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A rugged, blood-and-bone sword-and-sorcery epic with a huge visual imagination, a thunderous score, and a strikingly serious commitment to mythic pulp. It’s uneven in places, but its scale, atmosphere, and sheer physicality make it a landmark fantasy film.
Where to watch: Buy
Tue · 2h 10m
Director: John Milius
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Max von Sydow
A horde of rampaging warriors massacre the parents of young Conan and enslave the young child for years on The Wheel of Pain. As the sole survivor of the childhood massacre, Conan is released from slavery and taught the ancient arts of fighting. Transforming himself into a killing machine, Conan travels into the wilderness to seek vengeance on Thulsa Doom, the man responsible for killing his family. In the wilderness, Conan takes up with the thieves Valeria and Subotai. The group comes upon King Osric, who wants the trio of warriors to help rescue his daughter who has joined Doom in the hills.
John Milius
Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Max von Sydow
A rugged, blood-and-bone sword-and-sorcery epic with a huge visual imagination, a thunderous score, and a strikingly serious commitment to mythic pulp. It’s uneven in places, but its scale, atmosphere, and sheer physicality make it a landmark fantasy film.
Conan the Barbarian is the rare fantasy blockbuster that feels carved from stone. It’s brutal, solemn, and strangely grand, with a world of temples, thieves, snake cults, and ruined kingdoms that still feels alive because it’s so physically built and photographed. The movie’s confidence is part of the pleasure: it treats barbarism, destiny, and revenge as operatic ideas rather than camp punchlines.
What lingers most is the texture. The production design, makeup, costumes, and effects give the film a grimy, handmade richness, while Basil Poledouris’s score turns everything into a march of doom and legend. Arnold Schwarzenegger is perfectly cast as a near-mythic force of nature, and James Earl Jones gives the villain a hypnotic, almost priestly menace.
It can be blunt and occasionally lurching, but that roughness is part of its identity. This is not polished fantasy; it’s primal fantasy, made with conviction and a little madness. For viewers who want their sword-and-sorcery epic to feel ancient, muscular, and a bit dangerous, it remains essential.
Ollie Greenall (3.5★) · 1554 likes
Arnold Schwarzenegger punches a camel in this. That alone is worth three and a half stars.
fran hoepfner (4★) · 906 likes
feels genuinely epic in terms of scope and score, brilliantly shot, has all the little practical effects I love from movies of this era: plasticky jewels, tubs of goop, giant snake, mud, dry ice vapor, all of that good shit. basically when a movie starts with a sword being forged I know it will be the type of thing I’m into. only docked a star because I wish I watched it stoned tbh
Obistrike (5★) · 566 likes
What daring! What outrageousness! What insolence! What arrogance!... I salute you Mr Milius! A truly momentous piece of cinematic metallurgy. Conan the Barbarian is most prized, a true tale of sorrow and high adventure unmatched. Sumptuous set design, costumes, camels, snakes, gore, score and whores galore. Beautiful, pompous, authentic and magical, I demand, no I beg, that Hollywood creates a modern fantasy epic able to match Conan's thudding pace, thundering tone and grandiose scale. Impeccably physical performances, stunning cinematography and… more
pd187 (5★) · 519 likes
"what do you see?" "uhhh, infinity.." "good!"
matt lynch (4★) · 406 likes
"Life and death, the same." Power as virtue. One of the great high fantasy films, and the magnificent product of no less than three huge, even megalomaniacal egos.
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Another rough-edged, muscular fantasy adventure from the same era, built around pulp violence and quest mechanics.
Mythic, old-fashioned adventure with monsters, gods, and a grand, storybook sense of peril.
A visually lush fantasy fairy tale that leans hard into atmosphere, darkness, and iconic imagery.
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A serious, grounded fantasy film with strong practical craft and a harsher, more dangerous tone than most of its peers.
For those who like adventure, swordplay, and mythic storytelling, but with wit and warmth instead of brutality.
The obvious follow-up for anyone wanting more of the character and the franchise’s pulp-adventure mode.
A neighboring sword-and-sorcery adventure with similar genre DNA and a strong 80s fantasy feel.
revenge, destiny, trauma and survival, power and tyranny, mythic heroism, sword-and-sorcery, pagan fantasy, physical endurance
sword and sorcery, epic fantasy, revenge, mythic adventure, practical effects, 80s cinema, barbarian hero, cult villain, grim tone, pagan imagery