Another Pass at Conan the Barbarian (2011)
After the centennial episode and the coming of a new cohost, came Jason Anarchy, master of games and champion of Bacchanalian delights! Heavy is his brow, weighed down with thoughts of the 2011 revamp of Conan the Barbarian. Let me tell you of the days of middling adventure!
Find Jason on twitter and the Drinking Quest Kickstarter here!
SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts • Google Podcasts • Spotify • iHeartRADIO • Stitcher • RSS
Transcript
(Subject to Errors)
00:00
Jason Anarchy
And he says something to the effect of Conan. He was born in battle. And then it, like, cuts to his mother literally in the middle of battle, just giving birth.
00:10
Sam Alicea
First of all, that is the fastest, most inaccurate c section I have ever seen.
00:15
Case Aiken
Oh, yeah.
00:16
Jason Anarchy
Oh, yeah.
00:17
Sam Alicea
Like, I was just like, wow, if it was only that simple.
00:23
Jason Anarchy
Welcome to certain point.
00:25
Case Aiken
Use another pass podcast. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com. Everyone, welcome to another pass podcast. I'm case Aiken. As always, I have my co host, Sam Alicea.
00:41
Sam Alicea
Hi, everyone.
00:42
Case Aiken
And today we are having a savage rendition of a movie that we'll be discussing. And no better person could we have on for that than anarchy.
00:54
Jason Anarchy
Hello.
00:55
Case Aiken
Welcome, Jason. Welcome, welcome. Friend of the show Pat Edwards connected us because you're a game designer and you also like things savage. So real quick, what have you got going on?
01:12
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, so I'm most known for doing the drinking Quest series, which is like half dungeons and Dragons style game and half drinking game. So it's like a simple adventure, but when your hero dies, you have to chug the remainder of your drink in real life to continue. There's, like, real life consequences. And then I'm also a big fan of barbarians in general. I was a big fan of hero quest back in the day. He had that huge, brawny barbarian on the COVID And so with drinking quest, I've got, like a kind of a drunk Conan kind of parody on the COVID It really plays up the drinking pints kind of element of barbarians. So his name is Chug Locks. And then, yeah, I've got a Kickstarter coming on March 2 for the first six drinking quest games in one box.
01:58
Jason Anarchy
It's called Drinking Quest six packs. I just wanted to plug that quickly.
02:02
Case Aiken
I love that. That is fantastic.
02:05
Sam Alicea
Like, fun.
02:07
Case Aiken
And this episode is going to be dropping in the middle of that kickstarter. So anyone listening should go check that out. But as you alluded to and as I made a couple of puns based on it, we are talking about a brutal movie today. We are talking about the 2011 sort of, don't call it a remake of Conan the Barbarian.
02:24
Sam Alicea
Yeah, it's brutal in more ways than one. This is brutal mostly because this is a movie that has everything but a good script. Like, they literally threw the kitchen sink at you. There's even a runaway from an explosion scene. Guys, I was like, bad boys die hard. I didn't know that was going to happen here, but it does. And still, I was bored. Bored out of my mind. It was hard. This was a hard one.
02:57
Jason Anarchy
Yeah. The script was bad in terms of plotting and what's happening. Everything's just really generic. The dialogue never. There's. There's nothing interesting about it. It's like if you just wrote a first draft of a script and just never went back to it, that's kind of what I felt like. Just all these familiar beats with nothing unique about it.
03:17
Case Aiken
Yeah. And, I mean, the upside is that's the purpose of the show.
03:21
Sam Alicea
Yeah. Just to take another path.
03:25
Case Aiken
Yeah. I mean, that's the purpose of the show. We're going to talk about that because looking back on this, I saw this in theaters, and I remember walking out being like, oh, well, I spent some time in theater watching this thing because I was actually fairly excited when they started talking about it. Like, Jason Momoa was fresh off of game of, you know, was known for playing a big barbarian at that point. And it was like, okay, cool. Like, all right, they're going to do a Conan the barbarian. And they kept on talking about how it was going to be more like the books. It was going to be more like the Robert E. Howard pulp fiction stories. There was going to be actual magic in a way that they couldn't quite do in the 80s.
04:03
Case Aiken
They had some, but the effects weren't as great. Like, okay, now we've got 2011 money and we've got 2011 special effects and we've got all of that, and it's going to be more faithful to everything, and it's not going to be a sequel. It's not going to be whatever. And it's not a remake of the 1982. It is more faithful. And you know what it is? It's a fucking remake. Right down to the fact that we're going to do an opening montage of how Conan grew up and how his parents were killed when his village was invaded, and he's got a blood feud after the guy who happened to kill it. It doesn't matter that they changed some of the details. It's the exact same story. Exactly.
04:41
Jason Anarchy
Yeah. And it's a revenge flick without any fun and without any sense of heightened fantasy or anything like that. It's just really dark and brutal and there are some cool moments, but it's kind of a slog to get through.
04:57
Sam Alicea
I think it's interesting, too, because I don't feel like the casting was off on this. Sometimes you feel like, well, if you could tweak a person here or some lines there, I actually feel that everyone they casted was fine. Just the actors didn't have anything to work with because the script was just so. And I still think that Momo was fine. He was fine. Bodybuild, even. Kind of like his dude attitude fits the original pulp fiction kind of world. So that's not something that takes you completely out of it. But, oh, my God, I don't know, it just falls apart. Like, the middle is so sluggish and there's no character connections at all. It's kind of weird because you should feel something. I mean, something, right? This is a revenge story. You should want him to get his revenge.
06:00
Case Aiken
Yeah. This movie is 2011 as fuck. And I don't think I could process this at the time when I saw it. But now, with hindsight, I look back. We recently talked about Gi Joe, the rise of Cobra, which I did not see at the time because Gi Joe just wasn't really like my franchise. But I watched it more recently for this show, and there's like half the cast is shared between it, and we're kind of in the same ballpark of special effects being smooth. And there's a lot of earth tones to everything. So know you can kind of make it blend a little bit better without having to put quite as much effort into it. And then all the color correction makes everything orange and teal.
06:44
Sam Alicea
Yeah.
06:45
Case Aiken
And it's just. We're at that exact window when Michael Bay did really well on transformers and every movie was trying to be kind of like that in some regards. And this was just another attempt at reviving a property with the same sort of set of fine actors, but that's all. Everyone's fine in this movie. No one's great in this movie. No one stands out as being amazing. And then they have the most cliche thing you could possibly imagine, which is they open with a Morgan Freeman voiceover that is nothing but exposition. Like, way too much exposition. Yeah.
07:20
Jason Anarchy
Not only is it really awkward and kind of meta to have a Morgan Freeman voiceover, but then, like, half an hour into the movie, roughly, is when you first actually see adult Conan. And then he comes back to do another narration once the movie's already been going for quite a while, and it's so jarring and weird. And then also back to the beginning of the movie, Sammy mentioned not having an emotional connection, like, right. Just I was not buying it because starts with the Morgan Freeman narration, and he says something to the effect of Conan. He was born in battle. And then it cuts to his mother literally in the middle of battle, just giving birth.
08:01
Sam Alicea
First of all, that is the fastest, most inaccurate c section I have ever seen.
08:07
Case Aiken
Oh, yeah.
08:09
Sam Alicea
I was just like, wow, if it was only that simple. Literally, honestly, I'm going to say 2011. If you haven't seen it, don't even watch it. This is not spoilers, but Ron Perlman, Conan's dead. Basically takes and stabs his mother in the abdomen, rips it open and rips the baby out. Like he's literally born in battle, right?
08:33
Case Aiken
And then he, Rafiki raises it to the.
08:38
Sam Alicea
What?
08:39
Case Aiken
And that's when we get the title drop.
08:40
Sam Alicea
Yeah. And then he puts it in army. He's like, what do you want to name it? He's like, Conan. And then she dies, like, probably because of the improper sincerian. Like, she's bleeding out.
08:54
Jason Anarchy
And like, everybody in the battle is just like, yeah. Oh, that's cool. We'll leave those people alone for a while. They're giving birth over know.
09:03
Case Aiken
You know, it's a shame that they actually had this scene and they didn't put something about Kayla Zim being like, no man of woman born could kill him or something just so that we could have that fucking thing in there because he's untimely ripped, just like Macduff.
09:18
Jason Anarchy
Yeah. One thing about this movie, I feel like the director who has some good stuff, and I looked him up and he's known more for slasher horror films, and he's had a few good ones. He did a really good Friday the 13th remake. But I feel like this movie doesn't have a style of its own. I feel like it's always referencing other movies that the director thought was cool. Like you mentioned the thing, you know, the Lion King holding up the baby in the, like that happens right away in the movie. And it's like, okay, he saw that Lion King. He thought that was know. He saw some shots of the Shire and Lord of the Rings. And so he made Conan's village kind of look like that.
09:57
Jason Anarchy
And I was just picking up on all these little kind of references that just really took me out of it because I feel like the director, he seems like a typical fan of movies, but he didn't kind of know how he wanted to present this story in his own way.
10:13
Sam Alicea
Yeah, that's what I mean. This film has everything. Do you want a too quick caesarean? Yes. Do you want a snake monster? Maybe octopus? Yeah, we got that virgin sacrifice. Well, not close, but close enough. She's pure.
10:30
Jason Anarchy
Wait, she's pure blood. And then Conan sleeps with her in the middle of the movie. And that affects nothing that ever happened.
10:39
Sam Alicea
It has nothing to do with her virginity. It's just like implied, but it doesn't matter. It's just like her origin, like her dna, I guess. You want a priest that stands up for his priestesses that live there who, none of the other ones are pure bloods at all. So I assume that it's all made to just hide her and then he gets killed. You want a scary goth chick? Check.
11:06
Case Aiken
Not just any scary goth chick. Rose McGowan is a scary goth chick.
11:09
Sam Alicea
Yes. I'm going to say good things. I did enjoy the costumes in general. I felt that. Yeah. Were they kind of normal derivative fantasy costumes? Sure. But they were detailed and I appreciated it.
11:25
Case Aiken
Yeah, costuming was pretty good in this movie. Like, here's the thing. Aesthetics were definitely front and center on this. The director, Marcus Nispel, was primarily a music video director before doing this, he did a couple of slasher movies and he did Pathfinder, which critically was panned, commercially bombed. I remember liking it, but I haven't watched it since I saw it in theaters. But that was a Carl urban barbarian movie also. Yeah, I was kind of in the same style of being, like, we're going to do, like, this is so badass and music video esque kind of sequences, but it's going to be Vikings fighting Native Americans. This is also doing like, kind of, we're going to do music video style sequences, but it's going to be Conan the Barbarian lore. Yeah, I have a thesis about this movie.
12:20
Jason Anarchy
Sure.
12:21
Case Aiken
This is the same thing as the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes. This is someone taking a property that exists and saying, I know the following things about it. And pop culture discusses the following things about it. I want to do really cool versions of scenes from either the existing material or stuff that we've talked about that we never got a chance to watch. So things like Conan being born on the battlefield, which is like a reference to the books, all the stuff with more kind of savage kind of monsters, the various Conan's time as a pirate, all the stuff. It's like if you wanted to do a music video about Conan the Barbarian, all the footage is in this movie.
13:07
Case Aiken
You could absolutely take that and put it all together in some sort of tight three minute montage that sets up just how fucking badass Conan the barbarian is. But it doesn't actually do anything to make those moments, like those key snippets that you have in your mind's eye, connect as a story.
13:29
Sam Alicea
Yeah, I can see that. That makes sense to me because it really does. Like, this is so much when I was mentioning all the things I forgot about the pirate ship fight, I mean, everything. It has everything.
13:44
Jason Anarchy
That was one of the moments I kind of liked. I liked the pirate ship and I wanted more of, like, Conan on the high seas, having some adventures. That could have been fun. But yeah, it was just one of a million different elements that are there. And they just don't kind of mix.
13:59
Sam Alicea
With anything very well. Listen, Conan traveling around, like, freeing slaves, like, bringing them to the pirate island. That would have been a great movie. Like, that would have been totally know, drinking beer, cracking heads open. Then you learn about the secret. You set up a whole possible trilogy kind of thing. Like, oh, that's the guy who killed my dad. That could be the end. I know we're not at pitch time. Sorry, too soon. But honestly, that was fun. And it felt, like, very Conan esque. And it felt different than the original movies that we are clearly all familiar with. Enough that it wouldn't have felt like a remake or a sequel. It would have felt like a pulp story about Conan. Just one in the series kind of thing.
14:53
Case Aiken
Yeah, I feel like this movie is because it doesn't have a clear thesis. It falls back on the easy narratives of doing, like, an origin story. And that is why it's such a hard movie to make work as it is. Because Conan's stories are all, here's an adventure that happened. And then we jump to a different time in his life for a different adventure. Like, Robert E. Howard described Conan the barbarian as being a series of stories told around a campfire. Like, each one is from the vantage point of future. Conan, heavy with the crown of Aquilonia on his head, talking about his glory days to his subjects or to people he trusts, and talking about those different adventures. And that's why none of the story, the stories weren't written in a chronological order. They were written at different.
15:44
Case Aiken
Like, each story would be different points in his life and kind of bounce around. And this movie should have done that. This movie should have just been like, here's a story from his early days as a pirate and not have to worry about, like, he's got a blood vengeance story because we've already seen that. And the Arnie movies have such a huge shadow on this that it's impossible not to draw comparisons. And when you do, the same narrative beats. Those shadows become so much darker on this movie, like, you can't help but compare it.
16:15
Jason Anarchy
I like your approach with the different stories. That would have been a cool movie. You don't see a lot of movies with little individual kind of snippets in them. But that would have fit the director, who's used to telling small stories in his music videos. And he's got a really impressive list, too. Yeah, I remember looking that up, and it's like, oh, I remember watching all these huge music videos of the 90s, like Spice Girls and stuff like that. This guy did a lot of things, but, yeah, I think that would play to his strength, and especially if there's a pirate story in there. Yeah, I think that'd be awesome if it was, like, a compilation of Conan stories, the movie, and it wouldn't be in the 1982 movie's shadow anymore.
16:54
Case Aiken
Yeah. And spoiler for my pitch, there's a little bit of that in here.
16:58
Sam Alicea
Well, but I think also the stories always end with, but that's a story for another day. Right? My dad had a whole collection, so I used to read all the Conan stories, much to my mother's sadness, because she was like, no, don't. You're a young lady. But I think that it's something that would definitely kind of just fit the bill and work with the character really well and kind of get away. I also think that one of the things that they did was that they kind of leaned into this gruesome realism and leaned away from camp to try to get away from the 80s versions. And I feel like it hurt them more than it served them because there are some really cool things, but it just wasn't.
17:43
Sam Alicea
I don't know, there's something iconic about the way that the 80s camp was able to kind of embrace pulp that I feel like with this kind of feeling and rhythm, it kind of did them a disservice. Sometimes you just have to embrace the absurdity of things. I don't think this movie did that.
18:08
Case Aiken
Yeah, there's a lot of CGI blood in this movie, and I could really have gone for a couple shots of someone just, like, holding a blood plaque clearly in his hand and exploding it when he gets, quote unquote, stabbed.
18:18
Jason Anarchy
Yeah. There was just so much unnecessary gore and brutality that it either needed to focus on moments that mattered to drive the narrative, or if it's going to have that much blood, it needed to be campy. It needed to have some fun to kind of balance it out. It was just really one note with the constant brutality.
18:39
Sam Alicea
Yeah, there's, like, really cool moments. He goes to the guard door and he's holding the guy's head, and then the guy's head, like, the bottom is like, CGI. I was like, no, just get that freaking head blood. Let me see it. Be dumb. I don't know. Just a lot of that. I kind of missed that about the 80s versions.
19:03
Jason Anarchy
That part with the head at the door, that was a part that was almost funny. It was like, wait, are they going for a joke here? And it was just. I almost had a laugh. But again, the movie is so confusing, and you don't know what you're supposed to be feeling.
19:18
Sam Alicea
Exactly. And I feel like they should have leaned into the laugh. That should have been a joke. There should have been a joke there. There should have been. Because it's just for the most part, the movie is very humorless, too. There's no one that really, like, I know that sometimes comedic sidekicks or things like that can ruin a movie. They can go too far. But there was really none of that here. There was nothing to kind of give you any kind of shifts or highs and lows. There was just all one tone all of the time.
19:52
Case Aiken
Well, I want to push back on that a little bit because there's several spots that are set up as comedic beats. It's just you don't know where you are in the movie when they're like, whatever. The noseless guys, like, when Conan gets arrested and he's like, where's what's his face? The guy who's missing his nose? And it's like he's indisposed. And they cut to him torturing. It's like, smash cut straight to a torture scene that is paced as a perfect joke, but it's not a funny scene.
20:21
Sam Alicea
Yeah, the jokes weren't funny. They didn't land right?
20:25
Case Aiken
Yeah.
20:26
Sam Alicea
I was just like, yeah, no, case, it's not funny. I get what you're saying.
20:32
Case Aiken
Right. But I'm just saying they set it up to have these kind of comedic beats, and if you're in the right mood, those would be funny. But the scenes just don't really work that way. The camera and the cuts are comedic. The actual things happening are not. Like, the delivery isn't the way that the actual framing isn't, like I said, just the pacing on it, right.
20:59
Sam Alicea
So it's not, like, cohesive, like, what the message is. Which leads us back to, we're confused. We're confused the whole time we're watching this movie.
21:08
Case Aiken
What did you guys think about the first, the after Conan is born in the most violent and improbable c section possible, the period where Conan is a child? What did you think about that whole set of sequences?
21:23
Jason Anarchy
The worst part of the movie, hands down, that opening was the worst offender for, I think, most of the things we're talking about because, yeah, there was so much brutality. So, yeah, the weird c section in battle and then Conan just randomly killing all those savages or whatever they were.
21:47
Case Aiken
Yeah. The ones who had, like, animal voices.
21:49
Sam Alicea
Yeah. I was like, why? I was like, maybe they're a humanoid species and they're not necessarily humans. They just look like humans because they had animal voice. The sound was animal, definitely.
22:04
Jason Anarchy
Yeah. And that was yet another thing that didn't work. It was just jarring and everything kept taking me out of it. And then another one of just the worst shots was when he comes back with all their heads, and it's like, the scene is awkward and it doesn't show. Like, clearly he's a mighty warrior destined for greatness. It's like, whoa, he's got a bunch of heads there. And I don't know.
22:30
Case Aiken
Yeah, he's kind of fucked up.
22:32
Sam Alicea
He might be a psychopath.
22:35
Case Aiken
Yeah. When I saw this in theaters, I remember being like, okay, I see what they're doing. They're establishing he's so fucking badass. And then rewatching it. This is where a theory started to form that this movie actually works very well from the perspective of Conan as telling the story after the fact. And it makes your head cannon work for this movie a lot better because he's just like, I was attacked by all these savages, and look how fucking badass I was. And I even kept the egg. And then it was a really sad moment with my dad. And then I freed all these slaves, and these women wanted to sleep with me because I'm awesome. There's that element, even the later scene where he actually hooks up with Tamara with the worst fucking line in this movie of the, like, hang on.
23:23
Case Aiken
I have it written down where he says, I live, I love, I slay, and I am content. And then she just throws herself at him. And they have just, like, a weird sex scene because we have no idea where they are. And it's just like, all of a sudden, they're just like, some sort of place by themselves when she is being hunted on land and sea.
23:49
Sam Alicea
That whole thing just. Honestly, that whole setup is horrible because he leaves, and he's just like, take care of her to his friend. And his friend's like, you got it? And he gets off the boat and he goes walking. Conan's out of sight. And his friend goes, he left his map. And he might as well have said, wink. Go get him. Tiger, come back when you're done.
24:14
Case Aiken
Again, this works way better if you're thinking that someone is telling the story and just is a misogynist. And that's why these.
24:24
Sam Alicea
Leaves. And I'm like, wait, what? How are you protecting her? This makes no sense. And jumping back to the first, third, one of the things I will do is, I think it would have worked. Like that scene with him just deciding to confront the. I'm going to call them humanoids, the humanoid animal creatures in the forest, is that everyone else in his village decides, we're going to go back. So Conan has a moment where he can choose to not confront them, but as a child, he runs headlong in to confront them into their trap and then defeat them. And I was just like, it would have worked a little bit better if he was protecting someone in his village or something of that magnitude kind of thing, only to leave him a shred of humanity. And I get it.
25:20
Sam Alicea
They were like, he's the hunter. The hunters were hunting him, and he was prey, but he's not. But he wasn't because he had an opportunity to leave, and he decided to continue to go and run after them and hunt them down.
25:34
Jason Anarchy
He very coldly murdered all those innocent savages. It was like a psychotic choice. Yeah, he needed his back against the wall. Like defending himself or protecting someone. Exactly.
25:46
Sam Alicea
Everyone got out. Like, everyone was like, oh, those guys are here. Let's go back. Let's go back. There's actually someone that shouts, come on, Conan, or something of that. And he doesn't. He looks back at his pals, and he turns around and he just runs headlong into danger.
26:02
Case Aiken
Yeah, that whole scene could have actually used. So the movie both. Everyone talks too much and also doesn't explain enough. So this is one of those spots where this could have used way more exposition of how important this rite of passage is and not just Ron Perlman, kind of in a monotonous way, explaining, sumerians don't thirst for anything besides blood. If they need something, it's only steel or whatever. His line, somehow, Ron Perlman could have been like, ron Perlman, I love, and he's just not as exciting as he should be here.
26:36
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, I feel like he doesn't know what to do in the movie. Yeah, he stood out to me. Know, he was showing up, he was saying his lines, but he just kind of seemed confused because he's supposed to be this battle hardened warrior. That's how you see him in the beginning. But every instance after that, he's just straight up loving father, and he doesn't seem to have the intensity or the discipline or something. He seems too soft, for lack of a better word. And maybe some of the people in the movie were kind of realizing what kind of movie it was going to be while they were making it. Maybe they weren't giving it 100%. That's another thought I had, was.
27:18
Sam Alicea
I don't know if I want to say that he played soft. I feel like he played tired. I felt like he was tired of everyone's bullshit in the town. I felt like he was like, all right, everybody line up. We're going to do this because this is what we do. Please. It was like he was, like, at the DMV or something. This is what we do as Sumerians, blah, blah. Oh, Conan, you're here. All right, well, you're too young to do this, but fuck it, kid. Here you go. Go into the woods. Good luck. Don't break the egg. I'll be here waiting for you all when you get back. Anyone have a beer for me? I just feel like he was so, oh, why do I have to govern this space?
27:59
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, Ron Perlman's character should have been like. It should have been like an event. This mighty warrior is here, and he's going to oversee this ritual, and he's going to give a huge speech. It should have been a much bigger deal. But, yeah, tired is a good way to describe it. It doesn't have the intensity that it needs.
28:20
Case Aiken
Yeah, this is one of those spots where the desire to do the Robert E. Howard stuff and the desire to recall back to the movie that everyone knows are really at odds. The Robert D. Howard stuff, like, having tales of, like, oh, yeah. He was birthed on battle, and he had these tests of manhood where he was so badass, like, stuff that you could tell a story about, and it's like, fine, sure, okay, cool. Someone's talking about it, but we're not really watching it. Or at least we're not watching this extended scene. That's one thing. But then the loving dad, and then this is like the village getting raided and all that stuff. This creates this very pastoral kind of vibe for the Sumerians that doesn't fit the dialogue about them being these hardened warriors or anything. Like.
29:03
Case Aiken
Like, why are all the other barbarians more barbaric than the titular barbarian of the movie? Like, that's such a weird part about this movie specifically. You can buy it in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie because his village got destroyed. He was raised as a slave away from his society. And you get some of that here. But they try to paint the picture of Sumerians as being that barbarian tribe, which is not in the Schwarzenegger movie, but it is in the Robert D. Howard stuff because his parents don't get killed like that. Rather, his village doesn't get destroyed. That whole revenge story is not a big part of his origin. His origin is that he was a barbarian who participated in raids and would be part of those war parties and eventually traveled south and started becoming a pirate. It's this desire to have this.
30:03
Case Aiken
He's the good guy because he had these horrible things happen to him, and he comes from these nice village folk, but then also still paint them as violent warriors and so forth.
30:15
Sam Alicea
Yeah, I mean, it's also lord of the Rings, right?
30:18
Case Aiken
Yeah. The music callback is, like, exactly lord of the Rings.
30:23
Sam Alicea
There's actually a lot. Even the mask being separated and having to be rejoined together, it feels like. And then they hid it because they couldn't fully destroy all the pieces, which is not fully explained to you about why they wouldn't just grind down all of the bone that makes the mask, which was like, immediately my brain was like, wait, but why didn't you just grind that like, it's bone? Like, just grind it down? Why are you keeping pieces of the mask? Clearly, this is trouble, guys. It's like in Jurassic park when they're like, we're going to clone a dinosaur. I'm like, yeah, that's a problem. Same thing with this mask. Right away, you've got, again, like you said, case, it's like, almost every other movie is in this movie, and so it's like one of those things.
31:16
Sam Alicea
And you're right, it doesn't make sense for it to be like this pastoral town where everyone's just so, like, it's just like, we're just going to harvest some crops. There aren't even crops. It's just like, straw huts all around, and it's just like, I don't know, where's his stone throne?
31:34
Case Aiken
Yeah. I have a question, just from a narrative standpoint. Why do they find the last piece of the crown in the flashback? And then we have a time jump of presumably ten years.
31:47
Sam Alicea
Roughly, yes.
31:49
Case Aiken
To this time.
31:50
Sam Alicea
My theory is that's how long now is the. It took them to find the pure blood. That's my theory. Because it's the only excuse you can make.
31:59
Case Aiken
That's the in universe explanation. But from a standpoint of the ticking clock, doesn't it just seem like, oh, how convenient that it took you ten to 15 years to find the pure blood after assembling the crown, shouldn't there be devastation all over? Shouldn't this be, like, an infamous thing? If he's been tearing apart the nation or the continent or whatever? Yes, if it's Hiboria. And they're using the actual maps of Hiboria, the continent is weird. Africa, Europe, and Asia are all just one giant landmass on that map because the Mediterranean is dried up, and so it's this huge spread of land. And the tales of Kayla Zim should be epic. They say that he's become, like, a king, as opposed to just, like, some local warlord in the interim. But this should be huge.
32:49
Case Aiken
His legend should be massive, and Conan should have a very clear idea of who he is, as opposed to just finding out about him just in time to go save the princess.
33:00
Sam Alicea
Yeah. Just learning his name, too. His name should be infamous. It should be everywhere. Everyone should know. People should be hiding from him and quaking in fear. That's not happening. And you would think, right, like, that he would be turning. Even if you say, like, oh, he hasn't found the pure blood yet. He would have destroyed several temples at this point. He would have destroyed several cities and all sorts of things. So you are right.
33:29
Case Aiken
Yeah. It's like, why not just have it be an early piece? Like, maybe the first piece he finds? And then he's had this whole quest. In the interim, he's been assembling the crown, and now that the crown is assembled, well, now, shit. We need to figure out where the pure blood is because it's dangerous. It's so weird that he gets almost to the finish line at the very start of the movie in the flashback, and then we're just left to be like, I guess he just didn't do a very good job for a while. Now he's a threat. Okay, cool.
33:57
Sam Alicea
Yeah.
33:58
Jason Anarchy
And the movie shows that. It definitely shows that he's the bad guy. He's the big bad of the movie, but you never really get much of a sense of why he's unique, or you never care about him, and you're not particularly afraid of him. And there's a scene between him and his sorceress right hand. It's the worst scene for exposition in the whole movie. It's kind of in the middle, and they're just talking about plot stuff. And it was. Yeah.
34:27
Case Aiken
Wait, is this when his daughter tries to fuck him?
34:30
Sam Alicea
Incest? Because it has everything. This movie has everything.
34:36
Jason Anarchy
Game of Thrones had incest.
34:38
Sam Alicea
So does movie experience. Lord of the Rings, journeys, priests getting killed, everything, explosions.
34:47
Case Aiken
Yeah, this is a last season episode of Game of Thrones, basically.
34:57
Sam Alicea
No, you're right. That's a really awkward scene. Go on.
35:03
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, so the villains are just really poor and, you know, as the viewer that, okay, they're supposed to be the bad guy, but, yeah, you're never feeling that. Like, you're not feeling anything else in the movie. And, yeah, the incest was probably there because Game of Thrones, and then there's a few Game of Thrones actors in it.
35:23
Sam Alicea
I mean, also the end of it, the final boss battle, is terrible. When we're talking about this guy not being a great villain overall, the way that he dies is sad.
35:43
Jason Anarchy
Spoiler alert. He gets Hans Gruberd pretty hard, crying.
35:47
Sam Alicea
Out his wife's name.
35:49
Case Aiken
Yeah. And, I mean, I could live with that a little bit more if it felt like Conan did something outside of the realm of expectations to get into that position because we established early on that Zim is a capable fighter, or I say early on, it's like two thirds into the movie because the flashback stuff is basically act one. It's a very long sequence before we actually get to Momoa as Conan, but when he confronts him and he has the dumb fight with the twin blade thing that he's got, that is like a double scimitar on a hinge that turns into, like a Darth maul style lance and then also becomes two separate weapons. And it reforms in ways that are both impossible and impractical because this movie has everything.
36:41
Sam Alicea
Keep going.
36:42
Case Aiken
Yeah, it does. Like, we established that he's a better fighter than Conan, which is kind of insane and could be a big stakes thing if that was every fight up until this point. Conan clearly just can't lose, and then all of a sudden, he's fighting someone who actually can beat him. And that's kind of scary. If at the end now even supercharged and it's more desperate and Conan can barely win or barely can hold his own at all, and at the very end has to do something that's kind of insane, such as not saving Tamara at the, like, maybe that would have been a better moment for him to then get the Hans grubering because he's less crazy than Conan. And that's ultimately how crazy beats big every time.
37:34
Case Aiken
It's just weird that Conan saves the day in all ways at the end of this movie and doesn't ultimately prove himself to be truly barbaric.
37:44
Jason Anarchy
Yeah. And with that part as well, I just want to talk about how this movie just keeps referencing other movies? So the way he beats Hans Gruber in the end, it's a flashback to earlier in the movie where he's fighting with his father on the ice and Conan makes some cocky move and his father's like, and he hits the ice and he falls in the ice and teaches him a lesson that's straight up from Batman begins when Ralzel Ghoul is fighting with Bruce Wayne. But that's how he beats the final boss of the movie. He's like, you're on shaky ground or something, and the stone falls out from under. Yeah, it was. It was not satisfying to see that final villain defeated. That know, I'm like, maybe there could have been a creative kill at the end.
38:27
Jason Anarchy
Maybe this is all building up to something cool in the final beat. But no, that was not quite the case, this movie.
38:37
Case Aiken
The worst part is that it's boring. Ultimately, you don't feel a lot when you walk away from it. Yeah, there's an action scene, but it doesn't really excite you that much. Yeah, there's stuff like, there's all the trappings of a Conan movie, but you don't really care. I feel like all the actors are either wasted or some. I'm just not sure about, frankly, just in general. Like Rachel Nichols as Tamara. I don't know if she's a good actress or not because I've never seen her in anything good, but I'm not sure if that's her fault.
39:07
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, I think all the actors in this movie can get a pass. I think for the most part, everyone's trying their best, and Momoa is the best. I think he's a good enough Conan. He's fun to watch, but there's not enough of him in the movie. If you wanted to make this better, it's like just completely get rid of the first half an hour, the flashback sequence. Know, just have more of Conan in a Conan movie.
39:33
Case Aiken
Like, Rose McGowan, I think is probably the most fun part about this movie because she's like really playing it up. I hate that we see her as a young person, like the young version of her. That was weird. That's such a Star wars prequels kind of thing.
39:48
Sam Alicea
Yeah. I don't know. I didn't hate it so much. It's fine because it kind of introduces her powers, like what she can do in a weird way because you're not really sure what she can do with.
40:06
Case Aiken
The same weird little finger blades on her hands. It's just a scaled down version of the same character.
40:11
Sam Alicea
Listen, sometimes people don't grow out of their phases, case. And I don't think you should be judging her for her fashion choices.
40:17
Case Aiken
Fair enough. I am wearing a masters of the universe shirt.
40:19
Sam Alicea
Yeah, some of us are wearing wonder woman apparel right now. But I do think that it gives you a chance to kind of see what she can do. And she's kind of scary. I think it would have been better to see more how her power grew and she was the only one that looked like she was having any fun at all other than a few swings from Momoa in some action scenes. He was like, yeah, I'm having fun cracking heads. But other than those two, I really feel like people were like, this is a paycheck. I'm showing up. I'm saying these lines, I'm going to be paid, my mortgage will be fine. It's pretty much how I felt about, I think also the total onslaught all the time of just like action, gore, gore, action.
41:21
Sam Alicea
Because the movie is so, one note, there were times where, oh my God, you know how long it took me to watch this movie. I will be very honest with you guys. It took me 3 hours to watch this movie because I kept having to rewind because I would get bored. I would grab my phone, I would start going on like Twitter or TikTok or something and I'd be, no, I don't know what's happening. And I'd have to rewind. This is the longest movie I've ever watched, but because I could not stay focused enough to watch it was so boring.
41:51
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, terrible. I had to take breaks too. And there are a few parts where I rewinded it because I couldn't hear what was happening because the sound mix was bad, which is yet another problem with the movie. But I just wanted to throw out a comparison to another momoa movie. This movie has a pretty good similarity to Aquaman. So in Aquaman, it's a good, fast moving superhero movie, but there's this kind of gimmick where people will be talking in the movie and then there'll be an explosion out of nowhere and then the action starts. So it's not played for comedy in this one, but pacing wise, this movie also has that where it's just there'll be a talking scene and then, oh, all of a know action out of, oh, ok. And there are a lot of action scenes.
42:41
Jason Anarchy
Some of them are good, a lot of them are not. But I don't know. I just wanted to throw that in there. That was another weird thing about it.
42:48
Case Aiken
Yeah, that was a movie that had fun with it. And you can see Momoa's charisma gets a lot better at that. Like, my biggest issue with Momoa throughout this movie is that he talks too. Like, he's got this broly attitude, which could be fine. It can be a Conan kind of vibe, but he just keeps fucking dropping lines that are like, this isn't goddamn necessary. Wouldn't it be way more badass when the pirate ship gets boarded by troops if he just kills the guy and we don't have him being like, this is for all the Sumerians of my village line when he confronts Zim and he holds up his hands like, you left me to die while I wash my father. And then, of course, I live. I love, I slay.
43:33
Jason Anarchy
He did not slay that line.
43:34
Case Aiken
I am content. The deliveries just aren't great. And at this point, weren't used to Momoa as a talking actor, unless you were a big Baywatch fan, you weren't familiar with what he sounded like speaking English. And Conan the barbarian works really well as being a non talking kind of character. Arnold Schwarzenegger infamously could not say a lot in English at the time, and so they only gave him, like, three or four lines. Sorry, three or four lines with Valeria and total. It's, like, almost mean relative to what most stars of a movie would be. Yeah. And they tried to compete with that and have a smarter Conan in this movie, or, like, a more overtly intelligent Conan, but I don't think they succeed.
44:17
Jason Anarchy
There's definitely a few moments where you hear Momoa's kind of surfer dude kind of delivery, and I think that's why the line about being content fails so hard. He just sounds like such a bro sometimes. And yeah, we wanted Conan. Not like, I don't know, that joke is the best thing about the movie for me, that I just made there. That's the most value I got out of it.
44:42
Case Aiken
I'm looking at my notes from my first rewatch that I did a couple nights ago, and yeah, Samaria is too idyllic. I hate that they use CG when they do the forging sequence on the like, it just looks bad and it compares negatively to the original movie. Forging Steel is not by itself a huge, like, this is important for Conan the barbarian kind of thing. Like, it was used well in the original movie. Steel swords are valuable. Sure, you can do some stuff with that, but to be like, that's the mystery of steel and to have all these callbacks that then don't fucking play in any way for the rest of the movie. They don't matter. Aside from him getting the sword later on being like, Sumerian Steel is the best steel. It doesn't matter to the story.
45:24
Case Aiken
It could have been any sword whatever. In fact, it's a lemer version of the one from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie because in that one, the sword gets broken because it's actually not that good of a steel thing. Like, this whole thing that he had been longing for ultimately wasn't as good as he kind of remembered it being. And in this movie, it is like the perfect sword. Conan is a real angsty teen. We meet the party rogue. Oh, hey, it's some gorn. Oh, the sets. I swear to God. They just reused all the sets from Rome for the monastery.
46:01
Sam Alicea
Yes, absolutely.
46:02
Case Aiken
Every time we saw a thing, I was like, I'm very positive. I've seen lots of scenes set in this exact location. I'm like, the main area, I think was like the forum that they had on Rome. There's a spot where it's like the same senate area that was both used in that and also in 300. I'm like, oh, my God. I'm seeing all these structures that I definitely recognize from way too many things.
46:24
Sam Alicea
Yeah. Everywhere. There was a lot of reusing of set scenes. I feel like it kind of took me out of it sometimes. I was just like, I wanted this to feel like its own world, and it really didn't. It just felt like it was borrowing from all the other worlds. Yeah. Even with how sparse, like, the old Conan movies were, because they're not like, the most elaborate sets, I still felt like that was more their own world and more creative than the settings in this particular. Like, I'm pretty sure one of this felt like the Scorpion king set as well at one moment.
47:05
Case Aiken
Right. This just felt like generic fantasy settings. They didn't really feel like there was a culture to the world.
47:12
Sam Alicea
Yeah. Nothing was really thought out. It was just like, oh, now they're like, in a deserty kind of place. So we're going to put lots of sand everywhere and they're going to fight here.
47:23
Jason Anarchy
They needed more stuff that showed. These are the barbarian villages and this is how they live. And now they're in this city. And this is what's unique about this place. And here's Castle evil, where the bad guys are. Everything just kind of blended together and nothing looked bad. On a technical level, there was a lot of good stuff to see there when you don't feel it. Nothing matters, though.
47:51
Case Aiken
So this was an element that I get why they did it, and I appreciate the choices to do this. So in the sense that this is just a remake in the original movie, Thulsa Doom's lieutenants were important characters who showed up later in the movie as sort of, like, little midi bosses for Conan to fight. And they double down on that. In this movie, Zim has all these lieutenants, like, leaders of different barbarian groups that he's commanding that show up at different points. Like, there's the guy who gets his nose cut off. There's the guy who's, like, the more barbaric one that they trebuchet. There's the one who boards the party or boards the ship, who is supposed to be more of a southern kind of warrior type. And I get why they did that.
48:39
Case Aiken
And it's nice to sort of flesh that out from. It feels like a video game, having little mini bosses that they fight throughout. Like, how you would pace it out, but none of them change. Again, this is, like, a weird spot where it's just like, this movie is dumber than the 82 movie. And that is frustrating, because you would think that, with the benefit of hindsight, you would do a smarter script. All of these lieutenants are exactly the same ten to 15 years later as they were when they raided the sumerian village. Every single one's wearing the same clothes, adorned the same way, wielding the same weapons. They have not changed in any way. And sure, people can change. People can do.
49:21
Case Aiken
The little girl can keep her fucking same necromancer clothes that she had as a child, like, her easy bake, necromancer look that she had. And now she's like, top Chef. It's all the goddamn same.
49:33
Sam Alicea
She had very definite style. But also, how will the audience know that they're same case? Because we're dumb.
49:39
Case Aiken
That's the annoying part. Because it was like, okay, well, all these people have become corrupt and now are like, aristocrats or heads of the Church of the snakes. In the first movie, it felt like they had all used the time to become more powerful and more entrenched in their forces, as opposed to just being marauders. They haven't changed in the interim, which makes it even weirder that. Goddamn it. We have a flashback that sets up all this shit, and then so much fucking time has to pass before we get to the actual story.
50:08
Sam Alicea
Yet nothing has changed at all. Just Jason Momoa and our little favorite goth Rose McGowan.
50:16
Jason Anarchy
And effectively it just becomes a movie about just systematically going through sub bosses. That's what the time is used for. You get a half an hour crappy origin story, and then it's just, okay, video game sub boss killing. And then you get the last boss.
50:32
Sam Alicea
Yeah, and hunting down for the name, too. It's not even like that's why you're going through the sub bosses partially, is to get the name of the man who should be famous because he's got the mask that potentially is going to allow him to conquer the world already from when you were a child.
50:58
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, and the guy with the octopus mask, too. And the giant octopus near the end. I feel like they didn't do enough with that. I feel like if you're going to put a giant octopus in your know, Conan needs to kill. Like, yeah, it's just kind of there and they never really say much about it.
51:20
Case Aiken
Here's the thing I really want. If we're going to do a big special effects Conan movie, which is that there's no fucking giant animals and weird shit in this movie. There's a couple people who are adorned to look like, borderline not human. And then Wikipedia calls out a few people from unidentified humanoid race as opposed to being just like, human from this region, and that's fine. Robert E. Howard set the whole hyborian era before the last ice age with this idea that there were other types of hominids out there that had more ape like features and some even devolved into more ape like things because Robert E. Howard was not a scientist and that the whole makeup of everything was different, but that just based on the setting, there should be fucking Sabertooth tigers, there should be goddamn mammoths.
52:09
Case Aiken
Like, we should have big fucking animals that aren't just the animals that we know about today. The fact that everything could just as easily be set in a post apocalyptic future from now, which was originally the plan for the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, it's fine. But come on, man. We're making a movie where we actually have cg budget to have weird octopus creatures, and you can't have other shit. Just be kind of wild. Have one of the groups be actually, like, ape looking. Have them be supposedly homo erectus, have them be fuck. Have pilt down, man. Just double down on bad science, but have a world that, in addition to all the magic, has just weird animals. Have fucking Game of Thrones comparison aside, have direwolves have shit out there? Like, why not?
53:04
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, the whole movie didn't have a lot of fun and it's like, they should have been more creative and had fun with the creatures and the types of encounters that Conan has, because everything is literally just going through the sub bosses. And they were all generic humans except for the was. They were at least trying to do.
53:24
Sam Alicea
Something different with her, but they also wasted her.
53:28
Case Aiken
They wasted everyone.
53:29
Sam Alicea
They wasted everyone. They wasted everything. There's so much wasted potential. I think that's the big thing about this movie, is where it's really disappointing, is that on the surface, I guess it's fine. It's boring, and the script needs work, and people showed up and they did what they had to do, but it could have been so much more. It's not even the worst film I've ever seen. I wouldn't even say that. Like, oh, my God, it was the worst movie I've ever seen. It's not. I've seen far worse. But it's just so much wasted potential. Just so much sloppiness. It's just a lazy movie. It's lazy overall. Just the whole execution of it is lazy.
54:18
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, I completely agree there. Yeah. I don't know how they went in with that script. Maybe it was rushed or something, but I felt like that was the first mistake, and then it was certainly not the last. And maybe they knew they had a bad script and they're like, okay, well, the movie's got to get made. There was just no effort to make anything, to make the audience feel anything. Or maybe there was an effort, but nothing succeeded.
54:50
Sam Alicea
It should have been the tagline for this movie, basically.
54:58
Case Aiken
Well, and that's the thing that made me angriest about this movie when I saw it, which is that they hyped it so much about being like, this ain't your daddy's Conan we're doing. It's more faithful to the books. It's more real, and it's not any of those things. It's just a bland remake. It's just the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes to the original.
55:17
Sam Alicea
It's so funny. The reason I didn't go see it was because they were like, it's not your daddy's Conan. And I was just like, that's okay. I'll stick with my Arnold.
55:24
Case Aiken
I'm good.
55:26
Sam Alicea
His Conan is my Conan. I'm good.
55:29
Case Aiken
Yeah, this is 2011, so Schwarzenegger was still governor. But how great would this movie have been if it actually was Schwarzenegger telling the story at the beginning of the movie? And it flashes back to Momoa. And so we get that as a framing device rather than instead of Morgan Freeman, we get Schwarzenegger doing the iconic because they are directly aping the 82 movie by opening with the. In the time after Atlantis was submerged. Like, whole bit.
55:59
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, we're not your daddy's Conan, but it's a remake of your daddy's Conan in a way. And the ways they tried to be more faithful to the books basically just boiled down to gore. The problem is, though, with the books, you get Robert E. Howard's great use of language. He was really stylish with his words. And then this movie doesn't have a consistent style or a style that works, and it doesn't try to have a new take on Conan with how the movie's made. It's just stuff happening, and there's nothing to hold it together or make you think about the character in a different way.
56:38
Sam Alicea
Yeah. There's also no consistency of language. Now that you mentioned that in terms of the lines, it's not even like, oh, well, this character speaks this way or that character speaks that way, which would be fine. Right? Because that's a character choice, that kind of thing. They're from different regions. It's not like that. There are moments where a character is speaking where it feels like a classic fantasy story line that you've heard before, whether it be cheesy or cringey or whatever. And then right after, it feels very a modern thing to say. And it's hard to kind of marry because it's the same person saying lines that are from different regions times. And so, again, the confusion that this movie is that elicits no response other than just numbness was carried out that way, too.
57:33
Sam Alicea
I don't know if they let people Adlib because the lines were so bad and they were like, oh, you know, just say what you want to say if that's too awkward.
57:42
Jason Anarchy
Can't make it any worse. Yeah. Everyone either speaks really plain English or they're, like, screeching like a pterodactyl. There's no middle ground. Yeah. There's nothing interesting about the acting choices or the way people speak. And there's that horrible dubbing with the savages in the beginning so bad.
58:04
Case Aiken
Yeah. I want to move on to pitches, but right before I do want to have one particular call out, which is that Nanzo Anazi, who plays artist, the pirate friend of Conan, who is just, like, there when it's convenient and disappears when he's not important, is such a wasted character because he's really, like a father figure to Conan. And you don't get any of that from the character. He's a charming guy on screen and I'm so annoyed that he's just not around. He's just such a sidekick when he really should be more like a mentor. And it's such a bummer.
58:40
Sam Alicea
Yeah.
58:40
Case Aiken
I really wish he gave the opening model, like, the opening narration. I wish that he was the chronicler in this scenario the way that Mako was in the first one. I'm blanking on the sorcerer's name in the first one, but the one who does the narration and is the sorcerer and whatnot in the first. Like, that should be this character here.
59:03
Sam Alicea
Yeah, I bet he's a wingman. Wink, wink, nudge. Get off the ship. And friend who arm wrestles. There's arm wrestling in this movie, guys. It has everything. Arm wrestling for wenches.
59:23
Case Aiken
It had potential because it had good actors. It had a good budget. I mean, it was $90 million. It wasn't like they were like barely making the.
59:30
Jason Anarchy
It was $90 million.
59:34
Case Aiken
That's not huge compared to, like some.
59:36
Jason Anarchy
I was thinking like 20 million while I was watching it.
59:39
Case Aiken
Right.
59:40
Jason Anarchy
Wow. Okay.
59:43
Case Aiken
Because there were different director choices. I'm curious because we kind of dodged a bullet because it was supposed to be Bret Ratner, but before that, Rodriguez was an example. Or Robert Rodriguez was brought up as a potential director and they could have done this movie at 20 million and it would have been better.
59:59
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, probably. And he would have done the gore better.
01:00:02
Case Aiken
Yeah. But at least we didn't get Ratner because I've seen his Hercules and that's worse than this movie. This movie is mostly boring. It's not that bad. It's just dull. And you're like, why did they make this movie? It's so annoying. But if this was the only Conan the barbarian movie ever, we'd be like, well, that was a missed opportunity, but moving on with our lives. But it doesn't have to be. And I am curious what our pitches are. So, Jason, you are the guest. Would you like to go first or would you rather have one of us take the lead?
01:00:33
Jason Anarchy
Okay. Yeah. So the way I would change this movie so we can use a lot of the existing elements, keep know the general look of the whole thing is fine. We can keep that. Let's just say we're going to keep all the same actors. There's a scene early in the movie where Conan is freeing a village when it cuts to present day and present day in the movie. And you don't know as a viewer, I didn't know if Conan was freeing the village or if he was, like, raiding the village because he was a barbarian. And I feel like a movie where it spends time with Conan, coming to terms with his barbarian instincts versus helping people. Maybe he learns of some kind of evil where he wants to free villages and that has impact, and maybe Conan the liberator or something like that.
01:01:30
Jason Anarchy
That was one small scene that I thought really worked and I liked. You know, if the movie kept going in that direction, that could have worked really well.
01:01:39
Case Aiken
I gotta tell you. There's going to be some parallels then when we get to mine, because I also sort of felt that was a good element for the character.
01:01:47
Jason Anarchy
And I also like the pirate direction a lot, but I felt like that was going to be another pitch, so I'm going to stay away from that one. But I felt like, yeah, it needed to dive into the character more, and I felt like wrestling with his barbarian instincts is the way to go with that. Because it's like, why is Conan different from a generic barbarian archetype? And I feel like it needed to answer that question. So, yeah, that's the way I'd go with it.
01:02:19
Case Aiken
All right, can I piggyback off that one since I've got some similar. Right. So I had. So again, way too much fucking talking in this movie. Just in general, the opening narration, I would keep way shorter. If I could have it be artists, that would be awesome. But if they're dead set on Morgan Freeman, just play it as that's the older version of the character. I could live with that being kind of fine, or at least that works as a head cannon, but keep it way shorter. So instead of the whole exposition about the crown and all that shit, because, holy crap, do we have to explain the entire plot of the movie before we get into the movie? I realize that is sometimes a thing, but it's too much in this movie. It is way too much.
01:03:04
Case Aiken
So I'd have it be like, in between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the son of Arius, there was an age undreamed of when shining kingdoms lay across the world. None rose higher than the towers of Asheron, but that ascension was on the backs of slaves and dark magic. But all such poisoned foundations eventually crumble and their dark magics were lost to time and a new age of barbarism begins. And at which point we get a crack of the whip, and then we're in that village and we're focusing on the slavers right there. So that's how we open the movie. And then all of a sudden these barbarians start attacking and just murdering people.
01:03:40
Case Aiken
And we can focus on maybe, like a scared mother and her child while she's in chains and all these people are being murdered around her. She was being tortured up until this point, but now there's, like, fire and just violence. And emerging through the smoke and fire is this barbaric figure who takes down a guard with his sword and then raises his blade up. And the woman is screaming and terrified, and the blade comes down and severs her chains. And then we get our first clean shot as it follows up the sword and we see Momoa as Conan. And this is like, a nice inversion of that trope. Like, we've opened all these movies with, like, oh, look at this peaceful village. They're being attacked by barbarians.
01:04:20
Case Aiken
And now we're setting it up like, no, the barbarians are the good guys here, or at the very least are not necessarily the bad ones. Like, the raiders here are stopping the slavery part of things. And I think that's a good character point for him. And then we can have this sort of, like, they go off and party with winches and whatnot. Like it happens in this movie, but in that, what I would kind of like to do is have artists, because he has this point where he talks about the tower of the elephant, which is like a classic Conan story. He's, like, giving this whole story in. The crowd is enraptured by him.
01:04:59
Case Aiken
And I'd like to have him then do a shorter version of the test of manhood story about Conan and having artists be the one telling it and keep it real fucking short. He talks about, like, this man, like, this man when he was a boy, and start with some exposition to sort of set it up so that we don't need to spend all this time with Ron Perlman and then get into that whole sequence. And you can have that action beat and that's fun, but you can jump cut faster between it all because it's a story being told. And we cut back to him. And maybe one of the winches that he sort of gets really close with is asking about his hands. Why is his hands so burned? Or rather, actually, why did he leave his home?
01:05:48
Case Aiken
Like, if he had earned such esteem in his, like, why did he leave the north? Why has artist been riding with him since he was barely a man? And Conan can just say, that's not my home anymore, and then gets up and walks away, or rather, pardon me, he says, that's not my home anymore. And it looks like he's going to react negatively to the woman. Instead, he catches the hand of a pickpocket who's grabbing at his pocket, and he pulls it out, pulls the guy up. And this is how we get introduced to Elishan, the thief in this movie, who is not used a lot, but the actor is. I'm going to butcher this name. It's said Takmahui. I definitely just destroyed that. But he was also popping up.
01:06:40
Jason Anarchy
He's one of those actors.
01:06:40
Case Aiken
Yeah.
01:06:41
Jason Anarchy
You see in every movie. I looked up his name, too.
01:06:43
Case Aiken
Yeah, he was in Wonder Woman. Was it 2017? 2016 Wonder Woman movie? The big one, not 84. And before that, he was in Gi Joe Rise of Cobra. So, like I said, half the cast was in that movie, including young Conan, who played the young snake eyes in that movie, because he just played young action heroes, that actor. Oh, wow. But anyway, so he pulls them up, and Elisha can be like, oh, Conan, I'm sorry. I wouldn't have picked your pocket if I knew it was you. It's like, I owe you my life, man. And he goes like, now you owe your life twice. It's like, all right, well, perhaps I can pay that down a little bit. And at which point, Conan could be like, well, what trinkets could you possibly barter with? It's like, not trinkets. A name.
01:07:30
Case Aiken
One I know you'll want to hear. Conan goes, like, talk, and it's Kaylar Zim. And Conan, like, rises up, and he's, like, breathing hard. And you could have artists trying to calm him down, knowing that this is a name that's important to Conan because it should just be known already. And then the thief can be like, word has it that he has completed the crown and that he is on his way. He has found the last of the bloodline of Asheron. He's on his way to a monastery. It's a two day hard ride from here. And Conan could tell Artis, like, set sail as you had planned. I will depart at once. And we sort of set up him kind of fleeing into the night.
01:08:15
Case Aiken
And what I'd love to do is have Conan riding from, like, the city where they're all partying and you see the lights in the background, and he's like a silhouette riding into the fog of the night. And then that fog fades into the hookah smoke of the monk at the monastery, like, predicting that a warrior is going to come. And we can kind of have the monastery scene play out roughly the same. Most of the problems I have with how the monastery looks and whatnot is that it is super white and also super. I said all the sets come from Rome, and I would love if it looked a little more exotic, a little bit less like classical, rather antiquity. It's got that greco roman style of architecture to it, because they're clearly using the same sets and everyone's wearing, effectively, togas.
01:09:05
Case Aiken
And it just looks like a different movie from the barbarian stuff. I'd rather have some degrees of exoticism to it, but they're probably going to keep casting the conventionally attractive blonde, who at the time, I think was married to the head of Netflix, somewhere in that ballpark, anyway, so move on from there. So we get the same sort of, like, monastery type scene. She escapes the same basic way. I find it really weird, the exposition when their fassir, the head monk, is being tortured, when he's like, your wife almost did this whole thing. Either the monks should know nothing and that they've been protecting this bloodline here for a long time and have been very cut off from the outside world, or she should have been brought there explicitly when the crown started being assembled.
01:09:55
Case Aiken
And maybe her family was killed and she was brought as a child, and we should say that out loud and make it very clear that they were protecting this one girl. Because if it's just a family that was living at this monastery this whole time, there should be more than just one. Or they should have just killed her. Why is it just her blood and no one else? Why is she the pure blood in this? And how could anyone find that out? There would have to be some sort of logic as to how that bloodline has been descended as such, and either it's a protected bloodline at the monastery, or it wasn't at the monastery, and this one last child is brought to the monastery to protect it after some kind of invasion.
01:10:36
Case Aiken
Maybe early on, Zim found the last of this bloodline, which was like a small village or something, and unfortunately, everyone fucking died, except for know some scenario where he failed earlier on and thought he would never find.
01:10:51
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, they need a better way to determine the bloodline rather than the lady with the claws just tasting it.
01:10:58
Case Aiken
That's good and creepy when you get to the moment. But why would they even go there? Why would people even know about the blood of Ashron if it supposedly died out a thousand years? Like, why does any of that make sense? It doesn't. And I just feel like they need to flesh that scene out a bit more. And I don't love the idea of fassir being like, she would have enslaved all of hyborgia. There's a lot of bad fucking people out here. I don't know why anyone's necessarily worse than another. Sure. Anyway, pacing happens the same basic way. When he ties up both the barbarian chieftain and Tamara, we can have a whole thing where he flashes back to his dad talking about the importance of patience.
01:11:44
Case Aiken
And so we can have a little bit of the forging of the sword kind of scene in there, and you can even do the Batman begins break the ice thing. And it's like the end line could be like Conan. You need to understand the value of waiting. And then we cut back to Conan just polishing his sword as the sun is starting to come up, waiting for Kalarzim so that he can use it as an ambush kind of scenario. Basically, I'm trying to get the idea that there's just stories about Conan all throughout. I like the trebuchet scene. I think that was fairly a fun way to send a message. And the desert people fight like the sand construct. It's appropriate sword and sorcery kind of magic kind of scene. That's actually kind of fine.
01:12:29
Case Aiken
It's really weird because I don't feel like I get the sense that where he is, like that castle or whatever they're at, because it feels kind of like a western town that they go to with scaffolding and shit. And then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, no, this is actually a fortress on the edge of water. We needed a few more sweeping shots to sort of set up that he was meeting at some remote on a cliffside outpost, as opposed to, like I said, it kind of just feels like a desert town. Like, meet me at the okay corral to do the exchange. But that scene overall works fine. Aside from the dumb transforming sword. It should just be, like I said, a double scimitar where he should have two swords, whatever.
01:13:07
Case Aiken
It's such a gimmick because in the two sword configuration, it doesn't work better as a sword. You're going to have a harder time cutting through someone with the two blades that way. It just doesn't make any sense.
01:13:19
Sam Alicea
You really have an emotional feeling about this.
01:13:22
Case Aiken
Well, and then for it to have gears that it rotates in shape and so forth. One, this is supposed to be set, like, 10,000 years ago. And two, it's not practical now. You can make that weapon now, but no one would use it because it would break. When you try to hit someone with it, the handle would break.
01:13:42
Sam Alicea
I agree. With you're having a lot of feelings about it, and I'm just acknowledging that you're having a lot of feelings.
01:13:50
Jason Anarchy
They should give the double jointed sword to one of the sub bosses and then it won't matter as much. That might have been a better use for it.
01:13:57
Case Aiken
Yeah, it feels so bad because it is the main bad guy. And you're like, why does he have the dumb weapon? Like, if he was a two sword Fighter, cool, that's fine. I'm even fine with it. Where it's like that, where the two swords are pressed up against each other and he pulls them apart kind of thing. But the fact that they've got the two spaced out blades is why it's just. And again, it has a gear sound when it rotates into two sword configuration and then splits apart and then reconfigure. It's a bad weapon.
01:14:25
Sam Alicea
I agree. No one's arguing with you. Go on.
01:14:30
Case Aiken
Anyway, so they eventually flee. They jump into the water the same way as before rather than looking over the edge and the ship just waiting for them there, like, calling up to them. I'd rather them just blind jump into the water and we don't get the establishing shot of the ship. And then when they're treading water as they like, they dive into the water and they are treading water to come up. And then all of a sudden, a rope gets tossed to them and sort of established that this was their plan because it's just such a weird establishing shot of artists just being like, come on, jump. When it happens. I would rather have it be like, a little surprise that he was waiting there and that was the plan. Get back onto the ship.
01:15:11
Case Aiken
Artis, when he is talking to Tamara, at some point he goes into way too much time talking about born in battle. Anyway, so this is the time to drop that flashback if you're going to use that flashback and keep it shorter. So again, so we're not spending time. These should be not full scenes. This is where we're getting music video montages of, like, Conan was born in battle and you can see Ron Perlman clutching his wife. You can see him pulling up the sword with a speed up kind of animation on it, where the sword rises and then plunges deep. And then you can have the shot of the child being pulled out and not set as if it was real time. This is intentionally artists, like, maybe even doing some voiceover talking about it. And then we cut back to the modern time.
01:15:56
Case Aiken
We get the fight on the ship. He shouldn't make a reference to his village because I don't want Conan to have said anything yet about that. But he gets wounded in the fight, and they come to shore so everyone can recover, so they can make some repairs to the boat after they were boarded. By the way, did we see a boat that was, like, alongside their ship.
01:16:16
Sam Alicea
Or like, no, I have no idea where they came from. It's like pirates of the Caribbean. They walked through the seas.
01:16:24
Case Aiken
They just kind of teleport there. But so while Conan's being is healing, they should have tents on shore and so forth. Tamara should come to him. This is when he should tell the story of how his father died, because she can be looking at the wounds on his hands that held up when he encountered Zim. When Zim's like, who are you? He should have just raised his hand. And then Zim should have been like, sumerian. Rather than being like, you left me to die with my father. Again, just way too much time where Conan talks. And then this is where we should get a flashback, but not to a pastoral village where Ron Perlman is just testing these boys and also just a friendly blacksmith.
01:17:08
Case Aiken
He should have been like, the main lieutenant for, like, it should have been a warring party that Conan, having earned the privilege of being an adult, was part of. And they should have been attacking villages, and maybe they find the first piece of the crown together. And Corrin, Conan's father, doesn't want to murder the children of the village. He's like, put them in slavery, do whatever, but don't kill them all. And Zim's like, no, because they're going to come back. And that's when Corrin breaks with Zim and is then left to die in this burning blacksmith fire, and Conan barely survives. That's, that sequence should have been them breaking away.
01:17:50
Case Aiken
And that's why Conan knows who Zim is, not just like, has heard of him, actually fought alongside him as a boy and has been traveling ever since and no longer feels attached to his people because they were enthralled by Zim. Maybe there's this idea that the people who didn't like his father was left to die, but the rest are us alongside of him. It's not just like, oh, look at these innocent people that were wiped out. It was a barbarian tribe that was swept up in this sort of warlord's rise to power. So he tells the story. We get this as a flashback again, it can be more music video style as a result.
01:18:26
Case Aiken
It can be like more rapid fire kind of shots on all this stuff, cutting to the important moments, as opposed to the rules of, like, if we're in the scene, it has to be a little bit slower and establishing because Conan can be talking it over, know to give some exposition. After telling the story, we cut back to Tamara rubbing his palm. And this is when they make whoopee. And then in the morning, the boat is getting ready to go, but they should just be on a. Like, everyone should have had tents on the side of the, like, on the shoreline where they were gathering supplies, making repairs, et cetera.
01:18:58
Case Aiken
And while Conan is kind of getting up and getting ready to continue sailing on, Tamara should have a spy come up behind her, maybe, like, hand over the mouth, blade to her throat, and pull her away kind of thing, as opposed to, like, she's just walking in the woods and just gets attacked.
01:19:13
Sam Alicea
She was trying to make it back to the boat because she had a time limit.
01:19:17
Case Aiken
But why did they leave? Why was she allowed to be by herself when she's the most important thing in this movie?
01:19:23
Sam Alicea
Because someone was a great wingman. Wink, wink, nudge. Go get your girl.
01:19:30
Case Aiken
Why did they go so far to have sex? It's not like Conan didn't clearly have sex in front of other people on his boat before. You can't tell me that he didn't bring a hooker back at some point.
01:19:41
Sam Alicea
Yeah, no, of course.
01:19:44
Case Aiken
Yeah. So I'm just saying, have it be like, they have a bunch of tents on the beach. Like I said, they were making some repairs, and that's when they have to sail to Argalon to go find the thief again, who, when he left, it was just like, if you need him to find me, I'll be in Argalon. Okay, cool. I'll see you later. Now is the time where we see him later when he goes to encounter him, he starts a big fight.
01:20:05
Case Aiken
And rather than just, like, him showing up and being like, I owe this man my life, and then move on to a totally new scene, it should be like, there's a big bar fight where Conan is trying to find him, and then there's, like, a slow clap that kind of breaks it up when Elishawn shows up and is just like, I owe this man so much. And then we can actually do a flashback where we show the time where they encountered the noseless guy. And that scene can happen sort of here now and again to keep this sort of theme of, like, there's just all these tales about Conan, and we're watching one of them right now, but everyone's had adventures with Conan. Again, this isn't a guy he just met in this movie. This is a guy he's met a long time ago.
01:20:44
Case Aiken
And they've encountered each other a few times. Like earlier in the movie, sure, but like, other times as well. So we get that sort of sequence right there. It doesn't need to be as directly connected to the immediate plot because it doesn't really have much bearing on the actual chain of events of this movie. So it might as well have it be just one of these many tales of Conan. We go to act three, and it plays out similarly. I think that here's the big thing. Tamara transforming into the sorceress needs to one matter, because when it happens, she is dangling and it's like, well, why does it matter if she transform? You can't do anything. Oh, you turned evil. And you're still hanging from a whatever. Like, you could have been whatever. It should be that Conan has to murder her.
01:21:29
Case Aiken
And when he murders her, that's when, like, who should transform more into kind of some sort of monstrosity with the crown on. It should grow into him, and the octopus tentacles should be growing out of the back of his head, and it should be this very old one kind of vibe because Howard was really big into catholic type lore because Howard and Lovecraft were like, they included references to each other's stuff in their works. And there's hyborian references in Lovecraft as well. So we should have that sort of vibe that he's being taken over by this impossible geometric entity. And then when his newly reborn wife is killed in front of him, he's so shocked that there's a moment where he becomes more human. And that's when the sword goes through his back and through his chest.
01:22:19
Case Aiken
And that's when Conan has killed him and then drops him off the ledge.
01:22:22
Jason Anarchy
I like that. I think that would be a lot better.
01:22:24
Case Aiken
So now Conan then leaves. He can leave the castle burning. So we can get Conan walking forward in Silhouette, and he gets back up on his boat with Artis, and they're like, all right, well, where to nest? And artist says, we've been hired to sail to the black coast of Kush. There is a pirate queen named Balit who wants to hire as many mercenaries as possible. And then we can just sort of get a vibe like, all right, and now the next story is going to happen next. And as the itch sails off and you could have artists or Morgan Freeman or whatever give, like, but that's a story for another day or Arnold.
01:23:00
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, I'm still holding out for that Arnold King Conan movie. I hope that eventually happens.
01:23:06
Case Aiken
That'd be fun. I can't say too much because Pat Edwards and I have been playing around with that one.
01:23:15
Sam Alicea
So now I have to follow that new rule. Case always has to go last.
01:23:24
Case Aiken
You agreed to come on as co host.
01:23:26
Sam Alicea
No, I did. New rule as co host. Case always has to give his pitch last. No, it's fine. I will say that I did not think as much about the middle of the movie as I thought about fixing the beginning. I actually thought I could still keep some of the exposition in the front. It didn't bug me that much, but I wanted to fix the birthing story and I would actually do all of the intro much faster. So what I would do is I would show Conan's mom and dad in a battle and swinging swords, killing people. And Conan's mom realizes, oh, I'm having labor pains. And she would find a place to secure herself, call her husband, let him know, and he would defend whatever shack she's in front of just slaying people left and right.
01:24:24
Sam Alicea
And she would just pull that baby out of herself because that's how fucking badass she is. She's going to give labor in the middle of a barbarian raid on an opposing clan, and she's going to give birth to that baby. And he's going to come in, covered his blood and go, you good? And she's going to go, yes. His name is Conan. That's the beginning. And then the rest of it is very short moments. He's a little bit older. He's learning how to fight from both of his parents. You can even do a little bit of a test. I don't really care about it. But basically the thing is that you jump to his first official raid. He's side by side with his parents. He's really excited. This is the first time he's being allowed to do it.
01:25:14
Sam Alicea
They're going against a different tribe of barbarians. They're going to get something. And while they're there, because afterwards, of course, you take all the spoils of war. Conan finds a box with a bone, and he doesn't know what it is, but it's a fancy box, and he decides to take it with him. This happens to be one piece of the mask, which happens to be the undoing of his entire tribe. And that's what brings it. But it's not like the final piece. It is simply a piece. And he realizes that he has basically murdered his entire clan. When the bad guys roll in, he is basically the reason why everyone who he's known has to die. And his mom and he. They escape. And he feels that it's not an honorable thing. And she's like, we've got to live to fight another day.
01:26:11
Sam Alicea
And they get to the shores of water, and there's an ocean beneath him, and she just looks at him, and she just tosses him off because she's real fucking strong. And she goes down fighting. But he ends up in the ocean, and he's found by his adopted dad and the pirate king. And he never really talks about what happened because he knows that he's to blame for the fact that his entire clan faced this awful thing. And basically, a lot of the first half of the movie is just him doing, like, pirating stuff, going to places, raiding it, taking the spoils of war, including the women that they free and that kind of thing. Living this life where it's, like, more care free.
01:27:03
Sam Alicea
And then he starts hearing rumors in the bars that he's at with his different pirate friends about this man who's been hunting this mask. And he starts hearing and the pictures, like, someone draws him an image, and it's very much like the piece of the person who came to kill. So this is how it makes sense that he doesn't know this dude's name, right? Because he's been on the sea. He's in port once in a while. He's got news. But he didn't really know that a mask was being made. He just knew, like, bad shit was happening. But he's been a mercenary. He's been a pirate. He's been, like, living his own life, ignoring the things he did that know basically brought down his entire world as a child. And so denial is very strong.
01:27:54
Sam Alicea
I'm going to piggyback with case, and I'm going to say that eventually he learns the name from the pickpocket. He figures out that this is the thing, and he's just like, you know what? I got to go set this right. So it's okay for vengeance to come in, right? Because now it's like, other story. Sure. Let's do the vengeance jump forward. I would say for the end, because the middle, I don't care, except, yes, make the sex scene make more sense. Don't let her leave the boat for no reason. And I agree with case on everything he said about the monastery. I just did not like the set at all. Did not like the vibe. And I do think that it would be cool for her to also be from a small town or that kind of thing that was wiped out.
01:28:39
Sam Alicea
They didn't know someone was like. And then he found out, like, the bad dude found out that, yeah, she's.
01:28:44
Case Aiken
Just a small town girl living in a lonely world.
01:28:46
Sam Alicea
Yeah, exactly.
01:28:48
Case Aiken
She survived the midnight raid.
01:28:54
Sam Alicea
Exactly. Play the song. Write it. And I would say, have him face giant monsters. Have him face these crazy shit while he's searching for these things. And also, yes, make the mini bosses, however. Well, I don't even know if my version would have them, but if the mini bosses are still there, give them actual kingdoms to destroy. Give them things that he can blow up. Let this revenge be like, everyone who had a hand in destroying my people need to go, like, every single one burning. I want him to feel like, oh, gosh, why are words not in Keanu Reeves? I want to feel like he just lost his dog and he's Keanu Reeves.
01:29:53
Case Aiken
John Wick.
01:29:53
Sam Alicea
Yeah. I want him to be John Wick. I couldn't think of John Wick's name for some reason. I kept thinking Constantine. And I'm like, no, wrong, like, but I want him to be like, I want to feel the level of revenge I felt at John Wick in this. I want Conan to finally be facing the thing that hurt him by wanting to burn the world and just kind of thing. And in the end, you're so right about her and the sorcery, I say. I mean, maybe she starts floating. Like, why is she still hanging? She's transforming into the ultimate sorceress necromancer. Like, why is she still hanging there?
01:30:39
Sam Alicea
But I kind of think it would be more interesting, because I just think that she was so wasted if Rose McGowan's character, after being rebuffed by her father and not wanting, know, be fucked by her father, instead took over as mean baddie. I think that would have been a lot more interesting, because there is a sense that she wants to become her mother. She's like, I'm everything that she was. I actually even look like her. Like, in the flashback, her mom is played by Rose McGowan, so I look exactly like her. I am my mother. What are you talking about? This power should be mine. She's dead. I'm alive. My power has grown, so I should be the person who has the power.
01:31:31
Case Aiken
So, actually, this is a thing I kept wondering about throughout this whole movie of the whole purebrit blood thing and the relationship with the crown. And I kept thinking, should they be implying that Mariek Rose McGarron's character, should she be part of that lineage, too? And maybe the reason why Zim doesn't want his daughter to be the blood for the crown is that would mean that his daughter would be also the mother, and he doesn't want to fuck his daughter, I think. So that's already a thing anyway. And so maybe that could be the implication that she's always wanted it to be her blood that goes into the crown, but instead, they were trying to find someone else who was also of the bloodline.
01:32:10
Case Aiken
And maybe that's why then at the very end, McGowan then takes up the crown and becomes both, fills her soul with her mother as well as hers, and becomes, like, this ultimate dark magic.
01:32:21
Sam Alicea
Yeah, I think that would have been so much cooler because honestly, she's the only one who has any kind of otherworldliness to her in this whole boring saga of a movie. And so it would have been really cool to just have her be like, you know what? You know what? I actually do not need you, because if this is not how it's going to be, I'm just going to always be your lackey, like, always trying to please you. I'm done with that. I'm done with pleasing you. And then she could have turned into some sort of giant monster that would have been so incredible with claws because she already clearly loves them. I mean, since a child with claws. Absolutely. Why not? Why the frick had and then have Conan have to face like this?
01:33:15
Sam Alicea
Maybe even have the pirates show up like a freaking army, just like, okay, we're rolling through. Let's do this. Let's throw catapults of fire at this shit. Let's hack it up. Just have a real, actual big monster fight at the end because I want to see tentacles cut. I want to see blood squirting places. I want Conan at the end. I want to see him covered in blood, exhausted. And the pure blood girl just, like, lying on the floor, like, being like, is it over? Just, like, him just being, like, grunt at her and walk out, just like. And then everyone just gets on a ship and leaves. They drop her off at her home, they wave goodbye, and they're off to the next adventure. I don't know what I would do with the middle, but definitely not what was here.
01:34:11
Sam Alicea
Maybe along the lines of what case did.
01:34:13
Case Aiken
I'm now kind of envisioning the end being, like, this really gory version of the end of the Little Mermaid.
01:34:19
Sam Alicea
Yeah, why not? I feel like what's missing in this movie. The biggest thing missing in this movie is urgency and an emotional. Right. Like, yeah, okay, his dad died. That's sad. But you don't really feel how sad that is. But if Conan is the real reason, it's not like his tribe was the people who held onto the box. Right. Conan is the reason he brought this fate down on them. He basically killed his parents and his people with his actions, his thoughtless actions. Then his suppression of it, ignoring it for years. Makes sense, right? Because it's something that he can't face, and then he has to face it, and then he's a man on fire. He's a man on fire who then has to go to set things right, not just with the world, but himself.
01:35:21
Sam Alicea
This is his apology, and the only way he can do it is in blood because he's Conan.
01:35:28
Case Aiken
Yeah, but also not the blood of Tamara, because I kept thinking throughout this movie, like, why don't they just kill her? And then literally, no threats anymore.
01:35:38
Sam Alicea
Again, kill her. Grind. It's made of bone. It's not indestructible. Like, it's not the one ring. Like, the one ring you can't destroy. Right? They made it indestructible. And it said in that you either have to say something in the really long exposition about how they could only break it apart and can't grind it down or destroy it. I'm like, why are you guys holding on to it? No, I understand. So I would actually put something in it about it being indestructible. They're only allowed to break it down. And then I don't know why you can't kill her. I would know you have Rose McGowan's character. Explain that she also has the blood, and explain that her father wants her mom back, not just her.
01:36:24
Case Aiken
Right.
01:36:25
Jason Anarchy
That would make sense.
01:36:26
Case Aiken
Yeah. I think that helps make that part clear.
01:36:30
Jason Anarchy
Yeah. I like the idea of a sudden betrayal at the end and a giant claw octopus. That would have been a much better ending because, yeah, Rose McGowan's character was the more compelling of the two main villains, and that would have made sense if she ended up being the final one.
01:36:48
Sam Alicea
And she had so much fun with the character. She had so much fun with it. And I could see, I was like, if I were in her position, her dad doesn't actually have any power. He is a good fighter. I will give him that. But she's the person with power. Why is she taking orders from him?
01:37:05
Case Aiken
She wants that dick.
01:37:06
Sam Alicea
Well. And then he said, no. So what used to say, yeah.
01:37:14
Case Aiken
No fury like a woman scorned, especially daughter.
01:37:21
Sam Alicea
And it fits in with the original, the way that the books were written. Like, that whole idea of just, like, pulp, tits and ass, like gore, blood, deception. Like, let's just rip shit down and destroy. Like, she would have been amazing at, like, it would have been great.
01:37:47
Case Aiken
Yeah.
01:37:47
Sam Alicea
An evil sorceress for Conan to face with.
01:37:50
Case Aiken
Well, it would also combat the inherent misogyny that's just part of this kind of genre. It's really hard when you're kind of setting it up where female characters in this sort of pseudo time period don't feel like they have a lot of agency. And when they do, it kind of feels like it's like a forced thing on it, which sucks. And it would be nice to have McGowan really take hold and be the real villain after appearing to be more of an advisor for the majority of the movie.
01:38:22
Sam Alicea
Right. And subservient to her father, too. She spends a lot of time trying to please him, trying to make him see her value. And this is just a credit to actually the work that she did in this crappy script because I've actually given her that much credit. Her character actually had x, Y and Z in line, which is unfortunately, a lot of the characters in this movie and in this script are very two dimensional and they have not a lot going on.
01:38:56
Case Aiken
Yeah.
01:38:57
Sam Alicea
So I think it would have been, like, a more compelling ending. I would have enjoyed it. And also a giant monster getting splashed up.
01:39:07
Case Aiken
Yeah. I feel like anything would have been an improvement on this movie because it was just so bland. And I like that a lot. I really like the idea of giant monster and sort of working that angle out. I think it's really nice. I think there's some sort of fusion of these that could really work as a much stronger barbarian script than what we got. Because this movie. I mean, part of it is that if this movie didn't have the Conan license, I probably wouldn't have disliked some of the elements as much. It would have just been a generic barbarian movie. But it also is not a movie I would have watched ever, aside from maybe in college when I was desperate for a b movie kind of thing. There's just so many better movies than this.
01:39:51
Case Aiken
And without the Conan license, it's not that interesting. So the challenge is, how do we make it interesting? And I think we all have specified some ways that it would be a lot cool, like make Conan morally gray, make the world a little more violent in a way that doesn't feel like it's just gore porn if it feels like there's a purpose to it and that there's actual ramifications of everyone's actions. All good stuff and way better than the movie that we got.
01:40:17
Sam Alicea
Yeah. Also, if you're going to. I mean, not that any of us kept it, but if you're going to keep the challenge in the beginning, just have the things he fights be actual animals, like giant saber toothed tigers. Why do they have to be humanoid? It doesn't have to be, like, savage people from another tribe. It could literally be, like a pack of tigers. Literally. You could take any giant cat, any giant wolf, any giant dog, any giant saber tooth, or, like, a woolly mammoth. That's a boar. Boars are actually wild. Boars are really dangerous, but you could have done anything, and then people could have celebrated because they would have had dinner.
01:41:09
Jason Anarchy
It would have been a better step of progression to Conan becoming a brutal fighter rather than just instantly being able to kill any group of people.
01:41:17
Sam Alicea
Since being a, like, it was like, oh, I was like, in the woods, I was doing this thing. I got off track. I ran into these pack animals that basically cornered me, and I took them all out and I hauled their carcasses town. And now we feast.
01:41:37
Jason Anarchy
And that would have been a moment.
01:41:38
Sam Alicea
That would have all been better, too.
01:41:39
Jason Anarchy
Everybody's celebrating for a bit. That would have been nice.
01:41:42
Sam Alicea
Yeah, would have been, like, really nice. It'd be like, it's my boy. Look at this kid.
01:41:50
Case Aiken
Really proud, dad.
01:41:52
Sam Alicea
Look at this kid. He took this down himself. I'm going to hang these. They could have even put all the heads on spikes around while they did the barbecue pit. Like, just like, the bodies, and everyone could have just been dancing and drinking. And then the baddies attack. So, like, at the party, it would have been perfect.
01:42:11
Jason Anarchy
Or, like, the party, much better part of the party, where everything's kind of winding down and everyone's kind of drunk and falling asleep. Then the baddies show up, and everyone's a little bit more off guard.
01:42:22
Sam Alicea
Actually, that would have been great because then it would be like, oh, and my dad was super drunk, and that's partially why he died.
01:42:30
Jason Anarchy
Oh, yeah.
01:42:36
Case Aiken
We keep calling characters mini bosses and whatnot because this movie is just a game, and it would be more fun if you were playing it than if you're watching it as it is. It's just kind of boring. But maybe that's how it should have been ultimately, and maybe that's the kind of thing that should be a game. Like, game.
01:42:56
Sam Alicea
Let's talk about game.
01:42:57
Case Aiken
Do you want to give a bit more of a yeah.
01:43:00
Jason Anarchy
So drinking quest is kind of like Conan, except it's really funny. It kind of parodies and skewers sword and sorcery worlds, especially things like 2011 Conan the Barbarian, which is so self serious. Like, I love the genre, but there needs to be something that takes that to task sometimes. So drinking Quest is like Conan, it's sword and sorcery. It's very funny, and it's half rpg and half drinking games. So check out drinking Quest six pack on Kickstarter, which has the first six games in one fancy box.
01:43:35
Case Aiken
Awesome. And yeah, we'll definitely have a link to that in the description for the episode. People should check it out. I mean, the game comes highly recommended. I haven't had a chance to try it myself, but friend of the pod Pat Edwards raves about it. So I am excited to check out the Kickstarter and everyone else should come support as well.
01:43:54
Sam Alicea
Yeah, and it's probably a much healthier drinking game than just drinking every time you're bored watching Conan 2011.
01:44:01
Case Aiken
The perpetual beer funnel.
01:44:03
Sam Alicea
Yeah, exactly. It's like dying your liver. Will. Thank you.
01:44:09
Case Aiken
Yeah. Jason, thank you again for coming on.
01:44:11
Jason Anarchy
Thanks for having me.
01:44:12
Sam Alicea
Thank you.
01:44:12
Jason Anarchy
Really appreciate it. That was a lot of fun.
01:44:15
Case Aiken
Just one more time. Just give your social media plugs.
01:44:18
Jason Anarchy
Drinkingquest.com is my official site. I'm at DrinkingQuest on Twitter, Jason anarchy games on Facebook, and just Jason anarchy on Instagram.
01:44:29
Case Aiken
Awesome. And Sam, where can people find you?
01:44:32
Sam Alicea
As always, I am the mew of the Internet, so don't find me unless you're linked in another pass. You can find me here on this podcast.
01:44:42
Case Aiken
Yeah, you can find another pass on Twitter at another pass. You can find me on Twitter at caseaken, and you can find all of our stuff, our old episodes and stuff to come@certainpov.com. Where you can also find a link to our discord server. We're having this call on Discord right now, but you can just come hang out, share memes. We have a lot of WandaVision spoilers which will have just ended when this episode drops. So probably at that point we'll be moving on to the Winter Soldier or Falcon and the Winter Soldier. But come just hang out if you like anything that we do. If you like reignite and mass effect stuff, if you like, let's rewatch and rewatching old movies. If you like scruffy Nerf herders with like, DND, Gamestar wars stuff, all that's at certainpov.com. And yeah, just come check it out.
01:45:30
Case Aiken
Great shows. Sam, take us home.
01:45:33
Sam Alicea
Sure. Next time on the show, we'll be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed the show, pass it on.
01:45:47
Case Aiken
Thanks for listening to certain point of views. Another pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com. Yeah, we'll run Craig bot to record the stream, but it has crashed on occasion, and I would prefer not to have that screw things up.
01:46:25
Sam Alicea
Yeah, it's definitely let us down. Poor Craig.
01:46:29
Jason Anarchy
Yeah, I've done one podcast where the audio was lost for whatever reason, and it was like, okay, always double record. Oh, there we.
01:46:37
Case Aiken
Oh, yeah, always double.
01:46:39
Jason Anarchy
Okay. All right.
01:46:39
Case Aiken
And the other side happens, too, where someone's computer dies. Unfortunately, we had the stream feed, so.
01:46:45
Jason Anarchy
Okay. Yeah, so I'm recording from my end. Good to go.
01:46:48
Case Aiken
Are you good on your end, Sam?
01:46:49
Sam Alicea
Oh, yeah, I'm recording already.
01:46:50