To crush your enemies, see them driven before you,
and to hear the lamentation of their women.
This is Conan the Barbarian.
And unfortunately, so is this.
I'm sorry about what happened the last time.
And then there's also this movie.
You remember me?
Who are you?
I'm the one who made you pretty.
Since the meteoric rise of Conan in the '80s,
there's been repeated attempts at resurrecting the barbarian
who would be king.
And yet, they've all failed in one way or another.
I live, I love, I slay, and I am content.
First appearing in the Weird Tales magazine short story
"People of the Dark" from 1931, it
wasn't until the reprints of the Robert E. Howard
novels with Frank Frazetta cover paintings
and the Roy Thomas Marvel Comics that Conan truly
reached cultural prominence.
Off the back of these two creative sojourns,
John Milius and Oliver Stone wrote a film adaptation.
The feature was positioned to copy James Bond-- launch
a franchise and adapt one book a year
until you run out of books.
In fact, the first film ends with a coda-- a flash forward
of an older King Conan.
However, the would-be franchise was over before it could start.
'82's Conan the Barbarian was a commercial and critical
success, but without John Milius returning to the director's
chair, the follow up, Conan the Destroyer, lost its way
and ended up in the much more fantastical
and comedic tone that bombed both commercially
and critically.
The next film that would attempt to capitalize off the Conan
novels was Red Sonja starring Brigitte Nielsen and which
featured Arnold Schwarzenegger in a definitely not Conan role.
He was originally intended to play his iconic barbarian
in a cameo, but just before filming,
the producers lost the rights.
Thus when Arnold showed up on set,
his character had been renamed Kalidor.
The underhanded approach to filming permanently
fractured Schwarzenegger's relationship
with producer Dino de Laurentiis.
And to add insult to injury, Red Sonja
was the biggest bomb of the franchise.
And thus, the legacy of Conan languished
and would never fully recover.
During the late '90s, there was an attempt
at mounting a King Conan film titled King Conan
Crown of Iron, but it folded due to Schwarzenegger's 2003
gubernatorial victory.
After this, a revolving door of big name directors
attempted to take on the prospect of a new Conan film,
including a returning Milius, the Wachowskis,
and Robert Rodriguez.
However, the rights eventually ended up at Millennium Films.
After attaching Vin Diesel as the star and Brett Ratner
as the director, the project quickly began taking shape.
However, Ratner would leave over budgetary concerns,
and Diesel would bow out to star in more Fast and Furious films.
You don't turn your back on family.
And it was here that Millennium decided to take a big swing.
They needed to get the picture into production
before their rights lapsed, so they hired
Marcus Nispel in June of 2009.
The director of the Texas Chainsaw remake and Pathfinder
seemed like a great person to take over the project.
With a keen visual sensibility and a penchant
for grounded fantasy, he seemed to be a shoo-in.
However, Marcus Nispel would be the misstep that would
simultaneously get the film greenlit and also doom it
to the Walmart $5.00 DVD bins.
The story for this version of Conan the Barbarian
features one part Conan origin story and one part a mythically
infused "we've got to go collect a bunch of items" video
game movie plot.
We follow Jason Momoa, who was primarily
known as the actor from Stargate and Baywatch at this time,
as Conan.
And a well-cast but underwritten supporting ensemble
that includes Stephen Lang, Rose McGowan, and Rachel Nichols
as they all vie for control of a mythical mask that had been
broken into multiple pieces.
That doesn't sound too bad.
Right?
That sounds like a solid cast and a trophy fun an adventure
movie plot.
Conan doesn't need to be Shakespeare after all.
Only problem is, the film is kind of a mess,
and the main problem is Jason Momoa.
While Jason Momoa is currently a popular megastar
with charisma for days, in this film, he's one note.
And that note is not very Conan.
Then what?
I want your head.
Ironically, if the Jason Momoa of today
could travel back in time and replace himself in this movie,
he'd make a great Conan.
But the guy who's in this movie just kind of says things
in a low whispery voice and then shouts
stuff when it seems appropriate.
Prisoners of Messantia, the key to your freedom
sits in your captain's gut.
And also, why can't people say Conan correctly in this film?
Conan!
Conan, please.
Conan left Cimmeria.
It's Conan.
This really shouldn't be that hard.
He's the titular character.
Many of the problems with the film
lead back directly to the director Markus Nispel.
The tone of the movie is basically
just a living tribal tattoo, which isn't really the vibe
you want from a Conan movie.
It's so self-conscious about being a grounded, plausible
reality with fantastic elements in it
that it almost feels ashamed by the other-worldy things
in the picture.
Additionally, multiple sources connected with the film
have suggested that Nispel has a keenly visual mind
but had no story sense, which caused the film to capsize
as they were making it.
When watching the movie, you might
notice that all the scenes don't seem to flow into each other.
They feel like separate and distinct sequences that
then stop, and then we pick up with our characters
later in other places.
Well, that's because as they were making the film,
Nispel started to change the story as they went.
The first act is roughly what the script intended.
Primarily because the filmset in Bulgaria
had already been constructed.
This is all the Conan as a young man, his origin sequence,
up to about when his village is attacked
and his father is killed by Stephen Lang's
highly forgettable villain.
However, as the shooting progressed,
Nispel invented new locations, scenes, and set pieces.
He was constantly battling with the producers
of the project over how the story was unfolding.
And his main solution was to just add sequences and elements
to what they were creating.
This problem got so bad that apparently the film's
co-screenwriter Sean Hood was flown out to Bulgaria in order
to work day and night to attempt to write new pages utilizing
Nispel's ideas.
This led the whole film to have a jolting stopping and starting
rhythm to it.
Upon release, Conan the Barbarian was a flop.
It only made $10 million opening weekend,
and it only pulled in roughly 48 million
during its entire theatrical run,
which isn't even half of the film's purported $90 million
budget.
Unfortunately for everyone involved,
Jason Momoa would not be anointed King Conan.
We all know what happened next though.
Momoa would go on to play another very Conan-esque role
as Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones,
which proved to be his breakout part.
Dany, please!
A crown for king.
Since the release of 2011's Conan,
there have been a considerable number of attempts
at getting Conan or Conan spin off characters
into their own movies.
A Thulsa Doom project headed by Djimon Hounsou, a Red Sonja
picture starring Amber Heard, a Conan TV project, and a Red
Sonja film starring Rose McGowan that made it
far enough along that it got a teaser poster released
at comic-con.
However, the greatest Conan film almost produced
was Legend of Conan, a revisitation
of that long dangling idea of Arnold
returning to the role of Conan for a King Conan story.
In October of 2012, just a mere year
after the release of Conan the Barbarian, Deadline
reported that Universal Pictures had struck a deal for Arnold
to return to the role for what would be the final Conan
film in the original franchise.
What wasn't made public at the time of the Deadline press
release was that the story for Legend of Conan
would be loosely based on the novel Legend,
written by British writer David Gemmell and published in 1984.
The story follows an aging barbarian king
who must defend his kingdom one last time after discovering
there are hordes of outlanders attempting
to invade his domain.
Slowly, the film started to lose momentum over the four years
that Universal had the rights to the project.
Various producers that were attached to the project
were called away to work on higher profile projects,
and everything stalled.
The death knell for the script was when Universal president
Jeff Kirschenbaum left the company,
and none of the other execs picked it up.
It floundered in the studio's sea of projects.
Ultimately, Conan continues to be
a highly commercial and successful franchise,
but the goal of a movie franchise has eluded him.
It's just failure and false starts one after another.
Is this due to the fact that the first film was so fantastic,
or that Arnold in the role is so iconic,
or that it's just really hard to find big bodybuilders who
can act?
Maybe.
Or maybe it's just the simple fact
that all the other attempts at staging more Conan
have overlooked what made the Howard stories
work in the first place.
He's a barbarian.
Yes, sometimes he's heroic.
But the character of Conan is flawed, brutal, and complex.
Something none of the attempted film adaptations
want to touch with a 10 foot pole for some reason.
Well, that's all we have for this episode of Nerdstalgic.
What do you think?
Will a King Conan movie ever get made?
Comment below and let us know your thoughts.
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