Did you know that because 1985’s Red Sonja, which starred Brigitte Nielsen and Arnold Schwarzenegger, was not actively based on Conan creator Robert Howard’s character but the Marvel comic spun off from her, the film was therefore technically the very first Marvel movie? Well, now we both know. That movie, directed by Richard Fleischer, was hoping to cash in on the Conan films’ popularity (although Arnold does not reprise that character), but it was mostly unsuccessful despite a decent budget and some amusingly chintzy production design. There also may have been Razzies awarded for everyone’s trouble.
Anyway, Red Sonja returns in 2025’s new Red Sonja, a slightly more modern but equally chintzy update with a dash of #Girlboss feminism and CGI blood. This time around, the titular character is played by Matlida Lutz, best known for Coralie Fargeat’s stunning film Revenge, which by all accounts ought to be inspired casting. Sonja lives in the forest and is searching for what’s left of her people after her tribe was destroyed and scattered by a bunch of evil barbarians. She communes with nature and with her horse, and everything seems to be pretty hunky-dory until some hunters show up. When Sonja tries to stop them, she ends up captured and sent to the arena to fight as a gladiator for evil Emperor Draygan (Robert Sheehan) and his bloodthirsty warrior wife Annisia (Wallis Day). Draygan, it turns out, was once a slave himself, but he conquered these lands by deciphering some special book that taught him about engineering and science and chemistry, and that’s on top of wielding what appears to be some sort of mind control device.
That’s a lot of extraneous plot for a movie that’s mostly just an excuse to squeeze Lutz into a metal bikini and place a sword in her hand. In fairness, that is indeed Red Sonja’s legendary getup, but the film’s apparent attempt to turn her into a full-stop warrior badass rather than Howard’s more sex object-oriented original version would have benefited from bestowing the character with some armor that protects more than just her breasts. That said, director MJ Bassett does manage to deliver plenty of decent fights and kinetic choreography, and the larger battle scenes — although clearly stretching the limits of a Millennium Films budget — are amusingly pretty well-scaled. Unfortunately, Bassett, who also directed the decently wicked Megan Fox vs. Killer Lion movie Rogue, fails to bring enough energy on a holistic level. The proceedings are monotonous and largely cheap-looking, and none of the actors — particularly Lutz, who sadly fails to carry the project — inject enough charisma here to transcend the overall genericism of the situation. Something grander and a little more slyly humorous is what was needed to really sell the sum here, and that’s exactly what the 2025 Red Sonja is missing.
DIRECTOR: MJ Bassett; CAST: Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Martyn Ford, Robert Sheehan, Wallis Day; DISTRIBUTOR: Samuel Goldwyn Films; IN THEATERS: August 13; STREAMING: August 29; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 50 min
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