The Filmgoer's Guide to Conan the Barbarian (1982): Contents

To make things easier to navigate, I'll be using this post to serve as a directory for the Filmgoer's Guide, until I get the Complete Filmgoer's Guide finished.  I've made a start on The Filmgoer's Guide for the 2011 film, and... well, we'll see.

• Introduction
• The Nemedian Chronicles
• Of Swords and Riddles of Steel
• Cimmerian Mythology
• Cimmeria
• The Cimmerians
• Conan's Family
• Conan's Early Life
• The Picts
• Rexor, Thorgrim and the Vanir
• Thulsa Doom
• The Wheel of Pain
• The Cultured Conan
• Conan the Gladiator
• The Intellectual Conan
• Conan the Samurai
• The Philosophical Conan
• The Atlanteans
• The Multilingual Conan
• The Witch
• Subotai and the Hyrkanians
• Zamora
• The Cult of Set
• Black Lotus
• The Tower of the Serpent
• Valeria
• Giant Snakes
• King Osric
• The Mounds of the Dead
• The Wizard
• The Mountain of Power
• Crucifixion
• The Resurrection and the Price
• The Snake Arrow
• The Battle of the Mounds
• Do You Want To Live Forever?
• Children of Doom
• ... But That Is Another Story

If anyone's particularly interested in one of the subjects, I'll see what I can do to fasttrack them.

The Filmgoer's Guide to Conan the Barbarian (1982): The Philosophical Conan

Language and writing were made available. He was taken to the East, a great prize, where the war masters would teach him the deepest secrets: the poetry of Khitai, the philosophy of Sung.
 - Conan the Barbarian

Contrary to the monosyllabic, illiterate brute of popular culture, Conan in Conan the Barbarian is a highly educated and knowledgeable warrior. He was introduced to philosophy, poetry, tactics and strategy by his owners, quoting military maxims when prompted, and contemplating introspective musings on life and death.

Is this intellectual side of Conan a reflection of Robert E. Howard's creation?

The Filmgoer's Guide to Conan the Barbarian (1982): Conan's Early Life

... a BOY of about nine... The boy's dark eyes gleam like pools of oil... His eyes are piercing blue, the eyes of a barbarian child, already toughened by the harsh climate and the ways of the forest...
 - Description of nine-year-old Conan, Conan the Barbarian (1980 revision)

Conan is seen at the beginning of Conan the Barbarian, where he is nine years old. He has a close relationship with his father, who took him to pick wild blueberries since he was four or five. When Conan is nine, his father teaches him of his gods, and the enigma of Steel. On one fateful day, a horde of raiders come to Conan's village, decimating the populace and torching the buildings. No mercy is shown, not even to the women, and the few men brave enough to fight back are slaughtered - including Conan's father, who is slain before his son's eyes.

The slaughter is over almost as soon as it began: only the children, clinging to their mother's corpses or mewling pitably, remain - save one adult. Conan's mother, sword in hand, is defending Conan against the armoured warriors. Then a great, mysterious warrior - Thulsa Doom - dismounts, and seemingly entrances Conan's mother. She drops her sword to her side, and Doom beheads her. Conan can do nothing but watch, staring dumbly as his world is destroyed, and offers no resistance when he is locked in a chain gang with the other Cimmerian children. He is marched across hills, mountains, valleys and plains, until he arrives at the Wheel of Pain. There he is chained to a spoke, and forced to push this monstrous contraption. His childhood ends in chains.

Is this an accurate extrapolation of the clues Robert E. Howard left us regarding Conan's younger days?

The Filmgoer's Guide to Conan the Barbarian (1982): The Cimmerians

Smoke from the early morning cooking fires curls up from the wheeled huts of the Cimmerian village. There is a sense of solitude, of peace. Women and children wander about, clad in warm furs against the morning frost.
 - Description of Conan's tribe, Conan the Barbarian script (1980 revision)

Milius' Cimmerians are fairly rustic sorts: they work mills and other agricultural tools, herd sheep and cattle, live in kudzahs, wear clothing and use tools that seem inspired by Eastern Europe, Mongolia and Scandinavia. They seem to have a variety of hair colours, ranging from dirty blonde to dark brown. They are a hardy race, but not all are warriors like Conan's father: for the most part, they are just a peaceful, gentle folk eking out a living in a harsh landscape.

Howard's Cimmerians, on the other hand...

The Filmgoer's Guide to Conan the Barbarian (1982): Conan's Family

William Smith and Nadiuska play Conan's father and mother in John Milius' revised script for Conan the Barbarian. They depict the characters described in the script very accurately - but how do they compare to what Howard said about Conan's family?

The Filmgoer's Guide to Conan the Barbarian (1982): Cimmeria

Milius' conception of Cimmeria is of a great mountainous landscape, with many snow-capped peaks, and even Conan's village is covered in snow. Conan's home village is situated in a dark, boreal forest.  During the summer, wild blueberries are picked, and the leaves are darkly green, indicating the snow of the early scene is only seen in winter.

But how does it compare to Robert E. Howard's descriptions of Conan's homeland?

The Filmgoer's Guide to Conan the Barbarian (1982): Cimmerian Mythology

Fire and wind come from the sky, from the gods of the sky, but Crom is your god. Crom, and he lives in the earth. Once giants lived in the earth, Conan, and in the darkness of chaos, they fooled Crom, and they took from him the enigma of steel. Crom was angered, and the earth shook, and fire and wind struck down these giants, and they threw their bodies into the waters. But in their rage, the gods forgot the secret of steel and left it on the battlefield, and we who found it. We are just men, not gods, not giants, just men. And the secret of steel has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its riddle, Conan, you must learn its discipline, for no one, no one in this world can you trust, not men, not women, not beasts... This you can trust.

It's all very nice and evocative, but aside from the name Crom, absolutely nothing comes from Robert E. Howard. Indeed, much of Cimmerian theology and philosophy in the film is entire the creation of Oliver Stone and John Milius, with many divergences from what we know from Howard.

The Filmgoer's Guide to Conan the Barbarian (1982): The Nemedian Chronicles

The first stop on our journey through Conan the Barbarian starts, inscrutably enough, at the beginning, before the title appears on screen. The first words uttered in the film also happen to be the most tied to Robert E. Howard's work. Let's compare and contrast.

The Filmgoer's Guide to Conan the Barbarian (1982): Introduction

Thus far, there hasn't been a single Robert E. Howard adaptation in cinema.

None of the five cinematic adaptations ostensibly based on the work of Howard actually adapt any of his stories at all. Some films claim to be Howard adaptations, but all they truly amount to are pastiches, or adaptations in name only.  At best, they take a few plot elements and characters, greatly altered, and put them into a new narrative; at worst, they take mere names, and seem to make an effort to warp and distort them from their original iterations.