Shaking like a leaf

My wife and I decided to watch a movie, and since we're both excited to play the new Conan Exiles game by Funcom, we thought we'd watch the Conan movie from 2011 as neither of us had seen it.

Opinions are mixed on the original Conan the Barbarian (1982) with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but please trust me when I say it is infinitely superior than this garbage.

This is not a review piece, there's no real point to review it, it's too sad. Conan (2011) has a great cast of solid experienced actors, and the props are mostly good, as is the CGI, but the rest? The script is horrible and the film itself is terrible. The movie jumps all over the place and I got flashbacks to the Star Wars prequels (Ep. 1-3). Like George Lucas, Conan's director Marcus Nispel wasn't up to the task. There's the seed of a good movie hiding amongst the jump cuts and shaky action scenes, but you're going to have to find it yourself.

And here we come to the core of today's subject matter: bad action scenes. It should be said that breaking or subverting the rules can be a tremendously effective tool, if you know what you're doing. If you don't, you get a hot mess instead of a hot piece.

Conan has this in spades. The camera shakes and jumps and the entire movie is made up of super fast cuts. It seems that Mr. Nispel got his start directing music videos and it shows. But a movie is not a music video where you have only minutes instead of hours. The average music video is about four minutes long, but when you have almost two hours, you can take a bit of time to establish things.

I'm linking a video from the Youtube channel Rossatron, please watch it, because he explains so much better than I can how detrimental the modern trend to use shaky cam to film action scenes is.

I am growing seriously tired of all the shaky and dark action scenes that have infested modern action cinema. I hate not being able to tell what is going on. It's cheaper and easier, sure, but if the director can't shoot good action scenes in your action movie, don't give him the job!

I'm getting to the point where I'd rather go backwards and re-watch old action movies because they are simply better! Die Hard, First Blood, Lethal Weapon, The Terminator, and a whole pile of Asian action films, most of the from Hong Kong, are great. You understand the story, you can follow the action and at the end of the day, you feel satisfied.

Seriously Hollywood, I'm sick of this. Get your act together!

Well that's enough ranting for one day. Until next we meet, go watch a good action movie and have yourself a great week! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTNPtW0Le6U