RED SONJA (2025)

 

DIRECTOR: MJ Bassett
WRITERS: Tasha Huo, MJ Bassett

 

MJ BASSETT:

"The Red Sonja in this movie is my Red Sonja, and I guarantee she's not lots of other people's Red Sonja. "

"There is NO Red Sonja character. She's whatever you need her to be. You assume you know, she's feisty and tough, and she's rude to men, and maybe she's bisexual, and you know she wears a chain mail bikini, but there's not much people can say: - Oh, her character is this.
I know what to do with this woman and to utilize her for my purposes."

"When you read Red Sonja comics (maybe not Gail's because she felt a little more solid), she was just an excuse to have Conan next to a barely dressed woman fighting some monster, which was some metaphor for penis."

"I knew what I wanted her to be, but I also knew it wasn't exactly like a comic book character. I thought she had potential for more depth. I like what Gail Simone did to her, reinvented her."

"Chain mail bikini? It took us so long, to me, to figure out why she would wear it. Nobody would wear it. Nobody would wear this. It's a stupid costume."

"I interviewed some physically incredibly capable women, statuesque, with big breasts — everything that the comic book version of Sonja had always been, and I met some great actresses, but every single one of them failed to encapsulate everything. I thought Matilda is the place to go with this because she much more reflects me now. And I think ultimately you do make movies about yourself."

"Sonja is a lighter movie in terms I didn't want it to be so hard. I wanted it to be more accessible to young women."

"When I screened the movie to the owner of the Studio he said: - Oh, God, it's much better than I expected.

The limited audience we had, cried, because the film is about love and compassion"

TASHA HUO:

“Red Sonja is a barbarian, a female version of Conan, a superhero.”

 “Gail Simone's Red Sonja is fantastic because she is very feminist, self-confident and it is obvious that the woman is her author."

“Sonja lives in Hyrkania. Unlike the real world in which Lara Croft lives, Hyrkania is an imaginary world and I can present it as I wish.“

 

These two ladies clearly announced that this would not be a movie about the real Red Sonja, but about some imaginary character that they created in their heads, and that's exactly what they presented to us in their film.

What kind of character is that? 

A mix of female Tarzan & Mowgli, Greta Thunberg, Woodstock hippie, Spartacus, and Boudica from Temu.

This Sonja hides many different personalities within her — peaceful, gentle, humane, compassionate, naive, stupid, childish, calm, emotionally unstable, weak, impulsive, suicidal, smart, experienced, crazy, cruel, and insensitive...

What does this Sonja do in the movie?

She fiercely fights for animal rights, but she forgets to shorten their suffering when they are dying (the Hyborian version of the rhinoceros at the beginning of the film), she talks and cuddles with her horse like a small child with a puppy, she bathes with her clothes on, she is ready to fight to the death to save her horse, she throws weapons and invites the enemy to kill her without a fight, she tries to escape from captivity in the most stupid ways possible, she wisely plans and organizes an attack on the enemy, she sings Celtic lament, cries about every little thing, and especially while watching her biggest enemies dying, flirts like some teenage girl from modern teen romance movie, she deliveres pathetic speeches about piece, morality and justice like a contestant for Miss World, she blows up her enemy's palace without pity, although many innocent people will die in it, she cold-bloodedly kills an enemy soldier who was captured by her men, and then at the end of the movie she offers a therapeutic session of comfort and forgiveness to villain who killed her friends and persecutes her people, and holds his hand so he can die in peace.

Afterwards, she orders her men to bury his body with honors.

You never know who Red Sonja really is, because her features and mood change without any explanation from minute to minute.

All the while, she speaks in a strange accent that also changes throughout the film.

What can I say about the physical appearance of this Sonja — Matilda Lutz, who portrays her?

That she doesn't have any physical resemblance to Sonja from the comics and illustrations, that she doesn't have a mighty appearance, that she doesn't look attractive nor dangerous (so that's why MJ had to put that stupid war paint from Gail Simone's run on her face), that she doesn't stand out from the other women in the film in any way except for the red, and bad wig. I expected that the camera would add height and weight to her and that she would look bigger and more imposing on film, but it doesn't show.
In the first fifteen minutes of the film, during which Matilda/Sonja walks through a beautiful forest of magical colors, taking a bath with a horse, climbs a tree to eat honey (of course, bees won't attack her because Sonja is also a protector of insects), and then enjoys the scenery, you will see Matilda as she really looks - like a sweet and lovable heroine of a Disney fairy tale. Nothing like Red Sonja, of course, but at least she is nice to look at.

But then an ugly and surprising transformation occurs. Something that really surprised me and what I didn't think was possible — MJ Bassett and the people who were in charge to physically shape the lead actress for this role, but also those who were in charge of make-up and wig-making (all of them Bulgarians), managed to do impossible - to turn a pretty and feminine woman like Matilda into an unattractive and masculine one. 

In the rest of the movie, Matilda looks like a small, square, flat-chested Latin American female MMA atomweight fighter with a bad wig.

                                                                 

And in the last scene, in which Sonja drinks beer in a tavern, she looks like one of the guys she's gambling with.

I don't really know, maybe MJ wanted Sonja to look like a transgender person; maybe that explains her words that she wants to create such a Sonja that would reflect herself.

Matilda, as we have seen, will wear some kind of metal underwear for older ladies in the arena. She looks ridiculous in it, and I totally understand why she said in interviews that she was uncomfortable wearing it. MJ didn't put that homemade Halloween parody of Sonja's chain mail bikini into the film to please Red Sonja fans, as she said, but to make fun of her iconic costume. Matilda does not wear a "chain mail bikini" because it is her choice, but because her enemy forced her to do so to humiliate her.
First, there is a scene with the fat blacksmith who gives that armor to her before the fight in the arena, and when shocked Sonja asks: - And that protects?, he answers: - Nothing, absolutely nothing, but the crowd will love it.

Then in the arena we have another scene that has the same purpose. Sonja asks female gladiator Petra (played by Rhona Mitra) : - Did they ever make you to wear this?
Petra answers: - I would have cut the balls from any man who tried to make me.

It's even more absurd when Sonja chooses a similar variant of this costume for the next fight, only heavier, clumsier and even more idiotic (it includes metal skirt/shorts with pockets).

Sonja's hair, i.e. the wig, changed color at least three times in the film — from burgundy, to brown, and finally to bright red, so it is unclear whether the wigmakers forgot with which wig the filming started, or maybe someone was asleep in post-production when that color had to be digitally processed. Or is it some vague message about Sonja's transformation that the director wanted to send in this way. But even then, at the end of the film, Red Sonja will not have her natural fiery hair color that she is famous for.

The eyebrows were not touched. They remained black.

 

Sonja's fighting abilities in the movie are inexplicable, just like her character.

Sometimes they are there, sometimes they are not. At the beginning, Sonja is captured because she tried to enter the enemy's fortress as a boy scout, but only half an hour later she is a brilliant military strategist like Suvorov.
It is unclear when, where and how she learned to fight, because in the first half hour she is introduced to us as a peaceful hippie who picks flowers in the forest and whose only skill is to set a trap to catch a rabbit. But then we will see how she kills two (twice her size) guards with a knife in two strokes, and a few moments later she will defeat an experienced warrior, a former gladiator champion and bodyguard of the main villain, Annisia, (played by Wallis Day). We will see something similar in the gladiatorial arena.

But then, the same Sonja, sitting in the forest and keeping watch, will allow a man to sneak up silently behind her. Later, Sonja loses the fight to Annisia and she is mortally wounded. She helplessly awaits death, resigned to her fate (does this look like the real Sonja to you?), but luckily she is saved by a horse like in some movie for kids. After that, the Goddess revives her, or heals her wound (it remains unclear) and tells her that she will no longer be the old Sonja, but the new one.

Now we will see that Sonja is capable of stunts as a circus acrobat (backward somersault from the wall of the fortress, and hitting the opponent with an arrow while she is falling down), and in one scene we will see that she even literally flew from her horse on the ramparts of the fortress (the dilemma remains whether she really got the power to fly from the Goddess, or MJ just filmed that in a sloppy way).

Be that as it may, it is not clear to the viewers whether Sonja is the same warrior as she was, or if she is even stronger and deadlier—some updated version of Red Sonja the eco-warrior. Here MJ and Tasha obviously tried to use the comic book motif of the Goddess as Sonja's protector and bestower of unparalleled warrior skills and invincibility, as well as the motif of Sonja's reincarnation(from second Dynamite RS run), but like everything else in this movie, they did it clumsily so that it remains unknown whether Sonja somehow learned to fight on her own, or the Goddess gave her these abilities; did she die, and then she was revived, is she now stronger than before, or not, is she now vulnerable or not.

All in all, this Red Sonja is not Red Sonja in any way — not in appearance, not in costume, not in the sword she carries (a toy for children with a short blade and a strange pommel), not in character, not in exhibiting strange behavior towards her horse (another of Sonja's traits that the authors of the film misunderstood and copied poorly from a couple of comic books they read), nor in the words she speaks.

And Matilda Lutz herself contributed to this, not only with her inappropriate appearance for this role, but also with her bad acting. That's the second big surprise for me in this movie, because Matilda was a good actress in all the movies and series I've seen her in before (for example, the TV series Medici, or Revenge movie). Here, she was either misguided by the director, or she had the freedom to present the role as she thought she should, so she did it the wrong way; but anyway, she failed.

In the scenes where she has to look menacing and dangerous, she is simply ridiculous and funny. 

She looked like an angry teenager whose mother forbade her to go out at night, so she smashed everything in her room. The scene where she threatens to do damage to her enemies is really cringe; it looks like something out of a Latino telenovela where the lead girl vows to get revenge on her boyfriend for cheating.
The best example of this is the scene that takes place in the gladiatorial arena. I believe that Matilda would like to film it again if she could.

In the fight scenes, Matilda often looks like she is not in her right mind; she acts and screams like some lunatic. Especially cringe is her howl at the end of the film when she rides into the final battle with Draygan's soldiers.

Then there are scenes in which she has an odd petrified and confused facial expression, and those in which she receives compliments from Osin with a shy smile.

The only hint of good and convincing acting she showed in the scene where she sympathizes with the dying main villain.

 

How is the Hyborian world portrayed in the movie...Its nations, kingdoms, rulers, warriors, women?

MJ and Tasha took 15 minutes of their time to read an article on Wikipedia about it, randomly picked up a couple of names that sounded cool to them, and then put it all into the movie without any logic or sense.
So, in the film we will see that Hyrkanians are a small tribe of hippies who live in an idyllic copy of Hobbiton in the middle of a fairy-tale forest.

There are only a few dozen of them — mostly women and children. You will hardly see men (I noticed a typical Hyrkanian among them — a black guy), and none of them have weapons. These Hyrkanians are so peaceable that not only do they not lock the gates of their village, but they have no guards.
They may be a small tribe, but they still have a king whom we will meet near the end of the film. 

It doesn't matter that Philip Winchester doesn't look like a Hyrkanian king at all, because MJ Bassett likes to cast her friends with whom she has previously filmed(as she said), even if it's a small role like this.

The main villain of the film, Draygan (Robert Sheehan), who is presented to us as the most powerful ruler of the Hyborian world, is an autistic, irritating and hysterical freak, reminiscent of some spoiled young head of an IT company who was appointed to the director's position by his rich and powerful father, even though he is completely incompetent and retarded, and who is hated and laughed at by all the company's employees.

His army consists of about thirty warriors (who look like participants in some LARP convention), but despite that, he managed to conquer the entire Hyborian world. 

How? Is he some great wizard? No, but a scientist. The problem is that we will not see how he used his knowledge to dominate so many countries and nations; what possible weapons and machines he made to help him in this.
All we can see is some kind of magical reactor that apparently has nothing to do with technology and which Red Sonja will destroy with a simple metal stick; a remote control with a transmitter with which he tried to control Cyclops (but that gadget did not survive Sonja the acrobat who miraculously climbed the 10-meter-tall monster in two jumps and tore it off with one stroke of the sword), as well as some kind of primitive variant of cannons.

This emperor is riding in some kind of Mad Max armored vehicle, but it doesn't seem to be fireproof as Sonja's comrades will set it on fire during the attack on the fortress.                                                Draygan's attempt to create zombies from dead people, which he would use as his army, also failed.
This genius will order his soldiers to set fire to the forest where the Hyrkanians live, although a huge downpour starts that night. The outer walls of his fortress were made with ledges in the form of solid hand blocks to make it as easy as possible for his enemies to climb.

And when Sonja blows up his palace, this villain will show astonishing empathy and concern for the lives of his subjects by asking the following question to his adviser: - How many dead?

MJ and Tasha managed to make Draygan only a bad and cheap parody of some powerful and evil technocrat from modern times.

Poor Sheehan tried everything he could to somehow convince the audience that this is an original and complex villain, so he made idiotic faces, mindlessly repeated the same sentence(several times in one scene), he shouted, shook his head, whined like a neglected child, but his overacting didn't help at all. 

In the real Hyborian Age, such a ruler would have been thrown from the balcony by his subjects or drowned in pig shit. But in this film, everyone is afraid of him, although none of the viewers understand why.

However, we will see that Draygan managed to capture, no less than the king of Turan (played by some long-haired Bulgarian), whom his men brought to him from the nearby forest. This king looks and acts like an idiot too.

At the end of the film, we will learn that Sonja is eager to meet the king of Cimmeria.

Sonja's main ally and love interest is Osin the Untouchable. Not the blonde warrior Osin, Sonja's faithful friend and comrade, one of the most colorful characters from RS comics, but his parody — the dark-skinned prince of Shem (played by Luke Pasqualino, d'Artagnan from the British television series The Musketeers), a boastful pretty boy who behaves and speaks as if he fell out from some modern TV series for teenage girls.

Why is he called Untouchable? Well, in order for MJ and Tasha to make fun of Sonja's famous oath (in a similar way to what Gail Simone did in her RS run), Osin can only be with a woman who manages to touch him with a sword. But none of them have succeeded yet.
Sonja did that at the end of the movie, but she doesn't have time to make love with the prince, because she has a mission to save whales in the Vilayet Sea.

Judging by this movie, Shem borders Hyrkania. How else to explain the speed with which Osin brought his army from Shem to help Sonja in her uprising against Draygan and his troops, considering that he left a night before promising to bring help, and the very next day he returned to Hyrkania with his warriors (true—only ten, but those are serious numbers in this film when it comes to armies).
Maybe Osin was using a supersonic plane he found in the basement of Draygan's hangar.

We won't see the terrifying and powerful Hyborian warriors in this movie, because they covered the only man in the crew who looks like that (Martin Ford) with a baboon monkey mask. 

We will see another such mutant in the movie — a female, but we will never hear an explanation of who they are, and how they got among humans.

Michael Bisping is perhaps the only male in the film who appears (albeit short) to fit into the Hyborian world, and is really convincing and likable in his role, despite being given very little time in the film.

And women? Is there at least some beauty that stepped out of Frazetta's paintings or the pages of old Marvel Conan and Sonja comics?
The only such woman — Manal El-Feitury, whose pictures we posted here before, is constantly in the background in this film and is completely invisible. 

But even if she was in the foreground, it wouldn't matter because she, like all the other girls in this movie (except Sonja in that idiotic costume), is buttoned up to the neck.

But if the film doesn't feature the perfectly proportioned, exotic half-naked beauties that are the trademark of the Hyborian world, is there at least one woman who makes a impression in terms of looks and acting if we couldn't get that from the lead actress?  
There is. It's Wallis Day, who plays Draygan's bodyguard, and who really looks like she stepped out of a comic book. Other than that, her character is the only one that is interestingly written, and Wallis  manages to deliver it believably, whether in the fight scenes or the dramatic scenes. She looks dangerous, crazy, confused, vulnerable — always as her role calls for at any given moment. It's no wonder that I read praise for her in the reviews several times, that she stole every scene she was in, and even that it was a shame that she wasn't Sonja.

If the supporting actors leave a stronger impression than the two leads, then it is clear that the director made a serious mistake with the casting, but also in the way she worked with the actors she chose.

Like a king and his army — like the kingdom — wretched and poor. We will see a wooden fortification, a royal box that looks like it was made of cardboard for some school play, an arena that is missing half of the stands. Only the royal bedroom is more luxurious, but in the wrong way — because it looks like an interior from a modern movie with all the chest of drawers with fancy makeup drawers.
But all of the above, although poor, at least looks authentic.
Unlike the lake and trees under which the Hyrkanians pray to the sculpture of their Goddess, because it is painfully obvious that it is artificially created.

The CGi isn't as bad as people are saying in the reviews. The people in charge of this segment of the film managed to create a satisfying outside view of Draygan's capital. Cyclops is quite solid (an obvious homage to Ray Harryhausen which I applaud), and it's a shame we didn't get to see him demolish the royal lodge and kill courtiers, as the cut came as soon as his attack began. 

Also, we couldn't see the giant scorpion in the arena, although we saw that creature for a moment at the beginning of the film. It remains unknown whether those scenes were cut from the final version, or perhaps there was no money to film them at all.

There wasn't even enough money for extras in the arena (and those who play the audience are funny looking), so the CGI team had to intervene there as well.

That's why we shouldn't blame Draygan, who near the end of the film panicked and shouted to his soldiers: - They ambushed us! To many of them!", although he is sitting inside his fortress and Sonja brought only a dozen of her fighters on horses.

Another inexplicable mystery is where they found horses considering that Sonja previously blew up the entire emperor's palace, and earlier in the movie we saw that the Hyrkanians (except Sonja) don't have horses.

What are the action scenes like? Disappointing.

Firstly, because the viewers are prevented from seeing the action and the fight as they should. The main reason for that is bad editing — quick cutting and changing of frames. Besides, the choreography of those fights is not impressive either. Movements are wooden and slow; those scenes look like a training/exercise in which the fighters first of all take care not to injure themselves, but not like a realistic and brutal fight to the death.
Sonja's fight scenes leave the worst impression, because they are the least believable. And I'm not just referring to her superhero acrobatics from Marvel and MCU movies, but above all to the close combat of little Matilda(in which she uses a bow and arrow even though the opponents are only a meter away from her).

It is obvious that Sonja's male opponents (stuntmen and extras in the roles of soldiers), were instructed to be slower and clumsier so that Matilda could easily perform her fighting moves, which she painstakingly learned from her Bulgarian teachers. That's why you'll see funny scenes like in Mel Brooks' parody of Robin Hood; believe it or not, but two  times in this movie Draygan's soldiers will miss Matilda's body with their swords even though she didn't even  bend down. We will also see how Matilda knocks down Draygan's soldier with one slap, whose helmet falls from his head as a result of her blow. The funniest scene is when Sonja puts a chain around her guard's neck, and he pulls his head back even before Sonja pulls the chain.

Why is this movie rated R? In the whole movie, there is not a single scene in which the head or limbs are cut off? We'll just see two severed heads emerging from the bag and that's it.
I already said that there is no nudity in the film.

Many reviewers wrote that the dialogues are one of the biggest flaws of this movie, and I completely agree with that. 

Whether it's Sonja's pathetic speeches to motivate her comrades (- I choose to fight for what I believe in), or to explain her great goal to change the Hyborian world ( - This world needs leadership, moral and just), her lamentation over the fate of the planet Earth ( - The earth is bleeding.), Draygan's monologues that are cliché even for villains from the worst C production movies, but also lines ike this (- Bring me her head, and you will be my queen.), pretentious lines of the Goddess, with a heavy German accent of Veronica Ferres (-Sonja, the fate of the world is in your hands. The world needs you now more than ever), over cheap jokes about the Hawk's little dick (the gladiator played by Mike Bisping), all the way to the sleazy flirting between Osin and Sonja: - Sonja, you’ve done something to your hair. I like it!
- Stay alive, Prince Osin of Shem. One day I will claim my prize. 

The winner was the sentence that Petra said when Sonja complained to her that she only had a wooden sword and was therefore afraid of what kind of opponent would appear in the arena. Petra answers:       - You better hope it's not a giant beaver.

The cringe moments in the film are mostly related to some of those lines, although both Matilda Lutz and Sheehan equally fight for it with their crazy facial expressions.  

Ah, yes, not to forget the scene in the arena where Sonja manages to persuade Cyclops to demolish Draygan's palace and kill members of his court: - You are free. Your enemy is there!

Luckily, Cyclops understands English and is as obedient as a well-trained dog.

Don't be surprised when you hear words from modern speech in those dialogues, because if the characters of this film resemble people from our time, use technology from the 21st century, or fight against industrialization and the pollution of the Earth, why wouldn't they also use language and phrases from the modern age?

Draygan's closest collaborator is a professor. Unfortunately, we will not hear which university he attended and graduated from. Dryagan also has a minister; we don't know what he is in charge of, but considering that his emperor has conquered all Hyborian kingdoms, he is certainly not the minister of foreign affairs.

Not only is the humor in this film cheap and corny, but MJ and Tasha insert it where it doesn't belong. Thus, in the basement of the gladiatorial arena, we will see gladiators joking and having a great time like a group of guys and girls at a party, even though in the next hour they will face a fight to the death, in which many of them will die.

The costumes are just wrong, being a combination of medieval clothing and a cheap version of Game of Thrones armor.

The cinematography is too clean and polished; it has a digital, sterile look that doesn't suit a film of this genre. This is especially visible in daytime scenes.

The musical score is pretty good (although Celtic and medieval/renaissance music motifs that don't belong here often creep through the music), and better than the movie itself, so that's a serious problem, especially in the fight scenes, because then the musical theme is strong and epic, but during that time we can only see a muddy, tiny Matilda with a wet wig fighting two guys in plastic armor in front of some wooden fence.

I don't want to waste many words on the weak plot and bad pacing of this film, because most of the reviewers have already pointed out those problems — the script is a cliché sword and sorcery story with a bunch of holes, it looks like it was edited from a television series that was chopped up, and then those parts were hastily put together into some loose whole. So we have characters that suddenly appear and disappear, characters that have no motivation, or they're not developed enough (so it's impossible for you to feel empathy when some of the good guys and girls die, or to get excited when one of the villains gets killed), much of what happens in the film is unexplained, something happens too fast, and something drags on unnecessarily. Whether this is really a consequence of shortening the filming material, or the director's inability to connect everything into a meaningful and coherent whole, we will not know until, and if, the directors' cut appears.

But even the extended version cannot repair the terrible impression left by the film's idiotic ending, in which Sonja forgives her enemy by offering him comfort and support in his dying hour.

Such an ending was shocking even for those viewers who had not read any RS comics (the Real Sonja would just look at her defeated enemy with contempt and ride off leaving him to die, or she would pierce him with a sword to make sure he wouldn't survive).
What is the message MJ Bassett wanted to send to the viewers? That we should forgive tyrants and mass murderers? That we should feel sorry for them because they had an unhappy childhood. That evil should not be punished? If this is MJ Bassett's understanding of the compassion she talked about in explaining what her film is about, then it is a perverted and complete misunderstanding of this trait.

Conclusion:

The best thing about this movie is that there won't be a sequel, which is easy to tell based on its non-existent distribution in USA theaters, and low viewership ratings (currently 4.4 on IMDB and 2,5 on Letteterboxd), and because it will serve as a perfect example of what a Red Sonja movie shouldn't be.

I don't know what kind of contract Millennium Films has regarding the rights to the film adaptation of Red Sonja, but I hope that it is limited in time, because it is the only chance that some new studio and director sometime in the future will make a film about the greatest heroine of the fantasy genre, as it should be, and as Sonja deserves.