Actor Jason Mamoa says that he came to the reboot of Conan the Barbarian as a big fan of the comics.
“I was a comic book fan and a huge admirer of Frank Frazetta and when he died during our filming, it was so sad because I wanted him to see it and say ‘Wow, that’s my Conan!’ Just looking at his paintings, I wanted to put that up on the screen. I absolutely remember seeing that one where Conan’s standing on a pile of skulls and it’s seared into your memory and a I felt like Marcus Nispel is a pretty visually amazing director,” he tells the Philippine Star.
However, for all his passion, Mamoa says that the film couldn’t overcome a lackluster script.
“There’s just a lot of things that came into it and sometimes the script just wasn’t there. I just wanted take a stab at doing Conan and it’s out of your control, you can only do so much I feel like I bled over, and over and over to do the best I could. I feel like we represented him very well. The movie sometimes, it fell short you can only show up as an actor and be the best you can be,” he says.
Some fans blame Mamoa for the poor performance of the film. Do you? Or do you agree with his assessment that the script wasn’t up to snuff?
No, I think he did a good job. I just don’t think they should have spent so much time on his back story. A couple of more big battles – make it a real action story, and it would have been fine. Blockbuster, no – we don’t get a lot of R rated blockbusters.
Conan’s origin is kind of like Batman, Superman, Hulk – we all know it. Even the casual movie buff. You don’t need to beat us over the head with it again.
I thought the film was pretty good. It wasn’t a bad film, I’ve watched bad films and this wasn’t one. Sure it wasn’t out of this world, but I’ve seen lots of films that weren’t as good as this that did better.
To be honest, I think they did the film pretty good, although, they could have chosen someone who had a lot more muscle mass.