Movie review: Conan should go after scriptwriters

Take away much of the myth, most of the sorcery and all of the humor of the 1982 John Milius-Arnold Schwarzenegger version of the sword and sorcery epic “Conan the Barbarian,” and you’ve got an idea what the new “Conan” is like.

It has a better actor as star: Jason Momoa (“North Shore,” “Game of Thrones”). It has better sword play. It even has 3-D.

But you lose the legend of Conan, you’ve lost the plot.

This Conan is “battle born,” a child ripped (literally) from his mother’s womb as she lies dying from wounds suffered in combat. He’s a headstrong warrior, a killer by the time he reaches middle school (not that they had middle schools in the Hyborian Age).

After his father’s murder at the hands of an evil sorcerer (Stephen Lang), Conan cuts a wide swath through this dark epoch, slaughtering, wenching, leading a merry band of muscle-bound mugs on land and on sea, all the while hunting for the nameless thug and his witchy daughter (Rose McGowan) who killed Dad (Ron Perlman).

It’s a quest that takes us from one oddly named city to another, a digitally enhanced road trip without a laugh along the way.

At least McGowan, given skimpy outfits and Freddy Krueger fingers to go with her whiter shade of pale skin and plucked hairstyle, manages a little comical shiver every time she tastes the blood of an innocent she’s torturing.

And Conan? “I live. I love. I slay. I am content,” he growls, barbarically. If only we could say the same – the “content” part, I mean.

What Hollywood macho man and writer-director Milius gave the muscle-bound warrior back in 1982 was a more compelling back story (years in slavery) and a more compelling narrative quest, all delivered with a wink and a leer.

The “leer” is still evident in this film from the director of the latest version of “Friday the 13th,” Marcus Nispel. We’re no more than 45 seconds into Morgan Freeman’s dull, stentorian narration before we see the first topless damsel.

Momoa cuts a fine figure of a Conan, though hiring writers from the god-awful “Dylan Dog: Dead of Night” meant that he was pretty much on his own.

Lang is aging into a generic villain, forcing his voice into a growl as if that will save lines that state the obvious: “The mask is COMPLETE!”

At least Perlman, in a few early scenes, has dialogue worthy of the Robert E. Howard tale. Making his boy a sword, he lectures, “Before you wield it, you must understand it” – even if the kid isn’t listening.

Someday, though, Conan will learn “the Mystery of Steel.” And someday, somebody’s going to figure out that you can spend all you want on 3-D, locations and topless extras, but Conan isn’t Conan without the lyrical words that capture the barbarian and his barbaric age.