Conan the Barbarian get the Reboot Treatment

[The Hitman]

http://www.majorspoilers.com/archives/17037.htm/

This guy is huge. HUGE!

[GogglesPizanno]

As a HUGE conan fan, Im just happy to see it finally getting made. I don't have high hopes about it not sucking, but as long as they try and remain faithful to the books, and dont soften it up to pander to the PG-13 crowd, I will totally be there.

[lugaru]

Same here... I'm a huge fan of the original and of conan comics but I have found that some remakes are good and the ones that suck fall off my radar so fast that I barely notice them, so bring on the remakes.

[BWPS]

That's really really gross. What do you even call those muscles that are sticking out of his sides? I think they might be tumors.


And then he could say "IT'S NOT A TUMOR" and throw me into the sun.

[yell0w_lantern]

appear to be latissimus dorsi

[lugaru]

Ok, I finally clicked on the image and man that guy is over-built. Somebody should send him a copy of "bigger, stronger, faster", a documentary on steroids and american hero worship.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1151309/

[BentonGrey]

Yeah, Schwarzenegger was big, but that guy is TOO big.  Still, if it were just Conan the Barbarian, it wouldn't need a reboot at all.  That movie is beyond awesome.  However....Destroyer stinks out loud.  Not sure what I think about this yet.

[Ares_God_of_War]

I believe that's an older picture of Roland. Like Arnold, Roland is Austrian and a body builder. In fact Roland played Arnold in a bio pic and also Roland was the body model of the T-800 in the new Terminator film with Bale. He was also in a TV series called Son of the Beach that was produced by Howard Stern. I dont believe Roland is that huge anymore

[Camma]

Is it really a remake or is going to be another conan story?  I would like a different story, as Benton said the original CtB was an awesome movie that needs no remaking.

Does this mean the dude in the picture will eventually be the governor of California?

[GogglesPizanno]

The problem nowadays is that remake, reboot, re-imagine and sequel all basically mean the same sorta thing -- it just depends on what marketing demographic you are shooting for. Remake implies trying to take a smaller/cult film to a broader audience. Reboot is targeting a younger audience than the original did to double the fanbase. Re-Imagine means we wanted to make another movie, but knew we couldn't get it made without connecting it to a licensed property somehow and sequel is for appealing to your existing fan base. They are all shades of the same coin.

So really they can call this whatever they want. Its just another Conan movie. Just don't suck as bad as Destroyer did and I'll be happy.

[thalaw2]

I'd rather see a new story than a bad remake.  The first CtB was good because Arny kept his mouth shut through most of it and action told the story.

[Jakew]

I'd be happy with a decent sequel to the first film. I honestly have no interest in seeing a remake.

I mean, the first one is good because it has that cheesey, B-movie element to it ... it's kind of impossible to replicate that.

[Reepicheep]

Huh. Where did they find my photo album?

[GogglesPizanno]

Huh. Where did they find my photo album?

Crom took it...

[herodad1]

re-boot or new story.dont care.the guy looks alot like arnold and as long as its done right with a rated R  i'm there.big CONAN fan.loved the first movie.i'd like them to do a new story.at the end of the conans he's old sitting in the chair, but...thats another story.CROM!!!

[BentonGrey]

re-boot or new story.dont care.the guy looks alot like arnold and as long as its done right with a rated R  i'm there.big CONAN fan.loved the first movie.i'd like them to do a new story.at the end of the conans he's old sitting in the chair, but...thats another story.CROM!!!

Yeah, I'd like to hear the story of "king by his own hand, but his crown sat upon a troubled brow..."  Does anyone remember a few years back when they were talking about doing that, and the Rock was supposed to come in as Ahhhnold's son?

[daglob]

I'd rather see a Conan TV series on something like the SciFi channel, and have them adapt some of the original R. E. Howard stories. The first movie was an adaptation of several Howard and a non-Howard story, trying to get the best parts of later stories and sandwiching them into the first movie. While I enjoyed BOTH movies (and the DeCamp, Carter, Nyberg, Carpenter, et cetera pastiches, and even that pitiful little series), I'd really LOVE to see adaptations of "Tower of the Elephant", "Devil in Iron", "Shadows in Zamboula", "Queen of the Black Coast", and "A Witch Shall Be Born".

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind seeing a new fantasy adventure with Conan in it; wouldn't mind that at all...

[GogglesPizanno]

I'd rather see a Conan TV series on something like the SciFi channel, and have them adapt some of the original R. E. Howard stories.

I'm all for straight up Howard adaptations (though good luck toning down the violence, and sexism/racism), but mentioning Conan and Sci Fi Channel (or is it SyFy now) in the same sentence is like Blasphemy.

Seeing how Conan has fared on TV is scary.
Seeing what the Sci Fi channel does to adaptations and established characters is scary (How soon we forget Flash Gordon).

Putting them both together.... (Shudder).

[steamteck]

Gee, I liked "Destroyer" about 100 times more than the first movie which really didn't seem to get Conan on any level to me. Pretentious and ponderous was my feeling. destroyer was hokey but it felt way more like Conan.


Straight up adaptations would be beyond awesome. Actually just think how much better many   similar things adapted to movies would be if they just did that. Tarzan for example.

[BentonGrey]

Gee, I liked "Destroyer" about 100 times more than the first movie which really didn't seem to get Conan on any level to me. Pretentious and ponderous was my feeling. destroyer was hokey but it felt way more like Conan.

*Stares Blankly*

[daglob]

Gee, I liked "Destroyer" about 100 times more than the first movie which really didn't seem to get Conan on any level to me. Pretentious and ponderous was my feeling. destroyer was hokey but it felt way more like Conan.

*Stares Blankly*

It was more like the comic book Conan, Benton.

[GogglesPizanno]

Personally nothing about The Schwarzenegger Conan's were that "Conan-y" to me. Sure he was big, and went through the motions, but they wrote the character too dumbed down and I always felt like in comparison to the actual character it was based on, we were watching the adventures of Conan's younger, slightly 'special' cousin.

However the first film kinda felt like the Hyborian age to me (or as close as they have come). The books always evoked a sense of exotic locales seperated by vast sprawling areas of Nothing and wilderness, and i got that to a degree form the first film. Plus I think the whole Operatic feel of the pacing and the soundtrack etc... helped a lot of the shortcomings by giving it a very distinct tone.

Destroyer removed all that I liked about the first film, moved the location to a Studio parking lot and added Grace Jones... Sure maybe the character made a few steps forward, but the film took the whole Conan experience about 100 steps backward (for me). I tried watching it a few years ago, and couldn;t do it. It made me cringe too much. I'd rather watch Krull. That's Fantasy cheese done right!

[daglob]

Howard always said that his heroes were too dumb to do anyting but fight their way out of a situation. All you have  do is read a few stories and you know that he was pulling someone's leg. Conan is not a genius on the order of Doc Savage, Doc Doom, or Reed Richards, but he is a fairly smart man; often smarter than his adversaries (intelligence and knowledge are not the same thing, but Conan had a good bit of both). They think that an unschooled barbarian is no match for them, and guess whose head ends up on a pike by the last page?

Conan was "dumbed down" in both movies, and it made me wonder if the writer/producer/whatever actually read the entire Conan series (only 24 stories, as I recall, including one novel and some novellas). In the first movie, they had pieces of Tower of the Elephant, Queen of the Black Coast, and A Witch Shall Be Born, Red Nails, and Thulsa Doom lifted from a King Kull story (and I wonder about The Thing on the Crypt). The story has nothing to do with Conan's life, being made up from whole cloth, but isn't really bad other than trying to squeeze all the best parts of a the stories into the first movie.
The second movie was also "non-canonical", and was just a story that could have happened to any Hyborian Age barbarian. It does kind of harken to the"Conan: Man of Destiny" thing that DeCamp and Carter used sometimes, but that's not really bad.

But, as Goggles said, the first movie felt more like it was set in an exotic time, when men were men and the women were glad of it. What was it, shot in Spain and North Africa? You could believe that it was set in some age unknown to history. The Second movie lacked this; it wasn't even as exotic as a bad adaptation of The Arabian Nights.

Stll, it was as much like Conan as some of the pastiches.

[GogglesPizanno]

Actually for some really interesting reading, over the last few years they put out three volumes comprising the complete Howard Conan stories (They were popular enough that they put out several Robert E Howard volumes afterwords with his non Conan pulp work which I need to get). Each of them include a few early drafts of the stories in that volume as well as some excerpts of letters and correspondences Howard wrote to his friends (including HP Lovecraft, which I always found really interesting that they were good frineds) and some essays.

If you are a Conan fan, they are very much worth it. When you read them all along with some of supplemental material, you really can see how Howard had a recurring theme that society and "culture" were really the stupid ones and that the wild "dumb" savage with his natural instincts was in fact the smarter one and would outwit and survive every single time.

[daglob]

Been a Conan fan since I read "A Witch Will Be Born" in The Mighty Swordsmen edited by H.S. Santesson (It also had a Fafhrd and Mouser story).

My employment has been such that I haven't been able to get the newer volumes of stuff from Del Rey, but I have stuff from Lancer, Sphere, Centaur, Ace, Berkley, Bantam, Zebra, and a couple of British collections. And I got a buncha Tor pastiches.

I have three or four volumes of HPL's letters, and a couple of chapbooks of REH's . I've wanted to get the Del Rey books. Maybe one of these applications I've put in the past two weeks will bear fruit...

[steamteck]

Gee, I liked "Destroyer" about 100 times more than the first movie which really didn't seem to get Conan on any level to me. Pretentious and ponderous was my feeling. destroyer was hokey but it felt way more like Conan.

*Stares Blankly*

It was more like the comic book Conan, Benton.

True, but it was way more like the comic Conan than the first one was like the literary Conan. we needed fast action and blood and thunder done properly. we needed a towering larger than life indomitable barbarian. Not this passive unspeaking guy. A fierce primitiveness was needed that was way lacking in the movie.