Okay, I’m gonna be up front about this: RED SONJA (2025) is a movie that I kinda liked, but it took some effort. It’s an underdog movie, you kinda gotta be rooting for it to work, I don’t know if it’s gonna win over anybody standing there with their arms folded. But maybe I’m wrong. It has a sincerity to it. It doesn’t seem self conscious. That can go a long way.

It’s set in the land of Hyrkania during the Hyborian Age. When Sonja (Matilda Lutz from the excellent Coralie Fargeat movie REVENGE) was a child her village was raided and she fled. (Unlike in some of the ’80s barbarian movies we don’t have to specify what horrible things the raiders did.) Since then somehow she became a hell of a fighter and lives tribeless in the forest, searching for her people.

This is a character credited to Robert E. Howard, but she was really developed in comic books and most of us know her from the 1985 movie starring Brigitte Nielsen, which was not nearly as good as CONAN THE BARBARIAN, but I still kinda like it. In this version there are obviously barbarians around, but those guys need to get with the times, because this is when “people lived as one with the Goddess of the earth.” Sonja blesses the animals she traps for their sacrifice, and verbally thanks the forest for, I don’t know – maybe just for being there for her. She talks to a tree shaped like a woman, Goddess Asherah. Yeah, pretty soon we’ll find out just how amazing Sonja is killing motherfuckers with arrows and swords and stuff, but on a regular day she’s more likely to climb a tree and sit on a branch eating honeycomb. Living it up. Being nice until it’s time to not be nice.

That comes when some guys slice up a rhino-like creature, and she won’t stand for it. She follows them and sees other animals (a giant scorpion, some human rebels) being caged up for Emperor Dragan the Magnificent (Robert Sheehan, GEOSTORM, MORTAL ENGINES). He’s a guy kind of like Conan, or Sonja, in that he was a child slave but escaped and pulled himself up by the furry boot straps. But he’s different in that he’s a prissy asshole who treats everybody badly and makes other people do his dirty work.

Sonja gets in a fight with Dragan’s life-long best pal Annisia (Wallis Day, Batwoman), who hears voices; word on the street is she’s haunted by everyone she’s killed. Sonja gets her in a chokehold, but she’s surrounded. Her horse Vihur shows up, but can’t rescue her before a giant ape man named Karlak (Martyn Ford, BOYKA: UNDISPUTED, ACCIDENT MAN, FINAL SCORE) punches her out. So they’re both in captivity now.

Sonja lives and trains in a dungeon with other prisoners, and the emperor makes her take part in gladiatorial combat. When she’s given a chain mail bikini to fight in she realizes it protects nothing, but she still keeps it as her go-to outfit. I’ll take that as a boast that she doesn’t need real protection.

Director MJ Bassett (SOLOMON KANE, ROGUE [the Megan Fox vs. a lion one, which I liked], season 1 finale of Reacher) and screenwriter Tasha Huo (The Witcher: Blood Origin) know we’re not gonna be surprised by the “and you will be forced to fight your friend to the death” part of the arena fighting, so they get right to it. Sonja makes an admirable attempt to refuse, but it doesn’t work.

That section of the movie lasts long enough that I kinda thought they weren’t going to leave that location, but eventually they do, thankfully. When she has a chance to escape, she goes to rescue her horse first. She’s pretty pissed about that shit. A little bit of a JOHN WICK feel there.

Unfortunately I don’t think Dragan is a very fun villain except in a couple parts where he gets really excited that he’s going to have a cyclops. He brags about his vast scientific knowledge and makes fun of his captives for believing in gods, which – I mean, he’s right about that, but he sucks. Kind of a Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher or Ricky Gervais type I guess. There’s a part that threw me off too ‘cause he turns a knob on his staff and it lights up, like a little battery powered light. Took me a second to realize it was supposed to be a magic glow or whatever. Anyway he turns out not to be such an atheist after all, doing all this magic shit.

There’s kind of a problem here with making a low budget fantasy movie. On one hand, the most boring fantasy movies are the ones that try to get away with just having a bunch of sword dudes and no mythical creatures. This one doesn’t do that, but then the mythical creatures look like this:

Oh do I miss stop motion. And I mean I’m not too mad at a CG establishing shot like this

but it reminds me how much I wish we could go back to matte paintings. I like fantasy movies to have an artificial style, but I guess I’m programmed for the type of artificial I grew up on – soundstages, miniature models, puppets. So uncharacteristically my favorite parts of this are when they’re just out in the woods having a big sword battle. The fire and explosions seem to be practical, even the rain doesn’t look like CG, it’s lit pretty well, Lutz does well with the sword fights. Later they have her do some cool wire-assisted flips and stuff, and she looks cool with the war paint on. I’m not saying it’s as good, but a couple times it made me think of that movie AZUMI. So that’s a compliment.

(Sunt designer: Melissa R. Stubbs, HOSTILE TAKEOVER. Stunt coordinators: Borislav Iliev, WE DIE YOUNG and Kaloian Vodenicharov, DIRTY ANGELS.)

Oh, also she does some pretty badass shit to fuck with the emperor (see screengrabs).

No complaints about Lutz in this. She goes for it. I wish her supporting cast had as much screen presence. Rhona Mitra (BEOWULF, GET CARTER, HIGHWAYMEN, HARD TARGET 2) and MMA fighter Michael Bisping (xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE, TRIPLE THREAT, NEVER BACK DOWN: REVOLT) are good in small roles, but the others I found mostly flavorless. Without enough style or charisma on screen to carry us through the shoe leather there are definitely some dull stretches. That’s why when it comes down to it I’ll probly never watch this as much as I’ve watched the ‘80s version. But I gotta give credit to Bassett and Huo for a pretty smart story that doesn’t always go to the obvious places. I like that they try to do something more complex than just kill the bad guy. He came from the same tragic circumstances as Sonja, so she has some sympathy for him, but also points out that it didn’t make her go out and enslave people, so fuck you man you suck.

This has been in development by Millennium Films for so long that IMDb lists 36 producers. (One of them is Gail Simone, whose Red Sonja comics inspired some of the story.) It was first announced as a Robert Rodriguez movie starring Rose McGowan, which I bet would’ve been fun. I guess Simon West was attached for a while after that, but what I remembered was when they were sticking with Bryan Singer as director even after he was disgraced. They only gave up on that plan when no one would distribute it.

So I don’t know, maybe this was never destined to be a blockbuster, but I wish it could’ve had even half the production value of some of the 21st century fantasy sword guy movies like KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD, THE ROCK IS HERCULES, THE HUNTSMAN: WINTER’S WAR, DRACULA UNTOLD or of course SONJA’s cousin, the Jason Momoa CONAN THE BARBARIAN. The same material feeling more like a Real Movie could’ve actually been a banger. This just doesn’t have enough of the atmosphere I want from a cool fantasy movie, and that’s an important factor.

But you know what, when I saw the epilogue where Sonja is summoned for an unspecified further adventure, I knew I would be on board if it were to happen. If she gets to stay at peace then good for her, but if she goes into battle I’ll follow.