Saw “Conan” a few weeks ago

Note: My personal blog is on indefinite hiatus, but I am cross-posting from my newspaper blog at the Marshall Independent.

I took my kids to see “Conan the Barbarian” a few weeks ago. Well actually I took my son, I paid them to let my daughter curl up on my lap and sleep through it. Works for us.

Aw heck, I wanted to like it. Jason Momoa looked credible as Conan the Cimmerian, the sets were great, the scenery beautiful. And rather than follow the 1983 version with Ahnuld the Governator they just rebooted it.

Somehow the magic just wasn’t there.

They probably can’t be blamed, the original version was followed by a sequel that didn’t recapture it either. Those of us hoping for a long series were disappointed.

Better luck next time.

I sometimes wonder what makes a great movie adaptation of a book, and why some just misfire? “The Lord of the Rings” waited a long time for Peter Jackson to come along but it was worth the wait.

But while I enjoyed the Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies in my youth, nobody has yet done a credible job at faithfully adapting “Tarzan of the Apes” for the big screen.

And though the short novels of Robert A. Heinlein would seem good movie fodder, so far “The Puppet Masters” just didn’t work and “Starship Troopers” was made into an abomination by a director who seems to hate Heinlein and deliberately set out to misrepresent what he stood for.

Now I’m waiting for 2012 when a movie version of Tarzan’s creator Edgar Rice Burroughs’ character “John Carter of Mars” is to be released.

They’ve cast Lynn Collins who played Kayla Silverfox in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” as Dejah Thoris, which works for me. But somebody named Taylor Kitsch is going to be John Carter, and I’m sorry but I just don’t like his looks.

Capt. John Carter late of the Confederate States Cavalry is supposed to be aged but ageless. He doesn’t recall his childhood and has no idea how old he is, just that he’s very old. This guy looks like a kid.

There was also a version made with a prominent porn star playing Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, but the less said about that the better.

We live in hope.