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Jason Momoa says one of his films was ‘turned into a big pile of s***’

‘It’s one of the best experiences I had and it was taken over,’ said actor

Ellie Harrison
Wednesday 10 August 2022 04:03 EDT
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Jason Momoa proves why he's qualified to be Aquaman

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Jason Momoa has lamented how one of his films was, in his words, “turned into a big pile of s***”.

The actor, who can next be seen in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom alongside Amber Heard, said in a new interview that his 2011 sword and sorcery film Conan the Barbarian was ruined for him.

“I’ve been a part of a lot of things that really sucked, and movies where it’s out of your hands,” Momoa told GQ.

“Conan was one of them. It’s one of the best experiences I had and it was taken over and turned into a big pile of s***.”

The Marcus Nispel-directed movie was based on the books by Robert E Howard and followed Momoa’s Conan, a Cimmerian warrior who sets out to seek revenge on the warlord who had attacked his village and killed his father.

Momoa did not expand on why he did not like the end product, but the film holds an unenviable 25 per cent approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Film critic Roger Ebert described it as a “brutal, crude, witless high-tech CGI contrivance” at the time, while the Evening Standard’s writer Derek Malcolm said: “It’s like an expensive B-movie that makes a lot of noise but signifies absolutely nothing.”

Jason Momoa in ‘Conan the Barbarian’
Jason Momoa in ‘Conan the Barbarian’ (Lionsgate/Kobal/Shutterstock)

Elsewhere in the GQ interview, Momoa said he hopes cinema is shifting away from always having “a white guy that saves the day” and moving towards telling stories from different perspectives.

His new film The Last Manhunt, for example, reimagines the western story of outlaw Willie Boy from an Indigenous perspective, with a mostly Native American ensemble cast.

Last month, Momoa was involved in a “head-on crash with a motorcyclist” near Calabasas, Los Angeles. He was not hurt in the incident, while the motorcyclist sustained “minor, non-life-threatening injuries”.

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