Conan’s popularity

In this post I’ll try to explain the popularity of “Conan the Barbarian”.

 

Sword and sorcery

“Conan the Barbarian” just might be the best known film in the “sword and sorcery” genre. It had both a commercial cinematic success as well as future successful home-video releases.

On the surface level “Conan” is a very appealing movie. It has all the tropes of “sword and sorcery”: a mighty hero, beautiful love interest, a faithful friend of the hero, a quest for revenge, wizards and demons. But I believe it was the movie’s deeper themes that made it so successful. Those themes being:

Conan’s identity quest – He was raised with the “Riddle of steel”, and for all those years he was thinking about it. Only at the end of his quest did he finally came up with the answer to the Riddle. Conan was able to become his own man, with his own answers and ideas.

Thulsa’s religious and political manipulation – Thulsa Doom is one the most interesting villains I have seen in movies. He starts of as just a robber and murderer, but becomes a powerful cult leader. I believe the director John Millius was trying to convey a message about the almost inhuman cruelty of political and religious leaders, who exploit their followers for personal gains. Millius is seen as a rather right-wing figure, so it is no wonder that the villain in his movie is a fake liberal/pacifist cult leader who preaches goodness but does the most evil things. Unfortunately, Thulsa has parallels with many political and religious leaders in real life.

 

Nietzsche’s Conan

Some folks like to accuse “Conan” of being a fascist movie as it opens with a quote from Nietzsche. But “Conan” doesn’t promote a political system of fascism. If anything Conan kills the only guy we could accuse of being a fascist, Thulsa Doom. He is the only one with a private army and delusional followers.

No, I believe Conan is an expression of Millius’s right-wing philosophy of transcending one’s limitations and conquering your enemies, not ruling over the brainwashed like Thulsa does. Conan manages to overcome various obstacles and never falls into Thulsa’s trap to become one of his followers. It is his strength of will that we admire, much more than his sword skills.

I can’t remember where I read it, but someone on the internet said that Conan is a perfect movie for adolescent males. I think this might actually be true. .  It gives them the antidote to the modern political-correctness and pro-feminist attitudes which pretty much demonize anything masculine in our culture. Although the message of the movie can be seen as just “Might is Right” it is a lot better than “Might is very Wrong and Politically Incorrect”.

Also it is a fantasy that a lot of  boys have: to be a mighty warrior rescuing princesses, having gold and jewels etc.

Conan might be seen as the necessary mythological movie for young men.

 

Conan’s soundtrack

One of the reasons the movie is so popular has to be the awesome soundtrack by Basil Poledouris.

 

 

This post concludes my analysis of “Conan the Barbarian”. It is movie a lot of people underestimate and think it is just a stupid movie set in a made-up pre-historical mythological era. However it is a very cleverly made movie with lots of ideas  that ring true even today, some 35 years after the movie was originally released.

The movie had so much more to analyse than I thought at first. It is possible that in the following weeks/months I will be revisiting and updating certain parts of this analysis.