An authentic and raw performance by a budding superstar. A rousing score. Bloody, emotional battle sequences. A terrifying but charismatic villain. A Valkyrie with a big heart. And a hero’s journey for the ages. These are a few of the reasons I give whenever I’m trying to convince someone to watch the classic Conan the Barbarian, which happens more often than I care to admit. Conan turns forty years old this spring, and its influence on my youth was so strong that its references formed a kind of dialect among the kids in my neighborhood. It was simply the coolest movie we could have hoped to see in the early 1980s.
In addition to being cool, the movie has a depth that might surprise viewers who know it only by its macho reputation. That depth derives mostly from a worldbuilding device that is rare among genre films—so rare, in fact, that I have struggled to find another example. When I pitched this essay to Tor.com, I asked the editors if they could recommend any comparisons, and they were equally stumped.
The worldbuilding device is The Riddle of Steel, which brings Conan’s culture to life, and provides a basis for his underlying motivation. Ask any fan of the movie what the riddle actually is, and you’ll get a different answer every time. Ask them how the riddle can be solved, and you’ll get an even wider array of possible answers…