“Red Sonja” (2025) is the long-awaited cinematic reboot of the comic book character. Sonja (Matilda Lutz) wants to reunite with her tribe, the Hyrkanians, which she has looked for since she was a child. Instead she stumbles on the camp of Emperor Draygan (Robert Sheehan), a man who sees all life as subject to his dominion and is searching for the other half of a book that is the source of his power. He enslaves Sonja to fight in his arena, but she rejects his agenda. Are they the key to each other’s mission? Be prepared to have a very different viewing experience from “Red Sonja” (1985).
Lutz does not have the physical stature of Brigitte Nielsen, but she made the most out of what she was given. It was not until after watching “Red Sonja” that I realized that she was the star of “Revenge” (2018), the first film that Coralie Fargeat, who is famous for “The Substance” (2024), made. If you decide to fault Lutz if you did not enjoy this movie, reconsider because she is the real deal. Her Sonja is more like Disney’s “Pocahontas” (1995), and if it was a musical, she would sing “Colors of the Wind.” While Nielsen’s performance does not stack up to Lutz’s experience and execution, people who are watching this movie do not need that much backstory and emotion and want more fighting, but that is not Lutz’s fault. Unlike Nielsen, she gets stuck wearing the comic book correct chain mail bikini, but her sexualization is a symptom of the degradation that Draygan inflicts on all living beings. There is no nudity so go elsewhere if you are looking for exploitation. Like “Xena: The Warrior Princess,” Sonja gets a horse who is on her side, but I was unprepared for so many animals to be in danger and slaughtered in this kind of film.
Director M.J. Bassett’s introduction of Draygan was a neat trick because there are all these muscular men, and Sheehan is a slight man, which makes the unspoken statement that “Red Sonja” is different from its predecessor. As far as villains go, Draygan is as expected: a power hungry, controlling man who only cares about “progress” and does not believe in the gods. During the denouement, his backstory is revealed, and he becomes a sympathetic villain, which people who watch a lot of movies will see coming, but is a neat twist anyway. It was also a nice touch to reveal that Draygan is a horrible boyfriend who likes to mess with his girlfriend, Annisia (Wallis Day), a former arena champion who won her freedom and is styled after “Game of Thrones” Khalessi (Emilia Clarke), which seems to be a trend of late, but also feels like an homage to the real life Nielsen. Take notes and do not date a guy like him. Though set during the Hyborian Age, a fictional prehistoric period, this villain is modeled after our real-life villains in the vein of quotidian abuse to global power grabs. After seeing “Witchboard” (2024), I’m a little tired of solid British actors playing villains or villains with a valid grievance. Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman) would eat all of them alive, but I favor random, committed evil characters over rational ones who could do a power point presentation on their reasoning. Sheehan does show range, but the nuance is saved until it is too late, which is not his fault, but the way that it was written.
When I recognized Rhona Mitra as Petra, a seasoned fighter in the arena who mentors Sonja, I was simultaneously psyched and worried. Mitra works in any setting, time period or role, but her presence in a movie could mean that it is not going to be a well-crafted movie. “Red Sonja” looks like a pilot for a television series, not a film made for the big screen, which is not innately bad. Some of the special effects are dated now, and some are not. The fight scenes are well executed, but there needed to be more of them. There are quite a few flashbacks and oneiric scenes to flesh out the back stories, and they are fine, but a little go a long way.
Writer Tasha Huo wrote with lofty ambitions for the story to be a moral about environmentalism, the innate dignity of all life, and the value of free will over fascism. The dialogue is often hilarious. One line could have moved up a notch if it was changed to, “I abandoned you.” A lot of the script is a combination of storylines from better movies and television series like the “Spartacus” television series, “Game of Thrones,” the “Hunger Games” franchise, “Braveheart” (1995), “Black Panther” (2018), and “Lord of the Rings.” The story begins to lose steam after the revolt when her fellow slaves are no longer treated like pivotal characters and exist just to get killed. When the fight is just between Draygan and Sonja, it does not retain the spark compared to when they had more people to play against. Sonja’s reunion with people from her tribe does not feel as if it gets enough time before it is threatened, which makes it feel like an afterthought. Daix (Ben Radcliffe), the first Hyrkanian that she met since the first attack in their village, is not given enough screen time. Instead, the flirtation between Sonja and Osin the Untouched (Luca Pasqualino) gets more attention, and their connection feels stronger. The reunion is supposed to be her sole motivation, but it feels theoretical and not cathartic. The Hyrkanians never feel like flesh and blood, a concept that gets reinforced when the real identity of Sonja’s mother is revealed.
Humanoid baboon people called apes fight on both sides, but if you expect them to be any more than the background as if they were in the bar scene in “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope” (1977), prepare to be disappointed. It felt as if General Karlak (Martyn Ford) would play an important role when he commands Sonja to stay down, but the statement has no deeper meaning as if he recognizes her or has a hidden agenda. It is a missed opportunity, and if anything, it indicates that something was left on the cutting room floor. It is too bad that all those characters did not get excised entirely since they added nothing to the plot that did not already exist with another character. It was not world building, but scenery.
“Red Sonja” is a well-intentioned, but ultimately uneven reboot that is overall better quality than its predecessor while simultaneously losing some of the absurd verve of the original which makes comic book adaptations fun to watch and made the original into a cult hit regardless of its obvious deficiencies. The 2025 movie suffers from not knowing how to end and has too many resolutions that makes it overstay its welcome. It is begging for a sequel, which would probably have the same flaws as the feature but if it expanded into a television series, it could work.
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I was so annoyed that Sonja did not stop Draygan from destroying the book. Like damn, hasn’t he done enough?
