King Conan is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chance for a late-period masterpiece, like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven

2026-03-13 - 14:13

If the long-mooted third instalment of the 80s sword and sorcery series finally gets off the ground, it could be Arnie’s chance to go from ageing action hero to cinematic totem If you’re a fan of 1980s and 1990s Arnold Schwarzenegger, his late-era career has probably come as a bit of a disappointment. The Austrian oak was once Hollywood’s most reliable tool for punching killer robots, but he’s never really had his Unforgiven moment. Despite an absurdly influential run of science fiction and fantasy movies, Schwarzenegger has missed out on the sort of grizzled, late-career reckoning that might have deconstructed his own youthful myth, just as Clint Eastwood’s epic 1992 western confronted the very legend the actor-director spent decades building. It’s not as if Hollywood hasn’t tried. In fact, studios have spent the last decade or so trying to produce Schwarzenegger’s “old warrior” phase, as if prodding the action hero myth with a stick to see if it still roars. The problem is, nothing has quite landed. Terminator: Dark Fate turned the T-800 into a retired drapery salesman reflecting on his own violent past. Maggie had him as a grieving father in a quiet zombie family drama. Aftermath is essentially a sombre meditation on grief that briefly veers into revenge thriller territory. None quite managed to become the monument to the Schwarzenegger enigma that the actor’s era-defining body of work seemed to demand. If Arnold fans wanted the sort of late-career statement that turns an ageing action star into a cinematic totem, they instead got an increasingly mortal-looking man who turns up in mid-budget streaming thrillers looking faintly concerned. Continue reading...