The first review of Conan the Barbarian, which premieres August 24th, has hit the web. And it is overwhelmingly negative.
IndieWire was at the European premere of Conan at Empire Magazine’s Big Screen event in London, and now present their scalding review, calling the movie “half-assed” and “truly, truly awful,” and slamming the actors’ performances:
[Jason Momoa] is fine at the sword-slinging, but delivery of dialogue? Not so much. And the rest of the cast aren’t much better: [Stephen] Lang is on sneering villainous autopilot, reprising his Avatar turn with an unplaceable accent, while Rachel Nichols fails to give any personality to what is, in fairness, a role that’s not so much underwritten as never-written. Worst of all is Rose McGowan, made up to look like a cross between Christina Ricci and an IMAX screen, and horrendously overplaying her part as Lang’s sorceress daughter.
The 3D is also critiqued as being “impenetrably murky,” and the movie even falls short when it comes to the action sequences, the review states. Although the film has “little else” besides action, “you never care, because the stakes are never particularly high, and the wall to wall violence means that the pace feels glacial.”
Finally, while the review claims that Conan the Barbarian suffers both because of the acting and the writing, the aspect which most spectacularly fails is Marcus Nispel’s directing:
What’s really offensive is how anonymous it feels, and how entirely absent it is of anything approaching imagination or wit. The worst of it is how much he steals from other movies, and not even classics, but blockbusters from the last decade.
A very, very negative review, which it seems hard to get away from. Although the movie currently has a 78% anticipation rate on Rotten Tomatoes, we fear that a lot of eager moviegoers are going to be disappointed come August 24th!
Are you looking forward to seeing this movie, or would slating reviews such as this put you off?
Read the full review here at IndieWire!
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