When they take him from the fight pits to that new training center, they remark that he becomes literate and studies poetry and philosophy. So not only smart but educated as well.
Caught up another week now.
Re Hacking films into 3D.
I totally agree that trying to chop a 2D live action film into 3D is never going to work (even if like Tim Burton, you always planned to). the problem is that even if you are really clever with your layering, the individual objects (people, scenery, etc) will have no personal depth because they were filmed in 2D and it’s impractical (probably impossible in fact) to add that kind of 3D definition, e.g. the difference in depth between thier legs as they walk towards the camera. So what you end up with is the Viewmaster expereince of lots of 2D objects floating in paralax to each other, but individualy looking like carboard cutouts. Alice in Wonderland suffered from this, I expect Clash of the Titans does and I can’t imagine anything not filmed with 3D cameras could avoid it.
BUT.
I don’t think re-doing the Shrek Movies (or indeed the first two Toy Stories) falls into this category.
These were never filmed with a camera in the first place, and providing you have kept all the original rendering instructions I can’t see any reason why you couldn’t ask the computer to re-render them again but this time in 3D. Presumably all the depth information already exists in the computer model, it’s just a matter of what camera setup you use in the rendering.
So I think you could definitely re-visit those old computer animation films and make them pretty much perfect 3D. Might not be all that tough either, the original Toy Story was probably a long tough render the first time round, but the amount computer technology has moved on would probably chew it up easily now.
This won’t apply to ‘classic’ animation though, in fact I can’t see how you could ever do ‘realistic’ 3D with traditional animation. But any computer generated animation should be switchable to proper 3D.
Very good point. There are just moments that he seems dumb. The grunts and noises he makes when he falls into the cave with the skeleton, falling face-first into a bowl. I guess we could say he was drunk in that last scene. Maybe I’ve been thinking about this wrong.
Late note: Thulsa Doom is clearly an early Slytherin.
Man, I have been away for awhile from the podcast; I enjoyed this one but I died a little inside whenever Shaun and Chuck described Conan as stupid and a terrible planner. Not that they were saying anything incorrect- they were talking about the movie; as someone who hasn’t read the books I’ve simply familiarized myself with what REH fans thought of this movie and I realized how right they were about how unfaithful it was to just about every theme, idea and detail of the literary Conan. Conan was intended to be very smart and a brilliant tactician. But many fans also make the point that REH’s themes of barbarism vs civilization were thrown out the window; instead of Conan’s barbarism shaping him as a warrior, it was civilization that made him what he was; when he was freed from the wheel he was a naive simpleton with the life experience of a child. Civilzation educated him and made him a great warrior.
And it’s pretty obvious John Milius had complete disdain for REH; even exaggerating that story about Howard being visited by the spirit of Conan to make him seem nuttier(Howard simply said that he was suddenly inspired and wrote the first Conan story in a writing jag that lasted all night) and calling Frank Frazetta the high priest of Conan rather than Howard. Frazetta was an amazing artist but he did a lot of damage to the character by depicting him as a monstrous hulk, far larger than the books hinted at, and cementing the image in the public consciousness that no one save a bodybuilder who couldn’t act could live up to. And my case for Arnold being a terrible actor back then is this: listening to the audio commentary, it’s clear Milius regards Conan as intelligent; it’s Arnold’s performance that creates that perception that Conan is stupid.
I sympathize with REH fans who hate this movie; it was co-opted by an arrogant director with no desire to remain faithful to the source material; it got to the point where his King Conan script seemed to go out of its way to have Conan in the script behave the exact opposite at every turn from Conan in the book. And he let an artist who never knew the author create his image of Conan rather than the author himself.
But here’s my main point; the vast majority of Conan fans who hate this movie as an adaptation of REH still admit its an awesome movie. I love it, too, despite all I said.
I think (and it has been a while since I heard this cast) that Sean pointed out that Conan is smarter than the movie makes him look. It’s actually implied in the movie itself, since we see him initially as King Conan, but the movie is definitely rooted in his freebooting days.
I saw Outland last night and it is awesome.