A Wasted Opportunity

I've finally had the chance to see the new Conan the Barbarian movie in the theater. I caught a matinee yesterday, more out of a sense of duty than any real desire to see it for itself, since I had every reason to believe I wouldn't enjoy it. That makes writing a review of the film very difficult for me, since nothing less than a full recantation of my earlier doubts about it will appear objective, while any confirmation of them will simply prove that I did not view it with an open mind. I have no one to blame for this state of affairs but myself, so I don't begrudge anyone who summarily discounts what follows. Nevertheless, I did give the movie a fair shake, perhaps fairer than I might have had I not read so many reviews and commentaries beforehand, because I went into it with such low expectations that it would have been hard for the movie to have disappointed me any more than it already had.

On that front, I can say without hesitation that Conan the Barbarian is not as bad as I had expected. If I had to pick a single word to describe it, though, it would almost certainly be "mediocre." I knew going into it that I was not going to be getting Robert E. Howard's Conan, but I held out hope, particularly in light of some of the reviews that I'd read, that I might still be getting a solid sword-and-sorcery film whose protagonist just happened to share a name with a certain famous Cimmerian. Unfortunately, that's not what I got. What I saw today was, frankly, a mess and not of the glorious kind.

As a movie, Conan the Barbarian is all over the place, with only occasional flashes of cleverness, never mind brilliance. It felt as if it had been hastily -- or at least confusedly -- put together without any overarching vision of what it supposed to be. Was this an attempt to bring a more Howardian version of Conan to the screen, a remake (or "re-imagining") of the 1982 Milius version, a live-action version of a filler story from the latter days of Savage Sword of Conan, or just a B-movie sword-and-sorcery flick? This lack of a clear vision hobbled Conan the Barbarian, making it hard to know how to take the film. You see, I had hoped that, at the bare minimum, this movie would do two things: 1) Sever the connection in the general public's mind between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Conan and 2) Be an enjoyable movie in its own right.

Let's start with the first one. As is well known, I'm not a big fan of the first Schwarzenegger Conan movie (We needn't mention its sequel, since it's just awful). Despite that, I readily concede that the 1982 Conan the Barbarian possesses a certain something that gives it staying power. It's not REH by any means, but neither is it a joke, like so many of the fantasy action movies that followed in its considerable wake. This inexplicable gravitas, combined with a career-making performance by Arnie, has done much to secure its place in people's imaginations, especially those who don't know the real Cimmerian. To succeed, the 2011 film needed to establish itself as more than the ape of its predecessor, which it could have done in innumerable ways, though, to my mind, the simplest would have been to drink deeply from its literary wellspring.

Read almost any review and chances are you're going to see the new movie compared to the Schwarzenegger vehicle. Even when the comparison is a positive one, it only serves to emphasize the long shadow cast by the 1982 motion picture. This is why I find it bizarre that the current release focuses on Conan's quest for revenge against the warlord who slew his father and destroyed his village. Not only is this plot utterly alien to Howard's Conan but it ensures that viewers familiar with the Schwarzenegger version will have it in mind while viewing the new one. There are, of course, plenty of differences between the specifics of the two films' plots, but there are also enough surface similarities that even I, who knew better, found myself thinking of the 2011 film as some kind of remake. However you slice it, that's a failure, both of imagination and of any effort to give this movie its own identity apart from its predecessor.

This brings me to the second question: is Conan the Barbarian enjoyable in its own right? How one answers that question depends, I'd imagine, on the standards by which one measures enjoyment. There were definitely parts of the film I enjoyed. For one, the overall look of the movie wasn't bad and some of the special effects were well done. The same goes for many of the fight scenes, which were (mostly) nicely choreographed, though a few strayed into martial arts movie-inspired nonsense I do not want to see in a Conan film. The cast was solid, too, starting with Jason Momoa, who both looked the part and brought an appropriate intensity to most of his scenes. No one appeared to be sleepwalking through the film, which is more than could be said of me by the end of watching it. The script was mostly awful, laden with clichés and vapidity and largely lacking in the visceral power of Howard's best work. The plot, as I mentioned, is clearly inspired by that of the 1982 movie and does little to distinguish itself, other than the addition of comic book violence. Its characters, including Conan, sadly, are similarly two-dimensional, showing even less depth and development than the Milius version. In short, I was more bored by Conan the Barbarian than outraged.

That's the crux of it for me. Conan the Barbarian 2011 is just not a very interesting movie. The Milius film, for all its manifest faults, as both a motion picture and as a cinematic presentation of Robert E. Howard's most famous character, is memorable. Indeed, it's powerful in its own way and can serve as a discussion point amongst fans of both movies and Robert E. Howard. Its successor, though, is, at best, a way to blow two hours and then move on. It's a very forgettable movie and certainly not one that left me hungering for more. If it weren't for the fact that it laid claim to REH's legacy, it would be largely indistinguishable from any number of fantasy films that have come and gone and were never thought of again.  I doubt very much that, in 30 years time, many people will look back on this movie with great fondness.

I think that's a shame, because I remain convinced that Conan is a character who could do well on the silver screen. As conceived by Howard, he's eminently suitable to a series of episodic movies, each one presenting one of his adventures, even as the series advances the larger story of his life, culminating in his claiming of the throne of Aquilonia. To do that, though, Hollywood needs to do more than pay the briefest of lip service to Howard's conception of the character. Even assuming for a moment that a straight adaptation of any of Howard's stories were impractical -- something I don't believe -- why can't we at least move beyond the silly revenge quest origin story and get something different? And, while we're at it, is it too much to ask for stories whose plots actually make sense? I'm not looking for Tolstoy here. Heck, I'm almost to the point where I'm not looking for Howard anymore, but, surely, someone in Hollywood can find a way to tell an engaging, coherent story featuring Conan.

I almost feel bad for this review, because, truth be told, Conan the Barbarian 2011 isn't a terrible film so much as an example of bland, lowest common denominator entertainment, mostly devoid of anything that distinguishes it from dozens of other paint-by-numbers action films churned out each year. For some, that's probably enough and that's great; for me, though, it isn't. I kept hoping against hope that this movie might prove to be more than that, something that might kick off a series of movies about Conan, but, after the disaster this is proving to be at the box office, that seems increasingly unlikely. Indeed, it may have poisoned the well against any future Robert E. Howard-based movies for a long time to come and I am much more disappointed by that than I am by this halfhearted, forgettable movie.

The Ads of Dragon: Indiana Jones Roleplaying Game

May 1984 saw the release of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, while issue #89 of Dragon (September 1984) saw the appearance of this advertisement:

I won't deny that, when I saw this ad, I was pretty excited. The Indiana Jones movies were my gateway to the movie serials of yesteryear and, from there, to the pulp magazines that inspired them both. So, when I heard that TSR was producing a RPG based on the movies, I was really looked forward to it. How disappointed I was when I finally got hold of a copy of the thing! Players were expected to play one of several pre-generated characters and there were no rules for creating your own, which caused considerable problems. After all, who wants to play Short Round or Sallah when their buddy gets to play Indy? The game also made heavy use of cardboard fold-up "miniatures" for adjudicating many of its rules, which was fine if you had the right fold-ups, but, if you didn't -- which was invariably the case for scenarios you made up yourself -- you were out of luck.

In retrospect, I suspect the Indiana Jones Roleplaying Game was intended as a "gateway" game for kids who weren't already in the hobby and, on that level, perhaps it was better than I remember its being. As I recall, though, it didn't sell well and there were only a handful of modules released for it (two of which were based on the then-released movies). The game is mostly remembered for the erroneous belief that TSR tried to trademark the word "Nazi," based on a misunderstanding about the illustrations on the cardboard fold-ups. In addition, a copy of the game burnt by employees at TSR UK is responsible for the name of the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The God in the Bowl

With the latest attempt at a movie featuring Robert E. Howard's famous Cimmerian upon us, I found myself thinking of tales actually written by REH that might be ripe for adaptation. My thoughts inevitably turned to "The God in the Bowl." This is an interesting story almost as much for its textual history as for its content. Though submitted for publication to Weird Tales sometime in 1932, it was rejected by editor Farnsworth Wright, a fate it shared with "The Frost Giant's Daughter" (though the latter did see publication in an amateur periodical, with Conan replaced with "Amra of Akbitana"). Consequently, "The God in the Bowl" was unknown to the wider world until it was published in the September 1952 issue of the British magazine Space Science Fiction. Like so many Conan tales published at the time, L. Sprague De Camp edited "The God in the Bowl," often changing the words and phrasing of various sections. Howard's original, unadulterated text did not appear in print until 2002.

Though I am very fond of the story myself, I can fully understand why Wright might have rejected it. Unlike many Conan yarns, this one is slow-paced, even thoughtful, largely lacking in action and having no female character whom Margaret Brundage could paint in a state of undress for the cover of Weird Tales. "The God in the Bowl" is, for all intents and purposes, a police procedural story, with a young Conan the prime suspect in a murder. A watchman at "a museum and antique house men called Kallian Publico's Temple" in Nemedia comes across "the sprawling corpse that had been the rich and powerful owner of the Temple." In death, Publico's face is blackened, as is his tongue, and his eyes nearly pop out from his head. Though his tunic is torn, his many bejeweled rings remain on his fingers, to the amazement of the watchman, who naturally suspects greed as the motive.

Not long thereafter, Arus, the watchman notices a figure coming through one of the openings in the hallway.

Arus saw a tall powerfully built youth, naked but for a loin-cloth, and sandals strapped about his ankles. His skin was burned brown as by the suns of the wastelands, and Arus glanced nervously at his broad shoulders, massive chest and heavy arms. A single look at the moody, broad-browed features told the watchman that the man was no Nemedian. From under a mop of unruly black hair smoldered a pair of dangerous blue eyes. A long sword hung in a leather scabbard at his girdle.

Arus felt his skin crawl, and he fingered his crossbow tensely, of half a mind to drive a bolt through the stranger's body without parley, yet fearful of what might happen if he failed to inflict death at the first shot.

The stranger looked at the body on the floor more in curiosity than surprise.

"Why did you kill?" asked Arus nervously.

The other shook his tousled head.

"I didn't kill him," he answered, speaking Nemedian with a barbaric accent. "Who is he?"

I'm very fond of this introduction to the youthful Conan, because it succinctly establishes that, though a barbarian, Conan is no mere brute. He speaks a foreign language intelligibly and does not attack the watchman, even though he points a crossbow at him. And though, as we later learn, Conan had entered the Temple to steal, he speaks plainly and without guile to the watchman, flatly denying that he is a murderer, a position he maintains even when interrogated by a member of the city's inquisitorial council. The rest of the story consists of Conan and the Nemedians trying to piece together what actually happened to Kallian Publico and dealing with it.

"The God in the Bowl" is a short story and, as I said, not filled with much swordplay or indeed any other kind of action. That's probably why I like it so much: it shows facets of Conan other than his great strength and skill at arms. He's shown to be both intelligent and honorable -- as well as clearly contemptuous of civilization. In short, "The God in the Bowl" is an excellent introduction to the full character of Howard's Conan, as well as to many of the elements and themes of his Hyborian Age tales. It's also a story that's ripe for expansion and development, laying the foundation for original follow-ups to it. What a pity that a story like this is never chosen as the basis for a Hollywood screenplay!

Even Worse Than Predicted

With harder data now in, it looks like Conan the Barbarian did even less well than estimated over at Deadline Hollywood. The revised figures have the film grossing only $3.6 million on Friday and barely cracking $10 million for the weekend. Meanwhile, The Wrap puts the Friday figure at $3.7 million and estimates that it won't even break double digits for the entire weekend. However you slice it, this latest attempt to bring Robert E. Howard's most famous character to the silver screen is a failure.

I wish I could say that the failure was directly the result of the film's deviations from Howard's stories, but that seems unlikely, given how little known Howard's stories are. Of course, one might reasonably argue that, by presenting just a generic sword-and-sorcery movie whose lead happens to be named Conan rather than one that draws on what makes Howard's stories unique, the end result was inevitable. We've already got Clash of the Titans and Prince of Persia, what, other than the name, does Conan bring to the table that they don't?

Such questions are likely academic for now. Howard has never been treated well by Hollywood -- I think there's only ever been one remotely faithful adaptation of his stories -- and the failure of the 2011 Conan the Barbarian won't do much to increase the odds of that's changing. I'm OK with that. Like Lovecraft, Howard's an author about whom I care enough that I'd rather see no movies made of his works than bad movies. If I go to my grave without there ever being another Conan film made, I won't mind at all.

OSRCon Memento

While I have little doubt that this will horrify some people, here's a scan of a calling card Ed Greenwood was giving out to everyone at OSRCon:

I have to admit I found it very amusing.

Thak's Revenge

In the 1934 Conan yarn "Rogues in the House," Conan defeats an intelligent ape called Thak, who's set himself up in the place of Nabonidus the Red Priest. Nearly 80 years later, it looks like some of Thak's relatives managed to get the jump on the Cimmerian. The estimated box office receipts from last night's premier of Conan the Barbarian are in and the two week-old Rise of the Planet of the Apes made more money than the latest attempt to bring Robert E. Howard's famous character to the big screen.

I'll be honest and say I'm not too surprised by this. There wasn't much in the trailers that suggested that Conan the Barbarian was going to be a memorable film, let alone a noteworthy one. It reminded me uncomfortably of Clash of the Titans and other such fantasy action movies rather than anything in line with Howard's seminal pulp stories. If the estimates for the whole weekend prove true (only $11 million), then I think that pretty much poisons the well for any future Conan projects for the foreseeable future. That's a shame on one level, but, truth be told, I'd rather see no Conan movies made than a string of successful ones that bear little or no relationship to their source material.

121

On this day in 1890, Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born. It is no exaggeration to say that contemporary fantasy and science fiction would be very different today were it not for his unique imagination. Lovecraft's influence is so pervasive, even commonplace, that it often goes unrecognized. Every time a character in a story, movie, or roleplaying game encounters a blasphemous book, a slimy, tentacled horror, or teeters on the brink of insanity due to the horrible truths he has learned, we ultimately have HPL to thank.

Of course, many of these ideas predated Lovecraft or were further popularized by his imitators. Indeed, I think it likely that the vast majority of the stories and story elements deemed "Lovecraftian" are nothing of the sort, based as they are on very superficial readings of the Old Gent's writings.This includes the Call of Cthulhu RPG, which, while a very fine game and one of my favorites, nevertheless owes an equal debt to August Derleth as it does to H.P. Lovecraft (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I'm sure some of this superficiality stems from the intellectual laziness to which we all are prone, but I think most of it has its origin in the difficulty in really coming to grips with the philosophy and worldview that underlie Lovecraft's stories. HPL is sometimes called a "nihilist" or a "pessimist," but I don't think either label is an accurate one. The alien entities Lovecraft describes are not malevolent. They may engage in activities detrimental to man, but it is not through any ill will toward him, or at least no more ill will than when man inadvertently destroys a nest of ants when building a skyscraper. Lovecraft takes no pleasure in this reality; he does not celebrate it. He is completely indifferent to it, presenting it simply as a brute fact, albeit one with far reaching implications for man's self-image.

That most of us should recoil from this fact is not surprising, as it runs counter to long-held beliefs about the place of man in the cosmos. That's why, I think, so few of the works called "Lovecraftian" nowadays really deserve the sobriquet. I can count on one hand the number of books, movies, or RPGs that really embrace a Lovecraftian worldview and, even then, that worldview is often tempered with an instinctive hope for human transcendence that, to HPL, is utterly unwarranted. It's little wonder, then, that pop culture has chosen to defang Lovecraft, reducing his conceptions to catch phrases and nerd totems rather than grappling with the worrisome possibility that he just may be right.

Speaking as someone who does not think Lovecaft is right, I nevertheless wish that more effort was made, in books, movies, and games that lay claim to his legacy, to address the questions that he raises. That's my 121st birthday wish for him: that Lovecraft might be understood on his own terms rather than through lenses and categories alien to him. It's a tall order, especially given the vapidity of the term "Lovecraftian" these days, but I think it's a worthwhile endeavor nonetheless and a fine way to honor one of the forefathers of this hobby we all share.

Sandy Petersen Reviews Call of Cthulhu

A number of people emailed me today, asking that I take a look at this "review" of Call of Cthulhu by its creator, Sandy Petersen. It's quite a read, especially if you're interested in the genesis of this classic of the hobby. There are a lot of fascinating tidbits in it, some of which I already knew from other sources, but I think the most interesting to me concerned why the game was set in the 1920s:

To me, Lovecraft was never about the era. His characters used cutting-edge technology, such as submarines, airplanes, and recording devices, and interacted with cutting-edge events, such as the discovery of Pluto, and 20th-century population conflicts and pressures. So the way I saw it, if HPL had lived in 1980, he’d have written about Jimmy Carter (my dream is a 1980 HPL story where we find out it wasn’t a giant swimming *rabbit* after all).

However, the good folks at Chaosium did not respect Lovecraft. Greg’s exact words were "HPL is a terrible writer." That was mild, compared to some other Chaosium opinions. They were okay with having a fan like me design the game, because that way my love for Lovecraft would be in the rules. But on the other hand, the Chaosium folks wanted to enjoy playing the game I was going to design, and they wanted a "hook" to hang their fun onto. They chose the 1920s. In their games, they loved driving old cars, talking about zeppelins, flappers, the Weimar Republic and all that stuff. My own games usually didn’t reference the era at all, except peripherally. Yeah they were in the 1920s too, but they could just as easily have been set anywhere in the 20th century. A haunted house is a haunted house as far as I was concerned.

So Call of Cthulhu to this day is officially set in the 1920s, and has the big 1920s guidebook, with which I had little to do, except providing some monster stats (like for mummies and wolves and so forth). But that was the Chaosium thing.

And there you have it.

Quelle Surprise!

Over the last couple of days, I've gotten quite a few emails and other pointers directing me toward various advance reviews of the new Conan the Barbarian movie, which I've talked about on this blog on the past. As you can see from the aggregate consensus over at Rotten Tomatoes, it's probably not a very good movie, but, then, I wasn't expecting that it would be. My hope was that it would be at least a decent B-movie that might sever the connection in people's minds between the character of Conan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. If the reviews I've been reading are any indication, that doesn't seem likely to happen.

Now, it's possible, as is sometimes the case, that the reviews are overly critical and/or unsympathetic to the genre, but several of the reviewers I've read have actually demonstrated more than a passing knowledge of Conan and Robert E. Howard, such as this one from AV Club. Of course, many more are utterly unschooled in the stories of the Cimmerian and speak as much of that ignorance as they do of any flaws in the film. Even with those caveats, it's hard to be encouraged by what I'm seeing so far. It's looking more and more like we've got another forgettable summer action movie on our hands rather than something more substantial.

I still may see it, just to satisfy my own curiosity. On the other hand, I can think of much better ways to spend $15 than to watch a film I was probably going to dislike even if it had been better than the reviews would imply.

OSRCon Thoughts (Part IV)

On the evening of the second day, I had the opportunity to play in an AD&D game run by Ed Greenwood and set in his Forgotten Realms campaign. It has literally been more than a decade since I last played any sort of AD&D, but that didn't make a difference. For one thing, all forms of TSR D&D are close enough mechanically that, if you know how to play one, you know how to play them. For another, Ed plays a fairly "fast and loose" game, where game mechanics are secondary other concerns (about which I'll say more shortly). In this respect, I found myself reminded of the stories of how M.A.R. Barker runs his Tékumel campaign, an analogy that I think is quite apt, given that Greenwood, like Barker, has been imagining his fantasy world most of his life. For both of them, it's the world and its contents that are important, not the rules used to simulate them.

Before we began, Ed had two rules for us. First was a purely practical one: don't split the party. Second: anything that came out of our mouths came out of our character's mouths, unless it was something obviously rule-related, like "I rolled 15." These rules were fine by me, even the second one, which had the effect of both limiting unnecessary chatter and ensuring that everyone involved made at least a minimal effort to roleplay. I've never seen the need to adopt anything like Ed's second rule and my experiences refereeing Dwimmermount at OSRCon only confirmed me in that opinion, but I don't begrudge him the rule. I'm sure it's one that arose after many years of running con adventures.

As I said above, the game used AD&D, ostensibly its second edition. Truth be told, it was difficult to tell that it wasn't first edition, since Ed didn't use non-weapon proficiencies, which is, for me, one of the signature differences between the two editions. I played a cleric -- I'm sorry, priest -- of the goddess Tymora named Tashram and, while some of his spells were ones I'd never encountered in 1e, I found the experience indistinguishable from playing a cleric in the old days. That said, Ed uses the rules very loosely, mostly for the adjudication of combat and spellcasting and, even then, he seemed to do so mostly as a spur to his imagination. Again, I found myself thinking of Professor Barker and the descriptions of how he referees Tékumel using only percentile dice.

The specifics of the scenario we were playing are, frankly, unimportant, since, as an adventure written for a con, it was something of a "funhouse dungeon." The PCs were tasked with finding someone who'd fled through a series of "hop-gates" that were hidden and whose locations we could identify with a magic ring that glowed bright when we were near one. Thus, our party went from one place to the next, each place presenting a new and sometimes bizarre challenge intended to slow us down or kill us, thereby preventing our finding our quarry. The challenges were fun and many were very odd indeed, reminding me very much of the dungeons I created and played through in my younger days. I'm sure the convention format had something to do with this, but I also got the sense that Ed enjoys watching the players attempt to puzzle their way through his tricks and traps, so perhaps it was all reflective of his overall refereeing style.

Which reminds me: Ed is an absolutely enthralling referee. He's also a shameless ham. Every single NPC we encountered was played to the hilt, funny voices and all, and you can tell that Ed was having a blast doing so. Of course, his theatrics were delaying our progress, which, I suspect, was part of the point, since there was a time limit on our activities, both in real life and in the game. But there were plenty of times where everyone at the table was having so much fun interacting with one of the NPCs that we forgot about the time and just enjoyed ourselves. I can only imagine what it must be like to have Ed refereeing an entire campaign.

My fellow players were much fun, too, with some of them following Ed's lead and adopting funny voices and mannerisms. There's no question it was goofy, but it was also entertaining, so entertaining, in fact, that we soon attracted a crowd of onlookers watching us play. I remember as a kid visiting the back rooms of game stores where RPG sessions were being held and doing just the same, watching these older guys sit around a table and speak in character as they explored some fiendish underworld. It's not for everyone, I'll readily admit, but there's no question that it has a long pedigree in our hobby. We had so much fun that I think we dawdled a bit and so we reached the conclusion of the adventure rather late, resulting in a less than satisfactory conclusion to it, a fact Ed noted to me afterwards.

Looking back on the session now, one things really sticks with me. Though Ed was clearly more interested in characterization than many old school referees, he was nevertheless very keen to use player skill as the deciding factor in most instances. He didn't call for dice rolls a lot and, when he did, they were for things like saving throws or weapon damage. When we encountered a trap or a puzzle, we had to work them it for ourselves; we couldn't just "make a Spot check at DC 15" to find what we needed. The longer I am involved in old school gaming, the more convinced I am that that is the crux of the difference between older games and newer ones. For all the ways that Ed's refereeing might cause some grognards' skin to crawl, he is nevertheless, fundamentally, "one of us." He clearly gets that rolling dice should never be a substitute for individual cleverness and creative thinking. I had great fun playing in his adventure and would very happily do so again. I don't doubt that all the other players who sat around that table with me for four hours last weekend feel exactly the same.