Fucking barbarians!
—Ronal
Ronal the Barbarian raunchy Danish 3D animated fantasy parody from 2011, created by Thorbjørn Christoffersen, Kresten Vestbjerg Andersen and Philip Einstein Lipski. It functions both as a loving homage to, as well as a general spoof of the whole Sword and Sorcery genre.
Young Ronal is the feeblest and most pathetic of the Sons of Kron, a fearsome barbarian clan. Lacking both well-oiled muscles and the balls (well, at least not the figurative kind) to go on dangerous quests (not to even mention piercings and tacky tribal tattoos), he's picked on by almost everyone else except his uncle who tries to motivate him to be a real barbarian. However when Volcazar kidnaps the whole barbarian clan in order to carry out a blood ritual to enslave the whole world, Ronal has to go on definitely-not-a quest to find Kron's sword, the only weapon capable of wounding Volcazar and free the other barbarians. In his journey he meets Alibert the bard, Zandra the psychotic shield-maiden, Elric the elf, several instances of groin injury, lots of profanity and several jokes about sword and sorcery fantasy genre.
This movie provides examples of:
- All Amazons Want Hercules: Subverted, the Amazons prefer weakly Ronal to Alibert, though Rule of Funny (since Alibert is a Butt-Monkey and was eager to have some action) may be in action.
- All Women Are Lustful: The Amazons, the instant they recognize Ronal and Alibert as men and not ugly girls. Justified in that they have no men on their own and they have to make their tribe grow.
- Ambiguously Gay: Elric, mostly due to his mannerism and his lack of respect for personal space when it comes to Ronal. He also gives an interested glare at Ronal when only his scrotum is left visible from the potion and in the end he ends up as a masseur for the Barbarians.
- Art-Style Dissonance: The film looks like something straight out of DreamWorks Animation, but the incredibly revealing clothing that nearly all the characters wear alone should tell you otherwise.
- Barbarian Hero: Lots of them! An entire tribe (plus Ronal), the Shieldmaiden's tribe and the Amazons.
- Barbarian Tribe: Where Ronal hails from, their origins are explained in the start.
- The Bard: Played With by Alibert and his mentor. The mentor is a classic bard who speaks in flowery language, diddles on his flute, and practices music for its own sake. Meanwhile Alibert himself is a horny metalhead who treats his musical prowess as a means to an end, that end being sex.
- Best Her to Bed Her: The shield-maidens' tradition demands that shield-maidens be defeated by their spouse-to-be. Unfortunately, Volcazar knows about this tradition.
- The Big Damn Kiss: Zandra and Ronal, in the end, after it's revealed that he survived killing Zaal.
- Black Cloak: Part of Lord Volcazar's ensemble, along with his black armor and horned helmet.
- Black Comedy Rape: The Amazons' Mating ceremony, which they force on Ronal (who's seen returning in his hut holding his crotch and Covered in Kisses), while later the Queen tries to force herself on Alibert despite the latter's attempt to leave to help Ronal.
- Blessed with Suck: Zandra is still without a husband because she's too strong for any contender. Until she's beaten by Volcazar and forced to obey him.
- Bondage Is Bad: The General could be the poster child of this trope. He even whips his own bare buttocks as he rides, instead of his mount.
- Butt-Monkey: Ronal, but even more so Alibert: when they're caught by the Amazons and chosen for the "Mating Ceremony", Ronal is chosen to go first, much to the latter's envy.
- Chainmail Bikini: This is Chainmail Bikini, The Movie. (Or would be if actual chainmail were involved.) Though there's just as much chainmail speedo.
- Chekhov's Gun: The very long song about Kron and his battle against Zaan is used to find his tomb. In the Climax, Alibert remembers the song enough to tell Ronal where to pierce Zaal to defeat him.
- Cowardly Lion: Ronal may hem and haw and complain about how he is really qualified to be the hero of this story all the way, but in the end he still down faces the overwhelming threats in front of him and tries to save his tribe, because it is the right thing to do.
- Dark Is Evil: Lord Volcazar and his army are clad in black and look mostly demonic.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Zandra is a shield-maiden from a tribe of shield-maidens.
- Diagonal Cut: When wielding Kron's sword for the first time and confronting the General, Ronal accidentally swings the sword through the pillar behind himself.
- Disney Villain Death: The General is thrown into a pool of lava. By his nipples, no less, which is quite un-Disney. Which is also a Karmic Death, given that he previously pulled the nipple piercings of that very same barbarian to torture him.
- Dreadful Musician: Alibert, the bard's apprentice. Arguably, the best thing he did with his lute was to brain Gorak near the end.
- Dungeon Bypass: Attempted by Ronal: rather than fail the trial of Elfenguard's Gates he tries to persuade the group to pass around the gates. It doesn't work and they nearly get killed.
- Evil Is Burning Hot: Zaal appears like a titanic Big Red Devil seemingly made of magma.
- Evil Is Petty: Lord Volcazar certainly is. Even when transformed into Zaal, he blows a raspberry at a female barbarian who had just tried to throw an axe at him.
- Expy: Being a spoof of fantasy stories and sword and sorcery, it bears some similarities to The Lord of the Rings, especially the bad guys (the mooks are orcs with very similar looking: armor, mannerisms and weapons, the elite troops refers to themselves as Black Riders and halfway through switch their horses for winged mounts etc etc.). Volcazar himself bears a resemblance to Movie! Sauron, both in role, looks and weapon of choice.
- The Faceless: Outside of his spherical eyes, we never get to see Volcazar's face.
- Face–Heel Turn: Zandra tries to take on Lord Volcazar but she's defeated by him and thus, according to the laws of her tribe, forced to serve him. Fortunately Ronal talks her out of this.
- Fan Disservice: Ronal himself, who wears the same leather thong as other barbarians (who arguably veer towards this too). The Fairy waitress in the pub may count as a subversion of Fairy Sexy.
- Faux Action Girl: Implied with the Amazons, funnily enough: when we see them training with bows and arrows, they barely hit a target about 5 feet away from the archer. Later, not only they're outrun by the fat Alibert, but the only one who throws her spear hits the ground about 3 feet from her.
- Fiery Redhead: Zandra, the action girl of the group.
- Gag Penis: Sorta. Ronal's rather large scrotum is the butt of quite a few Share the Male Pain jokes, especially in the sequence where he uses an invisibility serum, only to discover that he doesn't have enough to render his scrotum invisible.
- Giving the Sword to a Noob: Of all the hundred barbarians he could have broken free, of course Alibert chose Ronal.
- Groin Attack: A lot, especially when an invisible Ronal gets struck in the nethers by arrows, because that was the only part of him that remained visible.
- Handicapped Badass: Gundar has lost his legs in battle and is bound to a wheelchair, but that doesn't stop him from kicking ass left and right.
- Heavy Metal: The "Barbarian Rhapsody" sounds like what the movie looks like.
- Heroic Build: Every single of the barbarians aside Ronal have rippling muscles.
- Implacable Man: Lord Volcazar. Only Kron's sword can even harm him.
- Infinity +1 Sword: Kron's sword, kept in his tomb. It's also the MacGuffin the heroes have to recover.
- Insistent Terminology: It is not a quest! Turned into a darker Ironic Echo when Alibert argues with Ronal and spits his words back at him.
- Irony: Alibert is always eager to hit on barbarian ladies or fantasizing about amazons rather than his quest, but he's mostly ignored. When he finally takes a serious decision to help his friend, the busty Amazon Queen literally throws herself at him.
- Jerkass: The Amazon Queen: when Alibert kindly refuse to have sex with her because he has to help his friend, she and her warriors try to kill him.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: One of the barbarians who spends time tormenting Ronal, but also tells him to save himself during the climax.
- Kavorka Man: Ronal and Alibert aren't exactly the most "conventionally handsome" men in the film, but the Amazons fall over themselves trying to get into their pants when they realize that they're men. The Amazon Queen even goes so far as to sneak into Alibert's tent a day early because he finds him so irresistible. This is justified considering their tribe is composed of nothing but women and they go so long without seeing men that some of them don't even recognize a man when they capture one.
- Large Ham: Lord Volcazar thanks to his No Indoor Voice and lots of theatrical gestures.
- Leather Man: The General, whose leather armor leans closer to bondage gear rather than actual armor.
- Left Stuck After Attack: Happens to Volcazar's flanged mace during his fight with Zandra, pushing him to utter "Fuck!" in response. Too bad Zandra cannot win either way...
- Marshmallow Hell: When Alibert receive a visit from the Amazon Queen, pushing his face between her sizable breasts is one of the tamest things she does to him.
- Most Common Superpower: What muscles are for barbarian men, boobs are for barbarian women. In fact, this applies to any female character.
- Ms. Fanservice: Zandra and pretty much all of the Female Barbarians and Amazons.
- Multi Boobage: Mentioned en passant by a horny Alibert. Ronal pointed out that said women were Pig Women.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Alibert has a Jerkass Realization when he and Ronal argues about saving Zandra and looking for Kron's sword and decides to put aside his only chance to bed the hot amazons and help his friend.
- Nature Hero: Subverted with Elric: he cannot figure out where to go in the wastelands and his attempts to "communicate" with a lizard gets him bitten in the face.
- Necromancer: Gorak summons Zaal from the dead so the latter can merge with Volcazar.
- Nubile Savage: The Amazons lives in a village deep inside a forest and mostly wear fur lingerie.
- One-Winged Angel: In the climax, Volcazar turns into Zaal after drinking the blood of the Barbarians.
- Our Liches Are Different: They have Hartman Hips and wear something that resembles red spandex in Gorak's case. Otherwise, he's of the half-rotten corpse sort.
- Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: When Kron was Impaled with Extreme Prejudice after defeating Zaal, he bled for seven days and seven nights, enough for his entire barbarian clan (minus one, probably Ronal's ancestor) to drink his blood which made them stronger.
- Shout-Out:
- Brigitte Nielsen stars as the Amazon Queen.
- The end credits with the "Barbarian Rhapsody" parody rock and metal music from Queen to Led Zeppelin to Iron Maiden.
- The Black Riders wear masks similar to Lord Humongous.
- The Sword that Ronal needs to procure is very similar to the Atlantean Sword Conan finds in Conan the Barbarian (1982), right down to finding it gripped by the corpse of the warrior the Barbarians worship. Even their names - Crom in Conan, Kron here - are similar.
- Skeletal Musician: "Barbarian Rhapsody", the end credits song, is performed by a bunch of disembodied skulls with Wild Hair.
- Squishy Wizard: Volcazar's lich is powerful, but he's taken out easily when Alibert, of all people, puts a Big Damn Heroes and whacks him with his lute.
- Stocking Filler:
- The Amazon Queen when she comes to bang Aliberth.
- The General. Unlike the above example, all the time.
- Stripperiffic: Parodied. The majority of the characters dress this way regardless of sex, Ronal included.
- Stealth Pun: At one point Ronal has to apply some invisibility lotion to sneak through an elven library, but he runs out before he can turn the last bit of him invisible: his codpiece. So we're treated to a scene of a floating codpiece moving through an elven library undetected. Eventually he makes his way to the printing room where the books are fabricated, and we're treated to a Tom&Jerry-esque slapstick scene where Ronal's genitals repeatedly barely escape destruction at the hands of printing press equipment. The music playing during this scene? The Nutcracker.
- Sword of Plot Advancement: The Oracle tells Ronal that he has to find the Sword of Kron in order to stop Lord Volcazar, though it is never said why until the climax; when Volcazar turns into Zaal, Alibert remembers a verse saying that Zaal was originally defeated when Kron's sword was plunged into a weakspot on his forehead.
- Testosterone Poisoning: The barbarians, especially Kron, but excluding Ronal. And Volcazar has got the villain version of this. There's so much boobage and hartman hippage that one could argue for a case of estrogen poisoning as well.
- Thong of Shielding: Most male characters wear one. Well, not so much shielding in the masochistic General's case. Not in Ronal's case either, but that's Ronal after all.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: In the end, Alibert finally manages to hit on some barbarian ladies in Ronal's village.
- Tin Tyrant: Lord Volcazar. It's actually a plot point, as the armor protects him from pretty much everything that's not Kron's Sword. While he's much larger and more powerful as Zaal, he no longer has the armor and even has a built-in weakpoint on his forehead.
- Toilet Humor: The Oracle is rather violently defecating when Ronal and friends first meet him.
- 20% More Awesome: A keg in the bar reads "110% Alcohol".
- Villainous Legacy: Zaal who has been killed by Kron before, but can still be revived by Volcazar.
- Vocal Dissonance: Played for Laughs. Volcazar is a tall, forboding, blatant Darth Vader Expy... whose voice would only somewhat sound out of place coming from a skinny pimple-faced nerd in a bowtie.
- Would Hit a Girl: Volcazar pimp slaps Zandra in the climax.
