A new trailer of the upcoming fantasy movie Conan the Barbarian has been released. It is the first real trailer with actual footage of the the movie. It looks quite impressive with a lot of action, which of course is to be expected of a Conan movie, but it remains to be seen if the story is any good.
Conan the Barbarian will be released to theatres on August 19, 2011. Jason Momoa, Khal Drogo in the fantasy TV series Game of Thrones, will star as Conan.
See the trailer below!
After a year that has not been too special on the fantasy front, I really don’t know where to start off discussing the short term future of fantasy; there are simply too many great new things happening in the fantasy genre during 2011!
Novels that will surely be amazing, endings of series that have taken decades to create and have held millions in their grip. Blockbuster movies and a television series that can only blow our minds.
Here are my personal hightlights: the best and most anticipated fantasy titles of the year to come!
Books and Series
The novel I am looking most forward to is The Crippled God by Steven Erikson. It is the last installment of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series and should be several hundreds of pages filled with the resolution of all mysteries that Erikson has created during the series. Allthough, knowing Erikson a bit, much will probably remain unsolved.
Close second on my list, mostly because we will have to wait till the end of September before it will be released, is A Dance with Dragons, the fifth novel in George R.R. Martin‘s already legendary A Song of Ice & Fire series. Together with the first season of Game of Thrones (see below), this novel will put a huge spotlight on the fantasy genre.
Soon available (in March) is the latest book of Patrick Rothfuss called The Wise Man’s Fear. After the succes of The Name of the Wind, the anticipation for this new novel is very high.
Last book I want to mention is A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, the last installment in The Wheel of Time series. I somewhat lost interest in the series over the years but for many fans this novel will be the most anticipated of the year and it is bound to be high in the New York Times bestsellers list for a long time. It is expected for November 2011.
Movies
Several interesting fantasy movies will be released in theatres in 2011 so there is a lot to look forward to but none of them are guaranteed to be very good. The most promising one is the last movie in the Potter series: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II, set to premiere in July. I am not that much of a fan of the Potter movies but the first Deathly Hallows movie was quite good so I am expecting a lot from part II.
The comedy fantasy movie Your Highness can go either way. Or it will be a hilarious ridicule of fantasy movies or it will be a annoying succession of desperately-trying-to-be-funny fantasy scenes. Your Highness will be in theatres on April 8.
Another movie I am not so sure about is Thor, with a story based on the Marvel comics. There is a good chance of this being a movie solely revolving around action scenes with the story having no depth and the characters being flat. Thor will premiere late April/ early May.
Last in this category of doubtfull movies is the remake of Conan the Barbarian. They will have to make an extremely good movie to come near the “level” of the original movie and to shake of the criticism and cynicism that fans will surely have. We will have to wait a while for Conan as it will not be in theatres until August.
One movie I am personally definitely not looking forward to is the first of the two Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn movies that will be released in November 2011.
Game of Thrones
I simply cannot say it enough: Game of Thrones is starting in 2011! On April 17, the first episode will air on HBO in the US and on Sky in the UK and like almost everybody with a heart for fantasy, I love Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire series and am highly anticipating this television series.
As mentioned before, 2010 was not the greatest of years for the fantasy genre but 2011 will surely make us forget all about it. In addition, we will have the anticipation of the movie The Hobbit that is scheduled for 2012…
Conan the Barbarian is the classic sword & sorcery movie, based on the stories of Robert E. Howard, that provided Arnold Schwarzenegger with his first major film role.
The movie tells the story of a young boy living in a mythical age whose family is murdered by an evial warlord. Conan becomes a slave, grows up to be a strong warrior on and goes looking for vengeance.
Over the years, Conan the Barbarian has become one of the best known and most influential fantasy movies.
The movie
The movie has quite a reasonable story and contains lots of fighting, magic and even some nudity. The acting of the main characters is not exactly topnotch but Conan was the breakthrough of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
During the Hyborian Age in the land of Cimmeria, the entire village of the young Conan, including his mother and father, is slaughtered in a raid led by the evil Thulsa Doom. Conan grows up a slave but once a free man he picks up the trail of Thulsa Doom. With the help of two thieves (one will become his lover) he is eventually able to defeat Doom, who by then has become the ruler of a large cult. After killing Doom, Conan is crowned king.
Themes & Style
Conan is the definition of the sword & sorcery genre. It is the classical fight between good and evil in which Conan has to go on a long journey and has to kill scores of enemies until he can finally defeat this archnemesis. With wizards and witches who control magic and can morph into animals, the influence of fantasy is strong but not strong enough to deny Conan his revenge.
The author, his books and other related works
Robert E. Howard is one of the great fantasy authors of all time. Conan is his most famous creation who centered in quite a few of his stories but Howard created several more characters including Solomon Kane on which also a movie was based.
The movie Conan the Destroyer and the television series Conan the Adventurer were created after the succes of Conan the Barbarian but both failed to live up to the first movie.
Recently, the MMORPG Age of Conan was launched, which is based on Howard’s Conan and is doing quite well so far.
Born on January 22, 1906 in Texax, Robert Ervin Howard became famous in the world of fantasy and literature as the the creator of Conan the Barbarian and the Sword & Sorcery fantasy genre.
Howard grew up in a booming oil town in Texas where he also spent most of his life. He was very interested in becoming a writer since he was young and starting writing when he was in his teens. Although he had a difficult start, Howard became a popular author and was able to live from his writing. Howard wrote stories and novels, mostly surrounding fantasy and western themes with his Conan stories as his pinnacle. He became friends with H.P. Lovecraft, another fantasy and science fiction author, best known for his novel The Call of Cthulhu.
After hearing that his mother had slipped into a coma and was about to die, Robert E. Howard committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. He was aged only 30.
Conan and other works
In his short life Howard has written quite a few stories and short novels. Most of these were horror and fantasy related but later on in his life he also started writing western stories.
By far the most famous character Howard created was Conan the Barbarian. After the stories of Kull were not received well, Howard changed the character into Conan and changed the stories to become more dark and brutal. They show the downsides of civilication like corruption and oppression. Conan, on the contrary, is honest, straightforward, speaks his mind and does what is right.
Over the years Howard wrote serveral Conan stories, with his main outlet for his writing being the magazine Weird tales. Howard also published several novels containing one or more Conan stories.
Conan was always depicted as the barbaric warrior who, depending on the story, saved a damsel in distress or fought an evil oppressor. Howard’s worlds are full of violence in which magic is used by Conan’s enemies.
This type of hero and storyline inspired many other authors and were the basis for what we now know as Sword & Sorcery. Throughout the twentieth century Howard’s work was more and more seen as important and influential literature, making him one to be considered as one of the best fantasy authors of all time. His influence and fame grew even more by the movies that were made based on his stories and characters, especially the cult movies Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer and Red Sonja, all starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
By creating the character of Conan the Barbarian and Sword & Sorcery, Howard has had enormous effect on the fantasy genre, influencing many authors even to this day.
