Killer Film talks Conan with Marcus Nispel and Fredrik Malmberg

Lionsgate Films is set to release Conan the Barbarian 3D this Friday, and Killer Film caught up with director Marcus Nispel (Friday the 13th) and producer Fredrik Malmberg to talk about the new 3D remake.

Tony: According to Wikipedia, it was your childhood dream to remake Conan?

Marcus Nispel: On Wikipedia they printed my wrong birthday so… [laughter] When I grew up in Germany, movies didn’t come out at the same time as everywhere else in the world. Back then it took like half a year sometimes to get to see the movie.

 

Fredrik Malmberg: Even Conan… Germany is getting it early September, everywhere else it’s August 19th.

Marcus Nispel: I remember Star Wars, which was a big thing for me, when that came out it took half a year. So you would get the action figures, the sound track, the Mad magazine spoof. You would act it out in the tree house in the forest. I still remember bloody knuckles from hitting each other with bamboo rods playing Conan long before we saw the movie. That’s what Fred is doing. He keeps that pathology alive. To me, the greatest reward would be to make a movie that people make action figures based on them. It matters to me more than an Oscar because this is not something that collects dust on a shelf because it spans generation to generation. So that’s the movies I like to make. They’re the movies I thought they were. A lot of people ask “Why does he like to make remakes all the time?” – I like to make movies that I had in my head as a 16 year old.

Tony: Yeah! That’s the point to keep having fun. Something else they say is that you give people what they want, but not what they expect. How much of that did you bring to Conan?

Fredrik Malmberg: You kept saying that. That was a mantra for you.

 

Marcus Nispel: If you make an adaptation of anything – newspaper article, 70′s TV show, true story, or a series of books – you get a whole bunch of lovers of the genre into one room, you talk for a while, you will realize that there’ll be certain things overlapping. Ten pressure points – that’s what must be in the movie, that’s the holy grail, that’s what you need. Everything else has to be different. Otherwise don’t do it.

Fredrik Malmberg: And listen, Robert E. Howard’s Conan, it is an iconic character. Just like even if it was, I’ll stick my head out and say, Shakespeare, each generation has to get their version of the iconic, classic stuff. Because they’re coming from a different point of view. I think that the Arnold movie was amazing, was fantastic. I mean we’re all big fans of that. We were kids. That formed parts of us in our generation, but the underlying source material is still as current, it’s still vibrant, it’s still being read. So, it just needs to be interpreted on the big screen for this generation, because they’re a different crowd. The underlying material is as current.

Marcus Nispel: The idea of what Conan is has changed. People say go back to the original books. I looked at the cover. That Conan looks like Dean Martin – his arms like noodles. Then the painter’s come in, Frazetta, which for me was a great deal. A lot of those were actually Tarzan. I didn’t know that, I thought it was Conan – it was just a pretty big Tarzan. Then the disco era, Star Wars, just happened. Everything wanted to be like Star Wars, disco era, Mr. Universe, a new Conan gets shaped. The video games, the comic books. Now, you can’t ignore all of that. I have this analogy because I did a lot of commercials for Mercedes. Great car. The spirit to that car, yes, sometime in the 40s they had a great diesel, it was a great collector’s item. That’s not a reason to stop making Mercedes. Even though you want to collect the diesel, if there’s a sleek new model, you want to get that too. If I would come out, or a producer would come out or a car builder and say, “Oh I got a great idea. Next year we just build a diesel the way it was.” I wouldn’t get very far.

Tony: True. Is that the idea behind the increase in gore in this one?

 

Marcus Nispel: Is there really?

Fredrik Malmberg: I disagree. Because when I saw that 1982 film – you can’t compare the two. When that [original] one came out, it was a big slap in the face. It was violent. That pit fighter scene – for the time, it was incredibly violent.

Tony: So the new one is more for our time?

Fredrik Malmberg: For our time, I hope it’s the same slap in the face. It’s not the Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, cute elves – this is Conan the Barbarian, the prehistoric really savage man.

Tony: …Like the intro of the character is awesomely brutal.

Fredrik Malmberg: That explains why he is the anti-hero. He grows up in an environment where you basically have to pay the consequences for your action. If you say a word, and it’s the wrong thing to do, [snap] it’s a duel to the death. And I love that little scene in the beginning where all the kids say – because they have no weapons right? – they all say, “Turn back.” and he’s like, f*ck it. Because he wants to prove his worth to his dad that “I can fight with warriors.” What’s even more to me true to the spirit of Robbie Howard’s Conan, is then he – that whole fight, thanks to the second unit guys who were fantastic, the fight choreographers – he actually picks up things in the moment. Like, here’s a rock, boom! Here’s a knife, bam! It’s like this kid is a natural born killer – he’s an ultra marine.

Marcus Nispel: My favorite scene in the whole movie that I actually wanted to put on the Internet. Because, in a way it defines what I learned making movies. What I didn’t know when I did Pathfinder, is the difference between empathy and pity. See, both of these characters get their tribe killed, both get their parents killed, both get their asses kicked. One guy, you feel sad for him, you feel pity. The other guy, you go like, YEEAAH!

Fredrik Malmberg: Yeah! You get behind him.

Marcus Nispel: It was that scene with Leo that turned it for me. Marc Gates, my storyboard artist, came up with the idea to give him the egg. Because at that moment when he does that, to me, I get that character with the sense of defiance. This scene was under fire for so long. I fought to the last – even after I showed the director’s cut.

Fredrik Malmberg: Even in the script stage, I remember people kept taking out the scene and we kept saying, Marcus and I, “Put it back, put it back, it defines the character.”

Marcus Nispel: Everybody wants to keep the first act shorter, “Who wants to see a story about a kid?” But to me the Conan story IS like a Tarzan story – you can’t take the tree house out.

Tony: The movie is about Conan, his life as a kid and growing up, too.

Marcus Nispel: And it helps you over the hump, into accepting a new Conan in many ways. The other trick of piece of piece giving information is you can grow with him. I love little Leo. I gotta tell you I’ll talk about him as much as Jason Momoa because he’s carrying the first act, the first half hour of Conan. Just when we thought we were zeroing in on our Conan I thought, “Who’s going to play him now as kid?”

Fredrik Malmberg: And he looks like him, his physicality his acting talent.

Tony: You don’t question that that’s Conan as a child.

Fredrik Malmberg: Even now, I met him yesterday, he’s grown up and a year and a half older, and I’m thinking, “You know we start filming the next film in a year, so, maybe…”

Conan the Barbarian 3D hits theaters August 19th.