The character always struck me as a brainless, incompetent bimbo who didn't appeal to me. I loathe Conan the Destroyer because it reeks of having been put together by a committee of studio execs with zero artistic considerations involved, only commercial ones.
In the dialogue, it's revealed her character has been raised from birth to be a sacrificial goat. She's been so sheltered, that she doesn't even know any men apart from her attendant protector. For a 15 year old cloistered, manipulated princess, I found D'abos performance to be perfectly fine, and actually quite nuanced in comparison to some similar characters in other films. For example, just the night before I watched For Your Eyes Only again. After having read here about the original conception of the villain for this entry, it's now perfectly clear to me that the Lynn Holly Johnson character was intended to be much younger. The producers obviously lost their nerve, but didn't bother to rewrite the part for an older actress. Casting a 20ish year old actress in that part makes the character come across as functionally retarded. Had she been cast younger (lke D'abos age in CTD), there still would have been problems buying any attraction to Moore's 50ish Bond, but the dialogue and petulant manner would have made a lot more sense coming from a precocious, wannabe bad girl adolescent rather than a insufferably coy 20ish woman. As far as the committee mentality/zero artistic consideration for Destroyer goes- again, the purpose of this film is Saturday Matinee entertainment. It's based on a story by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conaway- two writers who were instrumental in the Marvel comics adaptation of the character. The film is very much in the quest/adventure spirit of the later comics run I read. I don't bemoan the lack of gravitas in something like Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad or one of Weismullers Tarzans, and I don't feel it's absence here either. The entire scope of the production is done with a high degree of workman-like professionalism. That's not a dig - when so much current theatrical fantasy is so damn insufferably dark and gritty and pretentious nowadays, I find this movie a great throwback. I could quibble about editing an obvious 'joke' line here or there, but it would be nit picking. This doesn't set out to be a pretentious 'saga' (thank God)- it's just a simple adventure entry. I'm sure I won't convince anyone that hates, but when so much of the 80s fantasy output is a wasteland to me (I'm looking at you Return Of The Jedi, Superman 2 & 3, amongst many others) this one has held up beautifully for me. And I don't mind saying so.RobertR said:
Making her an ignorant bimbo doesn't make it any better for me.Paul_Scott said:
In a strictly paint-by-numbers-marketing-way, yes. You could almost hear the committee of studio execs talking about the "need" to cut the film to a PG rating, to get rid of the "excessive" violence, and to insert a character whose role is almost solely comic relief. I've been reading the original Robert E. Howard stories, and Conan the Barbarian is very much in their bloody, savage spirit, even if Arnold doesn't fully capture how cunning Conan is. Destroyer sacrifices that to put youngsters in the seats.
I wouldn't call the Conan stories pretentious, but they're not lighthearted kiddie stuff, either. Arms get hacked off, guts get spilled, supple, comely young topless women abound. The first movie depicted all of that quite well. NO such stuff is to be found in Destroyer (I think of the title more as "Conan Destroyed", actually). By the way, the writers you mentioned hated the finished film. They obviously had no use for what the studio execs had done.
I'm sure neither if us will convince the other, Paul. I'm just glad we can make our own choices.
So this is kind of a hybrid cut? Or was that extra scene between Conan and Subotai just added for the special edition DVD? In that case, are there actually three slightly different versions, then? Sorry; I really don't know either of these movies very well, but I'm always fascinated by alternate cuts of movies and how they came to be.RobertR said:
It’s my understanding that the “I had a bad childhood” scene with Subotai was part of the international cut. So yes, this can be thought of as a third version. I never much cared for that scene, but I did like the added scenes with the princess at the end, so I consider this the best version of the three.Bryan Tuck said:
Thanks for the clarification. Interesting. However, according to this DVD Talk review, there's another issue. Apparently, the choral elements in the score for a couple of scenes have been omitted in the Blu-ray's 5.1 mix. I would say, "Surprise, surprise; another Universal Blu-ray with some missing music," but apparently, Fox's European DVD from several years ago had the same issue. Again, I don't remember the movie that well; I know those choral sections are loud and full on the soundtrack album, but have they perhaps always been mixed down in the movie (in any of the versions)?gomezfan69 said:
Well, I was 34 when I saw this and I had massive crush on d'Abo also. Plus, she was just icing on the already wonderful cake of THE WONDER YEARS series. Plus, I simply love the name "Olivia."
