Note: after editing the audio, I wished I'd done a few things differently, expanded some points, made others differently, and included the very end of the movie, where Conan (again) demonstrates that power and wealth aren't what matter in the end. So, perhaps I'll remake this at some point. I promise it'll be better than the original, unlike most sequels and remakes. *cough*ConantheDestroyer*cough*.
After this I have an autism-related article about ready to go as well as the next-to-last installment of "Why This Ancient Forgotten World?" I actually have the last part written. It got in my head and so, I figured I'd better type it up out rather than risk losing the idea I had. That of course delayed part four, but, on the upside, you'll get parts three and four in quick succession.
Finally, I strongly recommend you listen to the audio version of this, because it includes the movie audio of the segments quoted in the written version.
My Fantasy-Riddled Youth
Among the various fantasy books and movies I loved when young, is the 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian. Oddly, despite reading incessantly then as I do now, I didn't read the original stories until fairly recently. Regardless, this movie is one of a handful I'm happy to rewatch any time, and generally do every year or two.
As I'll explain below, I think the reason for this is that it's not 'just' an action movie; it's got some things going on under all that brawn and battle.
Being almost 45 years old, it's an easy movie to criticize for various failings with regard to our modern sensibilities. That's easy to do of most movies its age, so I see little point in it.
One of the film's greatest virtues is that it was one of the few good fantasy movies of the early 80s. It took itself seriously and wasn't afraid to tell a serious story, avoiding that most common tactic for deflecting seriousness: clumsy, stupid, cringy humor.
Conan: His Life and World
Context matters, so, before anything else, we need to understand Conan's day and age and upbringing, such as it was.
Conan, variously titled the Cimmerian and/or Barbarian, was created by Robert E. Howard and debuted in 1931. Over the course of his prolific but tragically short career (he died aged 30), Howard wrote a number Conan stories of various lengths, plus tales of other characters, such as Kull and Solomon Kane (both of whom got movies semi-recently).
The stories do not form an arc or sequence, and it's more or less impossible to even arrange them chronologically. So, they can be read in any order.
In this post, I'm mainly going to draw on the first Conan movie, 1982's Conan the Barbarian, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in the titular role. The details of Conan's childhood given in the movie are largely the same as in the books, as well as in the 2011 remake staring Jason Mamoa.
All the stories are set before the Flood, in the so-called antediluvian age. The Flood is not just the Biblical flood, but the shared flood myth found across the Ancient Near East. It wiped out the original human civilizations, those of Conan's time. Leaving us with only tales of lost continents and civilizations.
Howard, in fact, went one better: his world had its own antediluvian catastrophe that wiped out a still earlier set of civilizations. This ante-antediluvian era is the setting for the Kull stories, and its ruins pervade the setting of the Conan stories throughout their various incarnations, from literature to video games.
Conan was the son of a village blacksmith. In the stories and the 2011 remake, he is born in the middle of a battle. The 1982 movie skips the birth story, but doesn't contradict it, introducing him at age five. Conan's people are known as the Cimmerians. They are experts at forging steel. (And while steel is an important theme in the movie, it doesn't bear much on what I'm going to talk about here, so please excuse me for largely ignoring it.)
Conan's village is raided by a warlord named Thulsa Doom (wonderfully played by James Earl Jones). His goons are well armed and armored, and it's no contest. All the adults are killed, Conan's parents included, his mother while holding his hand and defiant (she's no fighter, so defiance is all she has, and it's short-lived). The kids are marched off to become slaves.
Conan and some of the others are put to work turning a giant wheel in the desert. Presumably this powers something, but we're never shown. What we are shown is their numbers dwindling, and those left becoming more and more muscular, until it's just a very buff Conan.
Buff, adult Conan is then sold to a lantisa (a gladiator owner), and forced to fight as a gladiator. At first, he's just thrown in and has no idea what's going on. Not only does he (obviously) survive, but goes on to minor gladiatorial celebrity, and eventually his owner invests in him some, getting him educated and professionally trained. Conan's also used as a breeding stud.
Then, one night, in a drunken fit, his master sets him free. Like the wheel, there's no explanation. Conan doesn't know, so we shouldn't feel like we need to either.
So, yeah, a pretty terrible upbringing. Given this, Conan is a pretty violent guy. He's actually rather canny too, though this isn't immediately obvious in the movie. He's referred to as a thief as often as anything else (barbarian, swordsman, northerner, Cimmerian). His canniness is more visible in the books. In them, he has some issues serving under other men, but rather than challenging them outright, he undermines and supplants them. (He seems to be okay with female leaders.)
The Other Movies
There have been four Conan movies:
1982: Conan the Barbarian (Schwarzenegger)
1984: Conan the Destroyer (Schwarzenegger)
2011: Conan the Barbarian (Jason Mamoa)
2023: She is Conann (various, depending on life-stage)
For my money, 1982 is the best simply as a film and as a good depiction of the character and world.
Conan the Destroyer was pretty much a Dungeons & Dragons-style treasure hunt and save the princess story. For the day and age, it wasn't a terrible fantasy film, but it was not very 'Conan' at all and is full clichés as well as lots of awkward, uninspired, and at times painful humor.
The 2011 remake, of course, had better special effects and fight choreography, and was faithful to the setting, but was terrible otherwise. Mamoa was a worthy successor to Schwarzenegger. However, the story was so-so, lacking heart. It, too, had its fair share of clichés. The action sequences were ridiculously over-done: fountains of blood from foot wounds and indeed every hit with a blade, people crashing through stone pillars, kicking opponents impossible distances, you get the idea. Conan's not a superhero. Strong, capable, yes, but still a normal human.
I hadn't heard of She is Conann until a week or so ago. It's a French production that tells the story of a female version of Conan, Conann, in a series of vignettes from across her life. It's weird, full of body horror, anachronisms, and is quite surreal, but is fairly faithful in story and tone, if not setting. I can't quite decide whether I recommend it or not — it's certainly not for everyone. Either way, I do consider it a better Conan movie than 1984 or 2011.
The Philosophy of Conan the Barbarian
This section is entirely based on the first movie. And it spoils 90% of it or so, but leaves the finale out. You've been warned.
Throughout the first half of the movie, there's no sign that Conan cares about wealth at all. In the second half, he and his friends learn through their own experience as well as others' that riches are not all that.
In some late night philosophizing over drinks, a scene about quarter-way through the movie, the assembled offer a few opinions on the good life. Or at least what is good in life. Close enough.
Khitan General: My fear is that my sons will never understand me... Hao! Dai ye! We won again! [Cheers] This is good. But what is best in life?
Khitan Warrior: The open steppe, a fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
I'm pretty down with this answer. It's quite beautiful and peaceful, if a bit antisocial. I like a nice wind. And, hey, a lot of the time, I don't want to be around other people. So, sure, put me on a horse in the steppe, dogs instead of hawks, and I'd be good to go. Others at the gathering are less impressed though. So, they ask Conan.
His oft-quoted answer:
Khitan General: Wrong! Conan, what is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!
Khitan General: [Cheers]...That is good.
Well, yeah. A *bit* violent. Kind of psychopathic, and it's hard to tell who he's being worse toward: the men he kills or the women he immiserates. Either way though, it's not about personal gain, or even, apparently personal renown. It's worth nothing that he's talking about his enemies, not random people.
Given his upbringing to this point (in this scene, he's still a gladiator, so his life has been just that, slavery, and seeing his village and family massacred), his response is hardly shocking.
Later in the movie, Conan and his companion and friend Subotai rob a snake cult temple. In the process, they meet and join forces with another thief, Valeria. Together they rob the temple and kill its giant pet snake. Over the next few days Conan and Valeria fall in love, and all three party hard:
Narrator: All manner of pleasures and diversions were indulged. Wealth can be wonderful. But you know, success can test one's mettle as surely as the strongest adversary.
And they are depicted wasted and bleary-eyed, having over-indulged to no real end. Some jewels are scattered on the table, but they're too blitzed to care. Conan passes out and face-plants into his dinner. Some soldiers show up and arrest them.
The local king, Osiric, has them brought before him. He feigns irritation about the attack on the temple, and is angry that the cult is giving him shit about it, but in fact is quite happy Conan and his friends defied the snake worshipers.
It turns out that Osiric's daughter "has fallen under this Thulsa Doom's spell" and become a groupie. Naturally, he wants her out and deprogrammed, and being a rich king, offers the trio treasure "enough to become kings yourselves," but adds foreshadowingly:
Osiric: There comes a time, thief, when the jewels cease to sparkle, when the gold loses its luster, when the throne room becomes a prison, and all that is left is a father's love for his child.
King Osiric has learned what's what: it's our relationships that matter, not the moola.
Subotai and Valeria decline, but Conan, keen to avenge his family and village, is in. He makes an attempt, gets caught, roughed up, and philosophized at by Thulsa. This includes Mr. Doom pointing out the limitations of materialism (though not in a way that conflicts with turning the world into snake cultists with himself as Pope Python).
He demonstrates his non-material power over people by enjoining a young woman standing at the edge of the cliff above them to come to him. She obliges and, of course, falls to her death. He says:
That is strength, boy. That is power. The strength and power of flesh. What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength of your body, the desire in your heart. I gave you this.
Overstating his role in exactly how Conan's life turned out, sure, but there's a kernel of truth there. Would Conan have survived slavery and the gladiatorial pits without the thirst for vengeance?
Done explaining how he's the secret architect of Conan's life, Thulsa has him crucified on the Tree of Woe, some sort of bristle cone pine in the middle of the desert, to judge by the name, used expressly for this purpose. Left there to die of exposure, Conan bakes in the sun for a few days, kills a vulture with his mouth and drinks some of its blood. Subotai finds him on death's door and delirious. Conan's on his way out.
Valeria's having none of that. She and Subotai take him to a wizard, Akiro, who lives at the site of some ancient battle. Akiro warns her:
Akiro: There are dangers. But I see you care little for those. The spirits of this place extract a heavy toll.
Valeria: Then I will pay them.
Again, relationship first. Valeria's willing to shorten her life to save Conan. And, really, I think quite a few people would make the same choice in the unlikely event we were in a position to save a loved one from death with spirit magic, or, you know, otherwise sacrifice ourselves for that loved one. Quite a few people do in fact make that choice in extreme situations.
So, Conan's back from his dalliance with death. And this time his companions agree to help him rescue Osiric's daughter. They get her out, but as they are fleeing Thulsa Doom's fortress, he wizards a venomous snake into an arrow and shoots it, hitting Valeria, mortally wounding her. The spirits chose to collect their toll sooner rather than later. But at least she's with the person who matters most to her:
Dying in Conan's arm, Valeria says: Kiss me. Let me breathe my last breath into your mouth.
They have a funeral for her, burning her on a pyre. Her body burns spectacularly, despite Akiro's claim that,
Hey. Fire won't burn up there. No fire at all.
Conan stands by the pyre, as, nearby, Akiro and the crying Subotai watch and talk quietly:
Akiro: Why do you cry?
Subotai: He is Conan. Cimmerian. He won't cry, so I cry for him.
Now, that's a friend, helping to bear his companion's grief, shedding the tears he cannot.
In the last confrontation with Thulsa Doom's forces, but not TD himself, Conan is about to be killed by one of TD's lieutenants, only to be saved by Valeria, who appears as a valkyrie-esque figure in shining armor to stop the mortal blow. Even in death, Conan's relationships are what matter.
That's not the end, but I figure I ought to leave a little unspoiled in case you're reading this and haven't seen the ending. Thulsa Doom is still unaccounted for at this point in the story.
Epilogue
Of course, the moral trajectory of the movie is nothing new, nor is this analysis. That said, it's easy to see the movie as 'just an action movie.' But that's not true. There is a moral to the tale, and it's not just that bad guys get bad karma.
As J. Daniel Sawyer points out in this post, the stories we tell matter. The ones we care about most, best encode our culture and values. Even if you only see Conan the Barbarian (1982) as an action flick, you still digest the underlying moral message — just as you do with the other great tales of our culture from The Odyssey to Star Wars: A New Hope.
And this is why the original is the best of first three movies (I'm setting aside She is Conann because it's quite different, off on a different axis). 1984 and 2011 lack an underlying message and morality. Sure, they had lame scripts, ridiculous fight scenes, and whatnot, but it's that lack of a heart that really sets them back. Had their scripts had that, had the directors been on board with it, the story would've had a deeper appeal, the focus more on the characters than supercharged fight scenes, and we would all benefit.
Conan survives, rescues the princess, and thwarts Thulsa Doom because of his friends, whom he loves and love him. For all his terrible childhood, he seems to be a pretty good judge of character.
Take that lesson to heart.
