Jason Momoa claims Conan The Barbarian wasn’t the movie he signed up for

A lowly actor doesn’t always have that much power over a production, even the lead of a major franchise reboot. Casting Jason Momoa as Conan the Barbarian made a lot of sense, especially to Momoa himself, but the end result was a disappointment all around.

“I’ve been a part of a lot of things that really sucked, and movies where it’s out of your hands,” he tells GQ in a new interview. “Conan [The Barbarian] 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 shit.”

Momoa certainly knows what it’s like for a film to be “taken over” and totally changed from the initial vision. (Ahem. Justice League.) So at what point did Conan go wrong? Given that the star calls it one of the “best experiences,” it could have turned to “shit” late in the game, perhaps in the editing phase. But there are a lot of stages to making a film, and therefore a lot of stages at which the movie could transform away from the project the actor initially signed up for.

The future Aquaman had an inkling that things were going in the wrong direction (or at least, not a direction he liked) before the film premiered back in 2011. He said in an interview he was writing a sequel himself, because “no one’s going to know what I want to do better than me.” If only he’d taken the reins earlier; unfortunately, the rest is box-office bomb history.

These days, Momoa is over playing barbarians, anyway. “It’s been hard because people always think I’m just this dude who plays [macho characters],” he explains to GQ. “But I want to be moved, I want something new. Things are changing, and even the villain roles I’m playing now are eccentric.” Like his upcoming Fast X baddie: “I’m a peacock at the highest level and I’m having the time of my life.” Hopefully it all turns out the way he envisions it.