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.
