Bizarro Conan Part 1: Conan's prayer to Crom.

I've dabbled in fanfiction myself, and I highly recommend it to any aspiring writers; by getting a handle on the characters in a fandom you feel a great deal of affection for, it helps you with your own original characters and characterizing them consistently. And if you're out to write a good fic that is consistent with what the media depicts, sometimes you'll struggle with whether or not a character would do this or that. And sometimes when torn between two ideas, you can come up with an equal case for both being consistent. But in the "Bizarro Conan" stories, I will illustrate that there is no room for interpretation; the character and world in the 82 movie behave and are depicted in the exact opposite way Robert E. Howard portrayed them.

 So let's look at one of the more famous bits of dialogue from the film, the moment where Conan and Subotai are preparing to battle with Thulsa Doom's riders:

"Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, Crom... so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!"

That's actually a well written little speech. And never let it be said that Milius can't write great dialogue- witness Quint's speech in Jaws or Apocalypse Now (which is why it mystifies me that people claim that Milius intended with Conan the Barbarian that he wanted to tell a story mainly through images; I find it odd that the more experienced actors, Max Von Sydow and James Earl Jones, get lengthy speeches, whereas the inexperienced bodybuilder(arnold), dancer(Sandahl Bergman) and surfer(Gerry Lopez) get much shorter speeches despite far greater screen time)

What are the literary Conan's thoughts on praying to Crom? We happen to have a very telling passage from "The Queen of the Black Coast" to tell us exactly how he feels about that:

"[The] chief [of the gods of Cimmeria] is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods? ... There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people. In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity."

And notice how Conan speaks a little bit about what he expects from the afterlife; how does this compare with the movie Conan's expectations for what lies Beyond?

Conan: What gods do you pray to?
Subotai: I pray to the four winds... and you?
Conan: To Crom... but I seldom pray to him, he doesn't listen.
Subotai: [chuckles] What good is he then? Ah, it's just as I've always said.
Conan: He is strong! If I die, I have to go before him, and he will ask me, "What is the riddle of steel?" If I don't know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me. That's Crom, strong on his mountain!

So they got one thing right- Crom lives on a mountain. Crom has no time for bullshit riddles, and he won't reward any of his people for being able to answer one.

Do I hope you see what I am trying to accomplish with this blog; despite the title of this blog, it is about much more than the fact that Arnold himself was unsuited for the role; it is about how his casting was merely symptomatic of the approach that was taken for this film. 

Hello there

Let me start by saying I'm a relative newb to REH's Hyborian Age tales. But even before then, from talking to my older brother(who has been a Howard fan far longer than I've been alive), I knew something was wrong with the way John Milius' 1982 film depicted Conan, just from faint rumblings from the online REH fan community. And then I read "Beyond the Black River," and realized how terrible this awesome movie is as an adaptation of REH's work, and how most of all, Arnold Schwarzenegger sucked as Conan. The damage this movie has wrought upon the public perception of the character continues to this day, and with a new movie on the horizon for release next year that will likely compound this, I figured it was time to write this.

I plan to hit on a few points:

1. Overused tropes that Hollywood insists on working into movies(not just Conan), such as the murdered family, angst, and the fate of the world being at stake as opposed to a more intimate story.

2. The idiocy of some of Milius' ideas (I prefer to think of them as more fairy tale like than REH's sword and sorcery), such as how pushing a wheel every day for over a decade will give the Nietzschean a bodybuilder physique while killing the weaker ones.

3. How terrible Arnold was as Conan, not the least of which was his size (I've heard some people actually use the fact that he was too muscular to properly wield a sword when cast in this movie as a point in his favor!)

4. How this movie has left people with a distorted perception of the character, and what REH wrote.


Frankly, I am willing to bet Al Harron's "Blog That Time Forgot" probably covers the same ground in much broader strokes; Al also discusses misconceptions about the man himself oftentimes as well, as well as the sword and sorcery genre as a whole. But I'm going to focus more on the Arnold movie. Sometimes it will only be a quote from the movie and a quote from the source material (like where Conan says only fools would pray to Crom) to contrast, some days I will go more into depth. But I have much to say on the matter, so stay tuned.

Al's Blog