Okay, I actually went back to watch Conan the barbarism because of this topic. And, Im not sure if I always watched a shortened edition before but, this movie is both longer and better than I remembered, but oh lord itits an arthouse film in disguise. It takes 13 minutes to even get Conans village to be attacked, and in that 13 minutes there are 2 paragraphs of dialogue.
And this trend just continues throughout the whole movie. There are so many musical montages in this film. You just have to remember this one line from 58 minutes ago because they never remind you of it. Heck, half the important plot points are given as characters run away from the camera, clearly added in after the fact. Probably because audiences didnt get how any of these random scenes in the first 45 minutes (it takes way too long to get back to the snake cult plot) even connect.
overall I liked it.
like there is a lot of visual storytelling going on. Lots of subtle details like the sword in the end being the one from the intro, or Conans pose from the gladiator rings. Its all there, or could be inferred (they never do outright say if thulsa doom can hypnotize people or not by staring at them but I think its implied).
And arguably every line of dialogue not said by Arnold (except the to hell with you speech at the end) are very important. For a pure words to worth ratio, this is up there with the first mission impossible. Every line is important and basically grandiose philosophizing. Its just that theres 10 minutes between every line. This is a 2 hour film with 4 minutes worth of dialogue. Every single scene is a musical montage. Every single scene.
but even with all of that, good movie. I enjoyed it. But its still an arthouse film in disguise. And I can see why younger me really didnt like this.
the best parts are still thulsa doom and the power of flesh vs steel speech. Even if James earl jones calling himself everyones father was a bit tongue in cheek
~ my improv troupe ~
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