Some people lost their minds about Arnold Schwarzenegger returning to the role that helped made him famous, Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. “He’s too old!” they cried! Of course he’s old, he is in his mid sixties. But Howard didn’t just write Conan stories about the barbarian’s glorious youth, he wrote about Conan’s entire life — and subsequent authors have told tales well into Conan’s sixties, too. In fact, in a conversation with The Los Angeles Times, producer Chris Morgan points out that’s exactly what the next Conan movie, The Legend of Conan, will deal with.
First, Morgan insists the film will star the Conan we all remember, just decades older. He says, “Not a reboot, not a remake. Just an update. Where has the character been all this time? A catch-up with Conan.”
On the plot of the sequel, he adds, “He’s not going out and fighting battles, but he ends up getting drawn into something. And he has to access the barbarian he was in his youth. I love that Conan has been many things in his life, notably a pirate, a major tactician and a commander of men. In this movie, we’re going to tap into some of those things – things you haven’t seen on screen yet.”
In fact, he embraces the fact that Schwarzenegger is long out of his bodybuilding prime:
I want the warrior whose joints have started to fuse together, who has to crack the cartilage so he can pick up a sword again. I want the guy who’s not necessarily lost a step, but there’s some rust he has to shake off. I want to embrace that. It makes it a greater hero story. Conan needs to be faced with challenges. The greatest challenge to him isn’t the armies that are set before him. It’s, on some level, self-doubt, a little bit of slowing down and forcing yourself to be heroic beyond what people expect of you. What I don’t want is for him to step back in and look the same. That would defeat the purpose of our story.
Sounds like Morgan sees Arnold’s age as a reason to make a film that explores areas of the Conan legends that have never before been on film. I like the sounds of that, since although I liked 2011’s Conan the Barbarian reboot starring Jason Momoa, it didn’t really bring anything particularly different to the fold. Now we have a chance to see Schwarzenegger (and Conan!) in a way we haven’t seen before. Who could find an issue with that?
Morgan mentions that although he’s a screenwriter (he’s written Wanted and the four last Fast and the Furious movies, including the upcoming Fast and the Furious 6), he’s not sure if he will be writing the film himself. But he insists that he’s confident that he’ll be able to steer whoever ends up penning the film, which won’t be out any earlier than late 2014.
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