So, Conan

Finally saw the 2011 adaptation last night. Not as horrible as I feared and certainly no goofier plot wise than the Arnold version.

I will give it this; it certainly looked the part, some of the scenery and locations were fantastic, even if I’m pretty sure it was the same four broken columns at every location. Jason Momoa really does look the part and he was not bad given the limits of the script. Rose McGowan was at least having fun. No other character really makes much of an impression, especially the “thief” who can’t get out of a cage. There is also the prerequisit personality-free love interest and I gotta tell ya, Khalar Zym is no Thulsa Doom.

As much as love Ron Pearlman, did we really need to spend an hour reliving Conan’s entire childhood? I am starting to loathe movies and books that obsess over origin stories. It’s tired and takes up way too much of my friggin’ time. Give me some mystery. What ever happened to ‘The Man with No Name’?

Some of the more groan-worthy moment:
-the battle where Khalar Zym overruns Conan’s village is a tactical mess. And for being ‘feared barbarians’, they don’t seem to put up much of a fight.
-so they hunt down all the pieces to the mask, then spend ten years doing nothing?
-Dropping rocks on a slave market … is gonna kill a lot of slaves.
-Sand wraiths that can jump three stories straight up and can merge with the ground are killed by .. falling?
-a thief who’s main skill is a ring of keys? Ho-Ho! Magic!
-a rowboat full of soldiers sneaks up on a ship full of pirates in the full light of morning?

So what part of the movie would be useful in your roleplaying game? Not much. Any DM worth their dice would have seen this stuff a few hundred times. There is a *sigh* city of thieves, a summoning ritual over a (really, really deep) pit of fire, a monastery of peaceful monks (some who know kung-fu, some who just die a lot), a tentacle fight, and they even throw in a skull-headed mountain. Your best bet is to find some screen caps of the backgrounds, cities and maybe a few of the secondary characters for NPC ides and use them for inspiration. As I said, most of it looked cool.
Conan thee Movie Blog has some good pics.