40 Years Later: Conan the Barbarian

Director: John Milius
Starring: Anorld Schwarzenegger, Sandal Berghman, James Earl Jones
Running time: 129 minutes

This one is going to be a quick one. Conan the Barbarian is a masterpiece, and if you’ve seen it already, watch it again while drinking ambrosia from your enemy’s skull to celebrate its 40th anniversary – and if you’ve never seen it, well first, shame on you, and second...watch it while drinking ambrosia from your enemy’s skull. That’s it. That’s my review. Thank you for reading.

All right...maybe I can put in a little more effort. I remember the first image I ever saw of Conan – it was in a French magazine in the early Eighties, and I must have been five or six when I saw a screenshot of Conan, crucified on a tree, biting a vulture to death. I don’t remember, however, when I first saw the film. It was probably way too young on TV. 

At the time, French TV was often broadcasting Conan the Barbarian and its sequel, Conan the Destroyer, and also Red Sonja – in France known as Kalidor, from the male character played by Arnie, because you know...sexism – especially in the afternoon around New Year’s Eve. This was another time. It was also the time when the derivative He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was looping on children’s channels. So, while I don’t remember exactly when I started growing my hair, living in my underpants, and communicating only through grunting in an Austrian accent, growing up with a TV in the Eighties in France was basically growing up in the Hyborian Age. 

Still, among all these barbarians, it’s easy to forget just how different from anything else the first adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s character was from most sword and sorcery films – a genre which has now almost totally disappeared, surely killed by the 2011 attempt at rebooting the franchise. 

Almost once a year, I launch my copy of John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian thinking I’ll just watch the majestic intro starting with the voice of the wizard Mako pronouncing the maybe only sentences I know by heart: “Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jewelled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!”

Then the music starts, with its unforgettable percussion accompanying the sword forging scene, before Conan’s father tells us about Crom and...two hours later, I’ve watched the whole film and I start, once again, speaking with an Austrian accent. Isn’t it the mark of a true great film not to give you the urge to live in your  underpants,  but to be so easily re-watchable?

After this perfect intro, the film starts with the massacre of Conan’s village and family by Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) while he is still a child. Growing up as a slave, then as a gladiator, Conan only seeks vengeance once he is freed by his owner. Travelling the world, he soon meets Subotai (Gerry Lopez) a thief and archer and a little later, Valeria (Sandal Berghman), a brigand. Together they become a prolific band of thieves. Soon, the little group is captured by king Osric (Max Van Sydow) who asks them to save his daughter from Thulsa Doom. Conan sees his desire for vengeance reanimated. 

Some evil tongues will argue that the Conan from John Milius is not an accurate incarnation of Robert E. Howard’s original character. In the novels, Conan is indeed a bit more talkative and educated, but at the same time he would probably, even as a child, refuse to be enslaved and fight for his freedom. This is indeed the direction the 2011 remake took, for a result that I won’t comment on here – I’ll just say that the main difference between the 1982 version and the 2011 one is that the former is not an unwatchable mess. So, here we have a good example of what a good adaptation for the screen can be. Yes, the characters differ from the books, but the mythological dimension, the eerie world, full of danger and mysteries that you can find in the books are well transcribed while never falling into some kind of cartoonish circus ─ sometimes enjoyable, don’t get me wrong ─ as many other sword and sorcery films do. There is a delicate balance to find to depict these worlds and Conan the Barbarian found it.

Basil Pouledouris’s epic music plays a major role in the film's very peculiar personality. The music is indeed so predominant and evocative that Conan the Barbarian feels  almost like a ballet – I would have said “musical”, if not for the excellent musical you can find on YouTube – and images and actors seem to dance to Pouledouris’s compositions. For a film about a barbarian, Conan is strangely poetic and subtly choreographed. The direction, the editing and the music all come together to make a film that could have been just a tasteless B-movie into a masterpiece. A strange melancholia transpires all throughout the film. Even the ultimate confrontation, almost silent, between Conan and Thulsa Doom – far from the big savage duel one could have expected – bears this eerie, almost dreamlike feeling that you do not easily find anywhere else. The closer to this mood I can think of is, oddly enough, the very recent The Green Knight. 

And then there is this famous last shot of Conan sitting on a king’s throne while the narrator/wizard tells that this story should be also told. But the promise of such a sequel has never been fulfilled, and certainly not by Richard Fleisher’s Conan the Destroyer – even though I do shamelessly like it – which clearly never reaches the same heights. In 2005, John Milius was supposed to finally direct King Conan: Crown of Iron, but this never happened. So, while I doubt, considering how the film industry is today, that we still can have a proper sequel able to operate at the same emotional level as the original Conan the Barbarian did – and still does – all we can do is pray to Crom that maybe one day this will happen. And if he doesn’t listen – then to hell with him!

Did you know? Marvel has been publishing licensed Conan comics intermittently since 1970. In 2019, the character was inducted into the main Marvel Universe and joined the “Savage Avengers” alongside characters such as Venom and Wolverine.