Trivia / Conan the Destroyer

• B-Team Sequel: John Milius and Oliver Stone didn't return, resulting in a different tone and feel.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't happy with the decision to make a Lighter and Softer Conan film (although the opening action scene does feature a fair amount of blood shed despite a PG rating).
  • Original writers Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway were vocal about how their screenplay was butchered during rewrites, with Thomas in particular wishing that he had taken his name off the film.
• Deleted Scene: A sex scene between Conan and Queen Taramis was filmed, but ultimately left out of the final cut (likely so the film could have a PG rating).
• Dyeing for Your Art: Arnold Schwarzenegger, with the help of Will Hatty, put on an extra 5 kilograms (10 pounds), at Richard Fleischer's request, to play Conan in this film.
• Enforced Method Acting: When Bombatta and Zula are fighting, Grace Jones actually bit Wilt Chamberlain's ear and that is real blood running down his neck. The shocked look on Wilt's face is genuine as she had never done stunts before as this is her first movie role.
• Executive Meddling: Because Universal Pictures and producer Dino De Laurentiis thought it would have been even more successful if it had been less violent, they wanted to tone down the violence in the movie. It was also recut in order to secure a PG rating. Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, who wrote the original script, were ticked off at how Universal had watered down their script, they went to Marvel and produced the graphic novel Conan: The Horn of Azoth, which was their script in comic-book form (ironically, the movie had had a Comic-Book Adaptation shortly after its release), but with a few name changes to avoid legal difficulty.
• Franchise Killer: This is the second and last Conan film with Arnold Schwarzenegger thus far. After this, Conan went to the back burner in live-action until the failure of the 1997 series that tried to emulate Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, got an attempted reboot in 2011, and a third installment with Arnold that renders Conan the Destroyer non-canon has been stuck in Development Hell.
• Genre-Killer: This movie, along with Red Sonja, is widely credited with killing the Sword and Sorcery genre in media for quite some time.
• Hostility on the Set: Wilt Chamberlain and Grace Jones didn't get along on set. Chamberlain had to keep asking Jones to turn down her boom box.
• No Stunt Double: Wilt Chamberlain and Grace Jones did 90 percent of their own stunts.
• The Other Darrin: In the French dub, Jean-Pierre Leroux replaced Marc de Georgi as Akiro.
• Prop Recycling: From the first movie:
  • The upper part of Togra's helmet was one of the shoulders of Thulsa Doom's armor.
  • Ferdy Mayne's crown is the Aquilonian crown worn by Conan before the first film's closing credits.
• Uncredited Role: André the Giant as Dagoth. There are set photos of him and Wilt Chamberlain together making Arnold look tiny.
• You Look Familiar: Sven-Ole Thorsen, who played Togra in this movie, played Thorgrim in the first film.

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