Conan the Barbarian

violence, some sexuality

and nudity)

Why a new “Conan the Barbarian’’? Because the old Conan, the former Governator, has been brought low by age and politics and his own penchant for wenching? Because you can do so much more with special effects these days? Because it has been too, too long since we’ve heard, as Arnold so delicately put it, “der lamentation of der vimmen’’?

The people lamenting this time out will probably be moviegoers who’ve paid inflated ticket prices for a 3-D version that turns a pointless but watchable sword-and-sorcery B-flick into an unwatchable bowl of sludge. Verily, 3-D on the cheap - done in post-production with computers rather than shot using actual 3-D camera equipment - has become a pox upon the multiplex, and “Conan’’ is the worst offender since “Clash of the Titans’’ and “The Last Airbender’’ afflicted thy eye and mine. It is time for the oppressed to rise up and revolt, I say! Give me 2-D or give me a refund.

As for the movie itself, it’s tolerable. “Conan the Barbarian’’ stars the Hawaiian-born slab of beef Jason Momoa, who’s a better actor than the young Schwarzenegger but a lesser movie presence (he cuts a more commanding figure on HBO’s “Game of Thrones’’). In fact, the star is arguably outshined by Leo Howard, the feral 13-year-old actor who plays the young Conan in the opening scenes.

But Momoa’s likably brutish, and director Marcus Nispel has fun with the political incorrectness of this property. The screenplay lacks the sub-Nietzschean goofiness of John Milius’s script for the 1982 movie, which is both good and bad - that full-blooded love of pulp is missed. Still, the new film’s ripe with spurting blood and clanking swords, and aside from one lopped-off nose, none of it seems to hurt.

The best scenes come early, when young Conan is trained by his barbarian father (Ron Perlman), who’s then dispatched by the evil Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang). Lang’s acting has been getting wiggier by the movie and Perlman has been out there for years; the one scene the two share together is a testimony to the pleasures of Extreme Acting.