Conan The Barbarian (2011)
Crimes
- Featuring all the swordplay, bare breasts, and indiscriminate bloodshed viewers could want from a sword-and-sorcery movie, while still being incredibly dull
- Trying and failing to recreate an entire fantasyland continent in the budget-friendly land of Bulgaria
- Finally bringing Robert E. Howard’s great pulp hero back to the big screen, but in such a way that no one will want to see him again for another 30 years
Defenders: Stars Jason Momoa and Rose McGowan. (The DVD also features a separate commentary from director Marcus Nispel.)
Tone of commentary: Convivial. Momoa and McGowan seem to enjoy each other’s company. They have the easy give-and-take of people who have shared a difficult experience that others who weren’t there will never entirely understand. As the commentary progresses, they grow franker about the filming conditions in Bulgaria and some of their problems with the movie, particularly its ending. But they still seem to have enjoyed their filmmaking experience, and the film itself. “If Jason and I go silent on this commentary,” McGowan says early on, “it’s because we’re getting sucked into the movie.” (They don’t go silent that often.)
What went wrong: Momoa and McGowan focus more on the trials of shooting on a tight budget in Bulgaria than on the film itself, but Momoa makes several allusions to “fights.” He points out one scene in which he added some of his own dialogue: “This wasn’t in the script. I thought it was very important to put Robert E. Howard’s philosophies and code and some of the original dialogue in the movie.” He isn’t wrong to suggest that Conan The Barbarian’s three credited screenwriters apparently didn’t give this much consideration.