I loved the John Milius version of Conan The Barbarian. It was authentic looking enough and exotic enough to be something, another world, I’d never visited before. I especially liked the music. I recently saw the remake with Jason Momoa who looks remarkably like the Frank Frazetta illustrations of Conan. But the changes in the story line made me notice what I feel is a disturbing trend in movies today. In the original Conan was taken into slavery as a child and forced to push a giant grinding wheel along with the other child captives. He did this for years and by the time he grew up all his fellow slaves were dead and he alone pushed the wheel. This explains how he developed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s musculature. This scene was probably lifted from The Three Stooges Meet Hercules where the stooges and their meek, mild friend get captured and are forced to be galley slaves, rowing a warship. Their friend develops huge muscles due to the labor. And the scene where Conan decks a camel is right out of Blazing Saddles, but I digress…
In the remake of Conan no reason for Conan’s build or fighting prowess is given as it is in the original where he is eventually taken from wheel duty and trained to fight as a gladiator, but rather he is portrayed as being able to lob off the heads of four enemy warriors while still only twelve years old. This reminded me of the Star Trek “reboot” where James T. Kirk is no longer the whiz kid of Starfleet Academy, earning his Captain’s position, but is now a “bad boy” who lucks into duty when all the other officers are killed.
This is “instant gratification” gone amuck. Are the kids today so adverse to hard work and earning their place in the world that even watching someone do it in a movie makes them uncomfortable? When, probably not if, they remake Rocky, he’ll no longer have to suffer through a rigorous training montage in order to run up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in triumph but will be able to take some steroids instead.
Captain America, Superman, The X Men and virtually all the super heroes with the exception of Iron Man and Batman receive their powers through means other than hard work and training. Back in the 1980s it seemed every cartoon show I worked on had a “transition” scene where the hero magically changed into an alter ego. On the series Jem, the female record company executive magically transformed into a rock star. How weak is that? All she really had to do was change clothes and her hair style which was what Prince Adam seemed to do to change into He-Man. He didn’t even change his hair style, just the color. Did he really need a magic sword for that? Clark Kent simply took off his glasses and got into a pair of tights with a cape to become Superman and no one recognized him. Or, did everyone know Clark Kent was Superman? But if Superman doesn’t want to be recognized as Clark Kent then you’d better play stupid and pretend you don’t recognize him. That would make sense.