With the release just a few short days away, there has, understandably, been a great deal of focus on Terminator Genisys. While we’re curious to see the fifth installment in that saga on the big screen, it’s not the only franchise that Arnold Schwarzenegger is returning to in his post-political career acting resurgence. He’s also going to headline The Legend of Conan, and the star has some hopes and ideas for the film.
Talking to the Nerd Report, the former Governor of California shared his hopes for what the action in the long in the works sequel to Conan the Barbarian will look like. He said:
I was hoping that the idea of Conan having been king for a long time, then just threw it all away and went into retirement and went off into the mountains…That whole idea always appealed to me. Then of course he gets asked back because of some hideous and unbelievable things that are happening to the kingdom. So that’s when the battle begins again.
If this is indeed how things work out, and Schwarzenegger sounds fairly certain that they will, this is something that many fans have been waiting years to witness. At the end of Conan the Barbarian, we see an aged Arnold sitting on throne, having ascended to that position after years of hard fought battles, and it looks like we may finally see that era of Conan rendered on screen. Richard Fleisher’s 1984 sequel, Conan the Destroyer, was another young Conan adventure, a quest where the hero must save a young princess and fight Wilt Chamberlin, so he had a ways to go yet to get to this point.
At this stage of his career, Schwarzenegger certainly has the right look to pull off a grizzled old warrior king aesthetic. It won’t be the first time in his career resurgence that he’s played an older, broken down version of the kind of character he portrayed in his action hero heyday. In Sabotage he’s essentially one of his earlier character types who has to cope with the consequences of his past actions, and in The Last Stand he takes a different approach, poking fun at how he’s getting too old for shootouts, diving through windows, and all the things he did as a younger man.
It’s also easy to imagine Conan growing tired of a life of leisure. He’s a man of action, of adventure, and sitting on a throne, ruling by decree and command rather than by the blade, isn’t exactly his style. He’s the kind of guy who wants to get down and dirty and mix things up, so you the idea of him getting bored, throwing it all away, and wandering off into the wilderness is a natural fit.
We’ll have to wait and see how this all works out, but this talk sounds promising. There has already been talk that The Legend of Conan could kick off a new cinematic universe, so it’s possible we’ll see a lot more Conan on the big screen over the next few years.
