It would appear that barbarians are on the mind of a few people these days since apart from Netflix coming out with a historical drama titled Barbarians, it also sounds as though Netflix will be taking on a TV adaptation of Conan the Barbarian, everyone’s favorite Cimmerian. As many diehard fans will already know, Conan has been brought back a few times between animated and live-action appearances, but the fans have always had a special place in their hearts for the hard-hitting and insanely strong barbarian/destroyer, depending on which movie is your favorite. In the eyes of many fans, there has only ever been one definitive Conan, and despite the fact that Jason Momoa put in an effort to bring the big guy back to life it didn’t really help much since it was an attempt to revive Conan by rebooting him entirely, and a lot of fans just weren’t having it. At this time it doesn’t sound as though there are a lot of details forthcoming since while this likely isn’t a new idea, it’s something that could possibly be kept a secret until Netflix is certain of the direction that it’s taking. Whether it’s going to be a continuation of the movies or something else entirely is unknown, but you can guess what the fans are wanting, and what many of us that have seen the movies are hoping will happen.
If the truth is being told it did appear that Momoa was going to make a fitting replacement as a younger Conan, but the problem is that the movie didn’t really start out all that great since from the beginning, Conan was apparently an animal when it came to fighting and took down a group of grown scouts that had been trained to fight. Obviously, they weren’t great fighters, but he was a kid in the reboot and the effect just didn’t pan out, especially when he spat out an egg he’d had tucked in his mouth during an endurance trial that had been going on when the fight happened. The idea was to get through the trial without breaking the egg in one’s mouth, and apparently, Conan, who was the runt of the pack, was roughed up by those he was running against and didn’t break the egg, and he was also successful in not breaking it during the fight he somehow survived. That was a little too over the top, even for Conan, especially since the early Conan didn’t show him being trained as a fighter until he grew older and actually needed such skills to survive as a pit fighter.
But really, we can argue the finer points of Conan all day and night, but waiting to see what Netflix will do with the idea could be intriguing even if there are bound to be plenty of naysayers that aren’t going to want to hear anything about another actor playing Conan. It’s not hard to empathize with this point of view really since Arnold Schwarzenegger set the bar exceptionally high in his day, and there is a rumor going around that he might come back for a King Conan movie, but there’s nothing set in stone it feels like since it’s a rumor that’s been going around for a while now. One thing that is certain about Conan is that Netflix is going to take a crack at the story and possibly come up with something that will hopefully pay homage to the original idea and kickstart something into gear that people will be able to get behind. It’s easy to think that a lot of us don’t want to let go of the past and the greatness that it’s brought, and that’s very true in some regards. But it’s also just as true that a story needs to evolve and move on from time to time in order to avoid going stale. Conan has been a movie, a TV show, an animated series since apparently we don’t say cartoon as much any longer, and he’s been the subject of novels and comic books, so his legend is pretty secure. But anyone that takes on this mantle has to know that there’s going to be a tremendous amount of pressure to get the act down correctly, or fans are going to likely try and crucify whoever takes the role, with plenty of thought to what Thulsa Doom did in the first movie. Hey, I’m a nerd, I own it.
When all is said and done though this does sound like it could be an intriguing concept to see come to Netflix and it does feel as though picking the right person for the role will be of the greatest importance since otherwise there’s really no point in making the show. After all, what is best in life? “Crush your enemies! See them driven before you!”…you know the rest.
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