So, I was thinking about the new Conan movie, and its lack of anything remotely related to quality compared to its predecessor, the 1984 Conan the Barbarian.
It's been mentioned here in the released films forum that the movie possesses a brutal intellect. This is something I wholeheartedly agree with - but what's the reason? That can be laid at Jon Milius' feet. There's something to be said for the crop of directors who came out in the seventies - Lucas, Coppola, Scorsese, Carpenter, Milius, etc.
Alright, maybe not so much Lucas.
But there's a brutality in Milius' Conan that I relate to Scorsese's Taxi Driver - that the former is as much a product of that same 'school'
of filmmaking. I'm not sure that we've seen the same happen yet. It isn't so much grittiness as it is grit. "Brutal Intellect" could be the catchphrase of this pseudo-group. How do you see these directors, or how have you seen these directors, and this batch of movies, effecting what we know as cinema today?
If anything, I think they legitimized the genre flicks, the exploitation/'grindhouse' films as major, viable types of movies to be produced.
The 80's seemed to be a dilution of commercializing of that cache, and 90's and the 'Aughts" seem more to me about cynical, even biting commentaries (The Matrix, Shaun of the Dead, Coen Brothers' films- arguable critical films, snarky even.)
The 70's was about rejection of the status quo and the studio, staid way of doing things. A rough sort of earnestness (a reason I mention Lucas - A New Hope, in retrospect, is just so damned.....earnest. Empire, less so - but it retains a sense of that roughness, whereas Jedi, while not bad, definitely is more 'polished' and more of a product.)
...Sort of talking out loud here, externalizing musings. Feel free to ignore me.
