Red Sonja (2025)

Red Sonja (2025)

Captured, chained, forced to fight for her survival. Enslaved by an evil tyrant who seeks to destroy her people, Red Sonja must fight her way through the blood-soaked pits of the tyrant’s empire, assemble a band of unlikely warriors, rally an army of outcasts to claim her freedom, and confront and bring down Dragan and his ruthless wife, Dark Annisia…

Quite a program!!! Unfortunately, this film is as appealing, yet as bad, as Damsel (2024), the story of a damsel and a dragon. Yet it is the joy of Krull (1983) that I have been desperately seeking for years. Why did old films have so much charm? And why can’t the new ones manage to produce anything extraordinary? It’s as if having more resources also stifles imagination and creativity.

What a bore, my friends! Despite all the good things in this film, it’s a total flop!!!

I’m not familiar with the comic. I reckon that if I’d known it, I would have enjoyed it, but I’d still have been disappointed by this pitiful feature film. I don’t know if it’s entirely accurate, but I liked this comment: ‘The story sticks to the comics, not the original character, but that’s not what’s most annoying. The lead actress does the job, but the rest of the cast… you’d think the hair stylist took perverse pleasure in making them all look ridiculous. The music’s good. Such a shame.’

Yes, the soundtrack is good. I liked the action scenes; the scenery is magnificent. There are creatures we don’t see enough of – ones we’d have liked to see in action, like the giant scorpion. The cyclops is rather ridiculous, even though they’re usually such impressive creatures.

Ahhh… the beautiful and sexy Matilda Lutz! What a terrible actress!!! It’s appalling! She overacts and is clearly not cut out for this role. I would have loved to see someone like Lauren Lee Smith in her place. Sure, she’s no longer in her twenties, but it would have been so great if this film had been made a long time ago.

Nothing in this film is believable, and that’s a shame, because it had potential. We’ll think back to loads of films, but they were all better – like Gladiator (2000), Willow (1988) and Clash of the Titans (1981), even the 2010 and 2012 remakes of which were better. That says it all!

Director Michael J. Bassett (M.J. Bassett) made Rogue (2020) starring Megan Fox. I don’t know how good it is, but it certainly won’t be high on my list of priorities!

Do we know the difference between ‘vintage’ and ‘tacky’? Every fashion trend has its heyday, then becomes tacky before sometimes being reborn as a so-called ‘vintage’ trend! And now here comes this 2025 version of Red Sonja, which looks as though it’s straight out of the 1990s, like an Italian TV film you’d only see on the worst channels, with a look somewhere between neat papier-mâché and the art direction of the very first Dungeons & Dragons film from the year 2000! It’s worth noting that the 2023 version is very good.

I read this review: ‘It oscillates between heroic fantasy and atompunk! Yes, because the villain has his own ‘nuclear reactor’ in the heart of his capital, complete with force fields and a steampunk-style riveted metal tank. The mix never quite works, and, sadly, it’s not the few sumptuous natural landscapes scattered throughout this dud that will manage to create even a hint of harmony between two sets straight out of the early beta versions of World of Warcraft!”

And that’s a shame, because, in itself, you get the sense that the director had a few good ideas. Such as, for example, pitting a villainous atheist – 100 per cent tech-obsessed – against a barbaric world steeped in supposedly obsolete beliefs. It’s a pity that the actor chosen looks like he’s stepped straight out of Die Hard 4 (2007), only even more limp and scrawny (although this makes sense towards the end when we learn his backstory).

There are also a few well-executed twists – yes, we’re giving away spoilers, but who cares? – such as the fact that the villain’s comrade-in-arms shows signs of schizophrenia… which are actually due to chemical manipulation by the aforementioned villain! Also worth noting is a final scene consisting entirely of dialogue, with no epic final battle (though then again, there’s no budget left!), in which the viewpoints of two civilisations clash. The direction attempts a few tricks with Zack Snyder-style shots, without ever really pulling them off. The film would have been good if it had been directed by Snyder himself.

Let’s go back to the heroine for a moment! Because whilst we can certainly praise the actress’s obvious efforts to embody her role, she simply doesn’t have the build to kick the arses of 120-kilo muscle-bound blokes in armour! We’re a long way from the presence of Brigitte Nielsen, who previously played the feisty redhead in the B-movie-esque Kalidor {a.k.a. Red Sonja} (1985) – a film I’m almost tempted to watch again now. Yes, right there! What’s more, she’s portrayed as a very demure heroine, an animal lover, who admittedly gets angry from time to time at the men in barely passable fight sequences. All this without the charm of generous, funny TV series like Xena or even Hercules.

We’re left with this rubbish, which isn’t even good for a laugh during a pizza night with mates. A sort of pseudo-dark fantasy à la Temu, with a few very rare flashes of brilliance that have about as much impact as bailing out the Titanic with a holey, handle-less teaspoon!

Well, there’ll always be grumblers who complain about everything, just like those who say the film is outrageously feminist, that men are all fundamentally nasty and stupid, and that the only person who can hold a candle to the heroine is a woman. It’s so pathetic it’s laughable! We only see what we believe we’ll see!!!
But even amongst these brain-dead lot, there are some comments that aren’t without merit, such as this one: ‘How, in this day and age, can we advocate gender equality and yet produce such a divisive film? It’s laughable.
The story is absurd, and the special effects are rubbish.
The main villain of the story is a sort of medieval engineer, a scholar who invented a form of energy for his own city that’s similar to electricity.
However, the screenwriters didn’t think he’d be capable of inventing windows or steering wheels. So, in the film’s opening scene, he’s travelling in a sort of windowless carriage—used as a horse-drawn carriage—with a fixed wheel at the front. Very useful on winding mountain roads…’

I must admit there’s a lot of truth in what he says. The dialogue lacks any depth. The characters seem as though they were created by children. However, as screenwriting is such a difficult art, I shouldn’t judge the people who wrote this story. They probably put their heart and soul into it, for all I know. That said, I do think Hollywood investors ought to think twice before committing their money, and make sure they understand what they’re investing in. In short, this film is rubbish; the story makes no sense whatsoever. Fights, monsters, barbarians and neo-medieval science. And that’s not even counting the scene where the heroine is impaled by a sword before being saved by her horse, which appears out of nowhere.

The REAL Red Sonja film has yet to be made. For now, we’ll have to make do with this insipid, outdated, cringeworthy Red Sonja – a film that’s honest in its intentions, yet lacks the talent to match its ambitions.