Do You Know What Movie Character Makes A Grand Entrance? Conan The Barbarian

Wheel! Of! Pain!

Pulp writer Robert E. Howard is credited with inventing the ‘sword and sorcery’ genre with his character Conan The Barbarian. A Texan who would take his own life at age thirty, Howard’s musclebound adventurer was fighting wizards and monsters five years before the fussy British intellectual JRR Tolkein published ‘The Hobbit’, in 1937.

His creation is easy to mock, but Conan the Barbarian has influenced generations of fantasy novels, comic books, and movies, including a 1982 adaptation directed by John Milius with a screenplay by Oliver Stone. That’s a lot of testosterone right there: Milius wrote the first two Dirty Harry movies and Apocalypse Now and would go on to direct the legendary Cold War action flick Red Dawn. Stone, of course, was yet to direct a string of classics, including Platoon, JFK, and Wall Street, a movie that summed up an entire greedy era.

The two men took Conan the Barbarian very seriously and were determined to make an epic full of violence and sex. It’s a movie for the twelve-year-old that lives inside every dull, middle-aged dad. Are there cool swords? Hell yeah. How about a giant snake? You betcha. Boobs? Multiple pairs.

It starred bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger as the title character, a role that would propel him to superstardom. There are two pages of dialogue in the Conan the Barbarian movie, or so it seems, and half of it is spoken by the villain, Thulsa Doom, played by Darth Vader himself, James Earl Jones, bewigged and wild-eyed.

Schwarzenegger’s Austrian accent is especially chewy in Conan the Barbarian, but he nails his best line. When asked what is best in life, Conan answers: “To crush your enemies. See them driven before you. And to hear the lamentations of their women.” This is the right answer, but I would also accept a large Domino’s “Extravaganza” pizza.

But Schwarzenegger doesn’t need words to communicate and never has. He acts with his eyes, his pectorals, and the gap between his teeth. He would have made a great silent movie actor.

Conan the Barbarian is macho pablum, yet it's also oddly playful. It has a surprisingly diverse cast, including Sandahl Bergman as a swashbuckling Valkyrie-type and gravel-voiced character actor Mako as a sorcerer and the movie’s narrator. Max von Sydow shows up for one (1) scene, and it was nice to see him. But it’s Schwarzenegger’s movie, and he brings Howard’s noble brute to life.

Born during the fictional Hyborian Age, Conan is a Cimmerian bred for battle. He loves wine and combat and “doing it” and by “doing it” I mean “have unprotected sex.” Conan isn’t just an animal, though. He’s loyal to a fault. Conan loves to laugh, but he also has depressive episodes. In some ways, I like to think he’d have made a great blogger.

Schwarzenegger is a natural, but Milus and Stone also help his character by staging one of the great heroes reveals in any superhero/action movie, and Conan the Barbarian is a superhero movie. Technically, he’s part of the Marvel Universe. Conan is super strong and driven by childhood trauma like Batman or Superman, and even though he’s a rogue, Conan is always, somehow, on the side of the good guys or the least bad guys.

It is very important to make a grand entrance in showbusiness, no matter what kind of movie you’re in. I don’t care if it’s Hello, Dolly, or Dr. No, you only have one chance to make a first impression. This is also true when it comes to superheroes. That’s the whole point of wearing a cape, right? Theatricality? And our introduction to Schwarzenneger as Conan is memorable, that’s for sure.

But first, his origin. We first meet Conan as a boy who watches Thulsa Doom murder his parents and is then sold into slavery. Young Conan is lashed to the Wheel of Pain, a giant grain mill powered by dozens of other captives. These slaves push the wheel round and round, day and night, until they collapse from exhaustion and die. But not Conan. We see him get stronger and older and transform into a mighty, hairless gorilla. Eventually, only he survives. Our first glimpse of Schwarzenegger as Conan is of him pushing the wheel. As he has done for years. Why hello, barbarian.

That’s how you do it. That’s how to show up in a movie. That’s a grand entrance. From that moment on, Schwarzenegger’s Conan has our attention. He stands up to witches and cults. He seeks treasure and adventure, and revenge. He is Conan the Barbarian. The gladiator. The thief. The lover and king. The man who defeated the Wheel of Pain.

So guess what I rewatched yesterday. I think I’ll rewatch The Northman now, too.