Trivia / Conan the Barbarian (1982)

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Many of the Spanish extras were very enthusiastic about working on the movie. This ended up causing some problems, as quite a few of them ended up flubbing their death scenes through overacting caused by excitement.
• Backed by the Pentagon: In a way. Many of the extras were Spanish soldiers and people in obligatory military service.
• The Cast Show Off: An interesting non-actor example. Wanting real arrows to be used in the snake scene, director Milius formed part of the specialist crew himself, as he is a life long martial artist with a background in Judo and Kendo. In fact, after training a bit with them, Milius turned out to be the best archer in the posse, so he was ended up being the one tasked with shooting the arrows.
• Cast the Runner-Up: William Smith was considered for Conan but rejected. He did appear in the film, though, as Conan's father.
• Dueling Movies: 1982 saw two other similar "barbarian" films released, those being The Sword and the Sorcerer and The Beastmaster (three if you count Krull, which was more like space-fantasy-barbarian). All of them have some degree of cult following, but none at the level of Conan.
• Dyeing for Your Art: In the years previous to the film, Schwarzenegger grew his hair long and trained extensively in horse riding, stuntwork, climbing, martial arts, weapons training and ancient history to prepare himself for the role, with some of his training sessions being so strenous that John Milius made sure they were videotaped (also, a couple of his trainers at these fields end up receiving cameos as a reward). At the same time, Arnold had to drop 30 pounds of muscle so that he could use a sword properly, as it turns out having a bodybuilder's build is Awesome, but Impractical. At the end, Schwarzenegger got into such good shape that he decided to un-retire from bodybuilding and participate in the 1980 Mr. Olympia on very short notice. He was doing it more or less for the kicks and as a personal challenge, but actually went to win the contest in a huge upset, gaining his seventh and last gold medal (albeit by a heavily controversial decision, which Arnold himself acknowledged in his winning speech).
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • In order to properly get them in character, extras were forced to stay in complete costume all the day. This became just grueling when shooting in the Almería desert, as the heavy clothes and armors caused many extras to faint due to the heat and exhaustion.
  • Accidental example. When Conan is running from the dogs, Arnold Schwarzenegger was really running for his physical integrity, as they were quite vicious and had even attacked their own trainers. Arnold also injured his back when he fell from a rock he was climbing to in order to escape the darn critters.
• Executive Meddling: The original plan was for Arnold Schwarzenegger to be the narrator. The suits didn't like that due to his thick Austrian accent, so Mako became the narrator instead. Unlike many examples, though, this proved to be the right decision, as not only is Mako's narration so high on pork content that it became incredibly iconic, but giving the narration to someone else ended up lending a more mysterious and inscrutable air to Conan's character in the process.
• Follow the Leader: The film and its Dueling Movies were riding a wave of fantasy films of similar style initiated by Hawk the Slayer. It later inspired several other, like Deathstalker, The Barbarians, Amazons, Conquest and Hundra.
• Friendship on the Set: Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones became friends during production. Jones gave Arnie acting tips, while Arnie gave Jones body-building advice.
• Genius Bonus: The "What is best in life?" line is a slightly modified form of a quote attributed to Genghis Khan.
• Hostility on the Set: Dino De Laurentiis didn't like Arnold Schwarzenegger at first, believing him to be a Nazi (Arnold's father Gustav was, like many Austrian policemen of his time were, but not Arnold himself). John Milius, a real right-winger but apparently a saner person, sided with Schwarzenegger and trolled De Laurentiis with jokes until he knocked it off. Among other shenanigans, he left figurines of Francisco Franco on De Laurentiis' desk and took the custom to proclaim that he (Milius) was the only Nazi on the set.
• Looping Lines: Although Gerry López portrayed Subotai during production, his lines were re-recorded by Sab Shimono for the final release.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: In an interview, John Milius said that the dogs they used in the film were very unfriendly and dangerous. He even went as far to say "When you had the dogs chasing Arnold Schwarzenegger and he's running, he's actually running for his life because he knew those dogs were very dangerous and they even attacked their trainer".
• No Stunt Double: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sandahl Bergman did their own stunts, as suitable body doubles couldn't be found.
• On-Set Injury: A stuntman crashed face-first into a camera while riding a horse, Sandahl Bergman had her finger badly sliced with a fiberglass sword during a fight scene, Jorge Sanz injured his eyes with his blue contact lens, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was attacked by one of the dogs.
• Real-Life Relative: The Brazilian Portuguese dub has Garcia Neto, the father of Conan's VA Garcia Junior, dubbing Conan's father.
• Reality Subtext:
  • The literary Conan was noted to be a Cunning Linguist and a surprisingly cultured person due to his many travels and adventures around the world. The same happened to Schwarzenegger, as he had to learn some Spanish to move around and also did a lot of tourism through Spain during the film's production. Like Conan in Aquilonia, Ahnold loved the country (even if he was amusingly weirded out by some Spanish customs, like having diner very late into the night) and has returned several times since, even stating he would wish to shoot again in Spain if the long-promised Conan sequel ever gets made.
  • Jorge Sanz, who played the young version of the Cimmerian warrior in the prologue, was a Military Brat in real life too and no stranger to the ways of war. He later stated he would have joined the military had he not become an actor.
  • The scene at the end in which Thulsa Doom is ordering a mass suicide. The film was made shortly after Jim Jones' cult in Guyana did the very same thing. Director John Milius has publicly stated that the scene was based on the events of Jonestown. Jim Jones, James Earl Jones. Coincidence? Probably not.
• Referenced by...:
  • Thanks to Professional Wrestler Kevin Sullivan, hanging your opponent upside down in the corner has become known as "being tied to the Tree of Woe."
  • Blade Master has a Barbarian Hero character named Arnold, based on Arnie's version of Conan.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Child actor Jorge Sanz makes for a remarkably convincing young Ahnuld; he even had the beginnings of a mini-Lantern Jaw of Justice.
• So My Kids Can Watch: Max von Sydow did this movie for his son, who was a longtime Conan fan.
• Spared by the Cut: King Osric's death scene was cut from the film, rendering his character a case of What Happened to the Mouse?. See it here.
• Star-Making Role: Although this wasn't the first film that Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared in, this (along with The Terminator two years later) was the role that turned Arnold into the action movie icon he'd remain well into the 90s. It also gave him his second-most-parodied role.
• Throw It In!: It wasn't scripted for Conan to fall and hurt himself while climbing into the Atlantean tomb, but Milius liked the extra blood, so he kept it in.
• Troubled Production:
  • Making the film in Spain, where production was relocated to after the option of Yugoslavia fell through due to political unstability, proved to be not any less of a nightmare. Ironically, Schwarzenegger actually loved his time there, probably because the shootings were as much of an adventure as Conan's story was, and has visited Spain many times again since.
  • Spain's extreme climate was a pain to deal with in both ways. Actors and extras continuously fainted due to the intense heat while shooting in the torrid Almería desert, and in turn got frozen while doing it in the cold mountains of Ávila and Segovia. Temperatures in the latter were so low that fake blood had to be prepared with vodka instead of water in order to avoid it to freeze, which many an actor capitalized on to have a drink behind the crew's backs during bloody scenes.
  • Props, gear and even animals proved to be also difficult to work with. Schwarzenegger had trouble riding his camel, as it was difficult to control around, and he was also chased for real by the attack dogs, which were just as vicious as they looked. For his part, Jorge Sanz, who played child Conan, got his eyes injured by his blue contact lens, which were thick enough that according to him they felt "like two half eggshells". There were several stunt accidents as well, with some broken bones.
  • Original director of photography Gilbert Taylor was fired after three weeks after falling out with John Milius.
  • Working in the film was Awesome, Dear Boy for many Spanish extras, but this ended up becoming another problem, as some of them were so over-enthusiastic that they kept flunking their death scenes by hamming them up too much. Milius had to increase their payment in order for them to play dead more convincingly. Ironically, many soldiers acting as extras in the film got the money syphoned by the Spanish government, which used part of it for military healthcare.
  • As if all of this was not enough, there were Spanish environmentalists protesting through all the production, claiming natural landscapes were being damaged in the process of filming.
  • The final straw was a twist of irony, as although the team had avoided Yugoslavia for its political unstability, Spain suffered a coup d'état attempt of all things (the 23-F or "Tejerazo") just at the final stage of the shootings. Milius described it as, "The Civil War almost started all over again." This affected the filmmaking directly, because when someone reported there were some crazy Americans with swords and explosives messing around, the Spanish Guardia Civil raided the sets and stopped production in order to find out what was happening.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Producer Dino De Laurentiis initially insisted on an Eighties pop soundtrack, approaching Tangerine Dream for the assignment - but director John Milius insisted on hiring his then-unknown school buddy Basil Poledouris instead. Luckily, Tangerine Dream turned down the offer, and Basil proceeded to write one of the most famous classical music soundtracks ever made.
  • If Oliver Stone had his way, the film was going to be a Continuity Reboot set in the far future, with Conan battling mutants in lieu of or in addition to ape-men. Milius insisted on keeping the setting in the Hyborian age.
  • Stone asked Ridley Scott, fresh off Alien, to direct. He declined.
  • A sequel written by original director John Milius titled King Conan: Crown of Iron was written in 2001 and was intended to be a worthy follow-up to the original film (it would have disregarded Conan the Destroyer entirely). The project was moving forward, but got put on indefinite hiatus when Arnold was elected Governor of California, and eventually was shelved. It has remained in Development Hell ever since, although Arnold still has not given up the possibility to make it some day.
  • Milius originally wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger to be the narrator. But executives at Universal had problem with Arnold as the narrator due to his accent, and instead Mako was the narrator.
  • The novelization, based on an early version of the script, has quite a few. Conan has a fight scene with the dead king that he takes the sword from which rises up and tries to take it back. Thulsa Doom turns out to be the last of a race of snake men, with the human form just as magically attained as the snake. His guards are another race entirely with face-obscuring helmets to hide the fact, and all but the top level of his fortress is their ancient home which he took over when he bound them to him by magic.
  • Mattel was going to make a line of action figures based on the film, but backed out when it turned out it wasn't as kid-friendly as they hoped.
  • Charles Bronson and Sylvester Stallone were considered for the titular role.
  • Sean Connery was considered for Thulsa Doom.
  • Raquel Welch was considered for Valeria.
  • Sterling Hayden was first choice for King Osric but became ill before shooting began. John Huston was also considered.
  • Jackie Chan was pursued for a role, possibly Subotai.
  • Nick Nolte and Jack Palance were considered for Conan's father.

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