9 / 10
Official trailer
Conan the Barbarian is one of the strangest mainstream studio films of the 1980s. John Milius directed and co-wrote with Oliver Stone. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Conan in his first significant English-language role. James Earl Jones plays Thulsa Doom.
Sandahl Bergman plays Valeria. Mako narrates and plays the wizard. Max von Sydow plays King Osric. The film is loosely based on the pulp fantasy stories of Robert E. Howard, but Milius and Stone went their own direction.
The script reads like Nietzsche rewritten by people who took Nietzsche seriously, and that’s more interesting than the marketing suggested.
Conan hits me like an opera with swords.
It’s grim, strange and dead serious about ideas most studio pictures would have played for laughs, and that seriousness is what grabs me. My one knock is the stiffness of the few lines Schwarzenegger has to deliver, and even that has turned into part of the charm. It’s a 9.
The film made Schwarzenegger a star. It also defined what sword-and-sorcery cinema could be for the next four decades. Almost every film in the genre that followed owes Conan a structural debt. The film is operatic where its imitators are merely violent. The Basil Poledouris score is one of the great original film scores of the 1980s. The cinematography by Duke Callaghan treats the production like a serious epic. The film never apologizes for what it is.
What Works
Milius is one of the more idiosyncratic directors who got to make studio films in the early 1980s. He treated Conan as a meditation on revenge, will, and the value of an enemy. The opening sequence shows the destruction of Conan’s village, the murder of his parents, his enslavement, his decades-long enslavement on the Wheel of Pain, his eventual development into a gladiator, and his release into the world. None of this is narrated in dialogue. The film tells the story through images and Poledouris’s score for fifteen minutes before Schwarzenegger speaks a line.
Those fifteen wordless minutes are my favorite opening in any fantasy film. Poledouris does all the talking, and his music turns a village massacre and Conan’s years on the Wheel of Pain into the start of a myth. I wouldn’t trade that score for any dialogue Milius could have written.
The riddle of steel sequence is the philosophical center of the film. Conan’s father teaches him that steel is the only thing he can trust, then dies. Thulsa Doom, decades later, teaches him that flesh is stronger than steel, then helps Conan rediscover his own will. Both lessons are framed as serious teaching. The film treats its own metaphysics with the seriousness most films reserve for plot mechanics.
For Writers
A genre film can handle serious philosophical content if the filmmakers treat the content seriously. Conan the Barbarian is a sword-and-sorcery picture that argues about will, vengeance, and what makes a man. Milius and Stone aren’t winking at the audience. They mean what the film says. The lesson is that pulp material can have weight if the writer respects the material. Audiences can tell when a filmmaker is slumming. They can also tell when a filmmaker has decided that pulp is serious territory.
Schwarzenegger
Schwarzenegger in 1982 was a former Mr. Olympia with thick Austrian-accented English and limited acting experience. The film works around this by giving him minimal dialogue and maximum physical work. Conan reacts to events through movement instead of speech. The strategy turned out to be the right one. Schwarzenegger’s body language is more articulate than his lines need to be. He plays the slow accumulation of strength, the development of cunning, and the eventual achievement of mastery without ever giving a speech.
The casting was right for the part. A more conventional actor would have played Conan as a man with thoughts. Schwarzenegger plays him as a force learning to direct itself, and I’ll take that version, stiff line readings and all. Milius built the role around what Arnold could do, and I think the film would be smaller with a smoother talker in the lead.
For Writers
The right casting can transform what looks like a limitation into a feature. Schwarzenegger’s limited English and physical presence became the foundation of the character because the script was written around what he could do. The lesson is that constraints can shape character. If your central performer has specific strengths and specific gaps, build the role to use the strengths and minimize the gaps. The result will feel inevitable instead of compromised.
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones plays Thulsa Doom as a religious leader instead of as a generic warlord.
His followers are cultists. He kills with his voice as much as with his sword. The decision to make the antagonist a charismatic religious figure instead of another barbarian gives the third act real philosophical stakes. Conan is destroying a cult.
The scene where Jones turns himself into a snake and back is among the most successful supernatural moments in pre-CGI fantasy cinema. The transformation is staged so that the audience doesn’t entirely see what they think they’ve seen. The ambiguity is more effective than a full reveal would have been.
After the score, Jones is what I’d miss most if the film lost him. He makes Thulsa Doom a preacher you can believe people would die for, and that snake transformation creeps me out more than any digital monster I can think of.
For Writers
An antagonist whose power is ideological instead of physical creates a different kind of conflict than the standard hero-versus-warlord template. Thulsa Doom is dangerous because his followers believe in him. Conan can’t defeat him by killing him in single combat alone. He has to destroy the belief that gives Thulsa Doom his power. The lesson is that antagonists whose strength comes from outside themselves are harder to defeat and more interesting to oppose. The protagonist has to win the argument as well as the fight.
Craft Note
John Milius directed and co-wrote with Oliver Stone. Loosely based on the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard. Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan. James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom. Sandahl Bergman as Valeria. Mako as the wizard, who also narrates. Max von Sydow as King Osric. Gerry Lopez as Subotai. Ben Davidson as Rexor. Basil Poledouris composed the score. That’s widely considered one of the great original film scores of the 1980s. Released May 1982. Approximately twenty million dollar budget. Approximately one hundred million worldwide gross.
Does Conan the Barbarian still hold up?
9/10. It’s the defining sword-and-sorcery film and as philosophically serious as any genre picture of its decade, and I rate it this high because it means every word it says.
Poledouris gives it a score I’d put against anything from the eighties, Milius and Stone never wink, and Schwarzenegger’s body does the acting his English couldn’t yet manage. The 1984 sequel Conan the Destroyer is forgettable and the 2011 remake is bad. Watch the original.
