Red Sonja is not a character I have much familiarity with. The most I’ve known about the character is that she was inspired in name and appearance by a Robert E. Howard story, and the character came to full being in the pages of Marvel Comics. She was often paired with Conan the Barbarian, setting her within his canonical world known as the Hyborean Age. I know there was a movie made in 1985 starring Brigitte Nielsen which featured Arnold Schwarzenegger, famous for playing Conan in two feature films, as someone who wasn’t actually Conan the Barbarian. I have never seen it.
That really is the sum total of my Red Sonja knowledge. I’m just trying to be upfront here because after watching the new Red Sonja film from director M.J. Bassett and writer Tasha Huo, I feel like I’ve been opened up to a world and character that I would very much like to see more of.
The Best of B-Movie Fantasy
While Red Sonja doesn’t mean much to me as a faithful iteration of an established and beloved character or their universe, it does evoke plenty of positive comparisons to entertainment I did grow up with. Not only is Conan the Barbarian one of the greatest achievements of the cinematic art form, but the many ripoffs of the John Milius blockbuster hit were also an integral part of my upbringing. The Beastmaster and The Sword and the Sorcerer — both movies you can check out on the GenreVision podcast — were the kinds of “lower grade” takes on the genre that made an impression on me as a young film freak.
Red Sonja fits in perfectly with those kinds of movies. Its ambitions as far as telling an entertaining pulp fantasy adventure are well above admirable. Ever since Game of Thrones signaled a seismic shift in how serious cinematic fantasy stories were presented, it’s been tough finding a place for classically comic book sword-and-sorcery fare. To its immense credit, Red Sonja takes itself just seriously enough to earn legitimate emotional investment while also throwing itself full tilt into the base, goofy pleasures of the genre.
Red Sonja Wants More Green
The biggest thing working against Red Sonja is something out of its greater control: the budget. I always try to evaluate a movie based on the apparent limitations of its production in relation to how creative it’s able to be with the material it needs to execute. There is some very cartoony design work here that wouldn’t be out of place in a Guillermo del Toro Hellboy movie, and I appreciate the movie doing its best to adhere to that visual ethos even if the money isn’t there to make it look as great as a Disney venture.
However, Red Sonja is inescapable from looking like a streaming show pilot instead of the supersized blockbuster it wants to be. To some degree, I was reminded of Neil Marshall and his effort to make Big Idea Movies like Centurion and Doomsday within a smaller-than-usual budgetary framework. It’s another plus in Red Sonja’s win column that it reminded me of when Neil Marshall made movies worth watching.
Better Than Rings of Power
Other than its visual streaming handicap, Red Sonja is a welcome return to the fantasy adventures of yesteryear. It’s got great fantasy flavor — the mandrill makeups on two characters are wonderful — as well as a solid villain made even better by Robert Sheehan’s performance, and a hero in Red Sonja herself (Matilda Lutz) who is delightfully uncomplicated with her morality and agency.
If this was a pilot for a Red Sonja series, I would be watching every week. I can’t say that ever happened with The Rings of Power, and I am very familiar with and love Lord of the Rings. So, kudos to Red Sonja for getting me interested in something I never really knew enough about.
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