Conan Then and Now

So I finally saw the new Conan the Barbarian, several months after it came out. I was a bit surprised that it took me so long; as a fan of Stargate, A Song of Ice and Fire, and fantasy in general, I really should have been at my local theater on opening weekend . . . but I wasn't, and here's why.

When I first heard they were making a new Conan movie, I decided it was high time I saw the original. So I saw the old Schwarzenneger classic, directed by John Milius and scored by Basil Poledouris, and I loved it. I was up to my ears in A Song of Ice and Fire at the time, all wrapped up in political intrigue and labyrinthine plotting, and Conan provided an absolutely beautiful contrast. The plot was straightforward, uncomplicated, even predictable, but it still held me on the edge of my seat. The fight scenes, despite their 80's camp, felt so visceral and exciting that I realized I'd forgotten how important action was in a story. And the look and feel of the whole thing, brought to life by Poledouris's incredible score, was just mindblowingly epic.

Naturally I then proceeded to watch the sequel . . . and suffered the disappointment implicit therein. Conan the Destroyer was, though not altogether a bad movie, inferior to its predecessor in virtually every way. The dialogue felt forced and often silly, set design was exceedingly bland, Mako's voice didn't sound as cool, the fights felt less real, and I could go on. Really, that movie's only saving grace was a little surprise twist at the end, an unexpected turn of fate to conclude the awkward, stilted plot.

Lesson learned: Conan the Barbarian was a one-time thing, its glory unlikely to be recaptured. I didn't exactly forestall seeing the 2011 movie, but I lost all motivation to actively seek it out.

But now I've seen it, and I've got a few things to say.

As I probably implied above, I like Jason Momoa as an actor, and I think he was a great choice for the new Conan. Between Ronon Dex and Khal Drogo, he's made quite a name for himself playing barbarians, and his hair is probably a better match for the "black mane" Howard kept mentioning than Arnold's was. After seeing the movie, I think he did a good job with what he was given. I just really wish they'd given him a better script.

I think the writing of the new movie falls short of the old one because they were written with different intentions. It feels like John Milius wrote the 1982 script to tell a story in an artful, intelligent, yet exciting way. The new script really feels like it was written to be a blockbuster. People keep saying it's a "re-imagining" of the Conan story, not a re-make, but I don't buy that. The stories are way too similar. And nothing in Robert E. Howard's original Conan stories seems a likely inspiration, other than the depiction of Conan himself. If you ask me, the 2011 Conan is nothing but the the 1982 Conan altered in two ways:

1. They used modern special effects and film techniques

2. They dumbed it down for today's mainstream action movie audience.

It's the second one that really bugs me. The original film may have had the same plot as the new one, but there were little things like subtlety and subtext. Let's dive into the biggest example of this particular issue . . .

Conan's father forges a sword, and then the bad guy kills him and takes it. Before we go on, let's just examine how the handling of that little detail was botched in the new movie.

1982: The secret of forging steel is not widely known in the Hyborean age, and Thulsa Doom roamed the world in search of rare steel weapons to bolster his military strength.

2011: Zym came to the village to find a piece of the mask. The sword looks cool, so he takes that too.

In the new movie, we get a forging scene where Conan's father tells him the ever-so-clever secret that fire and ice are equally important to making a good blade. Then there's a training scene where the father criticizes Conan's anger-powered aggression, saying "there's too much fire in you." Thanks, Dad. Thank you for hitting us over the head with it. Steel is a metaphor for Conan. He needs balance. He needs to calm down and master himself. Awesome. When will this come up again in the movie? When will Conan truly learn that lesson, or suffer for not learning it? Never. The Conan-Steel correspondence is essentially forgotten as soon as we time skip from young Conan to adult Conan.

What about the old movie? Well, the old movie was much more respectful of our intelligence, and didn't throw the metaphor in our faces. The father alludes to something called "the Riddle of Steel," and Thulsa Doom later surmises that its answer is merely the superiority of a human being over any weapon, and between the two we synthesize our own understanding:

The whole 'fire and ice' thing is a nice simple idea that anyone can grasp. The old metaphor was more about steel itself, and requires you to know a couple of things about steel. Steel is man-made; you can't mine steel, you have to make it. And when you're forging a steel sword, hitting it with a hammer is an important step. Withstanding that makes it harder, stronger. Conan is Steel, but this time he's steel because hardship makes him stronger, because he must be forged by his life, by his trials, before he can understand the riddle.

And yes, that does carry through to later in the movie. It comes up right near the end.

In the 2011 movie's climactic fight, Zym, who took the father's sword, turns it against Conan. In case anyone missed that, he says it outright: "I'm going to kill you with your own father's sword." Thank you, Zym. Thank you for that. I couldn't tell what sword that was for myself. Thank Crom that line was in the movie, or I might have missed a whole layer of meaning in this elegant scene. Okay, enough sarcasm. Back to business. So they fight, and Conan gets Dad's blade back, and he finally feels complete, like he's fulfilled his -- blah, blah, blah.

A similar thing happens in the old movie. Conan ends up dueling with Rexor, one of Thulsa Doom's lieutenants, and Rexor's got the father's sword from the beginning. He doesn't mention that it's the father's sword, and frankly he doesn't need to. Not because it's obvious, but because it's not important. What's important is that Conan is fighting the people who not only killed his family, but his true love as well (yes, the love interest dies in the original), and he's angrier than ever, and this fight is epic. Blades flashing and slashing and clashing so fast that we don't even realize Rexor has the father's sword until--

--until Conan's sword breaks the blade in half. That's right, the father's sword breaks. Snaps in two. How anticlimactic, right? How can Conan avenge his father now? By killing the guys who killed him, that's how.

It's not about the sword. It never was. The new movie keeps showing us that Zym and Marique have the sword so we don't forget what Conan's motivation is, but the old one trusted us to remember that ourselves. The sword breaking advances the metaphor of Conan as steel. His quest, his life, everything he's been through, all of that has made him stronger than he was at the beginning, stronger than he believed he could become. The fact that his new sword (the possibly enchanted Atlantean sword) is stronger than the father's sword shows us that Conan has risen above his quest, and become true steel. (He does, however, use what's left of the father's sword to decapitate Thulsa Doom, completing his revenge with just that tasteful little touch of poetic justice.)

As brevity, I'm told, is the soul of wit, I think I'll leave it at that. That's the most glaring deficiency of the new movie, and it's kind of a synecdoche of all the rest.

I highly recommend watching the new movie and the old back to back. Like any remake, Conan 2011 is best judged when juxtaposed to the original.

And, of course, I know I've been pretty harsh in my criticism of the new film, so I should just clear up the fact that, overall, I don't think it's a bad movie. As far as action goes, it works pretty well. I just didn't think it was a great movie, and its various flaws stand out all the more when viewed in the context of the legacy of what came before.

I know the producers probably don't want the movie to be viewed in that context, but I really can't help it. If they wanted to make a completely new Conan movie, they shouldn't have recycled the plot of the first one. Robert E. Howard wrote plenty of Conan stories, providing the writers of today with plenty of material for a new story.

Frankly it's too bad they didn't draw on more of Howard's old work. I've been reading his stories and there's plenty there that I could see on the big screen. A lot of it is in the public domain now, so I urge everyone to check it out. You can find links here:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Robert_Ervin_Howard