It had James Earl Jones with great hair fighting Arnold.
And when Arnold's lover dies, she begs him to let her breathe her last breath into his mouth. Which would be bizarre if it weren't hilarious.
So I came in thinking that this new Conan didn't have any chance to match the old one. I was wrong.
The first thing I noticed in the first scene of the movie was what an interesting group Conan's tribe is. They're having some kind of war, and Ron Perlman (who's apparently the Rabbi/Chief/President of their club) is walking around stabbing everyone with his sword. But his wife is standing in the middle of the village, wearing war gear... and obviously about 14 months pregnant. Shockingly, she's dying not from being stabbed by someone who's 1) male and 2) not carrying a fetus, but is dying of pregnant (yeah, apparently "pregnant" was a common cause of death in wherever Conan was from). So Ron Perlman waddled over, cut the kid out of her womb, and asked her what she wanted to name him. In what must have been a delirious fit, she decided her barbarian-child would be named "Conan". Then she died. I'm guessing her second choice name was "Letterman".
So then we learn a little bit about the village. Ron Perlman, by virtue of being named Ron Perlman, is obviously a very Jewish barbarian. Conan, by virtue of not being able to talk properly (he mostly made lots of grunting noises and sneered a lot) and having a rather dark complexion, is obviously a very not Jewish barbarian. Which invites the obvious conclusion that Conan's barbarian-warrior mother was sheathing more swords than she let on, but that's an issue best left for another day. In this village, the movie establishes that everyone does one of three things: forge swords, race around the mountain, and worship the hawk. Possibly all the above, but definitely not more than 2 at the same time.
The next thing the movie establishes is that, for the most part, the village sucks at all three. Somehow, Colonel Quaritch (Noah Lang's dad) from Avatar rolls up, except this time instead of an Army haircut and a Mech Warrior, he brings Freddy Krueger. Except she's a woman, so I guess it's Freda Krueger... Either way, they proceed to beat up on the village, jack their swords, and pour hot steel all over Ron Perlman. Which I'm 98% sure is a hate crime, so you know they'll get theirs in the end. But for whatever reason, Quaritch decides he likes Conan. Probably because he's got a fat friend, and Conan cuts the fat friend's nose off. Quaritch knows cutting his fat friend's nose off is hilarious, so he lets Conan of the hook and doesn't kill him. But at this point, Conan doesn't have a Dad, and everyone else in the village is dead, so he's gotta figure out what to do with himself.
Needless to say, like any orphaned barbarian, Conan gets a full-time job. From what I could tell, this job consisted of rolling large rocks down hills for the purpose of breaking topless women out of cages in which they were enslaved. They then proceeded to drink beer and arm wrestle while ignoring the topless women completely. So for awhile, Conan is having a great time with his life of freeing naked women and getting wasted. But then his buddy with no nose showed up, and things got real. And by that I mean Conan decided being MLK of topless women wasn't for him anymore. So he went looking for Quaritch.
Now, at this point, a bunch of stuff happened, but the basic point is that Quaritch was after a particular girl, who for various reasons that aren't really clear was hanging out in a monastery with a bunch of other pretty girls and an old man who kind of looked like Raiden from Mortal Kombat.
But subtlety isn't Quaritch's style, so instead of rolling up and grabbing his woman from the monastery, he ran over the wall with his super-Jeep. Oops. So of course she ran away and found Conan. Actually "found" Conan is kinda strong... What really happened was Conan told her she wasn't allowed to talk or have opinions because she was a woman. Apparently, not keeping topless woman caged made Conan Susan B. Anthony in the barbarian world, but allowing them to talk was still preposterous. Needless to say, she doesn't appreciate Conan's misogyny and lets him know about it vocally. Just kidding-- he stuffs a cloth in her mouth, which leads her to fall in love with Conan and sleep with him. That decision also forced her to forfeit her "Pure Blood" title. But that's neither here nor there. Instead of making Conan get her breakfast after giving it up to him, she went to pick mushrooms. And got kidnapped by Freda Krueger. Whoops.
The rest of the movie primarily involves Conan bailing his woman out of jail and killing Quaritch. Needless to say, it's awesome. At this point, I'm not actually sure what the next movie I'm going to see is, but when I do, I'll be sure to write another review. And it'll be just as unproductive and useless as this one was.
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