Alright, this turned out way too long. Hope someone bothers to read it.
Conan the Destroyer (1984) - Movie Review by Khorin (includes spoilers)“Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, sword in hand. It is I, his chronicler, who knows well his saga. Now, let me tell you of the days of high adventure!”
Plot:The plot starts off with Conan kneeling before an altar with his friend Malak, the thief, when they get attacked by unknown men. After defeating them, the leader of the attackers calls her men back and tells Conan that she needs him for a quest. Conan at first declines, but after the leader, who is in fact the queen of the area, promises that she can bring back Valeria, Conan’s girl from the first movie, he agrees.
So they travel to the capital city where the queen tells Conan that he is to escort the queen’s niece, Jehnna, to find the horn of Dagoth, their god, a.k.a. the Dreaming God. The niece was born with a certain mark that allows her touch, without dying, a diamond that allows them to find the horn. When Conan is off-screen we hear the queen and Bombaata, Jehnna’s protector, discuss killing Conan after they have found the diamond.
Bombaata’s mission is also to protect Jehnna’s virginity, since she is needed for sacrifice. Jehnna does not know anything about this, naturally. This comes as no surprise to anyone, since they’re all dressed in black and the high priest has a staff with a skull on it. Of course they’re evil. We learn that the diamond is held by an evil wizard. It’s hopefully clear to everyone by now that the mission is to wake the Dreaming God from its slumber.
So they embark on their quest and Conan sets out to find his own wizard, so he rescues Akiro from cannibals. Akiro is the Wizard from the first movie, who is mentioned by name for the first time. So, they start their trek toward the evil wizard and on the way encounter Zula, who is a Zulu. Get it? Zula pledges to fight for Conan, because Conan rescued her after she was caught raiding.
They eventually reach the wizard’s tower, but the night before they enter it, the wizard sends a magic bird and kidnaps Jehnna in her sleep. Conan and the rest of the party wake up in the morning and notice that she’s gone and immediately set out to rescue her. The wizard’s toward is situation in a lake and it’s made of ice. This is where it gets a little odd that Conan is not cold without a shirt, since the temperature is cold enough for us to see his breath. They encounter the wizard, who turns into a troll-orc and kill him.
Afterwards they follow Jehnna who intuitively knows where to go and find the horn in an old ruin. On the ruin walls it tells how Dagoth will destroy the earth if awakened. Either way, on the way out they encounter cultists who want the horn. They escape from the ruins, but not before Bombaata takes Jehnna and the horn and leaves them to their fate.
Conan, obviously, gets mad for being betrayed and travels with what’s left of his party back to the capitol. There he sneaks in to the temple right when they’re about to sacrifice Jehnna (who we are now told must be sacrificed so that the queen can control Dagoth). He fights Bombaata and kills him and saves Jehnna. However the ritual has gone too far and Dagoth is awakened, so they fight him and manage to kill him too by ripping out his horn. The movie ends in a classic movie cliché where the heroes are awarded their rewards by the newly crowned Jehnna.
Visuals:The visuals in this movie are a bit mixed. The sets and the scenery is still top notch, apart from the wizard’s tower that is unfortunately pretty poorly made in some parts. The costumes still hold up to Conan the Barbarian’s standard of looking authentic but still rich with classic barbarian fantasy aesthetics.
The scope of this movie is for the most part much larger than the original. Whereas in the original they fought a cult with relatively little magic, in the sequel they fight cultists, other cultists, a wizard and a god. And cannibals. The problem with this is that the graphical effects do not deliver in all of these scenes. The fight against the wizard and pretty much all his magic looks pretty bad to a modern viewer and the entire set in that scene is also pretty poor. Dagoth looks a bit strange, but I can understand the technical limitations here, and the god does still look fairly terrifying and grotesque.
The wizard in all his terrific glory:
The fighting choreography is not quite as good as in the original either. Pretty much every scene with Zula fighting is pretty bad. She fights with a spear, but it doesn’t look convincing at all. Malak, “fights” with daggers, but it’s mainly him just hiding and stabbing people who are already down. It all really leaves you wanting Subotai from the original back. Conan’s fight against the wizard is not that well choreographed either.
Here you can see Zula fighting. As an added bonus you get to see Jehnna's terrible acting.
Audio:The movie has practically the same soundtrack as before and it’s still very good.
Acting:And so we come to the acting. This is worse across the board, to be brutally honest. So I’ll go through the most important characters.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in his role as Conan has deteriorated slightly from the original. He isn’t as convincing, and I believe one of the reasons could be that he has more to say. However, the difference here isn’t huge, and some of it is probably due to bad dialogue which I’ll discuss later.
The biggest offender in bad acting in this movie, and I’d be hard pressed to find anyone worse is Jehnna. Once again, her script and part in the movie is generally horrible. Half the time she is shouting for help, or trying to find out how to seduce Conan. However, the actress Olivia d’Abo makes the entire thing cringe worthy. It’s abysmal. If you watch this movie, you will notice this in her first line.
Malak, played by Tracey Walter, is also terrible. Once again, this is probably due to a bad script, but a good actor can overcome that to some degree.
Zula (Grace Jones) tries to play the role of a warrior woman, but once again just doesn’t manage it. Her fights are awkward and the way she acts is not believable. The entire effort to seem like a warrior is ruined in a scene where she spots a rat and jumps away like any old frightened woman (according to cliché) and is then laughed at by the rest.
Shockingly enough Mombaata played by none other than Wilt Chamberlain, a famous basketball player, does his job relatively good compared to the disasters above.
Mako, who plays Akiro the Wizard, is for the most part really good as per usual. However, one criticism I have is the opening speech he is responsible for. When he talks in the first Conan movie that intro is awesome and delivered perfectly. In Conan the Destroyer, however, the intro is not delivered with the same impact and seems almost indifferent when he says it. I have a feeling he had too much to say for the time he was given, forcing him to rush it.
Just listen to both of the and compare. The first one is from Conan the Barbarian, the second one is from Conan the Destroyer:
The rest of the characters do an average to decent job. The Wizard’s monologue lines aren’t really that impressive, but his entire character is pointless anyway, so I can’t exactly fault him for it.
Dialogue:So, remember all those memorable quotes I posted in my Conan the Barbarian review? That wasn’t nearly all of them, and they were fantastic lines, I hope you agree. Now in Conan the Destroyer, there are none. There’s not a single line that I can remember that was good and memorable. Some were decent, some were memorable due to being bad, but that’s it. What happened?
Instead we get lines like these:
Jehnna: How do you attract a man? What I mean is, suppose you set your heart on somebody. What would you do to get him?
Zula: Grab him! And take him!
Jehnna: I suppose nothing hurts you.
Conan: Only pain.
Jehnna: Conan! There are six of them against her!
Conan: One, two, three... I think you're right.
Malak: Why are they trying to kill us?
Conan: Maybe they want to capture us, and torture us to death.
Malak: I think we made the merchant angry.
Conan: Are you surprised?
Malak: But we didn't steal everything he had!
Conan: We didn't have time.
The one who wrote the script should seriously have given more thought to it. This is yet another black mark when you compare it to the original.
Personal Opinion:The plot to me feels a little needlessly convoluted for a Conan movie. In Conan the Barbarian he had one task and everything he faced was Thulsa Doom’s henchmen, with a few minor exceptions. The wizard that they fight is completely random. We are told nothing about him, other than he holds the diamond. He could be the protector of the world for all we know. And after they kill him and try to take the horn, some random cultists appear that want to fight Conan again. Then they also fight the cannibals when rescuing Akiro. The worst part about it is that it would probably be alright if the queen turned out to betray him in a shock twist at the end, but no. It’s blatantly obvious to everyone except Conan & Co. that she is evil.
Another thing that always bothered me was that when Conan fights the wizard, he finds the wizards weakness purely by accident, which makes the entire scene feel like Conan just got lucky, which is in direct contrast to the earlier movie.
All the new side characters just make me wish we had Valeria and Subotai back. Malak is the replacement for Subotai, and he's just an annoying guy who delivers some slapstick quality humour to it. Did they really think Conan needed that? Zula as a character does nothing other than stare menacingly and tries to be strong. Thank the heavens Mako returned with his character Akiro.
You may have noticed this review is fairly negative. It’s not really a bad movie. It’s okay. This was the first Conan movie I saw when I was younger and I loved it. I still like it. The only reason it sounds bad is because I really, really liked the first one and this comes across rushed in the first seconds of the movie. However, it’s still a Conan movie at heart. I do recommend it, if you liked the first Conan. If you thought the first Conan was campy and funny, well, this is more of that. Regardless, you should watch it.
My god, this turned out longer than expected. Thank you if you managed to read it all.
