This week on I Heart Xena, Warrior Princess Theatre is Red Sonja (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video), a long-in-development fantasy epic based on a 1970s Conan-the-Barbarian-except-he’s-a-girl Marvel comic. Of course, those of you keyed into the joys of classic schlock will invoke the infamous 1985 Red Sonja, the Conan crossover/spinoff that has us wondering if we shouldn’t have led with a “this week on Where The Hell is Brigitte Nielsen Now Theatre” joke (note: go follow her on Instagram and find out!). The new film – originally intended to tie in with the Jason Momoa 2011 Conan film until it flopped – overcame scads of developmental red tape, with directors and stars and producers shuffling in and out (there was some unpleasantness with filmmaker Bryan Singer when he was accused of sexual misconduct) until it seemed doomed to Hollywood purgatory. But it finally came together with director M.J. Bassett (Silent Hill: Revelation) and star Matilda Lutz (great in Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge), and the result makes one truly, deeply question whether it was worth all the rigamarole.
The Gist: We open with some voiceover about the glory and beauty of nature as the camera flies over a majestic CGI forest. Hooray for nature! Let’s celebrate it by recreating it inside a computer instead of actually photographing it! Within this forest is the municipality known as (pauses to Google the spelling) Hyrkania (note, this is necessary because the people in this movie always seems to recite awkward fantasy-saga proper nouns by trailing off into mumbles, as if they weren’t provided with a pronunciation guide), a perfect utopia of happy human beings working and playing in exquisite loving peaceful impossible harmony, and worshipping a nature goddess known as Ashermfmnffn. Here, happy young redhead Sonja happily plays with a happy little wooden horse until some evil invader barbarian pissants raid the village, murdering folks like Sonja’s poor mom, scattering the scant survivors into the woods.
Now Sonja (Lutz) is an adult, a warrior hardened by solitude and the need, the will, to survive. Accompanied only by her loyal steed, Mike the Horse (note: I made that name up, because everyone trails off on this one too), she needs, and she will, find the remaining Hyrkanimartiananians, or die trying. Now, let it be known that Sonja really loves her horse. Like, really really really loves loves loves him. I think this makes her a medieval feminist, since it’s implied she needs no man to save her, although it’s worth acknowledging that Mike the Horse saves her a couple times in this movie. They have a relationship based on mutual respect. She will wield a pair of unruly knives and an unruly bow against jerkwads, and should anyone get the drop on her, Mike the Horse will gallop over their bodies just in the nick of time.
One day Sonja’s taking a bath with Mike the Horse (hey, she keeps her microsuede skirt and top on) when she spots some guys, poachers, slaughtering some beautiful majestic made-up fantasy animals for their antler-crown thingies. As she follows them with the intent of making them pay for such cruelty, the social hierarchy of this narrative crystallizes: Ashermffnfnnm the goddess, then Sonja, horses, miscellaneous animals and finally, men. And who can blame it for crystallizing in this manner, since men in Sonja’s and most other realities tend to want to glom onto and assert power by destroying things and replacing them with lesser, uglier things, e.g., the men in this movie, who apparently want to turn all the forests into fortresses. And this pisses Sonja right the hell off.
Sonja winds up ending her exile by confronting some jerkwads who number too many even for her and Mike the Horse. She’s tossed into a hole – no, it’s literally a hole in the ground – where a bunch of other so-serious-they’re-hilarious pokerfaced warriors are enslaved, priming themselves for gladiator games. The ruler of the jerkwads is a preening sleaze named Dragan (Robert Sheehan), or Emperor Dragan the Magnificent to you, ya plebe. His right-hand lady is Annisia (Wallis Day), a silver-haired warrior plagued by schizophrenic voices-in-her-head that can only be quelled by magic potions, and who’s destined to be the title character’s mortal foil. As Sonja laces up a fish-scale metal bikini for her first go in the gladiator arena – note, she openly expresses that she’d rather wear something a bit more modest – Dragan schemes about world domination while the wizard in his employ blithers on about fueling the city with a giant shitty CGI effect that’s just begging to be destroyed by Sonja. If she can make it out of the Gladiator ripoff portion of the plot, mind you, which won’t be easy. But it will be chintzy-looking – chintzy-looking like a fox.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Red Sonja is Gladiator crossed with sub-release-the-Kraken Clash of the Titans nonsense and a Syfy original from 2011.
Performance Worth Watching: Lutz really got put through the wringer in Revenge, and she’s similarly dirtyfaced and bruised here, but not-so-similarly dogging it through this shitty shitty screenplay.
Memorable Dialogue: Sonja and fellow warrior Petra (Rhona Mitra) stand in the center of the gladiator ring:
Sonja: What’s coming through that gate? … I have a wooden sword.
Petra: Best hope it’s not a giant beaver, then.
Sex and Skin: None. Some of the ladies’ outfits are inspired by the designs of presumably sexually frustrated male comic book artists of the mid-to-late 20th century, but they’re toned down, and not as OTT-revealing as they could be.
Our Take: The lamentations of their women, my ass. Sonja is here! RED Sonja, to be precise! You wouldn’t want to confuse her with Orange Sonja or Vermilion Sonja, because they don’t kick ass like she does! RED Sonja shall not lament! To say this Red Sonja is an improvement over the 1985 movie – well, it’s a safe bet even if you haven’t seen the new film, which dutifully rounds the bases of the genre, obviously hampered by budget limitations. Bassett revs up some middling action choreography, indulges some faux-sweeping landscape shots, amps up the choral soundtrack, tosses in a rubbery-CGI monster or three and lets rip. There’s little room to be inspired when your apparent goal is simply to finish the movie while throwing up a prayer that it’s baseline coherent. At that, Bassett succeeds.
So let’s just say the movie’s not exactly The Northman. It’s more on par with a Paul W.S. Anderson joint, but a bit easier on the eyes than the ugly AI-looking phony sheen of his last effort, In the Lost Lands. The biggest issue with Red Sonja Twenty Twenty-Five is tone – lean into the camp, and you’re essentially acknowledging the teensy budget and admitting defeat. Working through the limitations towards earnestness is a bigger gamble. I’m not sure where Bassett lands, though. While Sheehan digs in and becomes a ham merchant, Lutz seems to be holding true to the pure heart of her character; guess who seems to be having more fun?
Part of this can be blamed on the screenplay, which plays like someone tossed a few semi-contemporary zingers into stereotypical declarative exposition-heavy fantasy dialogue. Sonja’s almost-love-interest (a plot cog played by Luca Pasqualino) is referred to as “a tasty morsel”; meanwhile, Sonja frequently speaks to herself or her horse or the forest (an actual line: “Thank you, forest”) with countless cumbersome proper nouns, and without contractions, self-awareness or a script doctor. She even enjoys a key moment where she sings a mournful song of sadness to her fellow gladiators, a highlight if the dwarves’ moansongs from The Hobbit movies really boil your pasta.
The cheesy dialogue often sounds like a soap opera, and the crisp digital sheen of the overall visual aesthetic makes the movie look like one, too. One with some cheapo CG monsters, bits of splitchy-splortchy-squirty gore and too many people with terrible hairpieces, worse dental prosthetics or rubber manimal (and womanimal?) baboon faces. We have to deal with all this for nearly two hours, although the film admittedly moves at a decent clip, and doesn’t feel overly long. Like Sonja herself, the film has mercy where Conan did not. Feminism!
Our Call: Sonja’s mantra with regards to finding her lost tribe is, “I feel today is the day.” Is today the day? The day to watch Red Sonja? Probably not. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.