Conan the Barbarian

Last night I decided to relax, and watched the 1982 classic Conan the Barbarian. I have to say, this has to be one of my favourite movies. Directed by John Milius and based off the stories by Robert. E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian basically set the standard for all following fantasy styled films, and kick-started the Dungeons and Dragons movement. While watching the film it is hard not to notice how much later films and even games have borrowed from this title.

A young Conan starts off in a small Norse looking village, listening to a story from his father about the riddle of steel, and how he cannot trust anyone except his sword. A short time later the village comes under siege, and although the strong villagers fight valiantly they ultimately fall prey to the marauding attackers, which look like Teutonic Knights on steroids. The leader of these is the charming James Earl Jones. After a fairly intense staring battle between Conan's mother and the Earl, her head is misplaced and falls to the ground, while Conan is whisked away to a child slave camp. The whole home village attack scene has been duplicated in many films, and even reminds me of the beginning of Fable. Where some films and games get this wrong, however, is when they start with the invasion right off the bat. It's hard to care for characters if you haven't learnt anything about them yet, so if you feel motivated to use a similar scene to start things off, make sure you have some time before the invasion to establish the characters etc.

Conan the Barbarian is set in a strange world that is not too dissimilar from our own, and seems to be a mixture of time periods. There are definite Egyptian, Arabian and Norse influences, but these are mixed together to create a unique and thriving world. With an inexact time frame, many liberties could be taken with magic, wardrobes and set designs, and adds to the whole fantasy feel of the film. The whole lack of green screen work, except perhaps for the first two shots of the film, adds greatly to the believability. In modern day films, it is hard to imagine doing any non-green screen work. But for Conan, since all the locations were real and all the lavish sets were real, we are drawn into the world even further. I believe that in the recent Batman Begins film they opted to take a similar route, and restrained themselves from using too much green screen (or blue screen, you know what I mean).

The dialogue through most of the film is fairly minimalist, but some comedy seems to come through in this relatively short space of wordage. For instance, after having some Black Lotus drug Conan and his side kick Subotai are making their way out of the city, when a prostitute tells them that she can protect them from evil. Subotai remarks that he is evil, and Conan remarks that she is a slut. Furthermore there is a whole conversation on flowers between Conan and the wizard. Another thing I found humorous in the film is the random laughs, when one character will begin laughing heartily and the characters around them will follow. Almost reminds me of the laughing moose scene in Evil Dead 2.

All in all Conan the Barbarian is an excellent title for anyone interested in fantasy/adventure films, and has really nice cinematography. Get to see Arnold the Governer Schwarzenegger in all his bloodthirsty glory.