Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Do you want to live forever?
THE SUMMARY: A boy’s mother and father are murdered in an attack on his village, he grows hulking strong, and then after raiding a few places and banging a few chicks, he kills the guy who did it. The story is lame, the action is bad, and the effects are cheesy. I love most ‘80s Arnold movies. This ain’t one.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER BRANDY: Arnold's star-making role as one of the most influential sword-and-sorcery heroes of modern nerd literature. And one of the best soundtracks ever put to film.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S AI FACESWAPS:
Matt and I once…
Closer to reality.
Space viking, or….?
This looks like it belongs in the Discord server.
Blonde has really been hitting the barre studio.
THE BEST:
There are some glimmers of decent philosophy: For a campy ‘80s action movie, there are a few brief moments of depth.
What is steel compared to flesh?: When Thulsa Doom has Conan captive, he says ‘there was a time when I searched for steel… Steel isn’t strong, boy. Flesh is stronger… What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?’ This monologue is profound for two reasons: 1) a weapon on its own is of little use. It still requires human proficiency to operate. Remember this with your own weapons, and prepare and train accordingly. And 2) material resources are of little value compared to life itself. Riches mean nothing if you don’t build a family. Power means nothing if you don’t build a family. All other resources are valuable only to the extent they support family. Otherwise, they’re just stuff.
The riddle of steel: Before Conan’s father is killed, he tells Conan ‘the riddle of steel.’ He says you can’t trust anything in this world, except one thing: ‘this’ you can trust. ‘This’ implicitly is the sword, but Conan’s father leaves him with a challenge: to find the riddle and the answer to it. Conan later does, revising his tactics to defeat Thulsa Doom. There’s wisdom here too - half of finding the answers in life is asking the right questions. Questions are, after all, aimed at solutions, and if the aim is way off, the answers will be too. Learning how to think critically, as in, how to ask the right questions, is perhaps life’s greatest skill. If you don’t know what the right questions are, ask all the questions, until the right ones become clear.
Some of the action is hilarious: The sword play and the rest of the action is very dated, but there were a few pieces of the action that had me laughing out loud, almost entirely in the final battle. The totally disrespectful horseback butt stab on the guy on the ground bleeding out. The ridiculous mousetrap-style impalement. And before all that, a crucified Conan defeating a vulture by mouth alone. What a champ.
Final fight.
A lot of blasphemous jokes to be made here...
What is steel compared to flesh?
THE WORST:
It’s just a revenge story made needlessly complicated: There’s a lot of dress-up on what is a very simple story: guy kills kid’s parents. Kid grows up big and strong. Kid-now-man kills guy. The end. And there are great movies built on that format - see The Lion King. The problem is Conan’s dressing doesn’t have the depth that The Lion King does. The characters are much less interesting and endearing. The ‘lessons’ are much more confusing. Instead of emphasizing philosophy, wisdom, and one’s place in the world, we get bad action and sex scenes. It’s just ‘you killed my parents, so now I kill you.’ But I guess that’s on-brand. Very ‘barbarian,’ indeed.
I get it - they had sex: Please - just stop. I’d rather watch Top Gun sex again. Or even Enemy at the Gates sex. These are long and hard… to watch. I don’t need a multi-minute soft porn scene to understand. P in V, good times were had. Great. Move on. Although I will say Arnold getting a few extra pumps in before chucking that witch into the fire almost made it worth it. Hilarious.
Some terrible effects: The snake fight is one of the worst looking movie effects I’ve ever seen. It was ‘82, yes, but this is the same era of the original Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Alien, and many more that achieved much more impressive things. You might see better puppeteering on a high school play stage these days. Woof.
How do you make James Earl Jones lame?: I thought the man was un-lame-able. I was wrong. What is this haircut? What is his weak-ass fighting prowess? He didn’t even put up a fight, actually - he just let Conan chop him. At least they gave him a cool helmet, but damn. He’s like if Lloyd Christmas from Dumb and Dumber became a villain you’re supposed to take seriously. You can’t.
Plus it’s odd this movie closely parallels James Earl Jones’ finest role, and the most famous line from it: Darth Vader’s ‘I am your father.’ In this movie, at the final confrontation, Thulsa Doom says to Conan, ‘you have come to me, my son. For who now is your father if it is not me?’ Of course Thulsa Doom is not actually Conan’s father, but his point is that he gave Conan a second chance at life, and the wisdom and will to live it.
Conan cheapens everything about James Earl Jones, right down to his lifetime performance.
Why?
Wow - I can't believe it's not a real snake.
That's quite the finish.
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NEXT WEEK: Napoleon Dynamite (2004). Napoleon is Matt’s October pick.
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