Conan the Barbarian (1982) - Prehistoric fantasy opus stretched out beyond its maximum

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Mythical, alluring poster for John Milius' Conan the Barbarian

QUICK REVIEW:

The first Conan movie by John Milius (Red Dawn (1984)), who wrote Apocalypse Now (1979), is an excessively long, tiresome affair with an Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)), who at this early point of his acting career still clearly had plenty to learn about his own talent and acting in general.
The story is set in a prehistoric age, where the young Conan sees his village destroyed and his parents slain by some fierce villains, who then enslave him for many years. He gains reputation as a barbaric killer after he gets loose, and then goes on his quest for vengeance.

So many shots in Conan are so protracted that even the most die-hard Arnold-fan will have problems not mentally drifting from it. I frequently totally forgot what the film was about.
It is blown up to epic length (129 minutes) with a grand, fine score by Basil Poledouris (Free Willy (1993)), which doesn't serve the Conan universe well, because the film is basically too ridiculous to bear such length and grandeur.
Line after line is spoken that seems too ludicrous to even have been written. Here's one example which is testament to the low-brow level that Conan floats around in: [ed.: Crom is Conan's sword!]

Conan: Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, Crom... so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you! 

One wonders if screenwriter Oliver Stone (Platoon (1986)) wrote Conan (with Milius doing rewrites) in a cocaine snowstorm. And Milius is no great director...
The film does have some impressive scenery and sets, liberal amounts of blood and mayhem, special effects and co-stars James Earl Jones as the evil Thulsa Doom and Max von Sydow as a bitter old king who helps Conan. And two sex scenes with Conan, the first one ending SPOILER with him throwing her into a bonfire!

James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom in John Milius' Conan the Barbarian

But dang is it (generally) boring. I just couldn't care about the walking lump of meat that is Conan if you tried to force me into it, I think.
In fact, the elaborate DVD behind-the-scenes documentary about Conan the Barbarian was better and way more interesting (and more than an hour shorter!) than the film itself.
The 1984 sequel by Richard Fleischer at least has an irreverence about itself, which the self-serious, solemn 1982 here original totally lacks.
Incredibly enough, Schwarzenegger still wants to do a third Conan, which has been announced with the title, Legend of Conan.

Related reviews:

Conan the Destroyer (1984) - Arnold K.O.'s animals and pushes doors open in early-career fantasy 80's extravaganza
John Milius: Apocalypse Now (1979) Redux version - The horror of war (screenwriter)

Watch the original trailer here

Cost: 16 mil. $
Box office: 130 mil. $
= Blockbuster

What do you think of Conan the Barbarian?
If I am missing some central charm about the character, what is it?

Apocalypse Now (1979, redux version) - Coppola's dizzying whirlpool epic of the horror of war

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An all-time great in poster art; this evocative, dark work full of depth and atmosphere by Bob Peak and Tom Jung for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now

Vietnam War-traumatized US Captain Willard receives a new mission: Sail up a Vietnamese river into Cambodia during the flaming grandeur of the Vietnam War and terminate an insane, rogue US colonel by the name of Kurtz. With "extreme prejudice."

An adaptation of Joseph Conrad's (Victory (1915)) classic masterpiece novella, Heart of Darkness (1899) written by John Millius (Red Dawn (1984)), Michael Herr (Full Metal Jacket (1987)) writing narration and Michigander master filmmaker and in this case co-writer/producer/director/co-composer Francis Ford Coppola (Tonight for Sure (1962)) changed a lot of Conrad's dark story to fit it into their current Vietnam perspective, (it originally takes place on a river in the Congo.) This is a review of the 2001-released 49-minute extended Redux-version of Apocalypse Now.
From being a story more exclusively about the darkness in the human soul, it grows in their hands into a horrifying Vietnam-tale, and a forecast of the apocalypse of the entire American system, its way of thought, or of the war effort in Vietnam at the very least, depending on the interpreter. A moral and human apocalypse of endless proportions.
Most of all, though, it still concerns itself with the savage, the uncontrollable, and the evil; the indefinable and incurable darkness in man.
Right from the first shot of helicopters rising in a cloud of napalm to the doomed sounds of The Doors' The End, the movie spellbinds its viewer in visual and sheer scope-of-production awe, fascination, and transformative despair.
Martin Sheen (The 3 Wise Men (2003, voice)) and Marlon Brando (The Formula (1980)) are majestic, and we have the sense all through the film that we so deserve this apocalypse that we are witnessing the journey towards.
The incredible near 300 day-shooting of the film in the civil war-plagued Philippines at the time with Sheen suffering a heart attack, choppers loaned directly from war there, Brando's troubling obesity, mumbling and refusal to prepare, tropical, disastrous storms, deaths, near-insanity and everything in between are portrayed by Coppola's wife Eleanor Coppola (Paris Can Wait (2016)), in her Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991), a great and very recommendable documentary on extreme filmmaking.
Apocalypse Now may be the best war movie ever made, and it is arguably one of the greatest 10 or 20 films of all time. An incredible achievement and experience that is never forgotten.

Related posts:

Francis Ford Coppola: Twixt (2011) - Coppola's dreamlike Gothic is a late-night gem

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) - Coppola goes for the jugular with unsubtle, overlong adaptation

Top 10: The best adaptations reviewed by Film Excess to date

Dementia 13/The Haunted and the Hunted (1963) - Coppola's gothic AIP castle horror 
 

Watch a teaser for the film here

Budget: 31.5 mil. $
Box office: 150 mil. $ + 12.5 mil. $ (Redux)
= Big hit (returned 5.15 times the cost)
[Apocalypse Now premiered 19 May (Cannes Film Festival, France, in competition) and runs 153 minutes/202 minutes (Redux version). Coppola paid Milius 15k $ to write the screenplay, which he finished a first draft for in '69. He eventually reportedly wrote10 drafts, more than 1,000 pages. George Lucas was engaged to direct for a period, and had in mind a low-budget approach, but was overtaken by work on Star Wars. Instead Coppola himself took the helm with a budget of 12-14 mil. $. He personally dined with the dictator of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos to arrange the use of his country's military in the long Philippine shoot. Several stars turned down offers to play Willard due to the long jungle shoot. Brando was contracted for 1 months shooting for outrageous 3.5 mil. $. Harvey Keitel started out playing Willard, but Coppola was unhappy with him and replaced him with Sheen. Shooting took place in the Philippines and in California from March 1976 - May 1977. The budget ballooned during the enormously long production, which suffered countless problems. Editing took 2 years. The film won the Palm d'Or in Cannes together with Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum. It was nominated for 8 Oscars, winning for Best Cinematogrpahy (Vittorio Storaro (Caravaggio (2007, TV movie))) and Best Sound, losing Best Supporting Actor (Duvall) to Melvyn Douglas in Being There, Art/Set Decoration to All That Jazz, Director to Robert Benton for Kramer vs. Kramer, Editing to All That Jazz, Picture and Adapted Screenplay to Kramer vs. Kramer. It won 3/4 Golden Globe nominations, 2/9 BAFTA noms, a César award nomination, won a David di Donatello award, a Grammy nomination, a National Board of Review award and other honors. It grossed 78 mil. $ domestically (52 % of the total gross). Roger Ebert has called it the finest war film ever made and given it a 4/4 star review, equal to its rating here. It was nominated for  The 2001 Redux release added 12.5 mil. $ to the total gross. It currently sits at #49 on IMDb's user-generated Top 250, between The Prestige (2006) and Memento (2000). Coppola returned with One from the Heart (1981). Sheen returned in Blind Ambition (1979, miniseries) and theatrically in Eagle's Wing (1979), Duvall in The Great Santini (1979), and Brando in The Formula (1980). Apocalypse Now is certified fresh at 93 % with a 7.8/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

Share your personal experience with Apocalypse Now here

1941 (1979) - Spielberg's bizarre 'comedy spectacular' sinks like a rock

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A packed, explosive and fire engine red poster drawn poster for Steven Spielberg's 1941

Ohioan master filmmaker Steven Spielberg's (Jurassic Park (1993)) initial entry in the annals of the bombs of the New Hollywood directors is his 1979 war comedy 1941. The failure was not as spectacular as that of some of his contemporaries, like Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie (1971), Martin Scorsese's New York, New York (1977), Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), George Lucas's Howard the Duck (1986) or (especially) Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate (1980), and it broke even and may have turned a slight profit, but it is still a deeply strange jumble, an impressively gigantic production of a crazy array of ideas and pointless dalliances. It is written by Robert Zemeckis (Flight (2012)) and Bob Gale (Amazing Stories (1986), TV-series), with John Milius (Evel Knievel (1971)) contributing story elements.

Centered on a war-paranoid, gun-loving Los Angeles in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 1941 presents a range of more or less comical figures, who we follow as they engage in attacks on - mostly - each other.

Some audiences surely think that 1941 portrays the American war effort in WWII as silly, a laugh, pointless, and/or unimportant. If Spielberg had not stayed working for decades and given us two of the best, serious WWII-films of all time as well, later on in his career - Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), - 1941 would have been a much more embarrassing blot on his body of work than it is.
As it stands, I don't feel he should be embarrassed of it. Everyone knows that Spielberg's heart is in the right place, and he just made a ridiculous film back in the heyday of these young directors' perceived immortality in 1979. Today, perhaps, he has become even more immortal in terms of his industry status and monetary gains; (he was the second-highest earning celebrity of 2012 according to Forbes Magazine; making around 100 mil. $; only surpassed by Madonna.) - But does Spielberg have more good pictures up his sleeves? His only directorial effort planned at the time of writing this is an Indiana Jones 5, with the far from youthful Harrison Ford (Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)), and it thus it unfortunately seems that Spielberg's finest hours are behind him. (Ed.: This was proved wrong as Spielberg did return with great family comedy The BFG (2016) and political drama masterpiece The Post (2017).)
Back to 1941:
Lacking a central character and an engaging story, and super-abundant in odd slapstick-comedy that doesn't result in real laughs, 1941 is strange, empty and extravagant to a point of ... pointlessness.
Visually, much of it is made uncomfortably bright for no apparent reason, while a seemingly grand and spectacular airplane scene in LA towards the end is so under-lit that it is hard to make out what's going on.
With an impressive cast of names such as Toshirô Mifune (Winter Kills (1979)), Ned Beatty (The Killer Inside Me (2010)), John Candy (Space Balls (1987)), Christopher Lee (Starship Invasions (1977)), Slim Pickens (The Swarm (1978)), Robert Stack (Police Story (1976), TV-series), Treat Williams (Moola (2007)) and others, and several fellow filmmakers involved in its making, contributing jokes, cameos, story, and script-wise, at least for Spielberg's sake, when the film was met with incomprehension, head-shaking and box office far below his two sensational films before it, masterpiece Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), - he had a boatload of good people on his side to share the negative critique with.
The things that make 1941 bearable (if not, for the general viewer, worth watching exactly), are the few laughs that it does have. Especially John Belushi (Old Boyfriends (1979)) and Dan Aykroyd (Tammy (2014)) and some of the toilet-humored Pickens-scenes supply these. There's also a quite extraordinarily staged and filmed dance scene that goes totally amok, which is also entertaining and fun in its own way.
Spielberg has stated that he considered turning 1941 into a musical halfway through production, and that, in retrospect, it might have helped it. I doubt it, but, of course, we will never know.

Related posts:

Steven Spielberg: The Post (2017) - Spielberg returns to mastery with a thrilling salute to the virtues of real, critical, brave journalism
War Horse (2011) - Spielberg visits WWI with problematic horse drama
The Adventures of Tintin/The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011) - Affinities for Tintin, earlier Spielberg and film will decide your experience of this 3D mo-cap adventure
Super 8 (2011) - Abrams' nostalgic family crowdpleaser (producer)
Band of Brothers - TV mini-series (2001) - WWII-sacrifice and -comradeship portrayed with skill and integrity (producer)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - A robot fairy tale with both heart and mind
Amistad (1997) or, Must... Free... Slaves! 
Empire of the Sun (1987) - Spielberg's grand production of boy-in-China-during-WWII is a misfire
Twilight Zone The Movie (1983) - Fear takes many forms in tragedy-struck anthology
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - Spielberg's greatest accomplishment
Top 10: Best car chases in movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Duel (1971) - Spielberg's truck terror is ideal afternoon fare
 

Here is a teaser for the film with Belushi prominently featured

Cost: 35 mil. $
Box office: 94.4 mil. $
= Box office success
[1941 premiered 13 December (Los Angeles, California) and runs 118 minutes. Spielberg sought out cinema legends John Wayne and Charlton Heston to participate in the film, but both advised him against it and called it unpatriotic. The enormously long shoot took place in California, including Los Angeles, and in Oregon from October 1978 - May 1979. Belushi was in an airplane accident during shooting and was hospitalized; the shot of the accident was used in the film. The film opened #3 to a 2.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it grossed 31.7 mil. $ (33.6 % of the total gross). The film was nominated for 3 Oscars: Best Cinematography (William A. Fraker (Protocol (1984))), lost to Vittorio Storaro for Apocalypse Now, Best Effects, Visual Effects, lost to Alien, and Best Sound, lost to Apocalypse Now. Roger Ebert gave the film a 1.5/4 star review, translating to one notch harder than this review. Spielberg has later said that personal arrogance on his side contributed to the film's not "funny enough" but that he is "not embarrassed by it." He returned with great adventure Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Belushi and Aykroyd returned together in John Landis' masterpiece The Blues Brothers (1980). 1941 is rotten at 36 % with a 5.2/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of 1941?