page_title: Conan the Barbarian (1982 film)
section_title: Characters
hierarchical_section_title: Conan the Barbarian (1982 film) / Characters
caption_attribution_description: Illustration of a scene in Robert E. Howard's "Queen of the Black Coast": this story and illustration was first published in Weird Tales (May 1934).
context_page_description: Conan the Barbarian is a 1982 American epic sword and sorcery film directed by John Milius and written by Milius and Oliver Stone. It is based on the character created by Robert E. Howard. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones, and tells the story of a young muscular barbarian warrior named Conan, who seeks vengeance for the death of his parents at the hands of Thulsa Doom, the leader of a snake cult.
  Ideas for a Conan film were proposed as early as 1970; executive producer Edward R. Pressman and associate producer Edward Summer began a concerted effort to get the film made in 1975. It took them two years to obtain the film rights, after which they recruited Schwarzenegger for the lead role and Stone to draft a script. Pressman lacked capital for the endeavor. In 1979, after having his proposals for investments rejected by the major studios, he sold the project to Dino De Laurentiis; his daughter Raffaella produced the film. Milius was appointed as director and he rewrote Stone's script. The final screenplay integrated scenes from Howard's stories and from the Japanese films Seven Samurai and Kwaidan.
context_section_description: The character, Conan, and the world of Hyboria were based on the creations of pulp-fiction writer Robert E. Howard from the 1930s.  Published in Weird Tales, his series about the barbarian was popular with the readership; the barbarian's adventures in a savage and mystical world, replete with gore and brutal slayings, satisfied the reader's fantasies of being a "powerful giant who lives by no rules but his own".  From the 1960s, Conan gained a wider audience as novels about him, written in imitation of Howard's style by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, were published.  Frank Frazetta's cover art for these novels cemented Conan's image as a "virile, axe-wielding, fur-bearing, cranium-smashing barbarian".  John Milius, the film's director, intended the film's Conan to be "a Northern European mythic hero". Danny Peary described Conan as "muscular, majestic, brainy, yet with ambivalent scruples".  Don Herron, a scholar on Howard and his stories, disagreed, noting that the personality of Conan in the film differs greatly from that of the literature.  The Conan in the books detests restrictions to his freedom and would have resisted slavery in a violent fashion, whereas the film version accepts his fate and has to be freed.  Robert Garcia's review of the film in his American Fantasy magazine states, "this Conan is less powerful, less talkative, and less educated than Howard's".
  The female lead, Valeria, has her roots in two strong female characters from Howard's Conan stories. Her namesake was Conan's companion in "Red Nails", while her personality and fate were based on those of Bêlit, the pirate queen in "Queen of the Black Coast".  According to Kristina Passman, an assistant professor of classical languages and literature, the film's Valeria is a perfect archetype of the "good" Amazon character, a fierce but domesticated female warrior, in cinema.  Rikke Schubart, a film scholar, said Valeria is a "good" Amazon because she is tamed by love and not because of any altruistic tendencies.  Valeria's prowess in battle matches that of Conan, and she is also depicted as his equal in capability and status.  The loyalty and love she displays for Conan makes her more than a companion to him; she represents his "possibilities of human happiness".  Her sacrifice for Conan and her brief return from death act out the heroic code, illustrating that self-sacrificing heroism brings "undying fame".  Valeria's name is spoken in the film only after her death.
  Milius based Conan's other companion, Subotai, on Genghis Khan's main general, Subotai, rather than on any of Howard's characters.  According to film critic Roger Ebert, Subotai fulfills the role of a "classic literary type—the Best Pal."  He helps the barbarian to kill a giant snake and cuts him down from crucifixion; the thief also cries for his companion during Valeria's cremation, with the explanation that "(h)e is Conan, a Cimmerian.  He won't cry, so I cry for him."
  Conan's enemy, Thulsa Doom, is an amalgamation of two of Howard's creations.  He takes his name from the villain in Howard's Kull of Atlantis series of stories, but is closer in character to Thoth-Amon, a Stygian sorcerer in "The Phoenix on the Sword".  The Doom in the film reminded critics of Jim Jones, a cult leader whose hold on his followers was such that hundreds of them obeyed his orders to commit suicide.  Milius said his research on the ancient orders of the Hashishim and the Thuggee was the inspiration for Doom's snake cult. In the original Howard stories, the worship of Set, though all too fearsome, is no sect; rather, it is the centuries-old  formalized state religion of Stygia (which is virtually a theocracy).
caption: The death and supernatural return of Bêlit in "Queen of the Black Coast" (as illustrated by Hugh Rankin in Weird Tales) is mirrored by the fate of Valeria in the film.
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