Not exactly the start to the marketing Lionsgate was hoping for. The first teaser for their upcoming big budget version of “Conan,” didn’t exactly impress, quite the opposite actually. You can catch it here if you haven’t seen it.
I cannot. I live, I love, I slay, and I am content.
This is also the start of the problem for this marketing push, the phrase doesn’t strike the image of a bloodthirsty barbarians, more watered down versions of them. Compare that to “300,” whose audience “Conan,” is hoping to capture, and their first teaser here.
Rated R, “300,” makes no bones about what it’s going for right out of the gate, and went on to be a huge box office blockbuster. “Conan,” feels less. In fact, it feels very PG-13. One that just plays out on a bigger canvas.
This becomes important when you look at where the film’s direction was meant to go, you’ll find this bit of information here dealing with the overall effect “Conan,” was going for from the film’s screenwriter Sean Hood…
“They could have made a soft, PG-13, Conan with lots of gimmicky 3D effects, but they decided on an R-rated Conan, that was more realistic… but this meant a tighter budget (if an estimated 80-90 million, as I read on IMDB, can be called “tight”). I think it was the right choice.” — Sean Hood.
With the second trailer, “Conan,” looked to branch out its concept and reveal more detail. You’ll find a link to it here. Sadly though, it looks to be the “Conan,” of gimmicky effects and softness Mr. Hood said they were intentionally trying to avoid.
Despite the epic elements at work, even the more lengthy trailer once again feels very PG-13. Based on the marketing so far, Lionsgate shouldn’t have high hopes of capturing the “300,” audience.
If the approach of the film was truly to capture what Mr. Hood was talking about, there needs to be a serious shift in their marketing in order to achieve that effect. There’s still time to achieve that result, but that August opening date is approaching fast.
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from the very first scene, you are basically told this movie is going to be over the top in a bad and very lazy way.. apparently Conan is “battle born”, in other words his father Ron Perlman is surrounded by countless merciless foes, of which he takes down a couple while screaming, and then he tends to his pregnant wife, akin to a scene from the recent Cowboys & Aliens, we are taught that during Hollywood battles you are allowed respite from the enemy if you enter an emotional two shot close up with a loved or cherished one, no one will dare attack you, it simply wouldn’t be fair.. so yes amidst the carnage Perlman and wife share some tender and distraught words, she wishes to see her son before she dies, and without even really looking he takes a nasty looking knife and performs the fastest C-section known to mankind, and voila.. he brings up a CGI baby.. the mother looks on, smiles, then dies, Hellboy is highly moved by these events, so decides to perform a Lion King and holds the child aloft and screams out loud, the camera pulls in beckoning the film’s title to force itself upon us.. this scene literally lasts 3-4 minutes.. and none of the attacking savages notices it happening, or pays any attention to the angry barbarian king screaming and holding a newborn baby above his head.. As i said i came into this film willing to hold my disbelief.. but seriously.. could this scene not have taken place in a hut or some other hidden shelter? Conan would still have been “battle-born”, the first thing he tasted (like every child) would still have been his mother’s blood, yet it would have been ten times more intimate and moving, and hundred times more believable. I completely understand this isn’t meant to be highbrow, but there’s no harm in adding just a slight bit of realism and genuine emotion to a fundamental scene, It will only involve the audience more and at little expense to any of the tone. As a result of this scene, I never cared for any character for any moment.. the film failed from its very inception.
I enjoyed the 1982 Conan the Barbarian, and went into this movie not expecting a film as good but one to be entertaining. Alas, this Conan the Barbarian only has the costume and set design going for it. Everything else is pretty much a disaster. The music score is not as memorable, or as epic or as haunting. The direction has inconsistencies with the tone especially all over the map. The dialogue is cliché-ridden and as much as I am starting to dislike using the term anachronistic the term applies to me here, the story is dull and sluggish and the characterisations feel little more than stock stereotypes. The acting doesn’t help, Stephen Lang has good presence but has nothing to work with. The lead on the other hand has no charisma whatsoever. Overall, disappointing and weak. 2/10 Bethany Cox
As a Robert E. Howard purist I am still waiting to see the original stories (“Thing In The Crypt”, “Red Nails’, “A Witch Shall Be Born” et al.) to be made into movies. Which will probably never happen for any number of reasons.
And while the movies with Ah-nult starring in them alluded to these original Howard stories they didn’t, for some odd reason, stick with Howard’s vision.
That said, knew I was watching the the film with a prejudiced eye in what the story *should* be and so felt that Hollywood had missed the mark yet again. However, the friend I went with (who has zero familiarity with Howard)…loved it. So maybe going into a “Conan” movie with a knowledge of all things Hyborean is a detraction. Which strikes me as odd because; trying to entice an already dedicated fan-base into the theater…is this not the purpose of licensing the rights to any character? So wouldn’t appealing to that demographic be the goal of the film maker?
Must be some sort of special mystical logic that defies rational thought that Hollywood employs in its decision-making. Either that, or they really are missing the gene that links logic with their brain.
I mean, sure, all of the elements were there, but it failed to follow the formula. Which made it a little too schizoid. Sort of a “Let’s shoot some film and make the story later” method of production.
And while I appreciate the need to get the non-Howard-fan audience up to speed with the character (and the story premise) it just seemed to break the entire adventure up into a bunch of loosely related stories.
Realizing that they only have two hours to tell a story, it is acknowledged that not every nuance of the characters can be explored.
So I guess, faced with that decision, that the building of the Conan character was disposed of in favor of a series of (pretty good) fight scenes. Sort of a “special effects & action can solve anything” approach to movie making.
Which does make for a show-ey, but not particularly interesting, movie.
Alas, poor Hollywood…for all the money at their disposal they just can’t get it right.
Their box office opening on that really showed that… Better development was definitely needed.
Wow! That is an attention-grabbing slant.
Chiming in here well after the fact but IMO watering down the trailer of Conan to get it into the trailer listing for other movies is not the best of moves.
It reminds me of the total [explicative deleted]ing failure in judgement from the studio heads that forced Die Hard 4 to be released as PG-13 so ‘more people could get in to see it’.
To reference 300, that trailer kicked some serious ass. I didn’t go to the movies to see it though, I watched it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again on YouTube. I didn’t know about 300 because I saw its trailer in a movie. People were scrambling to get their eyes on the European version of the trailer that wasn’t out in the States yet.
Lets not forget Comic Con where it was released (and how I am most others came to know of it), much to the dismay of all these [explicative deleted]ing idiot critics and studio heads that claim bad movies that fail (since Comic on became a stage for release) is because Comic Con is a bad place for it, instead of the obvious fact: YOUR [EXPLICATIVE DELETED]ING MOVIES SUCK. I find their attitudes reminiscent of a child hiding from monsters under a bed sheet as if that will actually do anything.
If Conan is a rated “R” blood-fest featuring a more in-depth non-monosyllabic shades of gray hero, then all that was really needed was a Red Ban trailer with a short voice over of one of his lines, the one about following someone into hell would have worked well, accompanied by some bloody action shots. That added with the foundation already set by the previous movies would create some serious moment for the film.
Instead our first look at the new Conan was some hippy drug induced vision through smoke. Awesome.
“This is also the start of the problem for this marketing push, the phrase doesn’t strike the image of a bloodthirsty barbarians, more watered down versions of them.”
The thing is, “I live, I love, I slay, and I am content” is truer to the character of Conan – as in, the original Conan, created in 1932 by Robert E. Howard – than anything from any of the previous films. Conan is more than some monosyllabic, brutish, bloodthirsty barbarian, he’s a leader, a lover, a hero, a villain, an adventurer, a mercenary. This quote, a paraphrase from one of the original REH stories, shows that there’s more to him than just hacking his foes’ heads off.
That said, the reason the film trailers have been “PG-13″ in tone – an assessment I agree with – is because Lionsgate were wanting to get the trailers in for Thor, Green Lantern, Battle L.A. and other PG-13 films. If Conan was more obviously R-rated, then the MPAA would refuse them to be put in front of PG-13 films. Now that Green Lantern’s been released, they’ve released a Red Band trailer that shows far more of the grim, brutal, bloody nature of the project:
http://www.conanmovieblog.com/2011/06/18/conan-the-barbarian-red-band-trailer-is-here/
Now the real marketing push can begin, and the true nature of the Conan film as Sean Hood has alluded to can be brought to the forefront.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, and for sharing the red band trailer link. Hopefully more and more will see it.