Arnold Schwarzenegger has reportedly agreed to return to Conan more than 40 years after Conan the Barbarian made him a star. The move sends him back to the role that helped define his screen image and his body, long after the 78-year-old retired from professional bodybuilding.
It is the kind of casting news that immediately sends fans back to the original film, because Schwarzenegger’s first turn as Conan was built on a transformation as dramatic as the character itself. He said he lost 15kg for the part, sacrificing muscle mass and adding body fat to play the sword-wielding warrior at a time when he had been known for a single-digit body fat bodybuilding physique.
When the project first came together, the change was not optional. John Milius wanted Schwarzenegger to look less like a bodybuilder and told him he wanted him “less cut” because it did not look natural for the period. Schwarzenegger said he had just won the Mr Olympia competition for the seventh time in Sydney, Australia, and was on set for the film two months later, so he changed the way he trained and ate to become more rounded.
He said he wanted to look like a man who had gotten his muscles from hard work in the world, not from very specific, organised training in the gym. Working with Franco Columbu over 18 months, he dropped from 110kg to 95kg and reached around 12% body fat. The shift went well beyond size. He moved away from high-intensity, isolation-heavy bodybuilding and into lighter weights, higher reps and circuit-style workouts, with rope climbing, horse riding, swimming and running becoming central to the plan.
He eventually built up to eight-mile runs and spent three months training two hours a day with martial arts master Kiyoshi Yamazaki, learning how to handle a 5kg broadsword correctly. Schwarzenegger later said Milius was very happy and that he looked exactly the way the director wanted.
That old physical reinvention is part of why this reported return matters now. The new Conan development ties his latest move back to the original image that helped turn him into a movie icon, but the unanswered question is the most important one: when and in what form he will take the role back up.
