Yes, a backstory explaining a characters childhood is very common in reboots. But it doesn’t HAVE to be that way. It all came together for Bruce Wayne in the well when the bats freaked him out after his parents were killed. Check. Got it. Now I understand grown up Bruce.

Maybe someone important in the process of the movie will, hopefully, read your post. The mysterious stranger with only hints of his background would be refreshing nowadays given the backstory-that-over-explains-everything trend. Not to mention the revenge plot device is used way too much as it is.

They need to watch the Man With No Name films of Sergio Leone to see how you can build up a compelling story with a gripping sense of place and time and drama without knowing a thing about a character’s motives or backstory. In some REH stories, Conan is like the Clint Eastwood character – mysterious, amoral, brutal, a destructive force of nature, but with his own code of justice – often guided by greed or sheer curiosity/search for adventure, a character coming from the barbaric desert to disturb/excite/enrage the “civilised” townsfolk, heading off again into the outlands etc etc. Plus the Leone films were grounded in a dirty, scuzzed up, detailed and realistic milieu, despite some of the outlandish characters and events. That should be the template for a Conan film, not some childish and cliched fantasy revenge film.

If they’re doing a Conan origin story it should start with the Cimmerians sacking the Aquilonia settlement and Conan’s discovery of the civilized world during the conflict. That would setup some following movies for him to go out into the world.

The Revenge theme is WAY overused and non-original. I’ve read all of Howard’s work and revenge was hardly ever a motive in them. From what I’ve read Conan’s adventures in the original stories often started with curiosity or desire, rather than revenge.