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OK, so get this.

Movie's based on two or three of the original E. Howard stories. But this particular scene isn't in any of them.

While I'm reading the collected works of Conan, I get a notice that a book on the history of the Mongolian Empire has arrived in my library holds (because I'm not paying $35 just to satisfy a passing curiosity). So I pause my Conan reading to start reading this book.

Now, this book was originally written in 1936 by a Russian, in German, and was translated into English 2 years later. So it was written roughly around the same time as the Conan stories. And I'm immediately noticing that it reads just like a Conan story. You have the same flowery prose, the same Man Who Would Be King By His Own Hand, ancient foreign lands that you've never heard of, pale-eyed/dark-haired protagonist forced to grow up too soon after his family is slaughtered...

And then there it is, on page 60 of The Mongol Empire: Its Rise and Legacy: It's this fucking scene almost verbatim. The only differences are that Jenghiz[sic] Khan is much younger, and answers his own question after posing it to his generals with the answer Conan gives, and the "wrong" answer is several answers given by different generals. Oh... and it's not the lamentation of the women so much as their screams as you embrace your enemy's women (I don't have the book next to me right now).

Come to think of it, the bit about him being torn away from his family isn't in the original stories anywhere that I can recall, either. So I can't help but feel that Oliver Stone and John Milius read this book and based Conan as much on Prawdin's Genghis Khan as on E. Howard's Conan.

Anyway. Cool Story, Bro.

Do you wanna live forever?

  • 2 months later...

Yeah I'd say you're right that the book was used as a source for the screenwriter. I think it makes sense that he would do some research to get a sense of the "atmosphere" for the screenplay. It's pretty cool that you picked up on his apparent plagiarism from a book that old. 

Its shit like that that really is "What's best in life."

 

😀

  • Author
15 hours ago, DoobieWah said:

Yeah I'd say you're right that the book was used as a source for the screenwriter. I think it makes sense that he would do some research to get a sense of the "atmosphere" for the screenplay. It's pretty cool that you picked up on his apparent plagiarism from a book that old. 

Its shit like that that really is "What's best in life."

 

😀

Not quite plagiarism, but I definitely couldn't miss the scene. Especially since there isn't any such scene in any of E Howard's writings.

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