Veteran director Richard Fleischer was brought on to replace Milius, with only Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mako Iwamatsu reprising their roles. To fill out the cast, singer and pop culture icon Grace Jones was brought on to play the female warrior Zula, and basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, in what would be his only film role, played the guardsman Bombaata.
Character actor Tracey Walter played Malak, an obvious replacement for Subotai. The film is fun, especially for young audiences, but it doesn't come anywhere close to being as good as its predecessor.
It's more memorable for the images of Schwarzenegger's Conan surrounded by the statuesque Jones, the absurdly tall Chamberlain, and the tiny D'Abo than for anything about its story or its set pieces.
Wrestler Andre the Giant , who would go on to win hearts in The Princess Bride , makes a memorable albeit masked appearance as a big monster. If ever there was a movie that cast most of its stars for the size and shape of their bodies, it's Conan the Destroyer.
In , Robert E. Howard's gruff and violent barbarian completed his long transformation into a character for children with the debut of Conan the Adventurer , an animated series from Sunbow productions, the studio behind such Hasbro-based productions as G. Joe , Transformers , and Jem and the Holograms. Conan's animated adventurers would not prove quite as successful as those series, lasting two seasons before being rebooted as Conan and the Young Warriors , which in turn only ran for 12 episodes.
This version of Conan was friendlier and had a more conventionally heroic morality. In one episode, for example, he refuses to join a pirate crew because stealing is wrong, whereas Howard's Conan or even Marvel's Conan would steal if it served his purposes, and even joined forces with pirates in the course of his adventures. This Conan led a team of adventurers created for the show. Zula was an African warrior similar to his Destroyer namesake, but male this time around. Jezmine was Conan's love interest, a former thief who'd reformed to join this law-abiding barbarian.
Greywolf was a young wizard whose sibling had been turned into wolves, and he hoped to turn them back. Finally Snagg was a Viking-esque warrior from a rival nation to Conan's. The main villain of the series was Wrath-Amon, leader of a Set-worshiping snake cult who earned Conan's ire primarily by turning his parents to stone.
In , Conan returned to TV for another series with the same title as his cartoon, Conan the Adventurer , but this time in live action. This was the era of the popular Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and its spinoff Xena: Warrior Princess , and Conan the Adventurer was an obvious attempt at achieving something similar — but it lacked those shows' charm, and ultimately their success. With German bodybuilder-turned-actor Rolf Mueller as Conan, the series drew more from the Schwarzenegger movies than the original stories, but the character of Conan drifted even further from his source material.
Mueller's Conan was friendly and jovial, and his power came more from pure brute strength than any particular skill or intelligence. Like in the animated series, he led a whole party of adventurers, featuring Danny Woodburn as the clever dwarf Otli, Robert McRay as a deaf warrior named Zzeben who communicated with sign language, T. Storm as the capoeira warrior Bayu, and Aly Dunne as Karella, the latest incarnation of Conan's fiery love interest.
Conan and his companions didn't even wander the world in this series. They spent their time attempting to free Cimmeria from the evil conquerer Hissah Zul Jeremy Kemp , who was also responsible for the death of Conan's parents. Furthermore, the Cimmerian god Crom is no longer an absent, distant deity, but instead a central and active force in Conan's life.
Conan the Adventurer only ran for one season. In , Dark Horse Comics obtained the rights to publish Conan, and over the next 13 years the barbarian was featured in a number of series which hewed closer to Robert E. Howard's original stories than any adaptation in recent memory. The first Dark Horse series, which was simply titled Conan , ran for 50 issues. Although Conan's adventures often result in him performing heroic feats, his motive is more than often his own survival, enrichment or rise to power and he thus displays many of the characteristics of an anti-hero.
While uncommon, the name is still used in Ireland. Its etymology is ambiguous. Some sources e. Others e. Given Conan the Cimmerian's career, both are apt. Conan is darkly tanned, has "sullen" or "smoldering" blue eyes, a "mane" of long black hair, and is scarred - Howard mentions most often the scarring on his face.
Contrary to many modern illustrations, Conan is hairy:. He is exceptionally tall and strong. Howard is never explicit in his stories, but in a letter to P. Schuyler Miller he wrote:. Conan's height and weight as an adult are subject to speculation - some estimates make him 6' 6" 1. This tallies with a comment Howard wrote in another letter [citation needed] that his crusader character Cormac Fitzgeoffrey is a double of Conan and that Cormac is 6' 2" and pounds.
It is also of note that the blade of Conan's sword is described as being 5 feet long, likely making for a 6 foot sword including the grip, in the earlier story, " The Scarlet Citadel ". He uses it with one hand as well as both hands with ease, therefore it is possible that Howard imagined him quite taller at the character's beginning. Or simply he used different swords during his adventures. In Howard's tales no human is ever described as stronger than Conan, although several are mentioned as taller such as the strangler Baal-Pteor or of larger bulk.
Although Conan is muscular, Howard frequently compares his silence, suppleness, agility, way of moving to that of a panther - see, for instance, " The Servants of Bit-Yakin " "Jewels of Gwahlur" , Beyond the Black River or " Rogues in the House " - or another feline:.
His garb is very often a loincloth or breeches and sandals, and his weapon a sword of some description, depending on his fortunes and location. During his reign as King of Aquilonia , Conan was:. He loses none of his vigour with age with the above description coming when he is in his mid 40's.
Though several later authors have referred to Conan as "Germanic-looking," Howard imagined the Cimmerians as a proto- Celtic people with mostly dark hair and blue or grey eyes. Whether you want to read it all as a fun homage or an early attempt at a shared universe is up to you.
Sprague de Camp. Chances are, the image of Conan you have in your head right now owes a lot to artist Frank Frazetta: His version of the famous barbarian—complete with rippling muscles, pulsating veins, and copious amounts of sword swinging—would come to define the character for generations.
Howard was alive so he could have seen what he did with his character. Thomas pled his case, and Lee agreed to give Conan one last shot. But this time instead of the book coming out every month, it would be every two months.
The plan worked, and soon sales were again on the rise and the book would stay in publication until , again as a monthly. This success gave way to the Savage Sword of Conan , an oversized black-and-white spinoff magazine from Marvel that was aimed at adult audiences.
It, too, was met with immense success, lasting from to The Conan stories take place on Earth, but in the mythical created by Howard Hyborian Age, between the time of the sinking of Atlantis and the rise of the known ancient civilizations. Howard devised the Hyborian Age to fit in with his previous and less-well-known tales of Kull, which were set at the time of Atlantis. Arnold Schwarzenegger was originally to have reprised the role of Conan in this film, as the Red Sonja character was a spin-off of the original Conan novels.
Ultimately, a new character was created who was essentially Conan in everything but name. This is a well known riddle from ancient times. The answer is a human. A comb.
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