Posted at AICN by Drew “Moriarty” McWeeny.Jul 04, 2000
THE CONAN THAT NEVER WAS
I first saw CONAN THE BARBARIAN on the eve of my 12th birthday. The
film was a hard R, and I remember the tricky negotiations that went into
convincing my parents that I needed to see this movie. Thankfully, I
grew up in a house with a mother who read science fiction and fantasy as
much as I did, so all I had to do was feed her a steady diet of the
Robert E. Howard collections for a few months before the big day. By
the time CONAN was about to come out, she was as ready for the film as I
was. That poster hypnotized me every time I saw it in the lobby. There
was something about the stark image of Conan, his sword, and the warrior
woman at his side... it promised me an adventure as grand as STAR WARS,
mythic and fantastic, and I couldn’t wait for it.
And when it finally arrived, it was one of those perfect magic movie
experiences for me. I fell hard in love with the film on first sight,
and that affection hasn’t wavered one bit since. Sometimes when I bring
the film up to someone, I get a look like they can’t believe I’m
serious. Ten times out of ten, the ones who look at me like that are
the ones who have never seen the film, who judged it based on the
plethora of shitty sword-and-sorcery movies that came out in its wake.
I find myself extolling the film’s many virtues with an almost
evangelical zeal, and the only difficult part is figuring out where to
start raving. Do I praise Arnold Schwarzenegger for turning in
genuinely strong and emotional work in his first major starring role?
Do I praise the oddball supporting cast like surfing icon Gerry Lopez
and Mako? Do I bring up the hypnotic, powerful work of James Earl Jones
as Thulsa Doom, one of the best cult leaders in film history? Is it the
staggeringly great score by Basl Paledouris, used to such rousing effect
in the GLADIATOR campaign this year, that I mention? Or do I emphasize
the surprisingly affecting and adult love story anchored by the tender
work of Sandahl Bergman? Or do I mention the dancer’s grace and
authority she brings to every major fight scene?
Or do I start with John Milius? I think perhaps that’s where any
serious discussion of the film and its place among the classics begins.
Milius is a curious filmmaker, a guy with undeniable skill and and
style, and he’s been associated with a number of great or greatish films
like BIG WEDNESDAY, APOCALYPSE NOW, THE WIND AND THE LION, and RED
DAWN. He’s been spoofed mercilessly by the Coen Bros. in the form of
Walter, John Goodman’s character in THE BIG LEBOWSKI. He’s a name that
most film geeks know, but for some reason, he’s never had the career
that he should have. For me, there’s no pinnacle in his resume that
stands higher than CONAN. It’s a great story, breathtaking in its
simplicity but rich in detail, mature and sweeping and sad and intense
and exciting. The visual panache that Milius brings to the movie is
evident upon viewing, but I never understood just how much of the story
was his. For years, I’ve been raving about how smart the screenplay for
the film is, giving the lion’s share of the credit to Oliver Stone, who
shares screen credit with Milius.
It was only in the last month, though, that I learned exactly how wrong
I was about the project’s pedigree. Two things happened. First,
Universal DVD issued their magnificent new Collector’s Edition of the
film, complete with a one-hour documentary on the movie produced by
Laurent Bouzereau (who performed similar duties with JAWS and 1941,
among others), new footage that’s been incorporated back into the movie,
and a secondary audio track that features both Milius and Arnold.
Second, I finally got hold of a copy of Oliver Stone’s original August
1, 1978 first draft of CONAN, written for Ed Pressman’s company. Now, I
can finally see what everyone brought to the table, and the result is
that I love the film even more, even as I also regret deeply that
Stone’s film doesn’t exist.
From the very opening of the film, what we are seeing is Milius’ vision,
inspired in places by what Stone had written, but undeniably different.
Milius opens his film with a Nietszche quote, “That which does not kill
us makes us stronger,” which seems apt when you look at the life this
character leads. There’s nothing but misery after misery, loss after
loss, pain and death to mark each milestone. In black, we hear the
voice of Mako, the film’s narrator, setting the tone for us, finishing
with the promise, “Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!”
And then “Anvil Of Crom” begins, the film’s main theme. It’s one of
those perfect pieces of film music that does it all. It manages to
convey all the emotion, all the adventure that the film holds in store,
all in three minutes of music. And as we’re swept away by this
pounding, insistent score, the film’s other major theme is set up by the
first actual image we see, the glowing hot red liquid outline of metal
being poured into the mold of a sword. Right away, we are introduced to
the one visual motif that ties the film together... we see the making of a sword,
a strikingly fashioned blade that’s as distinct as Luke’s lightsaber.
Conan’s mother and father work together on the sword, him forging it,
her wrapping the handle.
And as the theme fades, Conan’s father sits with him, examines the
sword, and speaks to him of their god, Crom. Both Milius and Stone have
this scene in their scripts, but Milius makes it more of a mystic
exchange, an elder handing down a secret. He speaks of how man came to
possess the secret of steel, a secret that used to be the sole domain of
gods and giants. “No one in this world can you trust. Not men, not
women, not beasts.” He touches the blade of the sword, as does Conan.
“This you can trust.” That one bit of dialogue was Stone’s first, and
it is crucial to the way Milius imagined the rest of his film.
In Stone’s script, there is an attack on Conan’s village. His parents
are quickly killed, but curiously, the young Conan is simply left alive
to make his own way in the world. Once they’ve killed the adults, the
raiders simply ride off. It’s exciting, but it feels incomplete.
Milius knows the value of an origin, though, knows that we need to
really feel where Conan begins, feel it deeply, if we’re going to care
about where he’s going in the film. There are two main missions Conan
has in the movie. First and foremost, there’s revenge against whoever
wiped out his village and his parents. Milius plays the sequence for
all it’s worth, staging a brutal, visceral assault that lets us know
right away just how dangerous this world is. Limbs are hacked off,
bodies attacked by dogs, horses felled. It’s overwhelming, and at the
end of it, young Conan stands with his mother, her holding a sword,
protecting her boy. They’ve already seen Conan’s father fall, and all
the warriors assemble, surrounding the woman and the boy. The leader of
the attackers reveals himself as a young Thulsa Doom, and our first
impression of him is magnetic. His blue eyes, his long hair, and that
serpentine stare... Jones exudes menace. He is set up without one line
of dialogue as a presence to be reckoned with. Just as our first
glimpse of Darth Vader told us all we needed to know about his
character, so does our first scene with Doom. He approaches the woman,
his eyes never leaving her eyes. Finally, as if in a dream, she lowers
her sword. Doom turns away, then suddenly spins and takes her head off
with one clean stroke. The image of her body falling away from Young
Conan, who is still holding her hand, and of his face as she pulls away,
is chilling and memorable. Doom and his men walk away from the boy, taking his father's sword with them,
and he sees the standard they carry, a carved totem featuring two snakes joined in the middle, facing one another across a black sun.
Young Conan is then taken to the Wheel of Pain, another invention of
Milius’, and again, he seems to understand that there are significant
stops that must be made along the way when setting up a truly epic
myth. Stone’s script is impatient to get to the adventure, which is
part of what makes it such a compulsively addictive read. When we first
meet the adult Conan, he’s being chased by wolves across an open plain.
He finally turns and fights them all in a pretty crazy action scene. He
stops for comfort and aid at the home of a woman who turns out to be a
witch. She speaks of a prophecy that seems to refer to Conan. There’s
events that mirror these scenes in the final film, but Stone’s world is
rougher than Milius’, more barbaric, and he etches things in quicker.
He doesn’t show us how Conan grows up; it’s enough to just know that he
did. In Stone’s script, these events just happen, one after another.
Milius is after something greater, though. He takes his time, and the
sequence that he’s invented to show Conan’s passage from boy to man is
probably my favorite section of the film. All the children of the
village are spared, chained together, and marched away as Mako’s voice
over returned. “Their ashes were trampled into the earth, and the blood
became as snow.” The children are sent away, to the North, where they
are sold to a slaver, strapped to a giant Wheel, where they simply walk
in endless circles, pushing the Wheel forward. Using the Wheel, Milius
lets the years themselves roll by, and we see a boy grow into a man,
until finally Arnold himself looks up through his now-shaggy mane of
hair, pumped and buffed from the years of toil. He’s sold into a life
of pit-fighting, where he picks up the skills to match his impressive
size, and where he is taught the savage philosophy of the day. What
good fanboy doesn’t know the response to the question, “CONAN! What is
best in life?!” It’s only after all of this experience, only after
Conan has earned his freedom, granted to him in the middle of the night,
that we find him on the run, the wolves at his heels. It’s eleven pages
into the Stone script. It’s twenty-five minutes into Milius’ film. It
makes a world of difference. Now we are invested in seeing what Conan,
a slave since childhood, will do with his new freedom, what place he
will find in the world. Milius adds one last mythic touch, though,
before momentarily returning to Stone’s script. He interrupts the chase
by the wolves as Conan finds an underground crypt. In that crypt, he finds an Atlantean sword, waiting,
ready for Conan to claim as his own. It’s in the hands of a skeletal warrior who crumbles in front of Conan.
Conan has now finally claimed his own steel, his own gift from Crom, and it completes him as a free man.
Both Stone and Milius use the robbery of a temple as the first major set
piece of the film, and the two sequences are similar in the broad
strokes, but this is where the films begin to take radically different
directions. Milius has Conan pick up a companion named Subatoi, a
thief, after leaving the witch’s house, and then has the two of them
head into a town together. Once they arrive, Conan begins to ask around
about the standard that he remembers from his childhood, the symbol of
the two snakes. There’s a natural flow to the way they find the tower
at the center of town. It’s not just a random robbery. This is part of
Conan’s main quest in the film.
In the script, Stone has Conan drift into a tavern alone, and there’s a
sense that he’s experienced, knows how to work the angles in any town he
rolls into. He listens to the various conversations around him, then
intrudes into the one he finds most interesting. In this case, it’s
between a priest and a pickpocket who are discussing a Stygian tower in
the city’s center. Conan walks right up and joins in with them, setting
both men on edge immediately. There’s an arrogance to Conan. He’s more
of a bastard in Stone’s draft, less motivated by some driving sense of
revenge or loss and more of a mercenary, cold and cruel. When Conan
suggests scaling the tower, they laugh at him, but he is determined.
They tell him about the Stone of Set, a fabulous jewel that’s kept in
the heart of the temple, but they warn him that any attempt on it is
suicide. Conan is unimpressed by the warnings. Before he can leave the
tavern, he has an encounter with a thief almost as big as Conan himself,
and there’s almost a fight. At the last moment, bloodshed is averted,
though, and Conan fades away into the night.
Then Stone does something that Milius never does, and I think it’s the
one real weakness of Stone’s script. He shifts the focus of the film
away from Conan for a fairly major sequence that sets up the bad guys of
the film. Milius is already tying in the opening of his movie, moving
it forward as one singular narrative, and Stone’s cutting away to
introduce new characters, the princess of the kingdom Conan has stumbled
into. Yasmina is in the midst of a crisis as her brother the king
wastes away from a mysterious illness that no one can stop or even
identify. In a crazy, terrifying sequence, Yasmina is left alone with
her brother, who finally reveals himself to be possessed by some evil
entity called Taramis. Yasmina recognizes the name, but protests that
Taramis is dead. The king attacks his sister, and she has no choice but
to fight back. She stabs him to death, then collapses, destroyed by the
encounter.
It’s cut back to Conan, who is staking out the Stygian Tower, but only
briefly. Almost immediately, we’re back to Yasmina, who is getting
ready to leave the palace, to go for help. She’s panicked now, and as
her aides help her prepare, one of them calls her “Your majesty,” and
the weight of what’s just happened sinks in.
In Stone’s script, Conan encounters another thief who is going to try to
take the Stygian Tower, someone named Taurus. In Milius’ film, Subatoi
and Conan are about to try the tower when they encounter Valeria, the
warrior woman who becomes Conan’s lover and partner. Milius is laying
the groundwork for his film, always advancing the story. Stone just
sets up the barbarian equivalent of a STAR TREK red shirt, a thief who
can get ripped apart by the tower’s mutant guard so we get a good look
at the creature in action.
Yes, that’s right... I said “mutant guard.” The main reason Stone’s
script wasn’t made in 1978, I’m sure, was budget. It certainly wasn’t
because the script was poorly written or unimaginative. Just the
opposite is true. The script is dense with descriptions of monsters and
settings that seem to have been taken directly from the pages of the
pulp stories of Robert E. Howard. Maybe today, with modern CGI and
makeup effects, and with a budget the size of LORD OF THE RINGS, someone
could capture the scale of Stone’s vision onscreen. In 1978, STAR WARS
was still state of the art. Jodorowsky’s ambitious adaptation of DUNE
had been budgeted at $400 million, and it would have taken a similar
amount of money to do what Stone proposed. He starts with one creature,
a freaky thing that guards the Stygian Tower, and he has Conan fight the
thing in a sprawling action set piece that establishes Conan as the
equal of any beast or man. During the scene, we get a look at the snake
cult that occupies the temple, and we hear the name “Thulsa Doom” for
the first time. He’s not referred to as the leader of the cult,
though. Instead, he’s described as the minion of Set, a creature that
will rise up in the final days and rule over man with sorcery and
slavery. We see that Yasmina has come to the Stygians for advice, and
they offer up a terrifying vision of the end days, which they say are at
hand. She doesn’t know how to react. Meanwhile, Conan’s epic battle
with the creature and the giant snake that guards the Stone of Set rages
for six pages of densely described action. Stone may have missed his
calling when he chose to become a social moralist with his films instead
of an action writer. He’s got a brutal sense of pace, and he punishes
Conan in scene after scene. There’s no easy victory offered here. When
Conan flees the temple at the same time that Yasmina is leaving, their
paths cross in an unexpected manner. She is attacked by a group of men,
and they attempt to kidnap her for ransom. Conan hears the scuffle and
intrudes. When he sees that it’s the pickpocket and the thief from the
tavern earlier, he can’t help but interfere. It’s that arrogance
again. He ends up having to kill all four men, and when he finishes, he
wrestles her down and claims his reward from her, a savage kiss. Stone
actually sets Yasmina up as Conan’s first romantic interest in the film,
and this introductory sequence sets up their chemistry in the rest of
the script. She’s both horrified by and attracted to his rough manner,
and he is delighted by her pampered softness, but unwilling to put up
with any royal temper. She realizes quickly that Conan is a valuable
ally, and she offers him money to escort her home. When they reach the
palace and he realizes she is Queen of Zamora, he’s shocked. She offers
him even more money to stay and be her closest bodyguard, and Conan
accepts.
From this point forward, there’s little or no reason to compare the two
scripts. Milius seems to have read Stone’s draft and taken ideas and
elements that he thought were interesting. Stone has Conan crucified on
a tree at one point, and Milius does, too. They’re totally different
scenes in terms of what they accomplish and where they fall in the film,
though. In Stone’s draft, Yasmina doesn’t even last one full night as
queen before Taramis shows up. An animal-like resurrection of Yasmina’s
evil sister, Taramis brings Thulsa Doom and an army of mutants with her
when she sweeps into Zamora. She is disguised perfectly, transformed
into Yasmina, and the palace coup takes place in the dark, behind closed
doors. No one knows. Taramis effectively becomes Yasmina and begins to
turn Zamora into a hell on earth. Conan is taken out into the desert
and crucified to get him out of the way. There, he is discovered by a
gang of thieves who see some merit in this impressive form, who see a
possible ally. One of the thieves is Valeria, a beautiful warrior who
rides at the side of Janus, the leader of the thieves. They rescue
Conan and take him back to camp, where Janus’ taunts cause Conan,
already weakened and injured, to take up arms against Janus. There is a
fight, and Janus ends up dead. On page 84 of the script, the entire
camp of thieves picks up a chant of “CO-NAN! CO-NAN!” as they surround
their new leader. Valeria watches, impressed, and we fade to black for
an intermission.
Stone actually has his script divided into two distinct parts, but the
Milius film still manages to feel like more of an epic. Maybe it’s the
way Stone breaks his story up, making it episodic, like a number of
short Conan stories strung together. Eventually, everything does indeed
come around to Conan and Valeria riding on Zamora and rescuing Yasmina.
There’s an ungodly battle against a seemingly endless mutant army that
closes the script that really is like madness, like a nightmare that
Stone somehow spilled onto the page. The problem is that there’s no
sense of character carrying us through. For all intents and purposes,
the second half of Stone’s film exists just to set up a romantic
triangle between Conan and the pampered Yasmina versus the spirited
Valeria. Milius makes Conan and Valeria immediate soulmates, and the
intensity of their passion really pays off after Conan’s near-death,
when Valeria literally fends off the spirits of death to keep him on
Earth. When Thulsa Doom strikes her down in a chilling scene near the
end of the movie, it’s shattering. Their love is simply doomed, no
matter what, and even bringing him back from the dead isn’t enough to
keep them together. I’ve always loved the line as Conan lights
Valeria’s funeral pyre, when Subatoi is standing with the wizard played
by Mako. Tears course down Subatoi’s cheeks, and the wizard ask why
Subatoi cries. The little thief gestures at Conan and says, “Because he
will not.” There is a sense of strong bonds between these characters, a
depth to the friendships that is earned over the course of Milius’
film. In particular, there’s a scene that has been restored in the new
DVD that takes place just before the final massive battle among the
rocks, where Conan and Subatoi talk about their outlooks on life. It’s
maybe the finest moment of performance that Arnold has ever given. It’s
sad, tempered with the disappointment and pain that his life has been
made up of, and I believe him absolutely. There’s more of a human heart
beating inside Milius’ Conan. Strangely, he does this by using less
dialogue, not more. The film uses dialogue sparingly at best, and it’s
to the great advantage of the experience. Stone’s script is talky, and
much of the dialogue sounds like it comes from the ‘70s, not from the
Hyborean Age. Think of the temple theft or the orgy in Doom’s hideout
or the battle at the end... these are extended sequences, ten minutes or
more each time, that feature no dialogue whatsoever. In that final battle, Milius has a moment that is positively
operatic in which Conan finally comes face to face with his father's sword, stolen all those years ago,
and must break it in order to move on with his life. It is rich with subtext, but it's also great action cinema. Bravo.
Stone sets the character up for further adventures by having him finally
choose Valeria and the wind at his back, the two of them riding away as
the script comes to an end. Milius hints at further adventures, but his
film ends on a somber note after Conan finally destroys Thulsa Doom and
the snake cult, cutting off James Earl Jones’ head and burning down the
giant outside altar where all the followers are gathered. It’s the end
of the first chapter of Conan’s life, and it is a perfect place to leave
him. The new DVD cut incorporates a bit more footage involving another
princess, the daughter of Max Von Sydow, who is the focus of Conan’s
secondary mission in the film. I don’t mind the addition, but I didn’t
need it. To me, the film’s ending always felt complete and perfect
before. Now the focus is diffused a bit, and it may end up actually
hurting the picture.
No worries, though. In any form, John Milius’ CONAN THE BARBARIAN is
worth another look for fans of the film and is a must-see for those of
you who have never seen it before. And the Oliver Stone script is a
fascinating look at what could have been, a great adaptation of the
material that steered the way for what we eventually saw. I’m not sure
I would have preferred it to what we have, but I’m glad I finally got
the chance to compare the two and share these thoughts with you.
