Arnold Schwarzenegger was already a celebrity by the early 1980s from his bodybuilding career, TV appearances, and featured screen time in the popular documentary Pumping Iron, but his attempts at acting didn’t really take off until he landed the lead in Conan the Barbarian. A screen vehicle well-tailored to both his strengths and limitations, the sword-and-sorcery epic was a box office hit that would quickly launch Schwarzenegger to become one of the biggest movie stars in the world (in multiple senses of that phrase).
Conan the Barbarian is also remembered today as the second iconic villain role for the great James Earl Jones, whose vocal performance had of course brought Darth Vader so memorably to life in Star Wars and its sequels. Playing the evil wizard and cult leader Thulsa Doom allowed the actor to demonstrate that he could be just as wicked while showing his face as well.
| Title: | Conan the Barbarian |
| Year of Release: | 1982 |
| Director: | John Milius |
| Watched On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | Blu-ray Netflix Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
Nominally based on the series of pulp fantasy stories published in the 1930s by author Robert E. Howard, but more directly inspired by the Marvel Comics adaptation that resurrected the character in the 1970s, plans for a film version of Conan the Barbarian were initially developed by Hollywood producer Edward R. Pressman (Phantom of the Paradise) with a screenplay written by Oliver Stone. When it became clear that Stone’s ambitious script would be too expensive to film, Pressman sold the project to Italian mogul Dino De Laurentiis, who hired John Milius (then a recent Oscar nominee for Apocalypse Now) to rewrite, pare it down, and direct the movie.
Schwarzenegger, who’d been cast and put on retainer by Pressman, stayed with the project through the transition. Milius agreed that the bodybuilder’s muscular physique was a good match for the famed Conan paintings by pop artist Frank Frazetta. At that stage of his career, Schwarzenegger had an instinctual ability to pose for the camera, but not quite as much skill at delivering dialogue through his thick accent. Fortunately, the part could be adjusted to focus more on the former and less on the latter.
One of the main qualities Milius brought to the film was an insistence on taking the material seriously. His vision for Conan would have no camp or goofy humor. He treated this fantasy story about a beefcake warrior’s ascendance from slave to thief to hero as a piece of grand literary mythmaking on par with Beowulf or The Lord of the Rings. His Conan the Barbarian was also an unabashedly masculine movie filled with bloody violence, so much that the director had to recut it multiple times before release to avoid an X rating.
Audiences of the day ate this up, especially young male audiences. The film was a major box office success around the world and signified that Arnold Schwarzenegger had officially arrived as a movie star with a promising career on cinema screens ahead of him. Critics, however, were not as convinced. Reviews at the time couldn’t seem to reconcile the disconnect between what was perceived as a bunch of silly pulp claptrap being delivered with such earnestness and even reverence. Even years later, debate persisted over whether the film was an adventure masterpiece or an overwrought cheesefest.
Over time, critical consensus on Conan the Barbarian has seemed to swing in the movie’s favor, and it’s now generally regarded as a genre classic. Even so, the film is not without its flaws. The plot is pretty thin, the production values sometimes dodgy, and Schwarzenegger’s line readings often stilted. The violence that so shocked the ratings board in 1982 is pretty tame by modern standards. (In most cases, it’s quite obvious the swords are not actually connecting with the victims they’re swung at.) The story’s quite sexist (even rapey) at times, and Milius’s attempts to infuse it with a semblance of philosophy about “the secret of steel” is mostly a bunch of macho, Right-wing bullshit.
For my part, I enjoy Conan the Barbarian and think Milius made the right call with the serious tone. Strong supporting performances by James Earl Jones and Max von Sydow counterbalance Schwarzenegger’s inexperience, and the stirring Basil Poledouris score helps tremendously to sell the story as a grander epic than the action on screen can necessarily live up to. However, personally, I wouldn’t rank it in the top half of my favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. I have no patience at all for the lousy sequel, nor any desire to ever see the failed 2011 remake with Jason Mamoa. I have no interest in Conan as a property or franchise beyond this one film.
The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Conan the Barbarian has long been a popular title on home video, if not necessarily a great showcase for video quality on any format. The movie was produced on a tight budget, one consequence of which is that it was photographed on drab and grainy film stocks using the cheapest available anamorphic camera lenses that producer Dino De Laurentiis could recycle from previous projects. Although the 2011 Blu-ray edition from Universal scored respectable reviews at the time, looking back at that high-def video master (which I found streaming on Netflix, though it appears to be leaving that platform soon), the studio clearly hit it with a fair amount of Digital Noise Reduction and artificial sharpening to try to massage it into some watchable condition.
In early 2024, boutique label Arrow Video licensed the film for new releases on both Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD. The latter was released first in a Limited Edition two-movie set called The Conan Chronicles, paired with its inferior 1984 sequel Conan the Destroyer. A few months later, standalone Special Editions of each film were released individually. Because I have no interest in Destroyer, I opted to buy just Barbarian on its own. The two-disc package contains three versions of the movie seamlessly-branched on a 4K UHD: the 127- minute U.S. Theatrical Cut, the 129-minute International Cut, and a 130-minute Extended Cut that first premiered on DVD in 2000. (My viewing focused on the International Cut.) The second disc is a Blu-ray reserved only for bonus features. Because no standard Blu-ray copy of the movie itself is provided, I had to take screenshots for this article from the older transfer on Netflix.
I won’t pretend to be an expert on Conan the Barbarian. I’ll concede that Arrow’s 4K master may well be the best it’s ever looked on home video. Even so, the approximately 2.35:1 image is still fairly soft and grainy. It doesn’t help that, in addition to the many process shots and optical blow-ups, many shots simply have poor focal issues due to the lenses used. Here or there, an occasional scene will come through as impressively sharp, but I tend to doubt the movie ever really has 4K worth of detail. Thankfully, the Arrow transfer appears to be free of any overt signs of DNR or other unwanted processing.
Colors are decent for the early 1980s, if understated. Contrast is mostly flat, and the application of HDR is subtle. These aren’t necessarily criticisms so much as observations for where to set your expectations. I have no idea whether or not the underlying film elements could yield better results than this in the future. For now, the disc is very watchable.
The movie’s soundtrack is offered in both the original mono (encoded as DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0) or a brand new Dolby Atmos remix. I’ve seen other publications lavish praise on the Atmos track, and I have to say, I’m completely baffled by that. I think it sounds awful. Although, yes, the Basil Poledouris score is spread to more speakers and bass has been goosed a bit, the entire track sounds very dull, rolled-off, and overly noise-reduced. Sound effects are suppressed low in the mix, and the choir vocals in the score are practically inaudible in many scenes.
The original mono, meanwhile, may be a little bright on the high end, but is much crisper and livelier. Sound effects, brassy instruments in the score, and those choir vocals are much clearer and better defined.* Bass and dynamic range are negligible, unfortunately, but I’d still take the mono for this movie over the Atmos any day.
*Note that, in my room, I prefer to listen to mono soundtracks split to my front Left and Right main speakers, as that’s how I get the best results. I suspect that many listeners who find the mono track disappointing probably leave their A/V receivers set for Dolby Pro Logic or a similar processing mode (Dolby Surround Upmixer, etc.) that will collapse mono audio to the center speaker – which can be problematic if the speakers are not all evenly-matched and the center is less capable than the side channels.
Disc 2 is loaded with a bounty of extras. Many of them are recycled from previous video releases, including the hour-long Conan Unchained making-of documentary by Laurent Bouzereau, archive interviews, featurettes, deleted scenes, trailers, and image galleries. New to Arrow are several pieces on production art, costumes, special effects, editing, and an interview in which filmmaker Robert Eggers (The Northman) expresses his appreciation for Conan.
Related
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
- James Earl Jones
- Dino De Laurentiis (producer)
- Ron Cobb (production design)
Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the Netflix streaming edition of the film grabbed off a web browser and are used for illustration purposes only.
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