What I Think of Conan the Momoan

5 Replies
photo courtesy of mattrailer.com

I said in my post last Friday that I thought Conan the Barbarian was a semi-decent movie.  Now that things seem to be slowing down a little and I have time to write, I need to define that term.  Simply put, “decent” means not good but not particularly bad, either.  “Semi” means not even that good.

The problem, as more people than I’m going to try to link to have said, is that the movie simply doesn’t deliver in terms of story.  There are just too many holes in the internal logic.  I’ll discuss the things that stuck out to me, but first I’ll discuss why this character isn’t Conan as written by Robert E. Howard.

There were a couple of attempts to tie this movie to what Howard wrote.  Some of the initial lines narrated by Morgan Freeman in the opening were quotes from Howard.  One of the characters summarizes the events of “The Tower of the Elephant” in about one sentence when he’s bragging about Conan’s exploits.  Then there’s the famous quote, “I live…I love…I slay, and I am content” that was taken completely out of context and not even quoted correctly.  The actual quote is from “The Queen of the Black Coast” and is “I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”  Beyond that, there’s nothing directly from Robert E. Howard in the film.

The argument to counter this criticism is that the film captures the spirit of the Conan stories.  But even there the film falls short.  I won’t rehash the origin story criticisms.  Others have said it better than I.  Nor will I get into the depiction of Conan as a crusader against slavery.  There’s no point in throwing stones at the fight choreography.  In this type of movie, the If-I-Did-This-In-A-Real-Fight-I’d-Be-Gutted school of combat is almost unavoidable.  Instead I’ll point out a few lapses in logic that others seem to have missed.

First, Tamara.  She seems to be the only one of the female monks who has any idea how to fight, and she’s quite accomplished at it.  Why?  Is she unique in her interests and abilities in this area, or was she singled out for special training?  If she was, what explanation was given to her and the rest of the monks?

If Tamara’s such a great fighter, and tells Conan that she won’t go with him after he rescues her, why is she docilely accepting being tied up in the next scene and at no time trying to escape?  Is she into bondage?  The sex scene didn’t indicate she was, but maybe that was too racy for the R rating.  Nah.  Probably not.

In the final fight scene, Tamara falls through a bridge of wooden slats.  She has a chain on her wrist, and Conan catches the chain to save her.  The distance she falls before he catches her is enough to dislocate her shoulder if not tear her arm off.  She isn’t even bruised.  That’s pushing things a little too far.

Last gripe about Tamara.  If she was supposed to fill the role of Belit in this film (it was Belit the above quote was spoken to), why does he ride off and leave her in the end?  Belit was the one great love of Conan’s life.  There was no real reason for him to leave her.  Except maybe that since he’d bedded her, it was time for new conquests.  And he would never do that to Belit.

I can’t buy Conan deliberately allowing himself to be taken prisoner in order to get close to one of the men he’s after.  My memory may be misleading me, but I don’t recall Conan ever doing anything like that.  I do remember more than once him threatening to kill anyone who laid a hand on him.

When Tamara is kidnapped from the ship, why wasn’t there a man on watch?  Robert E. Howard’s Conan would never be so stupid as overlook a thing like that.  And earlier, when Khalar Zim first tries to kidnap her, don’t any of these people realize they’re coming.  Khalar Zim has a land ship pulled by eight elephants, fer cryin’ out loud.

I didn’t buy the scene where young Conan fights and kills the Picts early on, either.  Not while holding an egg in his mouth.

On the other hand, there were some things I liked about the movie.  The fight scene with the sand demons was exciting and (I thought) genuinely suspenseful.  Of all the scenes, I thought this one best captured the spirit of Robert E. Howard, at least until he defeats the sand demons and fights Khalar Zim directly.  Too bad more of the others didn’t.

I don’t have any major gripes about the sets and the cast, although I know some people do.  Jason Momoa did a much better job as Conan than I expected him to.  I can see him playing this role again.  I only hope he gets to, and in a film that’s actually based on Howard’s work.  Unfortunately, the movie is doing so poorly that it will probably kill any chance for a genuine Howard adaptation for another generation.

One final thought.  The makeup Rose McGowan wore as Marique placed an image in my head that I can’t get out, so I’m going to share it with you.  Her hair reminded me of Londo Mollari from Babylon 5, while the spots on her neck and forehead made me think of Dax from Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine.  If those two ever had a love child, Marique is what she would look like.

Congratulations to the Hugo Award Winners

Leave a reply
The Hugos were given out last night at Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention, in Reno, Nevada.

The winners are:

Best Novel:                      Blackout/All Clear                             Connie Willis

Best Novella:                   The Lifecycle of Software Objects      Ted Chiang

Best Novellette:                “The Emperor of Mars”                        Allen M. Steele

Best Short Story:              “For Want of a Nail”               Mary Robinette Kowal

Best Related Work            Chicks Dig Time Lords                  Lynne M. Thomas
                                                                                          and Tara O’Shea, eds.

Best Graphic Story           Girl Genius Volume 10:                        Phil and Kaja
                                                                                          Folio, art by Phil Folio

Best Dramatic Presentation , Long Form:                Inception

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form:               
                                     Doctor Who:  “The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang”

Best Professional Editor, Long Form:                      Lou Anders

Best Professional Editor, Short Form:                     Sheila Williams

Best Professional Artist:                                         Shaun Tan

Best Semiprozine:                                                  Clarkesworld

Best Fanzine:                                                         The Drink Tank

Best Fan Artist:                                                      Brad W. Foster

Also, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, which is not a Hugo, went to Lev Grossman

Adventures Fantastic/Futures Past and Present would like to congratulate all the nominees and especially the winners.  A list of winners and all nominees can be found here.

Conan the Movie

Leave a reply
I just came from seeing this movie called Conan the Barbarian.  It’s a semi-decent sword and sorcery flick about this guy who has these adventures.  He just happens to be named Conan.

Interestingly enough, one of my favorite writers, Robert E. Howard, also created a sword and sorcery character named Conan who goes around having all these adventures.

Other than some place names, there’s not much more in common than that.

I’ve got to pack up the van for one last short summer jaunt before school starts for my son on Monday.  I’ll write a more detailed review sometime in the next few days.  I doubt anything I have to say will have any impact on how well the film does, but I do want my thoughts to be coherent.  I will say that the movie wasn’t as bad as I feared (an advantage to setting your expectations really low) but not as good as I’d hoped.  I’ll elaborate on the semi-decent remark in the full blown review.

RIP, Colin Harvey

Leave a reply
It is with great sadness that Adventures Fantastic/Futures Past and Present learned today of the death of Colin Harvey.  He passed away of a stroke at the age of 50.  He was far too young.  Angry Robot Books has posted this remembrance.  I’ve only read one of his novels, Winter Song.  It was one of the first books I reviewed.  I loved it and was hoping he would return to that universe.

He will be missed.  Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Kate.

Blogging Conan: The God in the Bowl

Leave a reply

Coming of ConanThis is one of the shorter Conan pieces.  It was probably the third Conan story Howard wrote and one of the few rejected by Farnsworth Wright when he submitted it to Weird Tales.  It wouldn’t see publication until years after Howard’s death.

This story has always been one of my favorite Conan tales.  It’s unique in that it’s at heart a police procedural, and a rather good one, even if it does have some stereotypical good cop-bad cop interplay. It’s also something of a locked room mystery.

Conan has broken into a museum of sorts, having been commissioned to steal a particular artifact.  Instead he finds the night watchman bending over the corpse of the building’s owner.  Conan thinks the man is another thief.  He realizes his mistake when the watchman pulls a cord, which rings a bell summoning the city watch.

The prefect in charge of the watch thinks Conan is the killer and wants to beat a confession out of him.  Accompanying the watch on their rounds this particular night is Demetrios, chief of he Inquisitorial Council.  He understands just how foolish such a course of action will be.

Instead of beating Conan, Demetrios interrogates him.  Conan freely admits he’s in the building to steal, but steadfastly denies killing the owner, whose name is Kallian Publico.  It’s a shame Howard didn’t write more of this sort of thing, because he seems to have had a knack for this type of dialogue.  I think this story has examples of some of Howard’s crispest, best dialogue in any of his works.  Other suspects are eventually brought in, including Kallian Publico’s chief clerk, Promero.  When the prefect orders a particularly sadistic guard to beat Promero for information, Demetrios does nothing to stop it.  In fact, Howard’s entire portrayal of Promero is one of disdain.  Conan at one point calls him a weakling and a fool.

The contrast between how the police treat Conan and how they treat Promero is intriguing.  Demetrios tends to believe Conan’s story that he didn’t kill Kallian Publico, while the prefect insists he did and on the basis of little evidence.  Demetrios respects Conan’s courage and strength while Promero’s weakness attracts only bullying.  It would be easy to dismiss the actions of the police here as entirely stereotypical of crime fiction of the day, but I think that would be a mistake.  While there is some stereotyping going on in the way the police behave, I think Howard was using that to make a point about strength and weakness.  Weakness attracts abuse.  Demetrios respects Conan’s strength too much to challenge him.  He knows he’s likely to lose.

The other thing of interest is what is implied by the sarcophagus that everything centers around.  It seems Kallian Publico had acquired a bowl shaped sarcophagus from Stygia earlier in the day.  It had been sent as a gift from Thoth-amon (who appeared in “The Phoenix on the Sword“), priest of Set, to Kalanthes, priest of Ibis.  Ibis and Set don’t get along, so why Thoth-amon would send Kalanthes a gift is something of a mystery at first.  Kallian Publico acquired the sarcophagus from the leader of the caravan transporting it.  The caravan leader didn’t want to go out of his way to deliver it, and so left it with Kallian Publico to deliver.  Of course, Kallian Publico had no intention of delivering the sarcophagus.  Instead he opened it…and received what was intended for Kalanthes.

“The God in the Bowl” seems (to me at least) to be considered a minor Conan story.  It’s certainly not one of the ones I’ve heard talked much about at gatherings of Howard fans.  I think that’s a shame.  Howard was stretching himself as a writer with this story.  By adding the mystery/police procedural element, he was trying something new.  A careful examination of Howard’s oeuvre reveals he did this frequently when he wanted to branch into a new genre.  That fact that not all of his attempts were successful is less important than the fact that he tried and wasn’t afraid to experiment.  We would have been poorer, and Howard’s work less moving, if he hadn’t tried at all.

More Stupidity Involving Amazon

3 Replies
It’s late, and frankly I’m tired and don’t feel like writing a long rant tonight.  It would probably be incoherent anyway.  Besides, I’m planning a long rant next week and don’t want to vent my spleen prematurely.

I did want to point out something to you, though.  Earlier today, Passive Guy posted a notice about a group of different nonprofits in California urging a boycott of Amazon.  They’re upset about taxes.  Seems Amazon, which is not based in California, refuses to pay California’s state sales tax.  Good for Amazon I say.  Anyway, these people say we should boycott Amazon until they do.  And did I mention that this is a group of nonprofits, who don’t pay taxes in the first place?

Yeah, like the title says, stupid.  Passive Guy, who is a lawyer by training, gives a good breakdown as to why this is a dumb argument from a legal perspective.  There are a number of insightful comments about how this strategy, if it were to succeed, would hurt they people it’s supposed to help. 

It’s an interesting post, to say the least.   Go read it.   In the meantime, I’m compiling a list of  things I’m going to buy from Amazon.

Blogging Conan: The Tower of the Elephant

2 Replies
Of all the Conan stories, this one, “The Tower of the Elephant”, is arguably the best.  It’s one of the shortest, but it contains some of the strongest writing Howard ever did.  For example, from the opening paragraph, in which Howard describes the the Maul, the part of town smart people don’t go into after dark:  “Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers staggered, roaring.  Steel glinted in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from the darkness rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings.  Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamor of drinking-jacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face.” 

That’s only three sentences.  Yet Howard managed to pack more description in those three sentences, more atmosphere and sense of place, than most writers do in three paragraphs.  He does more than paint a word picture.  He places the reader in the middle of the scene.

It’s into this scene that a young man named Conan comes. 

The plot is pretty straight forward.  Conan overhears a kidnapper bragging in a tavern.  The man mentions a tower known as the Elephant’s Tower.  He questions the man, who tells him that somewhere in the tower, guarded by more than human guards, is a priceless jewel known as the Elephant’s Heart.  The tower is the domain of the sorcerer Yara. 

When Conan says that courage is what is keeping the local thieves from stealing the jewel, the man attacks him.  Conan kills him, then decides to rob the tower himself.  While doing so, he encounters another thief named Taurus, who has been planning the heist for months.  They decide to team up. 

Taurus is killed by one of the guardians of the tower, and Conan proceeds alone.  Normally in these posts about Conan, I would have stopped summarizing by this point, but I’m going to make an exception here.  It’s what happens when Conan finds the jewel that makes “The Tower of the Elephant” stand out among Howard’s work and among works of twentieth-century fantasy.

Conan discovers the chamber containing the Elephant’s Heart is occupied by a creature with the body of a man, green in color, and the head of an elephant, with the head being disproportionately large for the body.  The creature is blind.  He’s also been tortured for centuries by Yara. 

At first Conan is horrified, then as he realizes the creature, who we learn is named Yogah or alternatively Yag-kosha, is no threat he feels a great sense of pity for him.  Yogah explains how he came to be trapped there (mentioning Valusia and Kull’s world, although not specifically naming Kull), then asks Conan to aid him in his revenge against Yara.  Conan does as he’s asks.  He kills Yogah, then squeezes his heart out on the jewel he’d come to steal.  The blood soaks into the jewel as if it were a sponge.  Conan takes the jewel to a lower level in the chamber, where Yara is in a trance.  He awakens Yara and gives him the jewel along with a verbal message from Yogah.  He then makes his escape from the tower.

What?  You think I’m going to tell you all the details of Yara’s demise?  You’ll have to read the story for that.  It’s short, and more than worth your time.

It’s Conan’s reaction to Yogah, even more than Howard’s prose, that lifts this story above most others.  Howard did a lot with the Conan stories to establish the trope of the thief stealing an ensorcelled item, yet in one of the earliest Conan stories he breaks the very stereotype he’s establishing by adding a layer of depth and feeling and having the thief willingly give up the item he’s come to steal. 

The popular misconception of Conan is that he’s a ruthless killer with little or no empathy for the pain of others.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Yes, there are stories in which Conan’s bloodthirsty streak is the characteristic that is displayed most prominently.  But Conan is a three dimensional character.  The compassion he shows here, while harsh, is still compassion.  He acts out of mercy, not bloodlust.  Only by killing Yogah can Conan free him from the torment he’s suffered and allow him to take revenge on Yara.  Conan genuinely feels compassion for Yogah.

It’s easy to see why “The Tower of the Elephant” is considered a masterpiece.  If you haven’t read it, or read it recently, you owe it to yourself to do so.  Then compare the storytelling you find here with what you’ll see in the movie when it comes out this week.  See if there’s a difference.  We’ll talk more about that when I review the move.

Finally, a Voice of Reason

Leave a reply
Lee Martindale has weighed in on the ratio of male/female writers in Year’s Best lists and anthologies.  I tried to post a reply, but wasn’t able to.  I don’t have a Livejournal account, and I couldn’t figure out how to log in from Google, so I’m replying here.  Finally, someone with credentials who speaks with a voice of reason.  If you read my interview with Lee, this shouldn’t surprise you.