Conan the Barbarian: 2-Disc Standard Special Edition - 4K Ultra HD [4K UHD]

I have gone from liking this movie to loving it over the years. James Earl Jones is a treasure, and there are several times that his speeches give me chills. Early Arnold is campy fun, and the giant snake and human soup also. The costumes and the teenage sensuality are likewise crowd pleasers. With the exception of Jones, there are no great performances, but the power of the movie is in it's characters and ideas. You believe that Jones is ancient, and magic, and crafty. Bergman's passion is credible, and as the hope of new love slowly erodes the cynicism of a life hard lived, it seems familiar. Mako's wizard is wise enough to be a genuine coward. When Schwarzenegger and Lopez argue the virtues of their gods over the campfire, they are not modern people in costumes. They are genuine polytheists, justifying their faith in deities they have never proven and the ideas they stand for, in the words of uneducated and uncivilized men, who are nonetheless capable and confident that they understand how the world works. And Conan's arc, as he grows from abandoned child to would-be hero to a more clear-eyed adulthood, is something you didn't really appreciate in your teens. And the main theme of the movie is more relevant today than ever. The silly story seriously explores the conflict between civilization and barbarity. We never lose sight of the fact that the barbarians are dirty, destructive, and debauched. The decrepit court of the hollowed out King Osric (Max von Sydow RIP) is a pointed comparison, not just to Conan, but to James Earl Jones' Snake Cult. The Snake cult is richer, better organized, more powerful, and more luxurious than any of the kingdoms around. It has better art and architecture, miraculous creatures, and actual magic! But it exists by victimizing its adherents and parasitizing the kingdoms it infests. Its glamour is a skin stretched over its corruption and predation. This movie can be enjoyed without any awareness of its depth, but I urge you to rewatch it and contemplate how the world it imagines is still the world we live in, four decades later. Maybe instead of the Tree of Woe, you could contemplate this on the Couch of Sloth.

Conan the Barbarian is one of those films that you enjoy the first time, relish the second time and then, by the third viewing and beyond, you have come to simply adore. This is a film that delights in its own storytelling, and displays surprising gravitas in exploring Conan's development as a character. The film was (well) financed by the company that typically pumped out those entertaining but vaguely embarrassing Greek legends films or Sinbad seafaring yarns, and is of astonishing quality particularly considering the company it keeps. You have high quality actors (including Arnold, whose mangling of the English language seems a perfect fit for the stoic titular hero/anti-hero), lavish sets, humor, and mayhem. The bodycount is high but never simply for show..even the primary henchmen put up a real fight instead of just slowing down the hero a little before he catches up with the villian. And what a villian! James Earl Jones in, and I'm being completely serious here, one of his finest roles as Thulsa Doom, charismatic archpriest of the snake god Set, whose disdain for physical combat aside from a brief bit at the intro actually adds to his presence and menace rather than detracting from it. A great musical score keeps the action hopping along, and the swordfights and battles are brawls rather than mincing fencing matches. I'm not writing simply to give my personal take on the film itself, however. I've owned the Collector's Edition for some time now, but it wasn't until I viewed it with the Commentary running that I felt the need to write a review. The commentary, placed over a muted showing of the film, is a discussion between Arnold and the director as the film takes place. It is a gem to listen to. Both (Arnold too!) are insightful and witty, and while it is clear Arnold hasn't watched the film in some time, his surprised reaction to parts of it is hilarious ("Boy, I sure get laid a lot in this movie!"). It's like an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 with Arnold and the director sitting beside you with a tub of popcorn chatting about the film. Everything from casting to the film's location in Spain right where Hemingway visited and based For Whom the Bell Tolls to Arnold nearly cracking his skull when the camel he's on lumbers up against one of the raised beach platforms to the wonderful marble concubine chamber actually being placed in a freezing trucking garage is discussed. This commentary, coupled with film outtakes, makes this a DVD you simply must have unless you truly hated the film. One outtake is the director's cameo as the vendor selling the infamous iguanas-on-a-stick, and another is that of Arnold being chased by the wolves/dogs just as he escapes his bondage for the first time. In the outtake, Arnold doesn't manage to make it up onto the rocks in time, and is savaged off-camera by the dogs: *lots of barking and snarling* [thick austrian accent]: "Ow, God dahmn it!" And, of course, in the film the next scene is Conan wearing a suit made of wolfskins. No stuntmen on that one, folks. We're also treated to the long and gruesome murder of the king by his own troops at the behest of Thulsa Doom (a side plot that occurred in the original Conan short stories). These DVD extras alone are worth the price of the whole DVD and I highly recommend checking them out. Tantalizingly, right at the end of the commentary, we hear the following teaser: Arnold: That was great. Now that we'ved watched it, now you know we have to make a third one. The director agrees, and so do I.

Yes, I do believe it's the best fantasy action movie ever made and I'm not ashamed by my blatant attempt to convince you of that. Let's start with the soundtrack, since it is this very thing that weaves itself into the very fabric of this movie. It was composed by Basil Poleduris who composed several John Milius movies in the 80's (John Milius directed Conan) who wrote most of the music before filming started. As such, the music acts as an additional narrator that drives the movie. Ranging from a thunderous ride of Wageresque proportion to sad, sometimes brooding laments - it speaks to the emotions of the characters who often are not so vocal. While you may not remember all the lines of the movie, you will remember the music (which has been used for temp tracks in trailers such as Gladiator). The soundtrack is arguably one of the most iconic orchestrational scores to come out of an action movie (which I highly recommend buying). The locations are exotic and fit the "between the times when the oceans drank Atlantis" time period, exuding a very primal, ancient feel. The cast is perfect with James Earl Jones cast as the villian and Arnold as the hero. The lines are mostly delivered by Jones who is as charismatic as they come as Thulsa Doom. Arnold's dialogue is mostly restricted to the odd terse line, the movie prefers to let his actions be his words. The rest of the cast plays their roles similar to Arnold with more actions than dialogue. The end result is a story far more complex than standard action fair. While the plot appears to be simple, the motivations for Conan and the rest of the characters play out like a classical myth or legend with paradoxes and parables. The action is gritty and real, the emotions are gripping and the visuals stunning with very little special effects (or CGI). As a Robert E. Howard fan (the original author of the Conan stories) and a fan who has seen Conan the Barbarian close to 100 times, this is the definitive edition of the movie. Seeing this is blu-ray was like seeing it for the first time; the details for every scene are laid out before you in amazing clarity for a 30+ year old film. The extended edition (with the alternative ending) is not recommended (the cuts were made for a reason). Enjoy this John Milius masterpiece!

Ah, Conan the Barbarian. If you were lucky enough to be alive in the eighties and of an age old enough to go to the movies you may have been lucky enough to see Arnold at the beginning of his movie career and eventual box office dominance of the eighties and early nineties. Let's start with some background. Conan the Barbarian was released in May of 1982 with an estimated budget of 20 million dollars. The director was John Milius with Universal Pictures distributing it and Dino De Laurentiis Company producing. The movie is an adaptation of a character created by Robert E. Howard named Conan back in the 1930's in the days of pulp fiction magazines. These were stories that were published in large number on cheaper grade paper pulp magazines which later became known collectively as pulp fiction. Howard has since become regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery genre. His career as a writer was short lived though as he shot himself in the head at the age of thirty. The movie opens with a black background on which is a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." It pretty much follows Conan through the trials and tribulations of going from a little boy through adulthood. The whole movie came about from Ed Pressman a producer who had been looking for a new vehicle for Arnold after his movie Pumping Iron where in which the world got a look into the world of bodybuilding and Arnold's training for the 1975 Mr. Olympia contest. He had a friend Ed Summer also a producer (isn't everybody...) who owned a comic book store and said Conan would be a perfect vehicle and took Pressman over to see the Conan comic books he had, this would've been around 1977. Just so happens Oliver Stone had been working on a script for a Conan movie at the time as he was also a fan of Robert Howard's Conan writings. Stone pitched the idea to Dino De Laurentiis who bought his script and brought in John Milius as the director. Milius took a liking to the Conan character cause he had been into Vikings from early on in his youthful surfboarding days. Milius would bring his surfing friend Gerry Lopez in as Subotai and eventually Sandahl Bergman as Valeria. Ron Cobb designed the look of the sets (he also worked on the sets of Alien) and Basil Poledouris (another friend of Milius) would do the sound track. The thing I like about this movie is that Arnold was still relatively new to acting so he wasn't throwing out the one liners and cracking jokes every other line like he did in Conan the Destroyer. This is definitely the movie that launched his career though and he basically owned the eighties from there on out. For extra features you have: A Deleted Scenes section. Conan unchained: The Making of Conan an excellent video with Ed Pressman on how it all started. Art of Steel: Sword Makers and Masters, this section goes to New Glarus, Wisconsin where the Albion Armorers Company make true reproductions of Conan's father's sword and the Atlantian sword (Jody Samson originally created the Conan swords and worked for Albion) and also has an appearance from Sensei Yamazaki the sword master who trained Arnold and the rest of the cast on the set. Conan: From the Vault, a collection of commentary and videos from back in the day and on the set of the movie. Special Effects, a short minute and a half video of one of the effects shots from the movie. Conan Archives, a collection of animation drawings and stills from the set. A theatrical trailer section and to round out the extra features: Feature Commentary with Director John Milius and Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you're a fan of the Jason Momoa version of Conan then you probably won't like Arnold's Conan but just like Shawn Connery was the first Bond, Arnold was, is and always will be CONAN in many peoples hearts.

I had seen this movie when I was a kid (I was 12 years-old) and I couldn't remember all the aspects of the film. That's why I was unsure if it was worth owning. Then I read some positive reviews and since the price was reasonable, I decided to purchase it. I never owned this title on VHS/DVD so I cannot compare Blu-ray edition to VHS/DVD copy. However, I can say that the Blu-ray video and sound are excellent and there is a 50 minute making of Conan documentary which is great. The best thing about Conan the Barbarian is the score which is absolutely amazing. The locations and production design are impressive, including the costumes and the sword fight sequences even though they may seem a little slow by today's standards (I do find the fight scenes in current films too fast and thereof unrealistic so Conan The Barbarian worked perfectly for me in that aspect). However, seeing it after 30 years, I did notice some of the movie's flaws. Most notable flaw is the acting and not just Arnold's -although his stands out more- since, I believe, this was his first acting in a major motion picture. Physically, he was the perfect actor to portray Conan but his limited acting abilities unfortunately did not do justice to the character of Conan. My other problem was with the two other characters, Conan's sidekick Subotai and the wizard who were miscasts and had no screen presence even in the scenes where they had their moments. I even think Valeria could have been better-cast with some other actress although she did OK. James Earl Jones' performance was the strongest. My favorite scene is when they infiltrate Doom's place inside the mountain with the mission to kidnap the princess. It reminded me a little bit of Stanley Kubrick's style with action sequences taking place with a powerful score that match the movements. The following sequence when Doom and his men attack Conan and his friends on the hills is also quite impressive. I do think, however, that the ending was too rushed and convenient. Conan gets to Doom too easily; just sneaks upon him after killing only one guard. Doom, even though he had supernatural powers like turning into a snake or calling on demons (as was stated early in the movie) did absolutely nothing to defend himself against Conan. I think the final face-off should have been much more grandiose.

Arnold as Conan! He'll always be the best Conan!

When I was a kid I saw this movie for the first time after begging my parents to let me watch it. They were horrified, and I was ecstatic. This has been my favorite movie for as far back as I can remember and it still holds up against all of today's advancements in movie making. After watching this special edition with the additional scenes, I like it even more. After watching all the extra's on the disc, and watching the movie with the commentary, I think I understand now why this movie does not age like so many others of it's time. Almost everything in this movie, was filmed for real. There were almost no special effects (aside from a short scene where the demons try to take Conan, which does look dated) and virtually everything that was filmed was filmed for real. By this I mean they were using steel swords and actually swordfighting (Sandhal got her finger cut off in one of the fights, and she accidentally slit a guys throat in another - they both recovered) they were also actually in the middle east filming. It took them five years to make this movie, because they actually took the time and effort to do everything in such a way that it appeared real. It wasn't filmed in hollywood in some cheesy 80's set like most other movies of the time. There was also a lot of focus on the human element of the story, and the majority of the movie was just character development, the plot seemed to be based around the development of the characters, instead of the other way around. In the end, this movie turned out to be one of the greatest movies ever filmed in my opinion, and because of how real they kept the filming, I don't think it will ever loose it's luster. I hope when they finally transfer this to Blu-Ray, they don't do anything stupid like take away anything that was included in this version of the film. Update: The blu-ray version took away stuff that was included in the extended release. The ending was pretty much exactly the same as the extended version, which I hear a lot of people complaining about even though it actually fills out the story and explains not only what happened to the princess, but also how Conan managed to infiltrate the citadel. Unfortunately it is excluding the scene with Conan and Subotai having dialogue before the big finale battle, and the few small scenes that were extended in the earlier parts of the movie. So it's basically the theatrical release, with the extended ending. The blu-ray transfer itself is pretty good looking, with only a few dark scenes still grainy which seems pretty normal for older movies being remastered to HD. Being that this is my all time favorite movie, I don't mind owning two versions of it.

This release is how movies should be release. Various packaging, but the same disc content across all package variants. For a movie this old, this movie has no business looking this good. The movie looked as if it was shot on film yesterday. This is a new restoration from the original 35mm camera negative, presented in native 4K. Picture is obviously awesome, it comes in Dolby Vision, HDR, Dolby Atmos, 7.1 and also includes a restored original mono track (DTS-HD MA 1.0). On my 5.1 the audio is good. Where this release stands out, is the amount of special features. Sure, many of them was on the Blu-Ray Disc and possible even the DVD, however there is enough decent and pretty in depth. Arrow Video really did an amazing job of this title. Plus there’s three versions of this movie on the 4K disc.

Delivered as I was celebrating my daughter's birthday with 1980s theme! How magical is that?! Will play tonight & update review if any tech issues. Conan The Barbarian is a fantastic 1980s movie if you love mystical magic, fantasy, action, buff men & hot women. Haha. I also bought Conan The Destroyer. (I already have both on VHS but wanted them on DVD too.) Update: Neither DVD will play in my DVD player since on the back each explains the DVD is PAL format. I'm in Canada. When ordering it I had a feeling this would occur & the seller confirmed it by sending me a message that it might not play in my country. But I also have a multi-format DVD player that plays NTSC, PAL, Secam, etc, so I will hook it up & try these Conan 1 & Conan 2 DVDs in it next. But if you're in Canada too these 2 PAL format DVDs might not play for you.

Not the limited edition but the movie itself is okay. Half the fun comes from the director and star's commentary, which is unserious and probably more entertaining. Great amount of special features, just look at the back of the case. Don't read, but look at all that text.

すべてのヒーロー好きの方やファンタジー好きの方にお奨めの一本。若き日のシユワが美しくかっこいい。格闘家の船木誠勝氏がこの映画の大フアンであるのは有名である。

What can I say great 80s film, picture quality ok bit still enjoyed it

Of the many genres of film that have come (and in some cases gone) over the years, few (with the possible exception of the Western) force you to sift through quite so many awful films to reach the few treasures as the 'Sword and Sorcery' genre. Up until the Lord of the Rings trilogy, many a far-fetched, un-thought-out plot was strung together with bad acting and poor effects and thrust upon fans of such films. Conan the Barbarian is almost certainly the best of the Sword and Sorcery genre, and whilst that is akin to being the best bobsledder in Jamaica, it is nonetheless an excellent - if flawed in some ways - film. It plots the early rise of Conan; orphaned at a young age when a tribe of warriors slaughter all the adults of his peaceful village and take the children into slavery, Conan, against all odds grows up to be immensely strong. Little more than an animal, he fights in the pits for his master and soon develops into a formidable combatant. Once finally free, he becomes a thief but always is determined to seek revenge for the murder of his parents. There are many blazing battles, spectacular visuals and a few excellent lines of dialogue. The true success of the film lies in the fact that it understands its weaknesses. For example, the plot can almost slow to a crawl in places as the plot is lacking in details at points. To combat this, the narration deliberately gives the film an air of mythology, as though an old legend, passed from father to son has lost much detail through the ages resulting in the film still being captivating. Likewise, another fault is Arnold Schwarzenegger who, at that point, was not long an immigrant to the USA and still spoke English with a heavy accent. His dialogue is less frequent but punctuated with thundering one liners such as: 'You killed my mother, you killed my father...YOU TOOK MY FATHER'S SWORD'. And Conan's prayer to Grom on the hilltop makes up for its simplicity with a forceful delivery that ranks it up with any monologue you are likely to see. There are other highlights such as a typically menacing performance from James Earl Jones and a thundering soundtrack that all make for a very enjoyable film and a cult classic. I say cult classic not because it is not a good film but because it is such heavy viewing that you will have to appreciate (not necessarily love) the genre to love this film. Conan the Barbarian is among Arnie's best films, bettered only by the two Terminator movies and maybe one or two others. A short note about the release of the film: It differs from the UK VHS release of the 1980s in some small details that are barely noticeable...until the end. The old UK VHS version, Thulsa Doom delivers one of the most frightening sermons in film history to full effect before being interrupted and then murdered by Conan. In this release, Conan is seen sneaking in with the daughter of King Osric and the sermon can only be heard in the background to considerably lessened effect. The final sequences also change the emphasis placed by the music with the VHS release again proving superior. Nonetheless, it is a classic, a great film that works around its faults very well and is definitely worth a look.