Arnold Schwarzenegger made his name back in 1982 in John Milius's Conan the Barbarian, a superior sword-and-sorcery epic, as a comic-strip hero from the mythic dark ages. It enabled Arnie to enter politics as what he called "Conan the Republican". Later he used the even greater success provided by the Terminator pictures to achieve elective office in California as "The Governator". Preceded by an epigram from Nietzsche ("That which does not kill us makes us stronger"), Milius's Conan had a certain fascistic grandeur; its blood-and-steel teutonic fantasy was a tale told by an ideologue, full of sound and Führer. This remake, the work of Marcus Nispel, the German film-maker who directed turbid retreads of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Pathfinder and Friday the 13th, is a glum affair. Starring the unimpressive, muscle-bound Hawaiian Jason Momoa as Conan, it begins with his warrior father delivering him by Caesarian section using a dagger on his dying wife during a fierce battle. The movie was shot on location in Bulgaria in what appears to have been a partial eclipse of the sun.