Yes, Red Sonja has had its one day in the cinema and now it’s on VoD. We all drew straws again, and I lost. It was a bit uncool of the guys not to show me the straws they got, but they said mine was the shortest. Still, I trust them; it’s not like they’ve lied to me before.
Red Sonja is a remake of the 1985 original with Arnie and Brigitte Nielsen. I start this review by saying I barely remember the original movie. I just remember it being a ‘sword and sorcery’ movie from the 80s. I’ve never read the comics.
This new Red Sonja stars Matilda Lutz, Robert Sheehan, Wallis Day, Luca Pasqualino, Michael Bisping, Martyn Ford, Trevor Eve and Rhona Mitra.
If I were to guess, most of the budget went on Mitra. M. J. Bassett is the director, with Tasha Huo penning the script, based on the characters by Robert E. Howard and Roy Thomas.
There will be spoilers, but firstly, you aren’t going to need to watch this movie, and secondly, the story is a predictable as they come.
The Story
The official blurb is:
An adaptation of the comic book, Red Sonja, a vengeful warrior known as a “She-Devil with a sword”.
We meet Sonja as a kid; there’s an attack on her village, and she escapes. Fine, this does expand during the rest of the movie, but it’s a typical opening.
It’s later, and we meet Sonja (Lutz) again, she’s now a girl boss, sorry, I mean a warrior of the woods. She loves nature, apologises for killing a rabbit for her dinner and is basically a hippy. Weirdly, she looks like how a hippy would smell.
Some of the giant creatures that live in the forest are being killed or captured by the bad guys. She tracks them down, and we meet the main bad guy, Draygan (Sheehan). Here, Sonja has a bow and arrow and a perfect chance to kill him. We know he’s responsible for her mother’s death, but if she killed him now, the movie would be over. #Shame
Sonja gets in a girl boss fight with Annisia (Day) and is captured. She is then sent to gladiator school for everyone’s entertainment.
Draygan is looking for the other half of a magical book, which is hidden in the forest where Sonja lives. Instead of torturing Sonja for the location of the book, he puts her into the arena.
Gladiator…NOT!
In the gladiator school, she meets a lot of new people, who are going to be her army later. One of the gladiators, Petra (Mitra) is a hardcore fighter, blah blah blah. Think Russell Crowe but with boobs.
When they get to the arena, Petra is immediately killed off, as they couldn’t afford Mitra for the whole movie. Sonja should have got the blame for this, but it just makes everyone realise she’s a girl boss and they need to follow her later.
Next time, again, instead of Draygan trying to get the information out of Sonja, he puts her in the arena, with everyone. They are all going to fight a cyclops that’s about 50 feet tall.
Sonja turns up the girl bossing to 11 and defeats the monster in about 60 seconds. I kid you not, it was about 1 minute before she saved the day. Here, she sends the other gladiators off, but she stays. To kill Draygan, right? Nope, to save her horse. #TescosMeatPie
She also manages to blow up Draygan’s power source for the city. I forgot to mention, but in this time of ‘sword and sorcery’, there are electric lights and power sources. #JustLikeRealLife
Sonja builds an army, saves the day and releases everyone from slavery. Draygan doesn’t die, she keeps him alive, as she was friends with him when she was young, and it makes her a better person, blah blah blah.
The Cast
Now, I’m not saying that Brigitte Neilson was the best actress in the world; in fact, she wasn’t the best actress in the original movie. What she did have though, was screen presence. She’s about 8 feet tall, and it looks like Yul Briner and Telly Savalas are hiding in her bra. She was a Sonja you didn’t take your eyes off.
Lutz, on the other hand, does not have screen presence. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a good-looking lady and her acting does the job, but she’s not ‘Sonja’. She’s a scrawny little thing with a neat waist and no boobs. She’s a modern-day Sonja, she’s a plain Jane, but with a big heart.
There is nothing to Lutz, but of course, she takes out guys twice her size. This was more impressive as Sonja was raised in the woods, with no training in hand-to-hand combat. Maybe rats are secretly really good fighters, and they trained her? #Splinter
The Bad Guy
The bad guy, Draygan, played by Sheehan, is the modern-day bad guy, a soy boy weakling. I don’t remember the bad guy from the original Red Sonja, but I remember Thulsa Doom, played by James Earl Jones, in the original Conan the Barbarian. Thulas was evil; he had screen presence, and you hated him.
Draygan is a good-looking high school kid who’s about as threatening as my nan while she knits. My nan might go for me and try to stab me in the eye with a knitting needle, but I can take her. It looks like a stiff breeze would blow Draygan over.
It’s explained in the movie that he is now the all-powerful emperor. How did he get there? Born into it? Family line? No, he was a slave boy who worked his way up. This was such a joke as he could have convinced a group of drunks to have a piss up in a brewery, let alone become an emperor! Fine, he had half of the secret book, but again, it didn’t really explain how he got to his position.
Pink Sonja
I said that at the end of this version of Red Sonja, she lets Draygan live. It’s 2025, we can’t have the girl boss behaving like the bad guy; that makes her as bad as a man! Instead, she shows mercy, love, compassion and reasonableness.
The main issue with this movie is two things. Firstly, you want the bad guy to get his comeuppance! I know it’s not the original movie, but again, Thulsa getting his dues is brutal, but stratifying.
Take that, Thulsa, you deserve it! He was a good bad guy, you hated him, and you loved to see his head removed from his body; he was a satisfying ending to a satisfying bad guy.
Draygan doesn’t get his comeuppance, but that brings me on to my second point, he got the satisfying end he deserved; a soy boy ending. He wasn’t a satisfying bad guy, so I really didn’t care what happened to him. Sonja might have well let him go; he’s not really a threat to anyone.
It’s the Little Things
I can’t imagine they could afford a Continuity Coordinator for this movie, so here are some things that needed attention.
All the villagers are in very well-groomed clothing and aren’t covered with mud.
In fact, everything in this movie was ‘clean’. All the buildings have been built by carpenters, all of whom have nicely cleaned table saws and hammers and nails. When there are ‘sets’ and not terrible greenscreen, they are all too polished. Sure, they chuck a little mud around, but it’s all nicely placed mud.
The archers in this movie are either the world’s greatest shots or non-existent. They can put an arrow through Petra’s neck at 300 yards, but when there’s a scene where they could easily kill Sonja, they are hiding, polishing their arrowheads. #CheekyInuendo
How on earth did Sonja become a great hand-to-hand combatant? She was raised in the woods by nature, but she can take on Draygan’s right-hand woman; who we learn is an ex-gladiator. She will take down half a dozen guys without smudging her eyeliner.
Also, who practices a backflip while shooting a bow and arrow? Sonja does, and she does it perfectly in the heat of battle. What am I talking about, it looks really cool for the trailer! And Sonja is as good as she is because she’s a woman! I’m so stupid sometimes.
Overall
Red Sonja is a cheap rehash of an original, which takes everything away from the original. Let’s face it, the original movie wasn’t exactly Citizen Kane, but somehow, they made this rehash worse.
The CG is doggy at best, the green screen is more obvious than Neilson’s boobs, and the story is paper-thin. There was nothing redeeming about this movie, as I said. Lutz is fairly attractive, but that’s about it. There’s no nudity in the movie, even though there’s a perfectly good opportunity for it.
In the opening, Sonja and her horse bathe in a pool. Of course, she washes herself with her clothes on; we can’t have modern-day girl bosses being objects of desire! #2025
I’ve seen some crap this year already, such as the latest was War of the Worlds. Red Sonja isn’t as bad as that, but it’s just a crappy movie that doesn’t need to exist. It’s boring, it’s girl bossy, there’s nothing redeeming about it. It’s not even worth hate-watching to see how bad it is.
Red Sonja is the fourth (I think) movie this year to get zero stars, and it won’t be the last.
