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Having read many of the original Conan stories I'll say that this unique story seems to be more faithful to the original character.  Not that the movie is in any way better than the earlier movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and produced by Dino De Laurentiis.  20 years and 90 million dollars provided no improvement in the actual execution of the story. 

It has been said that there was less of a focus on religion in this movie when compared to the earlier movie and generally that's true.  There were definite gestures to religion, centering around an aversion to self aggrandizement, slavery, condemnation of unequal combat and thievery.  These themes were part of the Conan saga going back to the original author Robert Howard, writing in Texas in the early 1900's.

Mr. Howard was a founding author of pulp fiction and added the Sword and Sorcery genre to early pulp fiction writings. The 1990's movie Pulp Fiction by master movie maker Quentin Tarantino turned out to be a much grander rendering of pulp fiction than any other pulp fiction story. Toping De Laurentiis' version of Conan would be like trying to top the performance of  John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman and Rosanna Arquette.  To his credit the actor portraying Conan in the current version, Jason Momoa brings just a touch of "Jack Sparrow" which has always been a part of the Conan character.

With a rewrite and a few edits, this portrayal of Conan could have laid a path for the successful Hercules/Xena production genre to the big screen.  There were after all, a lot of stories written about Conan and his adventures.