Hypothetical Conan Trailers - King Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword

Since my idea for Conan the Barbarian: Black Colossus was such a success, I decided to have a bit of fun with some more hypothetical trailers, including some of my ideas for prospective Conan films.

King Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword

A little background: an idea I had was an anthology film that combines "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," "The God in the Bowl" and "The Tower of the Elephant," using "The Phoenix on the Sword" as a framing story.  These are the first four stories Howard wrote, after all, and they show a pretty interesting spectrum of Conan's life: king, warrior, and thief.

"The Phoenix on the Sword" - 24 pages
"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" - 9 pages
"The God in the Bowl" - 19 pages
"The Tower of the Elephant" - 23 pages

Now, if we take the old "one page equals one minute" idea for a second, we can see that "The Phoenix on the Sword" and "The Tower of the Elephant" have roughly equivalent length, while "The God in the Bowl" is shorter, and "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" shorter still. Obviously depending on the direction this could expand or contract, but I think on can justify "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" as a ten minute sequence, "The God in the Bowl" a twenty-minute one, and "The Tower of the Elephant" as a full half-hour. While "Phoenix" is only a page longer than "Tower," it's absolutely chock full of potential for expansion, or just plain spending more time on it.

The Main Problem with the Conan the Barbarian Trailer (and film in general)

I've been holding off on revealing my opinion on the Conan trailer for a while, mostly because I think I've finally achieved the last stage of the Kübler-Ross model.

Stage 1: Denial
Date: 23rd February 2009
Trigger: the Latino Review Featurette
"Let's not be hasty, guys, the Latino Review might have gotten their facts wrong, or perhaps someone's screwing about with them. No way is this script outline real: "Khalar Singh"? Conan's tribe being wiped out yet again? Acheron being a significant plot point in what's chronologically the first Conan story, but never gets mentioned again until the very last? Come on, guys."

Stage 2: Anger
Time: 23rd October 2009
Trigger: Moviehole character casting sheet report
"I am vexed. After almost 80 years, we're going to get Another Made Up Origin Story just like the one we had 30 years ago.  It is extremely difficult to amply convey my deep and resolute exasperation at this turn of events."

Stage 3: Bargaining
Time: 12th September 2010
Event: Encouraging reports on Blackman's script for the sequel
"OK, OK, maybe there's another way of looking at it: if this film does well, then can we get an actual Howard adaptation? If this film does well at the box office, maybe we'll finally get a Howard story on the big screen. Maybe Blackman's script really is a pretty close adaptation of one of the original Conan tales - come on guys, this could be our chance!"

Stage 4: Depression
Time: 12th March 2011
Trigger: Conan the Barbarian teaser released

Stage 5: Acceptance
Time: 17th May 2011
Trigger: This post
"You know what? This is happening. It can't be stopped. It can't be changed. It can't be helped. We just have to figure out what we're going to do from here."

It's a source of constant amusement to me that there are several folk on various boards who think I'm somehow not a "real" Conan fan because I have the audacity to try and give the movie the benefit of the doubt.  Some even seem to think I've gone soft, that Sean Hood's outreach has given me some sort of about-turn on the project, and that I've said the formerly heinous script was now awesome (Wikipedius, he say: "citation needed.")  As far as they're concerned, I'm now the project's number 1 fan, and I brush off all criticisms with a "hey, at least it isn't Ahnold." They have no idea how very, very wrong they are. What they don't know is that giving the film that benefit of the doubt is the only thing that's keeping me sane.