Sunday 24 January 2010

Superhero Hype: A Den of Numbskulls and Ignorami

You know what? I just want to keep some of these comments. I can't really be bothered bringing it over there, because any intellectual discourse is just going to be wasted. These are a laugh riot. This is why people don't take comic fans seriously, and why the intelligent, insightful comic fans are drowned out by the blatherings of morons and imbeciles.



black conan? interesting..BRONAN the barbarian

good to hear that they finaly got someone, don't care much that they pick someone whose black even though he doesn't look it.

whats next, a Black Superman?

a naggger? (T notes: it's originally a much more offensive word, but I find reduction via mockery is immensely powerful in destroying the power of a word)

CONAN IS NOT BLACK!! THIS GUY IS "BRO-NAN"!! LOL!!!

... Apparently the very Hawaiian Jason Momoa is "black" to some people. Interesting.

WTF Conan is not a black, he a white guy they need ro stay true to the comics.

BWAHAHA, that's a good one.

Yeah because Conan was such an epic masterpiece as it was...

I remember seeing a documentary, showing an Australian body builder who looked a fair bit like the young arnold, I would have thought that guy would have been perfect.

This guy actually loosened up the last season of atlantis or at least his character did. But does the movie going audience really need another damn remake Conan included?

Arnold was the best Conan ever! some skinny black dude doesn't do the trick for me...I want something ridiculous! I want Arnold caliber size with award winning acting screw this loser!!!! sorry dude but I could take you which means you aren't suitable for Conan...

Conan in the original comics is described and drawn as having darker skin and had black hair and was not Austrian!

Why does hollywood think that we need to remake amazing classics? Why not find obscure movies that never caught on and remake them and stay away from movies that are cult classics.

Why remake something that has already been perfected?

The guy will never replace Arnold Schwarzenegger. The govenator was an epic Conan in the 1980s. Somethings are just irreplacable. Hope this fails.

Stop the dam remakes already. Your kiling the 1980s Hollywood.


You'd think that the internet would help people discover that Conan wasn't invented in 1982 or something.

Forget Conan, Remake Beastmaster. Brad Pitt can play Dar, Leonardo Dicaprio can play Kodo, and Johnny Depp can play Podo!

There's another film that was an absolutely horrendous adaptation of the source material.

YES. He's not WHITE. I love that.

... Why? Do you love that none of the actors in The Last Airbender were Asian? Do you love that the main characters from Memoirs of a Geisha were Chinese?

It would be good if the SHH moderators would censor all the racist comments as much as they censor 95% of what i say, sure i have let fly some strong opinions here regarding the moronic attitude of some of the people that comment on this forum, but racism should not be tolerated in any form and is absolutly unnecessary in this medium and should always be totally looked down upon. It is not freedom of speech to express derogatory opinions, it is simply nothing but bad mannors and poor perception of reality, grow up already please.

Wow.. a lot of people in here really are racist.

Aaah... Freedom of speech IS freedom to express derogatory opinions, sorry to say. Gotta love how this good chap wants to "censor" the "racist comments" while talking about "tolerance." Though I fail to see what's racist about acknowledging that a person from a particular ethnicity has been cast with someone from a different ethnicity, any more than noting things like eye or hair colour.

Awesome pick people.
This guy is pretty good I watched Atlantis every week and he was good in it. The world does not evolve around just White people playing major roles.


So it's ok to cast non-whites as whites, but God help you if you cast a white as a non-white. Gotcha.

Before you ****tards comment on this movie, please go out and get copies of the first 12 novels by Robert E. Howard, Lin Carter, and L. Sprague DeCamp. Until you read those novels you don't know **** about **** when it comes to Conan.

Neither do you, Winston. Neither do you.

He has the look. He should bulk up though. Yes I know he is black but his look is exotic enough. No one should be hung up on race so much. It would be different if he where the complete opposite of what the character's race is in the comics. If I remember he was always a darker skinned man with an obscure look.

You mean casting a guy who looks like he hangs out in the O.C. is not the "complete opposite" of someone who came from the grim, bleak, dark-skied north?

You know, the lovely thing about horrid disasters is that you can see them come from miles away....

Thank Crom somebody's talking sense. Thank you, Sasquatch.

Robert E Howard Describe Conan as "Tall, sullen eyed,black hair with BRONZE skin from being exposed to the sun...." (accoring to the Conan page on Wikipedia.
This guy is closer to that than Arnold ever was and he looks like Franzetta paintings of Conan.
If you grew up with the MAarvel magazine you know Marvel "whitten" him up becasue it would sell more comics.


Mitra's beard... Conan was born in Cimmeria, the distant north, from being exposed to the sun. Momoa looks like the Frazetta paintings about as much as the Rock does. Also, apparently ethnicity is truly down to skin colour, not things like facial structure or subtle cosmetic differences. By that logic, Ben Kingsley is more black than Vin Diesel.

Man - there are a lot of idiots on this board. A lot of them portraying like they KNOW Conan because they watched the movie; while some may have also read the comics. Both iterations were a little to a lot off base from the pulp novels Howard wrote. This guy fits the part. Conan was 6'2 and 210 pounds. This guy fits that to a "T". Conan was also, as stated earlier by somebody smart, bronze...like this guy.

Stop bringing up the 6'2" 210 lbs weight. Howard never stated it anywhere in his writings, and the comparison to Cormac is flawed to begin with.


This is ridiculous.
What next? Is there any possible way they could make this project any stupider?

I've read the script, folks, and it has nothing to do with Conan. Nothing at all. They've completely rewrittern the origin of the character in such a way as to totally alter Conan's basic motivation. Imagine if a Batman movie was made where Batman's parents were never killed, & Batman is portrayed as a fun-loving, wisecracking smartass who fights crime for the fun of it. That's what they're doing to Conan. They're even completely ignored basic details of Conan's world - like if, in the Harry Potter movie they changed the name of Hogwort's for no reason, & made Harry come from Dublin. That's what they're doing with Conan.

Now they've cast a Hawaiin. I get so sick of people saying "Race doesn't matter! He's a good actor, and that's all that matters!"

Sometimes race does matter. Most of the time it does not, but sometimes it does. For some characters, ethnicity is important to the character & how the character fits into his world.

Examples, both fictional and non: Black Panther, Geronimo, Muhammed Ali, Malcolm X, William Wallace.

Imagine if Denzel Washington was cast as William Wallace? He IS a really good actor, but a black guy can not be a medieval Scotsman - it would destroy suspension of disbelief. Is that racist? I don't think so. Or how about if John Cho was cast as Geronimo?

Well, that's what they're doing with Conan.

Conan is a Cimmerian. The Cimmerians ARE A RACE. A fictional race yes, but Howard was very, very clear on what the Cimmerians were. Like the Wakandans. The Wakandans are a fictional ethnicity, but clearly they're supposed to be black people, and it would be dumb as hell if they made a Black Panther movie & cast a white guy.

The Cimmerians were ancestral Celts, and Conan's racial status as a Cimmerian was a very important part of how he fit into his world. For Conan, race DOES matter, and casting Momoa is EXACTLY the same thing as casting a white guy to be the Black Panther, or a black guy to be William Wallace. It's stupid.

Why do these people hate Robert E. Howard so much?


*A round of applause for Eff It"

you guys are such critics,remember when heath ledger was cast for the joker,everyone was so upset even myself but when i saw how well he did i was shocked,to all you wanabe critics,don't knock off this guy cause he appear in baywatch and SG Atlantis which i will add i hate both shows,but i can tell you one thing he looks the part,if he can build up some more muscle hes in,this could help this guy shine.

The major difference is the outcry about Ledger was entirely unjustified, since before The Dark Knight Ledger won acclaim for some outstanding work in Two Hands and The Four Feathers, not to mention Brokeback Mountain. There's no equivalent for Momoa.

FAIL. Conan wasn't pretty, he was a Sumarian badd-arse. A war machine and agent of death, not an underwear model...

1st: Anyone who gives a damn to study their history will know that people from ancient Sumer are dark in features, curly hair. etc. It seems like whoever wrote the screen play was studying their Sumerian history. Think about it? Do you want a Nordic looking, Austrian speaking actor to inaccurately play a character or would you want an authentic reboot?

Wow, Conan the Sumerian. That's a special kind of stupid.

Man, some of the people here are dumb.

Not dumb because you don't know anything about Conan or Robert E. Howard, but dumb because you THINK you know what you're talking about.

Conan - the character - was not "mid-Eastern". He's not a Sumerian. He's a Cimmerian - a fictional RACE created by Robert E. Howard.

Here's what Conan's creator had to say about the Cimmerians:

"They came into these countries as Aryans. But there were variations among these primitive Aryans, some of which are still recognized today, others which have long been forgotten. The blond Achaians, Gauls and Britons, for instance, were descendants of pure-blooded AEsir. The Nemedians of Irish legendry were the Nemedian AEsir. The Danes were descendants of pure-blooded Vanir; the Goths--ancestors of the other Scandinavian and Germanic tribes, including the Anglo-Saxons--were descendants of a mixed race whose elements contained Vanir, AEsir and Cimmerian strains. The Gaels, ancestors of the Irish and Highland Scotch, descended from pure-blooded Cimmerian clans. The Cymric tribes of Britain were a mixed Nordic-Cimmerian race which preceded the purely Nordic Britons into the isles, and thus gave rise to a legend of Gaelic priority. The Cimbri who fought Rome were of the same blood, as well as the Gimmerai of the Assyrians and Grecians, and Gomer of the Hebrews. Other clans of the Cimmerians adventured east of the drying inland sea, and a few centuries later mixed with Hyrkanian blood, returned westward as Scythians. The original ancestors of the Gaels gave their name to modern Crimea."
Robert E. Howard - The Hyborian Age

So to those of you crying about how it's "racist" to say this kid is the wrong ethnicity to play a Cimmerian, well, you don't know what you're talking about. Conan's ethnicity is a key component to how the character fits into his world. In the case of Conan, race DOES matter, the same as it would matter in a film about Crazy Horse, or Genghis Khan, or Malcolm X.

Casting THIS guy to play Conan of Cimmeria makes is the same thing as if they cast Dwayne The Rock Johnson to play William Wallace, or Brad Pitt to play T'Challa (the Black Panther). It's STUPID.


I really wish I knew who "Eff It" was, because I feel the need to give him a beer.

In the chronology of the Thurian and Hyborian Ages, all the countries of the period were destroyed in a cataclysm a few centuries after Kull's reign. Eight millennia after this event came the Hyborian Age - the period of Howard's most famous character, Conan the Barbarian.


I sure don't remember Howard dating the Hyborian Age to 92,000 BC. Since Kull's time was 100,000 BC.

"A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit."
--Graham Greene (just for clarification, Graham Greene the British novelist, not the Native American actor)


I cannot think of an example of being "too respectful" to a book. Outside a word-for-word adaptation running for 20 hours (which doesn't really bother me, to tell you the truth), I... don't see the problem.

To be honest im not even sure why im posting on this forum anymore, its full of obnoxious, arrogant, ignorant nobodies who LACK FORESIGHT to see the whole big picture, is'nt it time to stop complaing about every single little detail just because it doesnt please your simple little uneducated minds and start appreciating the these films instead for the work that does go into them, if your so against the material and design of these productions why dont you go out there and put in the time and effort to make a film yourself, maybe then you might learn a bit of respect for the movies that your given instead of mouthing off all thre time.

So we should shut up and enjoy what we're given, because we can't make our movies? By that logic, we should eat every meal in a resteraunt even if it's causing us to projectile vomit: after all, we're not five-star chefs. And hey, if we buy a car that belches smoke and only starts nine out of ten times, we shouldn't complain: after all, we couldn't build a car to save our lives!

Honestly, I can't believe some people bring up the "Sumerian." I have to do a "Conan the Sumerian" cartoon one of these days.

10 comments:

  1. I can't even bring myself to read all of those, they're just too insipid and I'll just get mad.

    But your point on Airbender actors and Chinese in Memoirs of a Geisha made me laugh for pointing out the idiotic racism those ignorant commenters display.

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  2. I didn't read all of them, either. I already had a dose of Stupid before that; I can't take more today. :)

    Let's just say, some people should not allowed anywhere near the internet.

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  3. Heh, I had a feeling you wouldn't read them all, and you're wiser than I for it. My poor, long-suffering little brain is going to rebel at some point.

    I particularly love the thought that guy put in to his "Conan the Sumerian" post, saying that the writers obviously did their homework on Ancient Sumer. A pity they didn't seem to put said homework into Robert E. Howard, and that he couldn't even go to wikipedia to read up a little on Conan (even if it does keep that damn 6'2" quote I hate so much.)

    The stupidity is just going to continue, I'm afraid. (I really am afraid!) The best I can think of is to laugh rather than despair, and try my damnedest to illuminate wherever I can.

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  4. Conan the Sumerian? That is so bizarre I almost wonder if it isn't some kind of brilliant parody of the idiots on the board. Who knew Sacha Baron Cohen is a Conan fan, maybe he's upset he didn't get the part.

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  5. For someone claiming that all those opinion are just plain stupid and of not relevance, the author took a lot of time chosing, quoting, making comments (almost all the same, well...)...

    But yes, Eff It is absolutely right and there should be a petition online against making a film of Conan with a non Celtic-looking actor, and even Schwarzenneger was never the best choice, he looks to much of a gorila without the dreadful and sober outlook that the original Conan would have had. Cluncy Brown («Kurgan», in the «Highlander» would have been the perfect actor for the role.

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  6. Conan the Sumerian! Love it.

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  7. You wrote: "This is why people don't take comic fans seriously".
    Fine. Since Conan is not a comic hero but a character from the stories of Robert E. Howard, you may be right. You are obviously not talking about Conan fans or Robert Howard fans.
    As I said: that's fine for me :-)
    BTW: I don't mind the actor. But I fear, the movie will be crap.
    regards,
    Andradir

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  8. There are a lot of depressing references to comics and even one to the books with the horrible contributions crammed into them from De Camp and Carter. Given that so few people actually know who Robert Howard was and why this guy cast as Conan is such a bad choice I'm pretty much resigned to avoiding all things related to Howard's characters on the big screen.
    The original stories will have to suffice because I see so little hope of ever seeing any stage or screen production that will even come close to fidelity to the source as the small screen adaptation of Pigeons From Hell all those years ago.
    Of course, what can one expect from the same town that gave us '300'? And the crowd's howling for more.

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  9. It is my dream to one day do a Conan movie taken directly from one of Howard's stories. Perhaps someday I will be in a position to make that happen.

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  10. Jeff, my mind would rest easy if it turned out to be a fantastic hoax. Still, I'd watch your Conan film.

    Caturo: you're absolutely correct, and I'm well aware of the irony in spending so much time quoting and addressing those quotes loaded with ignorance and silliness. Generally, people have two options: ignore them (by far the best option) or do something about them. Because I'm an angry young chap full of hyperbole and vinegar I find exercises like this cathartic, as well as helping me to sharpen my own scholarship. Talking with Howard fans isn't going bring up certain questions like "was Conan average-looking."

    Andradir: I'm a comic fan myself, but the sad fact is a lot of people don't take comic fans seriously. This is not due to the faults of the medium, or the best examples of the medium being inferior creations, but due to the loud, ignorant idiots shouting over the voices over the others. It's the same thing with Conan: real Conan fans (be they Howard, comic, or film) are being drowned out by the moronic blitherings of drunken fratboys whose memories of Conan are camel-punching and vulture-biting. That was what I was trying to say, really: I have plenty of respect for fellow comic fans. Plus, this is a board about comic adaptations, hence why I called comic fans to attention.

    Rick, I always hold out hope. I never dreamt anyone would make a "Call of Cthulhu" adaptation, but we got a pretty well made silent film. Born of Hope and The Hunt for Gollum, while I didn't appreciate their divergence from Tolkien, were high-quality fan films, and I could see one of the more modest Conan films being made in the same manner. As filmmaking technology becomes more accessible, I think there's a distinct possibility of a good-quality Conan or other Howard fan-film in the near future. The existing "Return for Richard Grenville" will hopefully be only the first in a long line.

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