Fourthed, perfect setup. Also perfect comments about Mako and the score.
edit: God, listening now, and total goosebumps at “days of high adventure!”
Such a thing might be findable on the Internet, if one were to Google “king conan crown of iron pdf”. The story is kind of all over the place. It’s three hours long. And it ends in a cliffhanger.
That said, it’s hard to imagine this one capturing the feel of the original without Milius’ involvement. And, ideally, Oliver Stone’s.
We think this is a worthy successor to the original film. Think of this as Conan’s Unforgiven.”
He’s saying the right things.
Yes, but then:
They’ve yet to figure out whether the film will be R-rated like that original, but they won’t flinch from the hardness of the period depicted.
The only proper question for Conan is “how do we avoid the X?”
I’ll simply have to watch this. I thankfully avoided the Momoa version, keeping the integrity of the series intact along with my generally favorable outlook toward that actor. This one, on the other hand, could be epic.
Many +1’s for you–how soon can you start producing, directing, and/or writing this film?
A video of Basil Poledouris conducting a symphonic rendition of Conan. Apparently the only time he did it live in concert.
Maybe I’m being a grumpy old man, but movie soundtracks nowadays don’t compare.
I think it would have to be producing, since I have no movie-making abilities. I’ll just stagger in at 6pm, look at the dailies, and start screaming “What’s all this talking bullshit? Why aren’t there fucking vats of bodies being eaten during an orgy? AN ORGY!?” Then I’ll stab one of the grips lightly, throw my drink in the director’s face, and bed a starlet right there on the set without taking my eyes off of whichever camera is rolling.
That’s how you make a good Conan film.
Get this genius his own production company, stat!
Damn, hearing the music sure brings back memories of seeing it as a kid…what a great movie. High hopes that they do this right…
I was a big fan of Conan, read all the book in high school, collected the comics. I even had several copies of the #1 in the series until a flood:(
My favorite series of Conan comics was King Conan. I am all for the old man playing Conan the King, swinging a big sword and the only special effects being buckets of blood being thrown across the set.
Yeh Momoa can sit this one out.
Jason Momoa was a much better Conan (and it’s nowhere NEAR as bad a movie as some here make it out to be). This Arnie as Conan stuff is nostalgia getting in the way of good sense.
No he wasn’t and yes it was. He looked more like Conan should look but that’s where the positive ends. The new Conan was absolute shit and it had nothing to do with nostalgia for Arnie or the old movies.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/conan_the_destroyer/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/conan_the_barbarian_2011/
When people like Destroyer better than the new movie you know it sucks, because most of us would like to forget that movie ever existed.
I couldn’t even finish it. The same boring CGI movie I’ve already seen fifty times with a veneer of Conan, bleh.
The new Conan was one of the most aggressively awful movies I have ever seen. Laughable start to finish, tonally all over the map, badly paced.
As thespians, Arnold and Momoa may be neck and neck, but Arnold had more presence in the role and had the advantage of infinitely, infinitely better dialogue. The scene in which Arnold and Subotai discuss theology by the campfire is leagues better than anything in the new film. So are the scene where Thulsa Doom lops Conan’s mom’s head off, Conan’s monologue to Crom, the bookends with Mako’s voiceover, Max Von Sydow’s lamentation over his wayward daughter, Thulsa’s ‘flesh is stronger’ speech, and on and on. And oh yeah – the bit with the dead king in the tomb. Chills down the spine, an Errol Otus painting come to life. And then Basil’s score. Chills down the spine, again.
Appreciation for the '82 movie isn’t just nostalgia. In my opinion, the original Conan, warts and all, is one of the best swords-and-sorcery films ever made, full stop. I’ve written about it at length before so by way of response to your comment I’ll just throw out a link to my blog entry on it.
- note: I’m not really interested in what is or isn’t true to Robert E. Howard’s vision; from what I understand, Milius’s take was pretty far afield, and obviously Schwarzenegger isn’t much like the Conan of the stories (neither, though, was Momoa). I’m looking at the movies as standalones, in their own right.
IMO it could be good or bad, really, much in the same way as the original could’ve been a lot less memorable if Schwarzenegger and Milius - both really hit and miss - hadn’t both been in “hit” form.
I don’t have any doubt Schwarzenegger can handle the physical cast; the trick will be substituting something - preferably good writing and a solid B+ acting performance - for the probably unbottleable magic of the original.
I think the supporting cast made the originals great moreso than Arnold himself. He was morphologically suited to the part which is a rare, rare thing in Hollywood, but his performance overall could have been done a number of different ways without lessening the film. The opening sequence is completely Arnold-free and the best part of the entire film, IMHO.
Well, fair to emphasize the supporting cast, but I thought it was one of the his better roles and that that was fairly important to making “1982 Conan” (as opposed to “Howard Conan”) iconic.
I think it’s Arnold’s best role apart from the Terminator films. He embodied the part physically, which is key, but also captured a sense of naivete and of always learning from his experiences. And he actually kinda nailed his big dramatic monologue, the prayer to Crom. “Valor pleases you…”
Of course, James Earl Jones and Mako and Gerry Lopez brought a lot to the film. Jones especially. And the guy who played Conan’s dad did wonders with a tiny part, again thanks to some lovely dialogue (“just men. Not gods, not giants, just men.”)
Sandahl Bergman never quite worked for me, alas.
Ms. Bergman’s tall, statuesque physique helped her strike an incredible figure, very appropriate for film’s subject matter. She is/was apparently a professional dancer by trade and seemed very comfortable in role’s physical challenges.
Sadly, in terms of delivering dialogue, she proved to be a mostly wooden actress.