent Friday the 13th movie. While all of these films have a certain flair to them when it comes to action sadly none of them have been very good. Of course I'd expect a Conan The Barbarian film to be action oriented but that doesn't mean it can't have a good story.
As for the actor casted to play Conan, enter Jason Momoa. You might know him for his recent role as the stoic "Rhonin" on Stargate Atlantis. While I definitely think he has the right skin tone to play Conan, I'm worried he's a bit lanky to play the bulky barbarian, who's essentially a mass of muscles. When Arnold played the character in the 1980s films he was a former champion weight lifter, so I'm wondering how Momoa could possibly stack up. While the 1982 Conan film diverged a great deal from the Robert E. Howard stories (some of the best Sword and Sorcery fantasy ever written by the way), the film also used a lot of the same themes that Howard employed and did at least exemplify the Sword and Sorcery genre.
Again, while I'm excited about the possibilities of a new Conan film, I'm concerned that it'll simply end up being another shabby remake in an age where film studios seem desperate to capture anything remotely nostalgic and crap it out on film in order to make a quick buck. I really want this movie to be good as Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian character and pre-historic setting are to me just as influential on the genre of fantasy (influencing everything from Thundarr to Masters of the Universe) as The Lord of the Rings trilogy is. It's also equally influential to me as a writer of SciFi and Fantasy, so I'd really rather not see Hollywood screw it up.
I guess we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed.
