Having only known Conan from the two Arnold films, I bought a collection of the original Howard stories a handful of years back, and was surprised at how fun they were. The original Conan is a great adventure story character, and way more well-rounded than I think a lot of people realize.
Howard was a great writer. I've read many of his non-Conan works. His best genre was probably boxing stories. His use of imagery makes you see and feel every punch.
My favorite movie ever. And I'll always maintain, it is terribly misunderstood. Obviously a telling of hero's journey, and the whole movie Conan fails until the end. But the ending gives Conan a sense of reluctance. He burns down the Mountain of Power, only after some time of contemplation. And finally repudiates all that is Thulsa Doom, by walking past the princess as she bows to him. On one hand it represents a greater triumph. Not enough to kill Thulsa Doom. Conan then does not fall into trap of becoming his enemy. But there is also a sense of bitter-sweetness to the victory. Conan is a warrior because he has to be in that world. And perhaps he will fight in my wars and feuds to come, but it is because he must.
Much of my youth was spent reading the books and absolutely absorbing the comics, especially: Savage Sword Of Conan. Some of my best times were spent in those pages!!!
A while back I started reading all the Conan stories written by Howard. What I like about is, is that in his tales Conan is often a tool used to create a variety of adventures. Sometimes he has to sneak his way in, other times he's leading entire armies. In one tale he is even a murder suspect. It shows a complexity in Conan's character and the world he lives in, that's lacking in other barbarians.
19:00 I'm eternally astounded at how much faith Milius had in Poledouris - who was pretty unproven at the time. Conan NEEDS its score, more than most movies. Since there's so little dialogue, the score is the only thing holding scenes together. If Poledouris had failed, the entire movie would have likely failed. But instead, of course, he nailed it and delivered an absolute GOAT.
Between Big Wednesday, a score that is on a Conan level of awesomeness and for Milius, and The Blue Lagoon... There was enough evidence for Poledouris as the right man for the job.
Funny thing to consider, that Stone's Conan script, being set in a Post-Apocalypse wasteland, with cloning, mutants and freaks, sounds uncannily like the Hanna-Barbara cartoon series Thundarr The Barbarian. Wonder if there is a connection there...
With recently diving in head-first into Conan Exiles, I found myself quite captivated with even just the small snippets of the grander universe and story of Conan. Perfectly timed, good sir.
That was an interesting backstory! Fell sorry for Howard - both him and Lovecraft didn't had happy lives; they are had short and rather tragic existence even though their work live on...
Such an incredible soundtrack. The original release version was part of my gym soundtrack for years, pumping iron to the Anvil of Crom/Riders of Doom makes you feel like an ancient warrior king
I was the only one in the movie theatre, since no one of my friends was interested, but didn't regret seeing it - as a german Conan comic book fan back then.
All I knew about Conan before Arnie's film was the Marvel comics in the 70s. After I saw Arnie's Conan film, I read in a magazine that it was based off of some dude named Robert E. Howard in the 30s, and I was flabbergasted, I thought it was just the comics. So I saw a good deal at a bookstore for the Howard books, and the Sprague De Camp novels, and read them all, and wow! I was hooked. People may not agree with me, but I've always felt that De Camp's books were a nice addition to Howard.
Yeah, Sprague de Camp's omission from the record here felt conspicuous. I know many fans don't appreciate his editions to Howard's work, and I might even agree on some counts. But would Conan have the prominence he does without de Camp's tenure on the material? I'm not sure.
Boy I never thought to make that connection before, Conan is absolutely a hero for those who are sick and tired of responsibility and just want to go be a barbarian and pillage.
My pleasure. Intrada also released his score for Destroyer just last year after it was in legal limbo for a decade. I love owning both soundtracks. @@hollyingraham3980
So interesting to find out about Stone's proposal to set it in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, fighting mutants... considering that a Conan ripoff in just such a setting actually predated this movie, in the "Thundarr the Barbarian" saturday morning cartoon.
Robert e Howard’s work is amazing, even it was written in the twenties it’s is still imaginative, entertaining and far better than most of the crap written today.
I sometimes feel like it's a Christopher Reeves as Superman situation. Schwarzenegger made such an unforgettable impact as the character in live-action, no one really gets a chance to try another take on Conan. Even though Jason Momoa makes a decent attempt in that otherwise forgettable 2011 film.
@@digitaljanusThe Superman fandom is beyond tribalistic and close-minded. While Reeve is wrongfully deified in some circles, much of the fandom rallied behind Tom Welling and *Smallville* as their golden calf of choice, to the point of being viciously hateful and threatening to anyone else who dared play the role. (Brandon Routh in particular got the worst of it, and Henry Cavill never once was given the benefit of the doubt.) It took Welling's long-standing refusal to ever wear the Supersuit holding true for the CW "Crisis" crossover for the fandom to finally get it thru their heads that they'd been backing the wrong horse for nearly 20 years. I think a fundamental difference between Superman and Conan is that Superman had already been represented in mass media for decades well before Reeve's tenure. The Arnold films were the very first time Conan had ever been depicted in movies or TV. So unlike Superman, there actually was a justification for Arnold being the baseline for Conan: his version was the character's mass media debut. There wasn't any preexisting frame of reference otherwise. And it also doesn't help that the later attempts at adapting Conan missed the mark in terms of the character and the tone and feel of his world, so they were already lousy on their own terms regardless of who was playing him.
In the days of high adventure, Before the Oceans drank Atlantis, Thulsa Doom lived for a 1,000 years b4 he met my Master King Conan. The Phoenix & the sword.
I have to say I'm very excited to find this playlist; Conan the Cimmierian/Barbarian, and more widely Weird Tales and the Swords and Sorcery genre are absolutely my trash and I adore them. Though trash I don't think is the right word, I mean it's not high brow by any measure and one of things I love about the Hyborian Age is that It was was never meant to be taken seriously all the time; it can be delved into more if one wishes but it's always meant to be a good time. With that kind of mindset kept Conan and other like genre stories from falling into nihilism or 'grim and gritty realism' (which actually isn't all that realistic) that kept me from liking series like Game of Thrones or The Witcher short stories. Give me high flying, fun adventures with Robert E. Howard or some Absurdist Humanism with Sir Terry Pratchett and we can see what happens to a Barbarian Hero in his old age.
I had the fortune of living through the cable TV era where the movie channels played this all the time. What an incredible movie and the soundtrack is one of the best. Man Arnold was the meteoric biggest star in the world after this movie.
This is well timed. A new edition of JRR Tolkien's letters just came out, and a new letter from 1957 has Tolkien praising the storyboards and concept art from a 20 year old Ron Cobb. "Cobb's taste and style seems, on the whole, to fit The Lord Of The Rings better than I should have thought possible." No surprise he'd shine as production designer for another mythic, lost pre-history that feels lived in 20+ years later. I wish we could see those storyboards. The 1982 movie still stands apart for how it depicts and conveys its sword-and-sorcery setting.
Robert Howard’s life ended very tragically after he wrote the Conan stories. He had a tumultuous relationship with a woman, and then his mother died. After that, he took his own life.
I remember watching this movie in the theaters. not sure if i was ten or eleven. i just loved it. i couldn't enough of it. They used to make manga type comic books. Usually sold at shopping centers. I had my comic book adaptation of the movie close to me at all times. lol. I tricked my sisters to watch the movie. they had not idea about Conan. i could see them looking at me every time there was sex or nudity. lol . thanks for the memories.
This is some good stuff. You know what you're talking about and you make it interesting enough. I would recommend you make sure you know how to pronounce the names of everybody involved. Even seemingly simple ones like Bob Fosse. It would add much to your credibility. Good stuff, though. Keep up the good work.
Heh. I can't hear "Conan" without thinking of the cartoon version, and of Cohen, from Discworld. Also, He-Man has so many differences in story that it's clearly "inspired by", being its own thing. And not even in the Disney "wink wink it's actually plagiarism" way of, well, Disney, but in a "yeah we need something new, but in the same vein" sense. These background videos are also very interesting too, with lots of info not usually said in lesser documentaries.
He-Man's only real connection to Conan is the quasi-barbarian costume design. As a character in and of himself, he's a mix of Superman and King Arthur (his magic sword clearly being a superhero version of Excalibur).
@@reidmason2551 *Thumbs up.* I wouldn't be surprised if Conan were part of the inspiration for He-Man. But like I said, they're both distinctly their own characters.
9:35 God what a Small World we live in :) It fascinates me how many Artists are connected through little Meet ups and gatherings. Sadly, I’ve never gotten a chance to ever be at this level.
One of the conditions was that he couldn't give it away, including luxurious gifts. That's why he was hiring everyone. But Spike stuck with him when the money was gone. Spike was like "I still got plenty of money. Let's take a trip."
The Blue is for the more serious work, the Red for the less serious. While there is naturally overlap, I find this channel tends to draw in people who prefer more straight work, and the Red those that include more silliness mixed in.
Fans loves a well defined "canon" that answers all their questions. The thing that fans hate most, is meta. Here's the meta. Howard wrote a Kull story, but couldn't sell it. He reworked it, changing the name of the mc from Kull to Conan, and it sold. This Conan is a king. Intelligent, cultured. The problem is that the mag was on board for a barbarian more than another Kull story. So now Howard has to have some way to explain the King Conan story, and says that after all his barbarianing around, he eventually becomes a king. A cultured, politically savvy barbarian, er, former barbarian. It was always a problem, getting to that king part. It makes a much better life story for him to die fighting overwhelming odds. Oh, and most importantly, the Milius Conan story is NOT NOT NOT Conan. That "barbarian" comes directly from a Franzetta painting, and NOT from the source material. Conan wears CHAINMAIL for most of his stories. It's the preferred armor for his world. He speaks MANY languages, being a wandering sword for hire. He would not have any kind of German accent, since his "land" sits on current Scotland/North Sea, NOT cold wastes. His people were NOT metal workers. Any other things? Oh yeah, THERE IS NO MAGIC, in the high fantasy sense. If anything, the Conan world leads to the world of Lovecraft, since they swapped ideas and used each other's in their own stories. Conan is science fiction/horror. It was NEVER high fantasy, at least not until a bunch of writers came along and pretty much trashed the Howard "Canon."
I would disagree as someone whose been reading a huge collection of Howard's works including many Conan stories it may have elements of Sci Fi and definitely horror but there's plenty of magic in stories like a Witch Shall Be Born and The People of The Black Circle. It may not be high fantasy but it and it may not meet some arbitrary purist definition of it but it's fantasy take the outright Sci Fi elements and it's actually more in line with traditional folklore and legend based fantasy like basically anything Arthurian.
Oh Conan is fantasy alright. But it’s not high fantasy, it’s Sword and Sorcery, the polar opposite. And that’s the cool thing, the axis of modern fantasy has Tolkien on one pole with the high fantasy, idealized UK Tory Teagarden bullshit, and the other has Howard with Conan and his world. Everything else is in between. And most people write closer to Tolkien for one reason… it’s way easier.
Jack Vance comes to mind, most famous for inspiring _D&D's_ magic system where casting the spell burns it from your mind, so you need to learn it again. One of the neat things about the first edition _Dungeon Master's Guide_ is that Gygax has an appendix listing the stories that inspired the game.
Other key authors for fantasy RPGs were Fritz Leiber, who wrote the Lankhmar stories and Poul Anderson, who wrote the Broken Sword and Three Hearts and Three Lions - as well as Michael Moorcock’s Elric books. Although Tolkien was an influence, Gary Gygax didn’t like his high fantasy vision very much - so early D&D is more based on Robert E Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber and Anderson.
@@boobah5643 I used Gygax's list to discover a world of fiction beyond Tolkien. All those other authors had significant influences into D&D, and Gygax did a great job of introducing a wide array of material--Moorcock's intelligent swords and multiversal planes, Anderson's paladins, Tolkien's rangers and dragons, Vance's magic system, Lieber's thieves. But really, it does feel like the general sense of adventure and play is Conan and sword & sorcery, not high fantasy.
If you read Howard's original stories that this movie was based on, there's a lot of casual racism and xenophobia in there. Pretty common for authors of pulp fiction at this time, including HP Lovecraft who was an overt racist. It's not surprising that some of this made it into the movie. That being said I don't think that this movie was particularly egregious. It's just kind of the way that the source material was written.
