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Beheadings and Boobs | Conan the Barbarian · Potato Chip Pictures - A Podcast

• 0:00
  I started this movie like 3. I think I finished it the fourth
• 0:05
  time. Because.
• 0:07
  Each 1st 10 minutes, 12 minutes. Like I am trying to sympathize
• 0:13
  with Arnold Conan and get into the movie, but it's so it feels
• 0:24
  like a a dramatic play, but nobody's talking except Conan's
• 0:31
  dad and I enjoy that Conan's dad hold does a whole spiel of Crumb
• 0:37
  and you know, it's interesting. I have mixed feelings and I'm
• 0:45
  excited to get into it, but this is definitely a type of movie
• 0:52
  that I don't think audiences would enjoy in 2025.
• 0:59
  Like if we went to the. Movies, yeah.
• 1:02
  Yeah, I I think that a modern audience would would say what
• 1:06
  was the point? This movie's too meandering.
• 1:09
  So do we rate it on that? I I have to rate it on my
• 1:13
  feelings for it. And my feelings are kind of
• 1:16
  mixed because part of me is like, this is literally an epic
• 1:23
  slash adventure. Yeah.
• 1:25
  And there's not like a driving force for the plot.
• 1:29
  It's more of the story of how someone stumbled into their
• 1:36
  purpose. In life, yeah.
• 1:41
  On on the other hand, this is 2025 and I've watched epics that
• 1:47
  have had a purpose from beginning to end and good.
• 1:53
  It's. Yeah, like it's hard to to watch
• 1:57
  something that's a little more meandering and to be like.
• 2:02
  But there is one thing in this movie that I can't get out of my
• 2:09
  head, and I'm excited to talk about it.
• 2:11
  So I don't I don't want to waste any more time.
• 2:13
  I want to jump in. Hello and welcome to Potato Chip
• 2:35
  Pictures, the movie franchise review podcast.
• 2:37
  My name is Justin. My name is B Sammy Davis.
• 2:41
  And today we are looking at the first movie in the Conan the
• 2:45
  Barbarian franchise, 1980 twos Conan la Barbarian, directed by
• 2:50
  John Milius, written by Robert E Howard, John Milius and Oliver
• 2:54
  Stone. Important because Conan first
• 2:57
  appears in the Howard short story People of the Dark in
• 3:00
  1931. Conan would appear in 21 total
• 3:04
  stories written by that same author.
• 3:07
  But our movie budget of 20 million U.S.
• 3:09
  Dollars return of about 69 to 79 millions comparing the 1982 to
• 3:16
  the top earner and a middle one $10 million budget for ET and
• 3:22
  Poltergeist gets you 359 million, 359 million or 121
• 3:28
  million. Which?
• 3:29
  Isn't, which isn't, I don't know, particularly fair in the
• 3:33
  case of ET, so I went with Poltergeist to get a better
• 3:36
  sense. There wasn't there.
• 3:40
  Let me, let me. I've got to take a look.
• 3:42
  We're talking 19820. Never mind.
• 3:45
  I was about to say wasn't there a Bond?
• 3:47
  But there was one in 81 and 83. So yeah, 82.
• 3:53
  I thought there was another big movie that came out around that
• 3:56
  time because that movie or that year was stacked with movies.
• 4:02
  And then you mentioned ET and I'm like, well, that takes out
• 4:06
  everyone. Who else can possibly compete?
• 4:10
  I think there was a Star Wars in 82.
• 4:14
  Like maybe maybe you. I don't know the.
• 4:16
  Nature of the Jedi I don't owe, I mean.
• 4:20
  I feel like it's a It's a reasonable suggestion of how
• 4:25
  well liked it was. It tripled its budget in return
• 4:31
  when some movies were like 5000% in their their return from their
• 4:39
  budget. But I didn't go too much deeper
• 4:43
  into anything. That's that's the whole spiel
• 4:45
  for this Conan. That's usually as far as I go.
• 4:49
  So I am, I am quite impressed, I, I am, I have been driven
• 4:55
  before you. Where are the lamentations?
• 4:59
  Yeah, I don't have any women to give you lamentations.
• 5:04
  I'm sorry. All right, 1982 in movies.
• 5:09
  I'm going to just shout out some of the big ones that Wikipedia
• 5:13
  is telling me, starting with John Carpenter's The Thing, one
• 5:17
  of my all time favorite alien horror movies.
• 5:24
  Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal, another one that I love that
• 5:29
  audiences at the time did not, but I love that movie.
• 5:34
  The original Blade Runner, you already mentioned Poltergeist,
• 5:38
  you already mentioned DT Tron. The original Tron came out.
• 5:46
  And yeah, I think those are the biggest ones from that year that
• 5:52
  I am seeing. Interesting because I only
• 5:56
  really know a little bit of Tron the first one and that's from
• 6:01
  also, you know, watching the 1st 10 minutes a couple times.
• 6:06
  There's only a little bit of what would you say coincidental
• 6:13
  themes in that. I feel like Tron, all the all
• 6:18
  the programs are just questioning, well, have you do
• 6:22
  you believe in the user? And here in Conan, they're like,
• 6:25
  well, do you believe in Chrome and Conan's?
• 6:27
  Like if these gods aren't going to help, then whatever.
• 6:32
  Like, yeah. Get out of my way.
• 6:37
  Yeah, which is that's a. Well, I it's crazy.
• 6:41
  I also see Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Khan, which I usually
• 6:46
  say should be people's entry point into Star Trek.
• 6:52
  Like not even the original series or the original Motion
• 6:56
  Picture. I'm like, skip all of that and
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  go straight to Wrath of Khan. Make that you're jumping off
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  point for Star Trek. And that was 1982 as well.
• 7:08
  So I see a lot, a lot of sci-fi, and then I see The Dark Crystal
• 7:16
  and Conan holding it down in the fantasy department.
• 7:21
  I think it's a good term that I hadn't really thought of.
• 7:26
  The epic and fantasy. I think that captures how much
• 7:31
  you have to allow the the fantasy world to have Wizards
• 7:39
  and spirits and witches and snake people.
• 7:44
  And it's like, oh, OK, I mean, it doesn't have any basis in
• 7:51
  logic or sense, but we're here in a world with swords.
• 7:56
  And if the dichotomy and conflict is the power of steel
• 8:03
  and the power of flesh, I'm like, I'm, I'm down with that.
• 8:06
  Like, OK, which one should we? It is highly anachronistic
• 8:13
  because I think this is meant to be our Earth, but I think this
• 8:19
  is maybe late Stone Age, early Bronze Age.
• 8:26
  But for some reason they have steel and since we are so far
• 8:35
  away and and it's only word of mouth history from that point
• 8:40
  and you've got like the Epic of Gilgamesh from that time period.
• 8:44
  Sure. Yeah, that's at least the
• 8:47
  mindset that I think the author, I've already forgotten his name,
• 8:52
  but. Robert E Howard.
• 8:54
  Yes, I think he was trying to go kind of in that mentality and
• 9:00
  that range. But at the same time, he's
• 9:03
  quoting, oh snap, Genghis Khan, he's with the crush your enemies
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  thing and he's got steel again, a thing that's not going to
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  exist for thousands of years. In fact, Conan's family is is a
• 9:26
  a northern tribe that has mastered steel and is still just
• 9:32
  living out in the boonies. Yeah, yeah.
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  I think it it, it forces us to say, well, if we, if we bring in
• 9:47
  our objections at the beginning of the film, there's, there's
• 9:50
  not much else they can do to, to bring us back in.
• 9:55
  And I think the first 15 minutes are are a lot of it's tough,
• 9:59
  it's tough. I I feel very similar to how I
• 10:06
  feel about the first, like the first half.
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  Well maybe not that much of the 1st 3rd of 2001 A space Odyssey.
• 10:16
  I feel the same way with Conan the Barbarian where it's like if
• 10:20
  you can push through it, it will get better, but it's going to be
• 10:25
  very slow and very dull for a while.
• 10:31
  Yeah, you really got to give me people that aren't just Conan
• 10:37
  and his his adversary. Like, I'm kind of glad that Doom
• 10:44
  kind of wanders off. He's shows up, kills the guy's
• 10:49
  parents, and then he's gone for the next half and it's like, OK,
• 10:53
  like, that's fine. Yeah.
• 10:56
  I figure it out. I'll agree with you there.
• 10:59
  I actually think one of the strongest elements of this movie
• 11:03
  is that they introduced Thulsa Doom and his hench men right
• 11:09
  away. You know they're the ones who
• 11:11
  pillage Conan's village. There's nothing else really
• 11:16
  happening in the in the plot. They have to, so here you are.
• 11:20
  Yeah, like, you could have just anyone raiding the village and
• 11:26
  turning Conan into a slave. But, you know, giving us this
• 11:30
  connective thread at least makes it a little bit less random for
• 11:36
  the rest of the story to happen. But I do feel as though I oh
• 11:44
  boy, I really like hearing the Samurai Jack.
• 11:50
  I forget the character's name, but I really like the narrator.
• 11:54
  Hakku. That's right.
• 11:57
  Yeah, when his starts narrating, it was a surprise in that, yeah,
• 12:03
  I haven't watched Avatar, but Samurai Jack is etched into my
• 12:08
  memory and Aku's like, hey, guess what, this is my butt.
• 12:13
  So Aku is going to tell us the story of Conan.
• 12:16
  We see old man Arnold Schwarzenegger like sitting off
• 12:22
  in the background. Or maybe it's just a silhouetted
• 12:25
  Arnold at the very beginning. At the beginning, yeah.
• 12:28
  Silhouette. The point is, we get one bit of
• 12:31
  narration and then we cut to the father talking about Crom, but
• 12:36
  it feels like another bit of narration.
• 12:39
  Admittedly, there's a character on screen delivering the lines.
• 12:43
  It just feels like more so I was, I was truly like, I don't
• 12:50
  even think we were 5 minutes in and I was like, Oh my God, this
• 12:57
  has to start. It has to start.
• 13:01
  Yeah, I like I don't even know if I really take it in like acts
• 13:09
  because it it kind of has it. But that first bit is the
• 13:15
  prequel to the movie. Like yeah, this is the origin
• 13:19
  story and and the the adventure of Conan, like the first
• 13:24
  adventure of Conan, but I he grows up in that I need.
• 13:27
  To say that his first act goes from the beginning of the movie
• 13:33
  until he leaves the The Cave of the old warrior, I think that
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  encompasses for me the establishment of the character
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  still not establishing the story.
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  Like the most we got from the story was Tholsa Doom, the voice
• 13:59
  of Darth Vader with the blue contacts and the long wig.
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  And everybody's got these long wigs.
• 14:07
  And before we talk about the everything else, I do have to
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  say, it's burned into my head, the sexy beheading that he does
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  with the. Look back.
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  Yeah, he's looking over his shoulder, maintaining eye
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  contact, and he looks down. And then, yeah, the spin around
• 14:31
  and chopping off of Conan's mother's head.
• 14:34
  And then also like Conan is so dumb throughout all of the first
• 14:43
  act. Yes, I was going to say later
• 14:45
  on, there's one part where I was like, oh, good job, golf clap,
• 14:48
  good job, Yeah. But for most of it, he's gotten
• 14:53
  the the emptiest of eyes. Like he has no idea what's going
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  on around him. He's just impressed by all of
• 15:01
  the lights and colors that he gets to see every time he opens
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  his eyes. And he's a big brute and I
• 15:11
  think. He's a big brute when he's a
• 15:13
  little boy too. Like he is forever.
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  Just a big dumb idiot in the first act.
• 15:22
  Yeah, the beheading, I think I can only retroactively justify
• 15:28
  it in saying in the future Doom has a sway over people and can
• 15:36
  tell him to jump off a Cliff. And it this is the only way I
• 15:41
  could say that he hypnotizes her to stand still so he can behead
• 15:46
  her. And that's that's as far as why
• 15:49
  he's looking away so weird. But.
• 15:52
  It's. Still awkward first.
• 15:54
  Watch What Do You? Put this is 30 seconds of
• 15:58
  looking before we. Wow, James Earl Jones is really
• 16:04
  putting on the sexy face. I did not think that his eye
• 16:09
  color was real. I thought it was probably put in
• 16:13
  on the film or something, but oh.
• 16:16
  Yeah, it's definitely contacts. Well he had lighter eyes in the
• 16:22
  wiki. I went to look to be like, hold
• 16:24
  on, I don't know if it's exactly the colour that's in the movie,
• 16:30
  but I they feel so prominent in the movie that it was like, is
• 16:39
  this like the Dune where they have blue eyes effect?
• 16:42
  I see some pictures where he's got dark eyes and other pictures
• 16:46
  where he's got bright blue eyes. If it's not contacts then that
• 16:54
  was it it. It felt like it was a style
• 16:58
  choice, but if it's just his normal colour then that's pretty
• 17:03
  cool. Indeed.
• 17:07
  Well, you know, even if it is his normal colour, I'm sure that
• 17:10
  they put on some kind of filter to brighten them because they
• 17:15
  are unworldly blue. And then I then don't know how
• 17:21
  they do it in the second act when they give them different
• 17:26
  eyes. Oh yes, they guys.
• 17:27
  But that was. Pretty cool.
• 17:31
  So this story is about how Conan was essentially cattle for most
• 17:38
  of his childhood where he just pushed a big circle for no.
• 17:46
  Super buff. Got very buff and all the other
• 17:49
  kids that he was pushed in the circle with, they all died or I
• 17:53
  don't know. Yeah, but he got super buff and
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  he was doing the job all by himself.
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  They never replaced any of the people who fell.
• 18:03
  Nope, Something like that. And then one day the the slave
• 18:08
  master decided he's he no longer needs to push the big wheel and
• 18:13
  instead he's going to make him a pit fighter.
• 18:16
  This, this kid who has spent, I'm going to say over 10, maybe
• 18:22
  15 years only pushing a wheel every day and he's like, I bet
• 18:28
  he could fight. Yeah, that's I.
• 18:34
  I might have glossed over that until now.
• 18:38
  Doesn't make sense. Your buff, you will be good at
• 18:42
  cage fights. I'm positive of it.
• 18:45
  Maybe they're right. I I mean, it's lucky that he is
• 18:50
  right. Yeah, I think it spends.
• 18:56
  The suggestion is that he becomes super good at it and
• 19:00
  kind of like a gladiator and eventually gets freed, but I
• 19:05
  don't quite recall if the free was like a God's crumbs will
• 19:12
  happens or. No, OK.
• 19:18
  So no, it's not even that. Like it's they mention it, it is
• 19:26
  kind of a throwaway thing. He gets really good at pit
• 19:31
  fighting. Hurray.
• 19:32
  I'm kind of hating Conan at this point because I'm like, he's
• 19:36
  dumb and he's good at killing things and I'm supposed to be
• 19:39
  like, yeah, he's my hero. Like I really don't care.
• 19:44
  But then they take him to the East, where he will have access
• 19:47
  to learning. And this is where we get the
• 19:50
  Genghis Khan line of what is it that's that is best in life?
• 19:55
  And the kids answer incorrectly. And Conan, sitting on the table,
• 20:01
  answers to crash your enemies, see them driven before you and
• 20:06
  hear the lamentation of their women.
• 20:09
  And yeah. But it's like that night, his
• 20:18
  slave master, the guy who has had him since he was sitting on
• 20:22
  top of the wheel as a child, that's him.
• 20:27
  That's who I think it is anyway, the guy who was sitting on the
• 20:30
  wheel when he was initially chained to the wheel, that that
• 20:35
  guy gets drunk one night and chops off the chain holding him.
• 20:42
  And Aku tells us that he doesn't know why the guy decided to free
• 20:48
  him that night. Maybe he was drunk.
• 20:50
  Maybe he realized that he had had this person caged for too
• 20:54
  long and then at any point Conan could turn and kill the the
• 21:00
  owner and so that's why he let him go.
• 21:03
  I don't. I don't think the dogs in the
• 21:06
  next scene were from Civilization.
• 21:12
  I think they were wild. I think he was.
• 21:14
  It makes more. Sense running from wild dogs.
• 21:17
  Yeah, I was like, why did you free him if those dogs are from
• 21:20
  you? Because.
• 21:22
  That's what I thought at first. I was like, why?
• 21:25
  Why Like did did was he promised to be sold to someone else and
• 21:30
  so they're sending dogs to get them back.
• 21:32
  Like why? Why did they send the dogs after
• 21:34
  him? But then I realized the dogs
• 21:37
  don't have collars. I think they're just wild dogs.
• 21:41
  I think this is like a day or two later while he's wandering
• 21:46
  in the step he just happens to get attacked by dogs.
• 21:51
  Set down the skeleton throne room like in the middle of
• 21:55
  nowhere. Like is the the the whatever?
• 21:58
  Why is this here? Don't ask questions, Justin.
• 22:02
  This is a fantasy. Yeah, this is an adventure.
• 22:05
  He just kind of stumbled into it.
• 22:07
  Maybe the guides are guiding him.
• 22:09
  Yeah, you'll. Find a cave that's actually a
• 22:11
  vampire place and who cares that it's in the middle of nowhere?
• 22:17
  Just have the adventure dude. Like enjoy it.
• 22:22
  I don't. I got a little confused in this
• 22:25
  scene because I was. I thought he was suggesting that
• 22:29
  the dead king was crommed. Same.
• 22:33
  Yep. So you heard that too.
• 22:36
  Like I oh man. Well, now I'm more confused
• 22:41
  because I was, I was like, well, maybe he's just saying it like
• 22:44
  we would say, oh God, but he's just throwing it out there and
• 22:49
  he doesn't know who this guy is. He's just being like, oh, Crom,
• 22:53
  this is crazy that this person's here.
• 22:55
  But I think he directly called the guy Crom.
• 22:58
  I think he was like, oh Chrome I didn't know or something.
• 23:05
  Like it, it feels like, you know, the Excalibur.
• 23:08
  He finds a sword, and it means more than all of the other
• 23:13
  swords and fighting that he's done.
• 23:16
  It's a maybe he can own. A sword, yeah.
• 23:19
  He can only attribute it to Chrome's will or something.
• 23:24
  I Is this the part where you're thinking that this is like the
• 23:28
  first act? Because this is like 20 minutes
• 23:31
  into the film. Oh wow, I thought, I thought it
• 23:36
  went much further because I felt like everything before this I
• 23:41
  really was not having a good time with.
• 23:44
  It just feels like forever. Yeah, and now I'm starting to
• 23:49
  have a good time. Like now the story is picking
• 23:52
  up. Conan isn't dumb anymore.
• 23:55
  He has, you know, boosted into his intelligence stat.
• 24:00
  His wisdom stat is still low, but that's from inexperience.
• 24:05
  But I think his charisma stat is naturally high.
• 24:09
  And then, of course, his strength and everything else is
• 24:13
  naturally high. Yeah.
• 24:16
  And so when he gets the sword and he leaves and cuts off the
• 24:19
  chain, I'm like, all right, we got a movie now, like.
• 24:25
  Intro pre prologue is done. We are ready to hit the book.
• 24:31
  Yeah, well then I don't. Know where I would say the first
• 24:36
  act? Should be.
• 24:37
  I think I wrote it down at least time wise.
• 24:46
  Where did first third? Essentially the first third goes
• 24:51
  with the back story. He grows up and escapes to go
• 24:55
  get his sword. He meets a witch and gets
• 24:58
  information on finding the Temple of Set and the giant
• 25:03
  snake So. All he has to do is have some
• 25:07
  wild sex with a demon lady. Who can transform and disappear
• 25:13
  and never come back? Yeah, never be a part of the
• 25:16
  rest of the movie. Like, I was thinking, oh, wow,
• 25:19
  maybe she's going to turn into a hag, but it's going to turn out
• 25:22
  that that he knocked her up and she's going to be pregnant with
• 25:26
  some future villain. No, she gets thrown into the
• 25:30
  fire, turns into an ethereal version, and then flies away
• 25:35
  forever. And that was weird.
• 25:38
  But we got to meet Subo Thai, who was chained up in the back.
• 25:43
  Oh. Yeah, Yeah.
• 25:45
  So like in terms of time that getting to the Giants, they can
• 25:49
  stabbing it is the first third and that.
• 25:52
  OK, Then I'm willing to say that I'm willing to say that that can
• 25:57
  be where the first act is. And all that we've had for the
• 26:01
  first half of this or the 1st 20 minutes or so has been kind of
• 26:05
  dull. And now we've got like like an
• 26:09
  actual adventuring party that's starting to be built.
• 26:12
  We've got. Gets information on where he
• 26:15
  needs to go and that's the hook. It's like, OK, he needs to go to
• 26:18
  Zamora or whatever and. Yeah, some big city.
• 26:23
  Now we have something because he was just escaping from his
• 26:27
  origin story and getting a sword.
• 26:30
  And I like, OK, you could have started by having a sword and we
• 26:36
  could just start the story. Yeah, I yeah, we could have cut
• 26:41
  a lot of that stuff. But you know, now we've we've
• 26:43
  got our barbarian class, he's the main character and he's
• 26:48
  going to meet the thief class and they're going to go into the
• 26:51
  city and get drunk and I guess steal stuff like with abandoned.
• 26:57
  He, I don't quite remember seeing them pill for anything,
• 27:03
  but he punches a camel to death with one hit and everybody kind
• 27:07
  of stares at him like, what are you doing?
• 27:09
  Which, yeah. And that looks like.
• 27:11
  I guess that was when someone called him a thief and I was
• 27:14
  like, OK, so I guess they've been stealing stuff the whole
• 27:18
  time and that because they're called a thief, they decide they
• 27:21
  are going to become thieves. Makes sense, right?
• 27:26
  Yeah. So they're going to go steal
• 27:29
  from the snake cult. And that's when we meet our
• 27:33
  rogue, who might also be a thief, but.
• 27:37
  I was trying to figure it out. Put her in a different class.
• 27:42
  Like, yeah, Rogue probably fits 'cause I, I will say that it
• 27:51
  feels with the exception of a couple of like she has to fall
• 27:56
  in love with Conan essentially in the epic, she goes out and
• 28:01
  fights and kills and has some nice movement of her own
• 28:08
  character of her own. So I love that because she's
• 28:13
  she's a character, she she exists, she ran into Conan
• 28:19
  trusted him for for some reason and.
• 28:21
  I do like their meeting. They meet on the streets and
• 28:26
  they all draw swords on each other and they they square up to
• 28:30
  fight and then eventually they all accuse each other of not
• 28:33
  being real guards. Yeah, well, yeah, I know.
• 28:39
  I'm not a real guard. You're not a real guard.
• 28:42
  Like, it's great. My reason for saying she's a a
• 28:46
  rogue is because like she immediately gets a disguise when
• 28:53
  they infiltrate the place. So she's she's someone who's
• 28:58
  going to infiltrate and snap your fingers for real.
• 29:02
  She there was no commotion. No one even noticed she was
• 29:06
  there. So I that's why I'm going to put
• 29:09
  her in in the rogue class. Yeah, she still likes to steal,
• 29:13
  but I think she's more action focused.
• 29:17
  Yeah. Yeah, so they I OK, there is
• 29:24
  something from this infiltration that I loved and want to rave
• 29:31
  about, but I'll stop you if you want to get me there.
• 29:39
  About the infiltration itself, that we haven't.
• 29:41
  Sent well, just anything on this.
• 29:44
  The next bits. I don't want to leave the snake
• 29:49
  is the point that I'm making. Oh no.
• 29:51
  No, no, no, I think there's a bit to say there because they're
• 29:55
  I don't know if they specifically reference Doom, but
• 29:59
  it's like, OK, we get an idea of maybe a bit more where this
• 30:09
  group of of I don't even know what they're trying to do
• 30:13
  chanting death cult type stuff leading up to that.
• 30:20
  I think it's a fun commentary by coming in that civilization
• 30:24
  smells bad. Like yeah, that would make sense
• 30:26
  in 1200 BC or whatever earlier, but I'll.
• 30:33
  Go ahead with it. We'll say early Bronze Age
• 30:36
  civilizations had already figured out plumbing.
• 30:40
  Like there's evidence that that is one of our first city
• 30:46
  inventions. Like we didn't start doing
• 30:49
  cities until we could figure out how to get rid of our crap.
• 30:53
  That makes sense. But still, funny joke.
• 30:58
  Ha ha. I like it.
• 31:00
  But yeah, in the infiltration, when they're stealing all of the
• 31:03
  jewels and all the stuff, they come across this giant snake
• 31:11
  that's like a giant snake puppet that was obviously filmed on in
• 31:17
  camera. And at one point, well, not at
• 31:23
  one point, at the end of the fight, Conan chops the snake's
• 31:29
  head off and it looks so real and so good and it's a puppet,
• 31:39
  but it looks like a giant snake was beheaded.
• 31:43
  Oh, man, it looks good. 10 out of 10 on that special effect.
• 31:48
  I can't get enough of it. It's incredible.
• 31:54
  I didn't quite notice it to that extent.
• 31:57
  I'm trying to again. Oh, that He stamped it.
• 31:59
  But I don't think I watched that particular beheading.
• 32:03
  So Subo tie shot arrows into it to pin it into the wall and they
• 32:08
  may have replaced the puppet with the thing that gets chopped
• 32:14
  up but it looks really good. Like when it's beheaded, it
• 32:21
  looks like a real snake that was beheaded.
• 32:27
  It's still giant. It's, I don't know.
• 32:31
  I'm, I'm, I'm shocked. I'm shocked that you weren't
• 32:37
  just stunned by how awesome it was.
• 32:40
  I think there's a lot of really good costume and blood and
• 32:47
  cutting in this one. I feel like for the most part
• 32:52
  they just decided to show it and go for it because like there's a
• 33:00
  spike trap later on and it feels for 1982 on the same level as
• 33:06
  like The Quiet Place that we liked that where there's gore
• 33:09
  and stuff, but you can't, you can't do everything you can do
• 33:13
  now. But for 1982, they did a heck of
• 33:17
  a lot. Oh yeah, They did a shocking
• 33:22
  amount of special effects that looked so good for the time.
• 33:27
  There's really only one thing. Well, two things that I kind of
• 33:30
  hated, but otherwise I I was kind of surprised that this was
• 33:36
  a 1982 movie before how good it looked.
• 33:39
  But yeah, our heroes getaway Scott free and they they go to
• 33:44
  celebrate their victory. For a long time, I was trying to
• 33:49
  figure out, it felt like because the narrator said something
• 33:53
  about, you know, success and like, like, was it just this one
• 33:58
  success? Did they become like?
• 34:00
  This was their one job and they just hung around the city drunk
• 34:05
  all the time. Seems like you guys are.
• 34:10
  So bad at this. Yeah, I did think that was
• 34:15
  funny, that, oh, what's her name?
• 34:20
  The Rogue. The wiki calls her Valeria, but
• 34:25
  I don't remember her being named.
• 34:28
  Or maybe someone calling her Val like I don't remember.
• 34:33
  Well after they've stolen the stuff like she moves her hand to
• 34:38
  try and get the giant gem right in front of Conan.
• 34:42
  So like, it's a odd choice but for some reason it has to happen
• 34:48
  so that they can start making out and just link up together
• 34:54
  right from then on it. That's probably the weakest part
• 34:58
  of my my feelings of this character.
• 35:03
  Yeah, they they fall immediately in love after one, one heist,
• 35:11
  one heist and they're already Bonnie and Clyde.
• 35:14
  They are mad for each other. And you know, later on in the
• 35:19
  movie, I'm fine with the relationship, but early on it is
• 35:26
  very kind of jarring. Like they don't even know each
• 35:30
  other. They they succeeded once and now
• 35:33
  they've just been on a Bender and they're going to say they're
• 35:35
  in love. They're going to provide a cover
• 35:40
  story for Subo Tai when he's not kid arrested by the king and
• 35:46
  they're like oh, we're in the three of you the other guy died
• 35:49
  he. Was killed, then he's
• 35:54
  immediately brought inside. Yeah, but I did like that it was
• 35:58
  a good small touch. It was a good.
• 36:00
  You know, there is honor among thieves.
• 36:03
  Like they're going to back up their friend and be like, if
• 36:06
  he's gotten away, we're not going to snitch like.
• 36:09
  Yeah. Keep your mouth shut.
• 36:12
  I think for the purpose of the conflict the king has to be
• 36:19
  happy with them and and offer them more to get his kidnapped
• 36:23
  Princess daughter back. Yeah.
• 36:27
  Like, OK, I think they make it interesting in the king saying
• 36:32
  that. I can't recall how he says it.
• 36:35
  It makes the king admit to having been a thief and making
• 36:40
  all of his way up to be a king. So.
• 36:43
  He's, I mean, his title is King Osric, the usurper.
• 36:48
  He wasn't. He's not someone who was born
• 36:53
  into this life. He took the throne.
• 36:58
  Interesting, I must have not been told that by the dialogue.
• 37:05
  But I was told that by the dialogue.
• 37:07
  That's what I remember. What?
• 37:09
  But you're looking at the wiki. No, because they don't say it in
• 37:12
  the wiki. They.
• 37:14
  That's just what I remember from his introduction.
• 37:17
  And I was like, oh, so maybe he's the usurper because the
• 37:21
  snake cult put him on the throne.
• 37:24
  And then very quickly he's like, no, I hate the snake cult.
• 37:28
  Like, I'm going to give you guys as much of my wealth as you
• 37:33
  want. Just go get my damsel in
• 37:36
  distress daughter. And I do like his line about how
• 37:43
  eventually the the throne room becomes a prison.
• 37:47
  And I was like, oh. That's what made him
• 37:53
  interesting. And we're never going to see him
• 37:56
  again either. Another very interesting
• 37:59
  character and we're done with him.
• 38:01
  Maybe I haven't played enough Skyrim, but it feels very oh
• 38:04
  this location has this person and then they'll never leave
• 38:08
  this location. If you never go back to it, you
• 38:10
  won't hear about them ever. Yep.
• 38:16
  Yeah. So Conan, he's he buys into a
• 38:20
  sob store. All that learning.
• 38:23
  Yeah, he's ready to quest. He's ready to go on an
• 38:25
  adventure. He'll even abandoned his party
• 38:29
  to go on this. That was pretty lame.
• 38:31
  I was like, well, you guys just totally bonded somehow.
• 38:37
  And now he's going to right away in the night.
• 38:41
  Like Val was getting so much dialogue to be like, hey, let's
• 38:47
  just take the jewels and not get the Princess in it.
• 38:50
  It's it's fun. I enjoyed the fact that Val was
• 38:54
  there to be suggesting alternatives, like they have
• 39:00
  some honor, but also like, we don't have to do this quest.
• 39:05
  We could just leave. Yeah.
• 39:08
  This place sucks. Tulsa Doom.
• 39:11
  His last name is Doom. He.
• 39:15
  Knows what he's doing. Yeah, but you know, it's OK.
• 39:20
  You like any good adventure? Our hero will soon find a new
• 39:25
  companion, and this time it's going to be a wizard.
• 39:27
  Yeah, except I'm so more I'm. I'm much more disappointed in
• 39:33
  Aku screen time than I am his narration.
• 39:36
  I love his narration, but man, I don't love the wizard.
• 39:40
  It's. It's I like his introduction.
• 39:46
  I like when he immediately starts threatening Conan and
• 39:50
  Conan's like threatening back and then they just start
• 39:54
  laughing and they're going to hang out together.
• 39:56
  I'm fine with that. I'm a sucker for a trope and
• 39:59
  that's one of those tropes that gets me.
• 40:01
  But I'll agree with you after that his on screen performance
• 40:07
  is. So lame.
• 40:11
  Yeah, compared to the picture I had in my head from his vocal
• 40:16
  narration. So good as a narrator.
• 40:18
  Oh my gosh. It's just just such a like
• 40:22
  tactile voice, like just so recognizable.
• 40:27
  Well, and it seemed so thoughtful.
• 40:30
  He seemed like a, you know, someone who really was powerful
• 40:36
  and in control. Like runs away screaming from
• 40:39
  all of his stuff. Yeah.
• 40:40
  Like he's not good with the spirits that he's kind of chummy
• 40:45
  with, like, And we'll have to get back to that after this next
• 40:51
  piece because I don't. The effects of the ghosts back
• 40:57
  at the wizard Hut. Not bad.
• 40:59
  Yeah, OK. The whole.
• 41:00
  That's the part. I wanted to.
• 41:02
  That was the second thing I wanted to talk about.
• 41:05
  So I do want before we get there, I want to get to the
• 41:08
  first first thing. So we do have to talk about the
• 41:12
  first mountain infiltration. Yeah, he's not dumb.
• 41:18
  Actually, no, this isn't the first thing I wanted to.
• 41:20
  No. OK, yeah, let's go ahead and
• 41:23
  yeah, go ahead and take me to the Mountain of Power.
• 41:27
  So, like, Wizard and Conan kind of, you know, they do chum up.
• 41:32
  And Conan is still set on his quest to go to the Children of
• 41:38
  Doom, where we assume Doom is. And he asked the wizard if any
• 41:43
  flowers grow around this place. And, like, the wizard's puzzled.
• 41:46
  And I'm puzzled. And then it's like, I don't
• 41:49
  understand. He gets some flowers.
• 41:52
  Yeah. And.
• 41:54
  Why? He gets flowers and takes them
• 41:59
  with him because we've been seeing the dooms children's with
• 42:04
  beards and long hair and flower like flowers.
• 42:08
  Like is this pointing towards like the 60s?
• 42:11
  Like what's these are all cultists?
• 42:15
  He goes to there with some flowers and he blends right in.
• 42:19
  I think it's it was such a decision to be like Conan's
• 42:23
  thinking ahead so he doesn't stick out.
• 42:26
  And I mean, maybe that's as far as he thinks ahead, but wow,
• 42:30
  good, good development, man. We.
• 42:34
  Well, and frankly, for a solo infiltration mission, I think he
• 42:40
  gets shockingly far. Like he gets halfway up the main
• 42:45
  stairs before he has to blend in again, and then he gets captured
• 42:52
  by the goon squad. But you know, for a while he
• 42:57
  was, he had a pretty successful infiltration.
• 43:02
  Yeah, and I don't think they recognize him at this point, but
• 43:06
  those are the two guys from the when he was a kid, parents died
• 43:12
  so. Honestly, I think they know that
• 43:17
  he's the one who stole the gym from them, but only because he's
• 43:22
  been carrying around that jade pendant like a big dummy.
• 43:28
  Like, here's the evidence of the thing I stole.
• 43:30
  Look. Look at this thing I stole from
• 43:32
  you guys. Yeah, they they unmask and catch
• 43:37
  him and he talks with Doom. Doom commands somebody to jump
• 43:42
  off a Cliff to show power of flesh because he he knows about
• 43:47
  the Riddle of steel And it's an interesting bit of like world
• 43:53
  lore. I kind of don't take Conan as a
• 43:57
  our world. Like if there was a weird
• 44:01
  creature that walked on screen and I would think closer to Star
• 44:06
  Wars world than than our world because none of the other names
• 44:11
  make sense. Like Chrome.
• 44:13
  I have never heard of Chrome, but Doom doesn't really consider
• 44:22
  him a threat so they just take him out, get rid of him, crucify
• 44:27
  him at some tree place. I wrote it down.
• 44:30
  Tree of Woe. Yeah.
• 44:34
  And it's a failed infiltration. Yep.
• 44:38
  So he failed and now he is going to be hung up on a tree.
• 44:42
  I do like that in addition to the ropes that are tying him up,
• 44:47
  the spikes go through the wrist, which is where the spikes should
• 44:53
  go because there are a lot of little hand bones.
• 44:56
  And if you put the spike in the hand, yeah, big heavy body will
• 45:00
  just RIP through it. But yeah, in the wrist, that'll
• 45:03
  that'll support the weight better.
• 45:08
  And again, I'll say the movie gets slow.
• 45:14
  It's interesting watching him capture a vulture.
• 45:19
  I was not expecting him to bite it.
• 45:22
  Yeah, it was. I was like, OK, all right, I bet
• 45:26
  that tasted terrible because vulture meat famously is not
• 45:32
  good. But it kept him alive just long
• 45:37
  enough for his original party, yeah, to rescue him.
• 45:43
  I think, I mean, it's understandable to split them up
• 45:46
  in the movie so that you can have someone to come get him.
• 45:49
  So not everybody's captured, OK? But yeah, then we get to the
• 45:56
  spirit scene. I feel like Aku just like sets
• 46:02
  it all up but then is so scared of the spirits and can't help
• 46:06
  out. I do think the levitation trick
• 46:09
  is kind of cool. This is your yeah wheelhouse.
• 46:12
  This is your job. Yeah, like we're not supposed to
• 46:15
  be in charge of this. And I, that's where when the
• 46:18
  spirits come and start the levitating Conan on these ropes,
• 46:21
  like Val is like holding him down.
• 46:25
  And I'm I'm like nobody explained what it's supposed to
• 46:29
  look like is but the spirits are supposed to be helping, right?
• 46:33
  Like, why? Like how do you know these are
• 46:35
  the wrong ones? How do you how do you know when
• 46:38
  they're done? Like I don't more questions than
• 46:42
  they have probably. It's the weakest scene in terms
• 46:47
  of, well, in terms of everything.
• 46:49
  It's weak in terms of execution. It's weak in terms of
• 46:54
  storytelling. They clearly didn't really know
• 46:59
  what they were going to do with the special effects.
• 47:02
  They knew they were going to do something in post production.
• 47:05
  And so they were like, there's going to be ghosts.
• 47:08
  So you got to swing at them like you're cutting these ghosts.
• 47:11
  So like swing at a thing. And I don't know if the actors
• 47:14
  got it because the lady playing Val is swinging wildly.
• 47:21
  Subo Tie occasionally stabs at something and and that looks OK
• 47:26
  in the animation. But then they have what looks
• 47:29
  like crayon colored animation for these spirits and I just
• 47:36
  don't like it. I don't think it looks good.
• 47:39
  I don't think the scene is good. I I don't know.
• 47:42
  I would probably agree on the scene, the spirits.
• 47:45
  I was like, you know, that I don't think they have any
• 47:50
  computer stuff going on, so it's what they had to work with.
• 47:55
  I don't know if you actually needed to see physical spirits,
• 48:01
  if their spirits like just show me some grass moving in the wind
• 48:07
  or something. Like, I don't know.
• 48:10
  I I feel like the spirits if they didn't want to have Val and
• 48:15
  Subotai fight them off they could have done different
• 48:18
  things. But I think that's why why
• 48:21
  they're penciled in so that the the party could save Conan from
• 48:26
  the spirits that are supposed to help him.
• 48:27
  Like no other spirits show up so these are the ones that heal
• 48:31
  them. I don't understand.
• 48:34
  Yeah. Although she does OK, maybe
• 48:38
  that's it. The wizard says there's a price
• 48:43
  to pay for healing them but I feel like if the price was more
• 48:48
  immediate for a Val then like then he gets healed for that I.
• 48:54
  Almost feel like that was a bit of a throwaway to justify what's
• 48:59
  coming up next. Snake arrow.
• 49:02
  But yeah, but at least like at least they had something in
• 49:07
  there to be like, yes, you can save Conan, but it's going to
• 49:11
  cost you. And but we get our second
• 49:16
  infiltration and this is my second thumbs down part of.
• 49:23
  The movie you don't enjoy that this is probably more gore and
• 49:26
  nudity in a 80s film than we've had in any of our other
• 49:30
  franchises. I mean the orgy is fine.
• 49:34
  I'm I'm never going to complain about getting to see boobs.
• 49:39
  The part that that okay, there were two things that just ripped
• 49:44
  me out of the moment because building up, it actually is
• 49:48
  pretty good. Like when they're getting into
• 49:52
  the kitchens and then they're getting in and.
• 49:54
  The kitchen. Energy is going on the.
• 49:56
  Kitchen have people like. It has people working in there,
• 50:00
  but we don't see what they're cooking yet.
• 50:03
  Well, the wall. Until they start stirring the
• 50:05
  pot that we. It looks like people right like.
• 50:10
  Oh yeah, yeah, OK. They're cannibals.
• 50:12
  They're eating. They're eating people.
• 50:14
  I was like I see legs in this red light but I'm sure the red
• 50:18
  light is meant to like obscure it a bit.
• 50:22
  That's that's, that's part of it.
• 50:24
  They're eating people. So the the very beginning of the
• 50:29
  this second infiltration is pretty dope.
• 50:32
  And then there's one part where our heroes are ascending into
• 50:42
  position and from I just I'm picturing Fulsa Doom's vantage
• 50:48
  point where he is sitting high above and with a clearview of
• 50:52
  everything and most things are dressed in white.
• 50:57
  And then we've got our 3 heroes who are dressed in all dark with
• 51:02
  their face, you know, that has dark streaks on it.
• 51:06
  He. Can't watch with his eyes closed
• 51:08
  like that's why. At one point Val crawls out to
• 51:14
  start a fire and I'm like, you would you would be able to see
• 51:17
  her? Like you could see her.
• 51:20
  Anyone can see her. She is just out in the open and
• 51:24
  she's so dark compared to how light everything is.
• 51:28
  And and then we've got the really bad looking body parts in
• 51:33
  the soup and I'm like oh come on.
• 51:37
  And that's when I'm lost. And then Thulsa Doom starts
• 51:40
  transforming into a snake and. I was not expecting his face to
• 51:44
  elongate. I think they did the right thing
• 51:47
  by doing it off camera for the puppet snake, but the the
• 51:53
  movement to suggest that this guy is actually transforming
• 51:58
  was. And why?
• 52:00
  Why, Yeah. It's never going to come back.
• 52:04
  He can transform this one time during this specific orgy.
• 52:09
  That's when he can. I, I hate it.
• 52:14
  I'm so fine with magic and demons and all this other stuff.
• 52:21
  It's this one time snake transformation that just had me
• 52:28
  livid. I was like oh this sucks.
• 52:31
  I hate everything about this. Yeah, it's, I don't know that I
• 52:38
  have anything favored except the fact that they seem to be
• 52:41
  infiltrating well and like, they don't immediately start killing
• 52:48
  people until they're set and ready.
• 52:52
  And then Val gets to do a lot of like fighting, I think maybe on
• 52:58
  their way out that she has just a solo fight against like 4
• 53:01
  guards. Yeah, not at once.
• 53:03
  Oh yeah, she's holding it down. Yeah, I was like, awesome, Yeah.
• 53:07
  I don't. I don't know if Subo Thai is
• 53:09
  even shooting arrows. He's just kind of off to the
• 53:12
  side. Conan is getting the damsel in
• 53:15
  distress and so when we cut to Val she's like taking on 4
• 53:20
  dudes. Yeah, it's I enjoyed that of
• 53:25
  this second infiltration. Yeah, I did not enjoy the
• 53:30
  exfiltration, the escape, the let.
• 53:35
  Me see. When Falsa Doom is back to being
• 53:38
  a human again. He like escaped out a side
• 53:43
  tunnel, but then like coincidentally at the right
• 53:48
  time, he leaves as a snake and he turns back into himself to
• 53:51
  shoot a snake. That's it, right?
• 53:56
  Oh yeah, that's he. He tells the snake to seek, and
• 54:01
  then he shoots it as an arrow. And apparently the snake can
• 54:06
  control how it's flying through the air, because.
• 54:09
  Yeah. It it seeks out.
• 54:12
  Val Aerodynamic, you know, Yeah, odd.
• 54:19
  Like she gets arrowed with a snake arrow and they stop out of
• 54:25
  range and then Conan draws the live snake out of the opposite
• 54:30
  side of her body and it's like, did this arrow go through her?
• 54:35
  Is that what we're saying? Because she had shot on the
• 54:38
  right hand side and it's pulling it out on the left hand side.
• 54:41
  And now I was like, is this just a mistake?
• 54:44
  Did they flip the frames in this shot?
• 54:48
  Maybe it it chewed its way through.
• 54:51
  Maybe it's one of those rare chewing snakes.
• 54:54
  Seeker. Seeker.
• 54:55
  Chewer. Snake.
• 54:58
  Yeah. But yeah, that's the end of Val
• 55:02
  she gets. They do a very dramatic like
• 55:05
  Remember Me, let me breathe my last breath and into you.
• 55:09
  It's like I mean she she was set on on falling in love with Conan
• 55:17
  and then she dies. But I feel like he cares more
• 55:24
  about the memories of his father at the next moment that they're
• 55:29
  they're done set up for for the inevitable.
• 55:34
  Yeah, maybe. I don't know.
• 55:36
  I feel like this was probably the best scene.
• 55:42
  After I've been kind of bummed out for the past two scenes, I'm
• 55:47
  finally kind of on board for the death and the funeral.
• 55:52
  I had to look up her name. Val was played by Sandal
• 55:56
  Bergman. I I don't know a lot of agents,
• 55:59
  these actors, but I definitely feel like she kind of was the
• 56:05
  acting muscle of this movie. If Arnold is the physical
• 56:10
  muscle, yeah, she's the acting of this movie.
• 56:15
  And now we lose her, but only temporarily.
• 56:18
  We'll get her back. That's the good news.
• 56:23
  When the fires of the funeral have brought Dulcidum to the
• 56:29
  arena of booby traps. 2 dudes versus but 12.
• 56:34
  Before we get to the booby traps, we got to point out the
• 56:36
  really great line of subo tie returning to the wizard, to Aku.
• 56:46
  And Aku is like why do you cry? And Subo Tie is like because
• 56:52
  Conan will not. It's interesting.
• 57:00
  Oh man, the toxic masculinity of this movie.
• 57:05
  Conan is strength. Yeah, I think.
• 57:10
  Is that before Arnold gets to talk about his father's memory?
• 57:14
  I feel like I wanted. I don't remember to count how
• 57:17
  many. Any of this stuff about his
• 57:19
  father's memory I wanted. To count how many lines Arnold
• 57:22
  has because for five sentences he's he feels like a person
• 57:29
  instead of a character talking about his father to subo tie
• 57:37
  because he asked Subo tie something.
• 57:39
  And he responds that, you know, it's feels like the spring wind,
• 57:44
  like that's that's an amazing memory and or feeling or
• 57:47
  something. And it comes after, you know,
• 57:51
  the Val has died and they're about to do some more stunt work
• 57:57
  with all their booby traps. The booby traps, and you know,
• 58:06
  I'm going to do what I always do, which is to say, if you are
• 58:10
  listening, in the United States of America, it is federally
• 58:14
  illegal to set up booby traps on your property.
• 58:18
  You cannot do it. You will lose your right to
• 58:21
  vote. Don't set up booby traps.
• 58:24
  But with that said, they've got, what, two of them?
• 58:29
  And then some weird spikes on the mound that don't make a lick
• 58:33
  of sense. So I feel like the spikes are
• 58:37
  set up to like maybe, maybe if you're running up them, be there
• 58:44
  to stop you. But the stunt guys get to fall
• 58:48
  from the top down, so they just roll over the spikes.
• 58:51
  It's more dramatic we. Quickly learn.
• 58:54
  We quickly learn that the spikes have been set up so that they
• 58:58
  are hindering subo tie and not the invaders.
• 59:04
  Subo Tie does get to shoot some arrows.
• 59:07
  I do like that he's kind of planned ahead, able to put
• 59:11
  arrows down where he'll need them.
• 59:14
  Surprisingly, yeah, he's he's. Capable in this fight.
• 59:19
  He's part of the the fight in a better way.
• 59:24
  I'm trying to like, yes, we've got the big spike trap.
• 59:27
  Are there any others? I'm trying to I think was a
• 59:33
  spike trap happened with the helmet fake out at the same
• 59:38
  time. OK, well it was more they were
• 59:42
  able to hide from all these people and surprise them in so
• 59:46
  many different places. Like it's two dudes and it's all
• 59:51
  of Tulsa Doom's generals. I don't know his actual
• 59:57
  fighters. His forces, I guess.
• 1:00:00
  Surprised that they beat two of the other dudes.
• 1:00:04
  The spike through the chest is probably my favorite effect
• 1:00:07
  effect because it. It's the one that I'm thinking
• 1:00:11
  of, and I can't think of any other booby traps that they
• 1:00:15
  would have used in. They had to have had at least
• 1:00:19
  one more because otherwise why show us any booby traps?
• 1:00:22
  But yeah, I can't think of any other one except for the really
• 1:00:26
  great Spike. Yeah, of that it's not.
• 1:00:32
  The spike is memorable. And finally defeating the other
• 1:00:36
  dude 'cause I think when the other dude shows up, or no maybe
• 1:00:40
  it was in the snake orgy, the big bad guys realize that Conan
• 1:00:46
  is the kid that they kidnapped and because he does his whole
• 1:00:50
  stretch thing. I think it was the snake orgy.
• 1:00:55
  And so now Conan is getting his final revenge on like both of
• 1:01:02
  them. Both of the generals.
• 1:01:04
  Successfully accomplishes it and you know, it's it's been come in
• 1:01:11
  since they killed his parents essentially.
• 1:01:14
  So we get to wrap up that thread.
• 1:01:16
  There's only the final boss left.
• 1:01:18
  Well, we skipped over the return of Val.
• 1:01:22
  Oh yeah, after the spike trap one of the generals gets the
• 1:01:26
  better of Conan, but then Val cheats by coming back from the
• 1:01:31
  dead. As a Valkyrie.
• 1:01:33
  Delivering yeah, Valkyrie for some reason, Val the Valkyrie
• 1:01:39
  and she delivers her famous line of Do you want to live forever?
• 1:01:47
  And. I kept chuckling at that line.
• 1:01:50
  I think she says it three times in the movie, but every time I
• 1:01:54
  think of it or hear it, I think of Starship Troopers.
• 1:01:57
  Exactly. With the Sergeant.
• 1:02:00
  So I'm hearing, yeah, I'm just like, oh, man, this, this line
• 1:02:06
  has been passed around for a long, long time.
• 1:02:10
  But yeah, she comes back as a Valkyrie.
• 1:02:13
  And yes, OK, that's all I wanted to say is she came back from the
• 1:02:18
  dead. Conan kills the other guy, and
• 1:02:20
  now you are correct. He's got one last dude to go
• 1:02:23
  get, and that dude is ready to turn his snake Colts into a
• 1:02:27
  suicide Colts. Like is that what he was queuing
• 1:02:31
  them up to? Because they all just have
• 1:02:32
  fighters. I think.
• 1:02:33
  So yeah. And I think he's talking about
• 1:02:36
  like, now's the end, We've come to the end.
• 1:02:39
  It's time to do what we've all I've been talking about.
• 1:02:42
  And I'm like, I don't think you've ever talked about a
• 1:02:44
  suicide pact. And they've already got the
• 1:02:48
  Princess back, right or no? No, they're only getting the
• 1:02:52
  Princess I. Thought they had her.
• 1:02:56
  She just because she follows Conan, she's all tied up walking
• 1:03:01
  up the front. Well, at the place where Suvo,
• 1:03:05
  Tie and Conan fight, she's chained up and I think maybe.
• 1:03:09
  She is the bait, Yeah. And she is successfully
• 1:03:12
  protected. And then when, you know, Conan
• 1:03:16
  goes for the final battle, he frees her.
• 1:03:19
  Oh, yeah. And I think he even says
• 1:03:21
  something like, go home or go wherever you want to go.
• 1:03:24
  Like, you and I are done. I'm going to go kill that guy,
• 1:03:29
  Pholsa Doom. And so in this scene, the most
• 1:03:33
  striking contrast is you've got her slowly coming up the stairs,
• 1:03:40
  and then from behind you've got Conan coming in.
• 1:03:46
  It's license some people up because they're distracted by
• 1:03:48
  her it seems like. Yeah.
• 1:03:52
  And I don't think it's an intentional distraction.
• 1:03:55
  I think Conan's like, I'm I'm coming up to kill you and and
• 1:04:00
  Thulsa Doom is like, there she is.
• 1:04:02
  Wait a minute. And yeah, I I'm pretty
• 1:04:09
  conflicted about this final sequence.
• 1:04:12
  Because revenge. I mean he gets the revenge,
• 1:04:20
  there is a good beheading, the Colts disbands, the spell is
• 1:04:26
  broken, he does a an Olympic sport to burn down the palace.
• 1:04:35
  That's the little point. I think the actual confrontation
• 1:04:39
  is kind of the same as the beginning, when he hypnotizes
• 1:04:44
  the mom without saying a word and then strikes her down.
• 1:04:49
  Conan kind of looks like he's getting hypnotized and then
• 1:04:54
  overcomes it and hacks into doom.
• 1:04:57
  So it's I would most retroactively justify it with
• 1:05:02
  that. But the Olympic throwing is
• 1:05:06
  ridiculous. Like you tossed it into a stone
• 1:05:09
  building and more fire caught on fire.
• 1:05:12
  I don't it. OK, sure, if you say so.
• 1:05:20
  It's so weird, but whatever it I mean, they decide to go home and
• 1:05:27
  we get one final bit of narration and then we get to see
• 1:05:33
  Old Man Conan with Arnold. So much cooler.
• 1:05:38
  I'm like, OK, if that's the Conan we maybe get like that.
• 1:05:44
  Conan looks like he has funner stories.
• 1:05:47
  Yeah. Well, it's like, I'm pretty sure
• 1:05:50
  the opening narration promised us that we were going to have
• 1:05:53
  Conan the the ruler of Conan, the one who was, you know,
• 1:05:59
  leading an empire. And that's certainly not what we
• 1:06:02
  get by the end of this movie. No, not so much.
• 1:06:06
  He he has he'll, I imagine, return the Princess to the
• 1:06:12
  usurper and he's got Subo tie 2. Just hang out and start doing
• 1:06:17
  their own thing I guess. Well, and Aku's going to come
• 1:06:21
  with them too, because he's going to eventually become the
• 1:06:25
  squad. The narrator.
• 1:06:27
  Yeah. And you know, the closing
• 1:06:29
  narration promises that in the future we will hear the story of
• 1:06:35
  how Conan became a ruler, became a, an emperor of his own, a king
• 1:06:43
  of his own, a conqueror, if you will.
• 1:06:49
  I think the extent of this movie justifies the box office return
• 1:06:59
  because I could see it being, you know, go to the movies one
• 1:07:04
  weekend and maybe you catch Conan, but that's because like
• 1:07:08
  all the seats are out in ET. I don't think it's a first
• 1:07:14
  choice. I think there may be some
• 1:07:16
  favorable reviews and maybe I'll look into them, but I am
• 1:07:20
  prepared to give it a very average score.
• 1:07:26
  All right, well, let's get into it.
• 1:07:28
  On this podcast, we offer ratings, not grades.
• 1:07:33
  The primary difference is where you find the average.
• 1:07:36
  Typically with a grade, you average things at a 7 out of 10.
• 1:07:40
  And that means if something did really badly, you kind of bring
• 1:07:44
  the grade up because you wanted to get closer to that 7 out of
• 1:07:47
  10. But that doesn't make sense for
• 1:07:50
  a movie review because like 5 out of 10 is the middle.
• 1:07:55
  That should be the average. And so we say A5 out of 10 is
• 1:07:59
  the average. We're not saying a movie is bad
• 1:08:01
  when it's a 5 out of 10. But with that said, Justin, what
• 1:08:06
  would you give Conan the Barbarian on a scale of 1 to 10?
• 1:08:13
  Below average I'd get feeling when I finished it and thought
• 1:08:19
  through my things was like five hits an average movie.
• 1:08:26
  But I think that was influenced by the narration that promised
• 1:08:32
  and then under delivered a story that with some nice enjoyable
• 1:08:40
  shining moments. Conan is more, he's more flesh
• 1:08:49
  than steel. Like that whole dichotomy.
• 1:08:51
  He's a big hulking dude with a sword.
• 1:08:55
  And like I don't while it's a conflict or set up to be flesh
• 1:09:06
  versus steel like it the Riddle of steel kind of doesn't do much
• 1:09:14
  more in the movie than the set up.
• 1:09:17
  Like we see Chrome reference at the beginning, but everybody has
• 1:09:24
  swords. Like the only bit is doom tries
• 1:09:28
  to talk his way out of a situation and and fails.
• 1:09:30
  So like it it plays into that. But just 4 is where I sit
• 1:09:38
  because it could be worse. Knight needed to.
• 1:09:44
  I think it shines pretty well as a relic of 19822025.
• 1:09:52
  I wouldn't re release it in theaters.
• 1:09:54
  That is like putting Morbius back out there It I don't think
• 1:10:02
  it would shine in the same way and maybe with a reboot and I
• 1:10:08
  think we'll eventually get to that in the franchise.
• 1:10:11
  I don't know how that one did, but this particular Arnold film
• 1:10:18
  4 is generous, I think I. Completely agree with you.
• 1:10:23
  And I am also at a four. I feel like really there are a
• 1:10:29
  couple of shining moments in this movie where you're like,
• 1:10:33
  wow, that I can see how that would influence people in the
• 1:10:36
  future. But for the most part, I think
• 1:10:41
  this is kind of boring and kind of a meandering tale.
• 1:10:46
  I think what I found most interesting was the fact that
• 1:10:52
  this was Arnold Schwarzenegger's first major role as an actor.
• 1:10:59
  He had done acting before, and he had even been in movies
• 1:11:04
  before. The problem is those movies were
• 1:11:06
  documentaries where he was not playing a part.
• 1:11:10
  He was a subject. He was part of what was on
• 1:11:15
  display. In fact, that movie is called
• 1:11:18
  Pumping Iron. I would highly recommend it.
• 1:11:22
  It's a very interesting movie. There was one of the original
• 1:11:26
  Hulk movies with Lou Ferrigno and Pumping Iron was a special
• 1:11:32
  feature on that movie. And I was like, oh, wow.
• 1:11:35
  So this is literally Arnold Schwarzenegger's very first
• 1:11:39
  movie. It's a documentary about these
• 1:11:42
  two men competing for Mr. Universe.
• 1:11:45
  So it's about Lou Ferrigno the good guy versus Arnold
• 1:11:49
  Schwarzenegger the bad guy. Interesting.
• 1:11:54
  And then a few years later, he got Conan the Barbarian, and
• 1:11:58
  that was kind of the launch of his stardom.
• 1:12:02
  And so you cannot deny how much of an impact this movie had, at
• 1:12:08
  least on Arnold's career. The rest of his career doesn't
• 1:12:14
  happen without this movie. Yeah, like a yeah, Predator in
• 1:12:20
  1987, five years later. I mean, before that I'm sure
• 1:12:23
  that he had some other stuff like commando or something.
• 1:12:26
  Yeah. And he he did a lot of
• 1:12:28
  commercial stuff, but really this movie having him flexing on
• 1:12:35
  screen was what kind of led to his career.
• 1:12:40
  And he took it very seriously because by the time we get to
• 1:12:46
  Terminator, he's like studying robots to see how they move so
• 1:12:52
  that he can try to act like a robot.
• 1:12:55
  And he's never really gotten rid of the accent, but he is truly
• 1:12:59
  an actor by that point. And I think it's because he
• 1:13:03
  didn't just want to be a big burly guy in this movie.
• 1:13:07
  He wanted to be an actor in this movie.
• 1:13:11
  And so that like if I were, if I didn't know all of that, I would
• 1:13:17
  probably give this movie a three.
• 1:13:19
  But the context does kind of elevate it.
• 1:13:24
  Like it's still below average for me, but I am willing to
• 1:13:28
  watch it again just for the novelty of it.
• 1:13:32
  It is interesting. Yeah, that's where, like, how
• 1:13:37
  many lines did Arnold actually have in this movie?
• 1:13:39
  Because he doesn't really need to talk very much.
• 1:13:43
  He doesn't, but he does. He speaks a lot, surprisingly.
• 1:13:48
  Like you look at a movie with other big burly people and
• 1:13:53
  usually they'll have them just reacting but not speaking.
• 1:13:58
  But like, even in those pit fights, that's Arnold screaming.
• 1:14:06
  I mean, it's not, it's not good screaming though.
• 1:14:09
  But it is him. It is Arnold.
• 1:14:12
  Like they didn't cut someone else's voice into it.
• 1:14:15
  So like, they trusted him with it.
• 1:14:20
  And it's not a lot of lines, but he does speak, Yeah.
• 1:14:26
  Yeah, it's a it's a foundational point because the next one is
• 1:14:33
  the Destroyer or conquer. Yes, Conan the Destroyer.
• 1:14:40
  I think Conqueror was supposed to be the third one, but it was
• 1:14:46
  never made and so the writer who wrote Conan the Conqueror ended
• 1:14:51
  up rewriting the script to make Kroll the Conqueror, which was.
• 1:14:56
  It's a totally different sword and sorcery movie, but there are
• 1:15:04
  times when you're like, OK, I can kind of see how this would
• 1:15:07
  have been a Conan movie, but it's definitely not.
• 1:15:12
  Not included in the franchise? Yep, you can't stay with us.
• 1:15:16
  We're not, we're not including it.
• 1:15:18
  We're we're not letting it be involved.
• 1:15:21
  So the next one is 1984's Conan the Destroyer with Oh man I
• 1:15:28
  can't believe I've forgotten her name already, but it's got
• 1:15:30
  mayday from a due to a kill. Feel like it's.
• 1:15:36
  Grace Jones. Grace Jones, Grace Jones.
• 1:15:40
  So I'm excited for that. I'm excited to see Mayday again.
• 1:15:46
  And you know that that's going to be an exciting time and we'll
• 1:15:50
  we'll discuss it more when we get there.
• 1:15:53
  But for now, if you have enjoyed yourself, make sure to hit the
• 1:15:57
  like button, leave a review or a comment, do any of those things
• 1:16:02
  that your pod catcher allows you to do and that helps us out a
• 1:16:06
  whole bunch. Another way to help us out is to
• 1:16:09
  share the episodes with your friends and family.
• 1:16:12
  If there was something you liked, you can share with them.
• 1:16:14
  If you know someone who loves Conan, I don't know, let him
• 1:16:19
  hear what we had to say. We didn't love it, but we were,
• 1:16:23
  you know, just a little bit below average on it.
• 1:16:28
  Yeah. And you know, you can, you can
• 1:16:31
  send it to them and have a conversation about why we were
• 1:16:35
  so off base with your friends. You can also find us on TikTok,
• 1:16:40
  Instagram and YouTube where we post shorts from each episode if
• 1:16:45
  you just want to share a bite sized chunk.
• 1:16:48
  And if there's anything that that you want to say about our
• 1:16:53
  takes or if there's a franchise you want us to look at, send us
• 1:16:57
  an e-mail at potatochippictures@gmail.com.
• 1:17:03
  And I've got, I think I've got to sign out for this particular
• 1:17:08
  franchise unless you've got one. Oh, is it fresh your enemies or?
• 1:17:16
  No, but that's a good idea what I was going to do because at
• 1:17:21
  least in this one, and I'm pretty sure in the next one, I
• 1:17:24
  think all of them end with Aku saying but that there's a story
• 1:17:29
  that will be told another time or something like that.
• 1:17:33
  And so so this is how I think I'm going to end it.
• 1:17:37
  Next week we are going to be watching 1984's Conan the
• 1:17:41
  Destroyer. But that is a podcast for
• 1:17:45
  another time. Goodbye.
• 1:17:52
  That works. Yeah, but I'm so glad we got to
• 1:18:02
  talk about sexy Darth Vader eyes.
• 1:18:08
  I feel like he's just the backdrop of a bad guy.
• 1:18:12
  Like he can command people to die but like he doesn't last in
• 1:18:19
  the sword fight as evidence. In the end he has to hypnotize
• 1:18:23
  people to then cut them with the sword he doesn't like.
• 1:18:26
  I don't know. Yeah, they really could have put
• 1:18:29
  anyone in the role of Thulsa Doom.
• 1:18:34
  James Earl Jones didn't add much to it, except that he looked
• 1:18:39
  interesting. Yeah, I feel like some parts he
• 1:18:43
  was trying to add more like trying to elevate what's going
• 1:18:48
  on. There's just not much you can do
• 1:18:51
  with it. Sword and board.
• 1:18:53
  It's time for gore and boobs. Like, Yep.
• 1:18:58
  Like you can try to add gravitas to this, but really we're just a
• 1:19:03
  vehicle to show teenage boys some boobs.
• 1:19:07
  Essentially.