Indeed. Still, anyone who knows Stone wrote Scarface should recognise his contribution in the sequence where Conan (in what I call his "scarface moment"), after his first major heist, jaded, drunk and covered in jewels, drowns in his soup (I suppose they didn't have coke at the time...). The exact same sequence is in both films (https://youtu.be/uuygJnnyiYI?t=6 and https://youtu.be/Uc--kwIftTI?t=88), except Tony Montana never matures beyond this purely material understanding of the world he lives in.
If there's something Stone has direct and very real experience of, though, it's addiction and combat.
I realise this can be said of many films, but come to think of it, Conan, Scarface, Year of the Dragon (and also Midnight Express, which Stone wrote the screenplay of) are all about characters transplanted into a violent and foreign environment they have to understand the culture and language of in order to survive and prevail, very much like Stone's own experience of Vietnam I suppose.
Tony Montana is shipped from Cuba into Miami's violent drug trafficking underworld, Conan is thrown at an early age into a violent world of orphanhood, slavery and magic, Billy Hayes is confronted to the violent world of Turkish prisons, Stanley White into the violent world of Chinatown's triads (AND he's a Vietnam vet...). Also their wives / love interests / sisters they secretly are in love with, all meet a violent death in three of those four films that are not based on the life of an actual person.
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Ace_Spade (9551)
2 years ago
That's a great observation about, not just Stone's military history, but the specific ways he tends to fold that experience into his screenplays - adapting through cultural absorption. A neat little recurring theme you've found there...
Stone's a very good writer and director, I just find him a little "obvious" at least once in every film he does. It's ironic that, given the reputation as a thoughtless meathead movie, Conan actually has some of the most subtlety and ambiguity as to its ultimate "message" of the movie. I'm guessing John Milius had a lot to do with that.
Of course, to be 100% sure, I'd have to track down versions of Conan's script. Which, I might.
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MichaelJPollock (736)
2 years ago
"It's ironic that, given the reputation as a thoughtless meathead movie, Conan actually has some of the most subtlety and ambiguity as to its ultimate "message" of the movie."
***
>Yes, it's a shame. I myself am guilty of having grown up thinking exactly that of this film, before seeing it again a decade or so ago and realising how unusually deep it was (in a non pontificating way) for an 80's fantasy/actioner.
I remember we had an interesting discussion about some years ago... (https://moviechat.org/tt0082198/Conan-the-Barbarian/58c736da5ec57f0478fb2dfb/Conan-is-an-exeptionally-deep-and-intelligent-film?reply=5f26b7d32191781eee870d81)
Ted Kotcheff's 'First Blood' is another film from 82 featuring a major action star from that era that I feel also has an unearned "thoughtless meathead movie" reputation. Probably due to its sequels though.
But yes, Stone can be a tad heavy-handed, whereas in Conan the metaphors do not "flash onscreen" so to speak. And yes, Conan -the film as much as the character- is undoubtedly more Milius than Stone. It's probably even more Milius than Howard.
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Ace_Spade (9551)
2 years ago
I thought this conversation sounded familiar! Great recall, and thanks for the link! Revisiting the old conversation is a welcome blast from the past.
First Blood and Rocky both suffered for the reputation that the Rambo/Rocky franchises developed as they wound themselves on and on ad nauseum, but the first films are both wonderful works of art. I think it's a bit of a shame that Stallone took the big paycheque more and more as time went on. His earlier works show such tremendous artistic promise (Party at Kitty and Stud's notwithstanding...) but he went for schlock and moolah. Couldn't he have thrown us another couple of thoughtful, emotionally-resonant films in-between the B-movie action? (Not that I don't love cheap entertainment and other "art candy" from time to time).
It's definitely more Milius than Howard. The characterizations are very different, although I think there's more in common than a lot of Conan fans think. Then again, they probably know more about Conan than I do.
And, again, I like Stone's work, so I'm not trying to rip on him too much.
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