Conan movies...why do they keep getting it wrong?

[Jaqhama]

One has to wonder why the movie Conan is always portrayed as a semi-naked savage, when in the majority of the stories Conan was clothed in whatever the local garb was, he spoke a smattering of the local tongue, he was cunning, clever and resourceful. He often wore a chain mail vest and frequently silk or leather knee length shorts.

With all those great REH Conan tales to choose from why do the movie makers waste their time making up screenplays of their own devising?

A Witch shall be born.
Red nails.
The people of the Black Circle.

They're spoilt for choice regarding story lines and plot.

Instead we get....probably a load of drek.

[wicked]

One has to wonder why the movie Conan is always portrayed as a semi-naked savage,

I can sum up the answer to that one in two words- Frank Frazetta. http://frankfrazetta.org/viewimage.p...ebarbarian.jpg
His depictions of Conan are as iconic as Howard's stories.

[John M. Whalen]

Conan? What about Tarzan? Even worse translation of a character from print to screen. Out of the dozens of Tarzan movies only a handful (Gordon Scott and Jock Mahoney) came close to the books. I'd love to see a studio just take the "Tarzan and the Golden Lion" book and make a film out of it. IT would be spectacular. With CGI they could create Opar the way Burroughs wrote about it. But alas, Tarzan is now at the level of a Disney cartoon character. I wrote an article for one of the Washington papers about Tarzana, Calif., where Burroughs lived and wrote the books. Hardly anybody living there now ever heard of him. His remains are buried under a tree in front of the office where he used to work on Ventura Blvd, between a furniture store and a dry cleaners.

[che2000]

Fair enough, Conan has been messed about virtually every time he's been put on screen, but I thought that the recent(ish) adaptation of Solomon Kane had its charms - granted, it was fairly far removed from REH but much better than, say, the travesty that was Kull.

What do folk think of the various Howard adaptations that have graced/ Plagued our screens over the years? Any favourites and/or absolute hatreds?

[The Griot]

Simple answer. Movies are not made for true fans. They are made for the general audience and movies makers have determined that moviegoers want their barbarians hunky and half naked. How else are you going to distinguish them from civilized folks?

I actually enjoyed the first Conan movie with Arnold. I wondered why they used Thulsa Doom as a nemesis when I understood that he was a King Kull character. But overall it was good. The second Conan movie with Grace Jones was forgettable. Saturday Night Live's Lothar of the Hill People was better than that movie.

[Dave]

I assume this is in protest of the new Conan movie, which looks pretty awful. Might be that S&S movies had their heyday in the 80s, and as bad as those were, they're the best we're going to get.

[Jaqhama]

I think the new Conan movie is going to be Conan as a movie producer and director visualises the character, not as fans of REH see him.

I still think the Sword and the Sorcerer was the best of a bad bunch.

For sword action movies, with no sorcery, you can't beat Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis in The Vikings and Charlton Heston and Richard Boone in The Warlord. Even Richard Widmark was okay in the Long Ships.
Just goes to prove that you can make good action sword movies...with good characters and scenarios...so why do all the S&S ones suck?
Although some of the oldies like the Sinbad movies and the Argonauts and Jack the Giant Killer were certainly worth watching. Must just be modern sword movies that suck?

[John M. Whalen]

The Vikings is one of my favorites as well. The Vistavision cameras really captured the look and feel of the location shooting. And the cast was first rate. Along with the stars were Janet Leigh and Ernest Borgnine. Janet Leigh also starred in Prince Valiant, featuring Robert Wagner in the title role and wearing a Prince Valiant wig. You may think I'm kidding but at the Saturday matinee level for which it was intended it is a pretty decent film with very good action scenes.

The most recent attempt at an historical epic has turned out to be a failure. Currently on DVD is Sword of War starring Rutger Hauer, as Barbarosa, the German king who conquered northern Italy back in the middle ages. This two hour extravaganza has excellent costuming, set design, and a half0decent cast of Europeans but suffers from amateurish writing and direction. I was able to sit through it because of the authenticity of the weaponry and the set ups leading to the battles. But the action scenes were poorly done and there was no dramatic tension in the script. This was no comeback vehicle for Hauer. However, he went on after filming this one to make the movie that seems to be reviving his career the way Kill Bill resuscitated David Carridine's. HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN is becoming a cult classic and it hasn't even been released in theaters or DVD. It's only available from Cable TV ON DEMAND. What a title. HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN. Say it to yourself several times.

[Jaqhama]

Rutger Hauer...Flesh and Blood, epic!

[che2000]

One of my favourites is Valhalla Rising... very violent, very strange, sorta surreal sword and sorcery. Great movie, though.

[Greybeard]

There's at least one S&S movie I enjoyed recently: Wolfhound. 2007 Russian film based on Slavic mythology.

I admit to enjoying the first Conan movie, although it may have more to do with the soundtrack than anything else. I even admit that I enjoyed watching the second one, but only when Olivia d'Abo was on screen.

Unfotunately, Milton is absolutely right: the movies weren't, aren't and won't be made for actual Howard fans. They're made for the people who know "Conan the Barbarian" without having read a single one of the original stories. They know the character from the comics and may have read a pastiche or two, but if you gave them a movie of, say, "Beyond the Black River" they wouldn't recognize the character as Conan.

[che2000]

I quite enjoyed Wolfhound. although the 'cut every one and a half seconds' style of editing tended to grate on me after a while (something to do with my age, I think).

Good sword and sorcery movies are as rare as hen's teeth and I reckon that the short-lived Italian boom of the 1980's probably did more harm than good to the genre both in literary and cinematic terms (to say nothing of things like Hawk the Slayer!)

[Jaqhama]

I thought Hawk was one of the better ones.

[che2000]

I don't know why it is exactly, but while I love sword and sorcery/ epic/high fantasy on the printed page I can rarely seem to get behind it on screen, even the much admired Lord of the Rings left me colder than a plate of yesterday's chips (or French Fries for our readers in the USA). I don't have the same problem with science fiction, westerns, horror or indeed swashbucklers of various hues (Scaramouche being a personal favourite) but for some reason cinematic fantasy (generally) turns me right off.

[Jaqhama]

Yeah. I'm with you there. S&S on the big screen just doesn't do it for me either.

But the sci-fi thrillers like Bladerunner and Aliens and Predator have all been excellent.

Odd isn't it?

[tchernabyelo]

Film adaptations of successful books are very rarely made for fans/readers OF those books (there are exceptions; Harry Potter and Twilight in recent years, but that's because those books are cultural phenomena).

Film adaptations are normaly made because soemthing has been passably successful in one medium and lends itself to a visual adaptation. But look at the numbers of people who need to go and see a film compared to those who actually read the books. Again, with a very few exceptions, the target numbers are FAR higehr for the movie. And broadly speaking, most (action) movies are going to be targeted at the male 15-25 or so demographic.

In other words, just because you or I are a fan of the Conan books, or even the comics (and the comic is where the visualisation of a shirtless Conan originates), doesn;t mean we are remotely within the target audience for the movie. Any overlap will be a happy accident.

[The Griot]

I saw the trailer recently and wasn't impressed. Blood was flying like geysers. DVD, maybe.

[Dave]

I can't recall any recent S&S films that really worked for me, but I remeber some from years ago that I enjoyed (bearing in mind I was in my late teens early 20s when most of these came out)

Beastmaster (the first one)
Excalibur (does that count as S&S)
Dragonslayer
Krull (I recently tried to watch this again, but stopped about 20 minutes in, not wanting to ruin the memory!)
13th Warrior (pretty recent, and not too bad)
Army of Darkness was fun (but not too serious)
Ladyhawke
Willow

[tchernabyelo]

About the only ones of those I would watch now are 13th Warrior and Ladyhawke. And therein may lie the point; the target audience for these movies are the late teens and early 20s types, not us. Geysers of blood probably tests really well in that demographic.

[che2000]

I'd like to make a special case for Zack Snyder's film of 300 which, to my mind, mixes a lot of sword and sorcery sensibility into the historical story (mind you it takes a lot of liberties along the way but is bloody good fun nevertheless).

[The Wizard Gethwin]

It's a pity there's not more good stuff coming out, because with CGI being what it is now you could so much with a good S&S film.