Should we really be at the dawn of a full-on swords-and-sandals revival, the litmus test for all Immortals, Hercules, etc. to come could well be this summer’s Conan The Barbarian, a modern update of the Robert E. Howard character that, despite its classic fantasy origins, will nevertheless always live in the shadow of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s version. Not that legacy ever intimidates director Marcus Nispel, a man who tackled Michael Bay-produced remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday The 13th while essentially plugging his ears to the cries of fans.
So how does Nispel get around similar knee-jerk reactions to Conan-heads averse to any Barbarian who doesn’t boast a thick Austrian accent? By keeping Conan’s dialogue in this trailer to a bare minimum, instead concentrating on scene after scene of clanging swords and new star Jason Momoa—who currently plays the similarly reticent Khal Drogo on Game Of Thrones—grimacing through his mascara as he battles an army of supernatural foes, including an unsettlingly hydrocephalic Rose McGowan. Anyone who misses the endlessly quotable lines of the original Conan, well, we suppose theirs are just the lamentations of the women.