Conan the Barbarian / Conan the Destroyer

Rating:
Summary: Arnold Schwarzenegger brings Conan the Barbarian to life
Review: "Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of...Hither came Conan the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandled feet."

At least, that was what was written in "The Nemedian Chronicles," the faux ancient text referred to by Robert E. Howard in his stories about Conan the Barbarian. Conan had been a pulp fiction hero in the 1930s and the stories had been republished in the 1960s in paperbacks with great covers by artist Frank Frazetta, with some unfinished stories by Howard completed by L. Sprague De Camp, and Lin Carter, who also wrote some adventures to fill in the gaps in the Conan chronology. Then Marvel comics launched a comic book version, scripted by Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry Smith, with many of the stories being adapted from Howard's original stories about Conan and other sword and sorcery adventurers.

It was with that literary lineage in the realm of sword and sorcery that "Conan the Barbarian" was released in 1982, although it ended up doing more for Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting career than it did for the character he was playing, since the film spawned only a single, vastly inferior sequel, "Conan the Destroyer." Director John Milius covers the early years of Conan's career, when he was taken from his home in Cimmeria as a boy by a raiding party of Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones), and sold into slavery. Eventually he began a trained gladiator and eventually earned his freedom, where he became a thief. The script by Milius and Oliver Stone essentially created a new narrative for the film, although readers of Conan will recognize scenes and elements from to "The Thing in the Crypt", "The Elephant Tower", "Red Nails," "Queen of the Black Coast", "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune," and "A Witch Shall Be Born."

Schwarzenegger's acting experience was rather limited at that point, but the role essentially required him to flex his muscles and look good. The showcase sequence of the film is when Conan and his companions, Valeria (Sandhal Bergman) and Subotai (Gerry Lopez), sneak into the stronghold of Thulsa Doom to rescue the daughter of King Osric (Max Von Sydow), who has joined the Snake Cult. With some pretty good background music by composer Basil Poledouris, the trio of thieves set up a diversion and launch a quick attack. There is a moment when Conan, his body painted with black stripes as camouflage, gets into position to begin a sword fight that simply looks great. The actual swordplay is rather limited, more slashing that actual swording, but we do get a sense of the power of Conan.

James Earl Jones seems a bit distant as the villain, but he was engaged in a weird acting experiment where Milius told him exactly how to do line readings and he did it. In the end, it is Sandahl Bergman who surprisingly provides what little emotional impact the film exhibits. A trained dancer, Bergman's elegant and fluid movements contrast nicely with Schwarzenegger's raw power, and she has a great way of looking at him that makes it clear which one of them has the brains in this outfit. More importantly, Bergman's Valerie seems totally at home in the savage world that the film creates.

"Conan the Barbarian" is not a great film, although it is arguably remains the best sword & sorcery film made to date (granted, the competition for the honor is rather sparse). Despite the overall woodenness of the acting, it does have the virtue of taking its characters seriously without descending into camp (they wait for the sequel to do that). If anything this film is reluctance to find any humor in the story (although Conan does slug a camel in an apparent homage to "Blazing Saddles"), which helps keep this 1982 film on the high road, relatively speaking. Consequently, while Conan fans might have hoped for something better, they certainly had ample reason to expect something much worse, and thus were relatively overjoyed by the end product.

That is not the case with "Conan the Destroyer," where the story was by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, a pair of writers for Marvel Comics. The story is a basic quest story where Conan escorts a virgin princess to bring back a powerful gem from a crystal palace, which will then be returned to a queen (Sarah Douglas), who turns out to be evil and wants to sacrifice the princess so the gem can used to summon an ancient demon, at which point wackiness will ensue.

The problem is not in the story, which certainly allows you to string together a series of Sword & Sorcery adventures, but in the casting. The princess is played by Olivia d'Abo, who simply looks too young (i.e., Conan was forever leaving pregnant princesses behind in his various adventures but there is no chance for that sort of chemistry here). Her body guard, Bombaata, is played by basketball Hall of Famer, Wilt Chamberlain, while Zula, the warrior woman who joins the group is played by Grace Jones, the singer/dancer/model/crazy woman. Comic relif, which was relatively absent in the orignal film, is provided by Tracey Walter as Malak.

With such casting the descent into camp becomes inevitable. Besides, there is nothing in this film even close to rivaling Arnold's best moments in the original (especially since the final shot of the old King Conan is recycled from the first film). "Conan the Destroyer" pretty much killed the franchise when it came out in 1984, although Milius is apparently preparing a 2005 film "King Conan: Crown of Iron," which there being a lot of speculation as to who will play Conan now that Arnold is Governor of Cal-e-fornia.

Those who have actually read the originally Conan stories will also find it rather distressing that Toth-Amon, the great Stygian wizard who was Conan's biggest enemy in the Howard stories, is reduced to a pit stop on this quest (I remember thinking at the time that this was the equivalent of Darth Vader being one of the guys that got dispatched at the Cantina in "Star Wars"). Thomas and Conway were upset by Stanley Mann's final screenplay, as well as the finished film, and ended up turning their story into the graphic novel "Conan and the Horn of Azoth," with art by Mike Docherty (all the names got changed to avoid any confusion).