Avatar vs Jurassic Park

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this.

Or this.

I thought it was just because I'm a dinosaur nut who can tell what film a dinosaur roar originates in (well, apart from a few ubiquitous ones whose origin I've never been able to track down), but it seems I'm not the only one.

A shame, it really took me out of the film. Mostly since it just reminded me of what I could've been watching.

And don't you forget it.

Triangulation: Tompk, Solomon Kane on DVD, and Cormac the Terminator

There are still a few things I want to get done before April rolls around, and I only have three days. Eek!

John Milius Doesn't Like The Idea of Remaking His Movies

Came across this interesting snippet:

“Red Dawn” isn’t the only Milius film getting a new treatment. Marcus Nispel (“Friday the 13th") is making a new “Conan,” a retelling of the mythology that Milius explored in the 1982 film “Conan the Barbarian,” which launched Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career. But Milius is not too psyched about "Conan" either -- or remakes in general. “No one wants their movie remade, especially when the movies take on a life of their own," he says.

Doncha just love it when people have a false sense of propriety over things? What bugs me is that this article is about Milius' dislike of the upcoming Red Dawn remake. Here, he actually has some sort of justification for not wanting to see his movie remade, since Red Dawn was Milius' creation. Despite all the changes, Conan is at its heart an adaptation - a terrible, loose, broad adaptation, but an adaptation nonetheless - and Milius has no more right to be annoyed about a new Conan film than Gene Wilder did when Burton "remade" Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

New adaptations of pre-existing source material from another medium are not remakes, and it irritates me when people assert otherwise. Is Orson Welles' Macbeth a remake of James Stewart Blackton's 1908 silent film? Is Batman Begins a remake of Tim Burton's Batman? Is The Greatest Story Ever Told a remake of King of Kings? No? Then a new Conan film is not a remake of Conan the Barbarian. True, the upcoming film does steal a bunch of elements, but that isn't what Milius said. What he said was No one wants their movie remade, especially when the movies take on a life of their own - implying that Conan the Barbarian was as much his own creation as Red Dawn was. Which it wasn't. Of course.

Also, "retelling of the mythology" gives the impression that Milius successfullly explored the Hyborian Age and Howard's universe - an impression in whose general direction I can only snort derisively.

Good Scot, Bad Scot: What New Comic Should Dark Horse Do Next?

Good ol' Strom over at the Official Robert E. Howard Forums poses the question.

1. King Conan Ongoing Series
2. Conan One Shot Schedule
3. Age of Conan Series (Non-Conan Stories in Hyborian Age)
4. Valeria Ongoing Series
5. Bêlit Ongoing Series
6. Thoth-Amon Ongoing Series
7. Mini- Series Return
8. Young Conan Ongoing Series
9. Anthology Ongoing
10. Nothing - Keep it with Just Conan the Cimmerian
11. Other - Write in your request below

At the risk of being labelled a big fat jerk, I'm going to discuss some of the above, using my much-touted and delayed Good Scot/Bad Scot system. Shocking, I know. I haven't really gotten into my long-standing problems with Dark Horse's adaptations, but I'll let Bad Scot do the talking, while I play Devil's Advocate with Good Scot.

Well, I won't just leave it at that, but explain why I don't.

"You wanna see immature and misogynistic? Check out Robert E. Howard!"

... where Conan rides off into the sunset with a bucket of gold under one arm and a scantily-clad female under the other at the end of every story! Except I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that either, because, just like The Witcher, it’s just escapist fiction after all, and if that makes me immature and misogynist, well my girlfirend of 8 years doesn’t seem to mind!
- "manveruppd" doesn't exactly have perfect recall when it comes to the Conan stories

Personally I saw it as a more clever take on Conan-esque fantasy, so I saw the girl cards as just goofy and over-the-top silliness, not intended to be taken seriously...
- "invisiblejesus" apparently doesn't think Conan-esque fantasy can be clever

From this discussion on the misogynistic elements in The Witcher. For those not in the know, one of the miniature storylines in The Witcher is that, due to his bizarre racial makeup, Geralt of Rivia happens to be both sterile, and free of any sort of sexually-transmitted disease, making him ideal for girls of a pre-industrial world to get their rocks off without having to worry. Somehow, people translate it as either "positive discrimination" as it turns Geralt himself into a sex object instead of the girls (which it surely doesn't come across as in the game, where every girl you get it on with has a card to collect), or it's a parody of that sort of thing in "adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasies like Conan."

If you have sex with Morenn in The Witcher, you get this cool card. You can collect a whole set. Gotta catch 'em all! I fail to see how this is any better than the "Maidens" you could rescue in Nihilistic's Conan, frankly, and at least then they're not reduced to freaking collectible cards.

Yeah... no.

A Comparison of the Howard Quotient in the Conan Films

It's crazy how little people seem to know about Conan the Barbarian's deviations from Howard. So, for the benefits of those people, I plan to enlighten them, so they can fully understand the enormity of the gulf between the two.

Omega Crom: Dey Be Silly Doodz

“The origin of Omega Crom’s name springs from Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian,” says front man Johnny Ketlo who is admittedly a long time fan of Robert E. Howard novels and Marvel Comics.

“Crom is the Cimmerian God of Steel and Slayer of Giants. Omega means the Final and Eternal, the end. (The Final and Eternal Slayer of Giants) Omega Crom is the Ultimate Extremity of Crom and a Signal to termination,” states Johnny Ketlo.

Asking front man Johnny Ketlo to describe the musical experience of Omega Crom he says “It’s like Judas Priest on Steroids!!!”

You wish. Rob Halford is a bona-fide gay man dressing in leather and latex, and he's still more overwhelmingly heterosexual and manly than 99% of all metal bands.

King Conan: Clown of Iron

Well, Milius' draft for King Conan: Crown of Iron has been circulating the internet. A Google search will probably take you to one. I'll probably do a bigger post on it some point in the future, but here, I'll just say everything that I hate about Conan the Barbarian is worsened tenfold. Ironhand's parody is not that wide of the mark.

King Conan Volume 1

I... am confused.

KING CONAN VOLUME 1
Written by Roy Thomas, art by John Buscema and Ernie Chan.
Conan is king! Join Conan, king of Aquilonia, his queen Zenobia, and their son Conn in this comics adaptation of L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, and Bjorn Nyberg's stories "The Witch of the Mists," "Black Sphinx of Nebthu," "Red Moon of Zembabwei," "Shadows in the Skull," and "The Ring of Rakhamon"!
King Conan collects issues #1 through #5 of the early '80s series originally published by Marvel Comics.
King Conan is based on a series of five short stories by Robert E. Howard, originally published in Weird Tales.
192 pages, $17.99, in stores on August 25.

So... wait. Howard only wrote three King Conan stories. What are the other two? If they're referring to the five stories they mention, then... how did they miss "L. Sprague De Camp, Bjorn Nyberg and Lin Carter's stories" right there? One paragraph above?

I hope they change that sentence. Something like "King Conan is based on the stories by Robert E. Howard, originally published in Weird Tales." Or some such. Something that doesn't directly contradict the previous paragraph.

Then again, I'm not particularly interested in this collection. No Howard, and I resolved never to read another De Camp Conan after the astonishingly horrible Conan the Liberator. I cannot tell you how much I hated that "novel."

Triangulation: Blackwood, Lovecraft, Brackett, Burroughs, "Conan" and more

This was a crazy week. So many important dates to consider!