Excuse me while I kill everything. – Conan
I embarked on a quest to watch through Tor’s list of 80s Fantasy. I have only seen an embarassingly small number of the movies on that list, and have decided to rectify that! Here, I review one not on the list: “Conan the Destroyer.” I felt that it was a good choice to continue the quest because it is also an 80s fantasy movie. There will be SPOILERS in what follows.
Here’s the thing, there’s pretty much no plot or development of characters in the movie. They tried–really they did–at points to give viewers connections to the characters, but overall they didn’t exactly succeed. They’re all fairly one-dimensional.
The sets are really awesome, with all kind of interesting scenery to look at throughout. Fight scenes seem well choreographed with interesting swordplay. There is a good amount of humor found through the film as well, and very little of it falls flat. There is a real feeling of epic in every scene. It feels as though there are world-shattering events happening, and that each battle is important.
The music is good, but it is pretty much the same theme song repeated over and over with occasionally different inflection.
Conan the Destroyer was fun. There’s just not a lot more to comment on. If you want to sit back and zone out while you watch a bunch of sword fights, this is a great way to do it. Don’t go in hoping for an epic plot, however. It’s not there.
The Good
+Epic feel
+Awesome sets
+Great fight scenes
+Decent humor
The Bad
-Very little plot
-Music good, but repeats a lot
-Slows down in places
The Verdict
Grade: B+ “Who needs plot when you have Conan? Super epic movie with awesome sets and great action. Loved it.”
Guest 1 (My Mother-in-Law): C+ “I was missing dialogue… I thought the dialogue was too brief. I could see that they were trying to make Conan sound and look like a Barbarian, but the dialogue was so brief that one might occasionally wonder if they’re all challenged mentally. Beautiful sets!”
Guest 2 (My Father-in-Law): B “It was solid all the way through but never really gripping.”
Links
J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!
Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!
Time to Watch some 80s Fantasy Flicks– I describe my quest to watch a bunch of 80s fantasy movies. This post also features links to all the reviews done so far.
A Ranking of 1980s Fantasy that would please Crom Himself– The original list of movies that made me embark on this quest.
SDG.
Eclectic Theist 