Arrivederci, Dino: Dino de Laurentiis, 1919 - 2010

And so ends a controversial, but influential career.

De Laurentiis is certainly a divisive and polarizing figure. His vast resume is clear, and his financial input has led to many successful films, even some cult classics.  He's certainly well known for the many fantasy, science fiction and action-packed movies.  However, his infamous creative ideas have resulted in cinematic disasters like Dune, Orca, the first remake of King Kong and... well, let's just say his films' quality is all over the map.

Conan the Barbarian may well have suffered a similar fate if de Laurentiis had his way, with rumours of his desire for a pop soundtrack instead of Poledouris' phenomenal score scaring the bejeezus out of me.  Luckily, John Milius isn't the sort of guy to kowtow to Hollywood types - unluckily, it means he wasn't asked onboard for Conan the Destroyer, and Richard Fleischer seemed a lot more likely to adopt de Laurentiis' ideas.  What we got was a more family-friendly Conan - one that Roger Ebert seemed to advocate and even prefer over Conan the Barbarian - and arguably, one that led to the crashing halt of the Conan film franchise.  Then Red Sonja came along and soured Arnold on the very idea of doing new Conan movies.

It seems unfair to discuss the "warts and all" aspect of a man after his death, but in my mind, it just showed how powerful and influential he became.  He could make or break a film based on his input.  Sometimes his gambles paid off, sometimes they didn't: sometimes a film benefitted from his input, sometimes it didn't; sometimes he backed off and let a director do his thing, sometimes he didn't.

Whatever one thinks of the man's handling of beloved franchises like Dune, King Kong and, yes, Conan, it is clear that de Laurentiis had a part in the creation of some truly fantastic films.  Not only the magnificent, flawed, infuriating Conan the Barbarian, but the likes of Manhunter, Death Wish, Blue Velvet, Serpico, and others.  Truly a remarkable career.

Conan the Barbarian Review Reviews: Grand Illusion Cinema tackles the Conan films

Time for another Review Review.  Syon, feel free to skip this one.

Conan The Barbarian is a sweeping fantasy epic from the days when they knew how to make a sweeping fantasy epic. The formula was a simple one: hire a bodybuilder, don’t give him any dialogue, and make sure he’s packing an enormous sword; then add is an evil wizard, and a scantily clad female or two and you’ve got the recipe for pretty much every swords and sorcery epic of the 1980′s.

That's what I've been trying to tell everyone! Bodybuilders, big swords, evil wizards, scantily clad females do not make a Conan movie.  They make a Big Dumb Sword-and-Sorcery movie.  From Ator to Zardoz, those elements can be found in all the useless Sword-and-Sorcery movies out there.  How one distinguishes a Conan movie - be it Milius or Howard - from any of the others relies looking beyond those elements shared by them.

Produced by Dino De Laurentis—who was certainly no stranger to spectacle—both Conan films (Barbarian and Destroyer) embodied the larger than life ideals of the Marvel Comics. It is true that Robert E. Howard invented the character of Conan, but neither film really captures his storytelling which was all  manly action and gore-spurting combat. Instead the films attempt to humanize the mighty Cimmerian and make him more than just an iron thewed killing machine. The result is an uneven, yet awesome pair of films in which Conan falls in love, loses his lover, sexes up a werewolf, fails to be seduced by either a simpering princess, or the terrifyingly oiled-up Grace Jones, and then goes head to head with a giant rubber snake.

... Right.  Because it isn't as if we see Conan's more contemplative side in "Beyond the Black River," "The Black Stranger," "Queen of the Black Coast," "The Tower of the Elephant," or "The Phoenix on the Sword" - you know, the very first Conan story.

Now he laid down the golden stylus with which he had been laboriously scrawling on waxed papyrus, rested his chin on his fist, and fixed his smoldering blue eyes enviously on the man who stood before him. This person was occupied in his own affairs at the moment, for he was taking up the laces of his gold-chased armor, and abstractedly whistling – a rather unconventional performance, considering that he was in the presence of a king.

"Prospero," said the man at the table, "these matters of statecraft weary me as all the fighting Ihave done never did..."

"...I did not dream far enough, Prospero. When King Numedides lay dead at my feet and I tore the crown from his gory head and set it on my own, I had reached the ultimate border of my dreams. I had prepared myself to take the crown, not to hold it. In the old free days all I wanted was a sharp sword and a straight path to my enemies. Now no paths are straight and my sword is useless.

When I overthrew Numedides, then I was the Liberator – now they spit at my shadow. They have put a statue of that swine in the temple of Mitra, and people go and wail before it, hailing it as the holy effigy of a saintly monarch who was done to death by a red-handed barbarian.

When I led her armies to victory as a mercenary, Aquilonia overlooked the fact that I was a foreigner, but now she can not forgive me...."

"No, Prospero, he’s beyond my reach. A great poet is greater than any king. His songs are mightier than my scepter; for he has near ripped the heart from my breast when he chose to sing for me. I shall die and be forgotten, but Rinaldo’s songs will live for ever."

My goodness, that's a totally emotionless, robotic, iron-thewed killing machine right there, isn't it?

I'm consistently baffled by this idea that Milius' Conan "humanized" Robert E. Howard's, as if Howard's character was some sort of boring one-dimensional slayer with no depth or vulnerabilities. Have these people not read the stories, with Conan's sly self-depracating gallows humour, his philosophical outlook, his canny strategic mind, his appreciation of the arts?  Wait, don't answer that.

Not many films have managed to capture the feel of the comics that they are based on as well as the Conan films do. The characters may not be complicated, but they don’t have to be, because they are larger than life. Despite efforts to humanize them, they remain iconic. They may not be played by the greatest actors in the world, but each and every one of those actors is perfect for the role they are asked to play. We don’t want to see Conan deliver a fancy speech, we want to see him chop off Thulsa Doom’s head and roll it down the stairs like a bowling ball! We don’t want Grace Jones in a romantic roll, we want to see her hitting stunt men in the crotch with a pointy stick! All right thinking people want to see that (except for the stuntmen) and I can assure you, with Crom as my witness, that seeing these films at the Grand Illusion is one of those things that is best in life.

Oh really? You mean fancy speeches that make up some of the most fantastic dialogue in any of the Conan stories? For that matter, what is Konahns prayer to Krumm but a fancy speech in itself?

Also gotta love "all right thinking people."  Because the quality of a film, contrary to popular conception, is not subjective, and that there is in fact a "right" and "wrong" way of watching a film.There might be appropriate ways to watch a film and inappropriate ones, but that doesn't mean right or wrong.  Sure, one can try to look at a Joel Schumacher film from a critical perspective, but just because the film won't really stand up to as much scrutiny if viewed as anything other than a popcorn flick doesn't mean that it's wrong to try.

King Conan: A Necessary Evil?

The history of the King Conan movie has been one long, drawn-out tease since the late 1990s. Milius' script, King Conan: Crown of Iron, was intended as the first of two films, followed by King Conan: Beneath My Sandalled Feet. Another script was, apparently, the disaster which would become Kull the Conqueror, leading many to note the hilarious irony of Kull the Conqueror being a rewrite of a Conan adventure when the literary Conan's first adventure was a rewrite of a Kull story - not helped by the fact that Milius stole a lot of Kull's back-story to supplement his Conan. However, neither came about, because Arnold decided Batman & Robin was a better use of his time - and I have to admit, he was the best thing in that wreck.  When it came to finalizing trilogies before he conquered the Proudest State of the American Continent that Reigned Supreme in the Dreaming West Coast, he settled for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. When Schwarzenegger ran for office, plans for a King Conan film were doomed, at least for the 2000s. I'm glad it didn't happen.

Robert E. Howard Movie Review Reviews: Richard Scheib's Moria

Originally, I was going to take Richard Scheib's movie reviews one at a time, but seeing as he recently put up his Solomon Kane review, I feel I might as well do them all.

Triangulation: Solomon Kane, Konahn el Destructor, Immortal Fantasy, and Things to Come

Another busy week here, at the REH forums, and at The Cimmerian.

In what is quite possibly my longest Cimmerian article, I delve into the Solomon Kane film. With a week later to ruminate, I think I've settled on "a good enough little film on its own merits, though naturally with many flaws." Interestingly, Paul Berrow liked the review, and said he'd have no reservations circulating it. Paul is one of the producers of the film: wonder if Jim Lad and MJB have read it?

On Thursday, I celebrated the first anniversary of my unofficial Cimmerian debut with El Ingenioso Destructor Rey Konahn de Simaria. I just wish Steve was still alive to read it. Hopefully he's having a good chuckle in Valhalla.

Saturday I chat about Charles R. Saunders' updates and Immortal Fantasy, the fun graphic novel from Winston Blakely. It'd be awesome if Winston and Charles did a comic adaptation of Imaro, or made up a new S&S hero together.

As for the future, Taran over at the Robert E. Howard forum brought a hateful little scribbling from Hans Joachim Alpers to my attention, and he makes a powerful case that this essay could have been a significant factor in setting back scholarship of fantasy for decades. As is tradition for The Cimmerian, I'm planning on giving it a good thrashing too. It's particularly the implication of comparing Conan and The Lord of the Rings to fascism that infuriates me beyond belief, as any fool would know Howard and Tolkien's hatred for the ideology in their letters and interviews.

Ladies & Gentlemen: Conan the Berber.

Remember back when I talked about Conan the Sumerian?

Well, this is quite possibly the greatest example I've ever seen. A scholarly, thoughtful, well-written article that tries to define Conan the Barbarian's ethnicity... judged purely upon the films. Absolutely no references to Robert E. Howard, or even the comics. The author assumes that none of those things exist, and uses only the films as a guide--and he still gets stuff wrong.

It's a thing of beauty, and not just because of the Howard mistakes.

Nostalgia Critic Reviews Barbarian & Destroyer - 19th January

I'm a fan of That Guy With The Glasses: he's a funny dude, and anyone who has Brazil as one of their twenty greatest films is alright.

Come 19th January, though, comes the single review I'm simultaneously anticipating and dreading: The Nostalgia Critic reviews Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer.

Witnesses to The Siege of Van Ostrand will know how nervous I am about this. The Critic is generally thorough in his research, although his greatest snafu--where he jokes about Mako's voice in a role sounding "like he smoked a million marlboros a day" unaware that the actor was suffering from oesophagal cancer during the recording--caused quite a bit of controversy. I dearly hope the Critic has the right sources, and that we won't have to order another assault in such a short time.

Still, even if NC trots out the same old nonsense, I doubt he has the malicious intent Van Ostrand did, and would be perfectly willing to apologise for anything he gets wrong, as he did with the Mako incident. Until 19th January, I'm hopeful.

Here's a couple of my favourite Nostalgia Critic Reviews:

Batman & Robin
Captain Planet
Saved By The Bell
Red Sonja
Alone in the Dark