I don’t go see comic book film adaptations. Partly because I’m cheap, and partly because filmmakers always seem to confuse the origin of the character for the entirety of the character, as if there’s nothing more interesting about Batman than spending 40 or 50 minutes of the film working out the precise details of his childhood and how he actually became Batman. We get about 40 minutes of our hero actually being a hero with this method, which Hollywood loves because they believe it “sets up a franchise.” Hollywood loves to set up a franchise more than they desire to tell good stories, and if you don’t believe that, then how do you explain the impending re-boot of the Spiderman franchise barely a decade after it was launched?

Anyway, this was released last week

It could be a commercial for a new theme park ride, or a video game, or perhaps even a commercial for the local semi-pro men’s roller-hockey team season opener, but it is in fact the teaser trailer for the new Conan movie. I’ve been avoiding any news about this, because I don’t want to have to care about what I suspect will be a crappy modern Conan film. I’m fine with my Conan comics and re-reading REH’s original stories on a regular basis, and periodically re-watching John Milius’ seminal film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger — what do I need a new movie for?

But various family members saw the trailer and then bugged me about it: “Is this gonna be any good? Are you gonna see it? Will you take me? Will you buy me candy?” (the youngest nephew is single-minded). Maybe some of their excitement for what is honestly a crappy teaser commercial awakened my curiosity, and maybe I secretly want to like this, but after checking out the official movie blog www.conanmovieblog.com/conan-movie-facts/ , I am guardedly optimistic about this.

[CONAN DESCENDING A STAIRCASE]

I don’t know anything about the guy playing Conan (Jason Momoa) other than that he’s Hawaiian and apparently has a couple kids with Lisa Bonet — thanks, IMDB.com. Some online people seem a little hung up on the fact that a white guy’s not playing Conan, which is silly — Ron Perlman ain’t a red guy but he did all right as Hellboy (OK, I did see the first Hellboy film, but only because Mike Mignola was so heavily involved, and it’s a better movie because of it.) Speaking of Ron, he’s in this one as Conan’s dad, which is fine by me. More movies should involve Ron Perlman.

Poking around on that blog also reveals that the film will have nudity (check out those photo galleries if you’re older than 18), which is pretty much a requirement for a Conan movie. Where there’s nudity there’s generally an R rating, and if the filmmakers are all right with that, we can expect (hopefully) an R-level of violence. There’s a plot synopsis that’s based on the first screenplay draft (and seems heavily adapted from “A Witch Shall Be Born,” but dressed up with modern scriptwriter conflict resolution), so who knows how accurate it is, but it does seem promisingly short on origin story stuff and more concerned with battles, blades and broads. And that’s all I can reasonably expect from any Conan story, or film for that matter. So perhaps I’ll actually see this one in the theater. Crom knows if any movie is going to get me out of the house, it’s either going to be a Conan film or a Northlanders adaptation.

But none of you kids are coming with me; your mother will go full-on berserker if I take you to an R-rated movie.

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