Crew
Director – M.J. Bassett, Screenplay – Tasha Huo, Based on the Character Created by Robert E. Howard and the Red Sonja Comic Book Created by Roy Thomas, Producers – M.J. Bassett, Christa Campbell, Mark Canton, Joe Gatta, Jeffrey Greenstein, Lati Grobman, Avi Lerner, Yariv Lerner, Luke Lieberman, Courtney Soloman [Solomon], Les Weldon & Jonathan Yunger, Photography – Lorenzo Senatore, Music – Sonya Belousova & Giona Ostinelli, Visual Effects – Worldwide FX (Supervisor – Alexander Valev) & WWFX London (Supervisor – Ron Manolov), Special Effects Supervisor – Adam Howarth & Ivo Jivkov, Makeup Effects – Millennium FX (Designers – Neill Gorton & Kate Walshe, Supervisor – Rob Mayor), Production Design – Clint Wallace. Production Company – Millennium Media/Campbell Grobman Films/Mark Canton-Courtney Solomon.
Cast
Matilda Lutz (Red Sonja), Robert Sheehan (Draygan), Wallis Day (Annisia), Luca Pasqualino (Osin the Untouched), Michael Bisping (Hawk), Rhona Mitra (Petra), Martyn Ford (General Karlak), Trevor Eve (Maester Crudelis), Tony Way (Dane the Blacksmith), Eliza Matengu (Amarak), Danica Davis (Teresia), Joana Nmamerue (Varla), Veronica Ferres (Sonja’s Mother/Asherah), Sofia Weldon (Young Sonja Age 9)
Plot
In the Hyborian Age, Sonja is the sole survivor after her village is invaded and her people killed. She survives living in the wild forests of Hyrkania with her horse Vihur. One day in the forest, she comes across soldiers who have slaughtered the animals for their horns. She follows the soldiers back to their camp but is captured by Draygun, a former slave who now commands a vast empire and is wanting to raze the forest and expand his empire into it. After seeing Sonja’s fighting prowess, Draygun takes her back to the capital and places her into the arena to fight against others and the wild creatures he has captured for the amusement of he and his people. However, Sonja’s fighting prowess is such that she defies all that Draygun brings against her as she determines to bring him down.
Red Sonja is the creation of writer Robert E. Howard, who is most famous for creating Conan the Barbarian. (See below for the other screen works adapted from Robert E. Howard). When it comes to Red Sonja, Howard’s part in the creation is over-stressed in that Sonja only appeared in a single Howard short story, Shadow of the Vulture (1934), which takes place in the 16th Century Ottoman empire where Red Sonya is a pistol-wielding woman seeking revenge. The Red Sonja we know was reinvented in 1973 in Marvel Comics’ Conan the Barbarian comic, gaining her own title in 1977, where the Marvel writers rewrote Sonya/Sonja in fantasy terms, placing her into the milieu of Conan’s Hyborian Age. It is on the Marvel Comics page rather than in Robert E. Howard’s story that the character and origin story of Red Sonja was created.
With the popularity of the duo of Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan films in the early 1980s, there was then a Red Sonja (1985) film starring a horrendously non-acting Brigitte Nielsen in the title role, which was a complete betrayal of the character. Much better was the animated Red Sonja, Queen of Plagues (2016), with a script by Gail Simone, the one filmed appearance of Sonja that gets the character right. You could also argue that tv’s Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001) is an unattributed copy of Red Sonja that gets the character right far more than any of the filmed appearances do.
A film revival of Red Sonja has been promised since the late 2000s. Robert Rodriguez was reported to be developing a version to star Rose McGowan. This never went ahead and was then inherited by Simon West, director of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider (2001), who wanted it to star Amber Heard. In the late 2010s, another version was announced under Bryan Singer but this was cancelled after allegations against Singer led to him being Cancelled.
The new version of comes under director M.J. Bassett. Then going by Michael J. Bassett, Bassett was a regular genre director on the rise several years ago with films like Deathwatch (2002), Wilderness (2005) and Silent Hill: Revelation (2012). In 2016, Bassett underwent gender reassignment to become a woman and has been credited as M.J. Bassett on everything she has directed since 2018. Since then, Bassett has done assorted work in US tv and made several films with the killer lion saga Rogue (2020), the non-genre Inside Man: Most Wanted (2019) and the killer rhinoceros film Endangered Species (2021). Bassett had previously adapted another Robert E. Howard character to the screen with Solomon Kane (2009).
One has sinking feelings about how Red Sonja was going to turn out when the first thing that appears on the screen is the name of Millennium Media. Millennium are a company formed by former Cannon Films associates who have a business model that involves taking established IPs that have run their original natural course and spinning out new films. See the likes of The Wicker Man (2006), Rambo (2008), The Bad Lieutenant – Port of Call: New Orleans (2009), The Mechanic (2011), Texas Chainsaw (2013), Leatherface (2017), Hellboy (2019) and Rambo: Last Blood (2019), among others. Ominously, Millennium were responsible for the disastrous previous attempt to revive Robert E. Howard’s creation with Conan the Barbarian (2011) starring Jason Momoa.
While you can only speculate about the versions of Red Sonja planned by Robert Rodriguez and Bryan Singer, both directors with a flair for action and superheroics, my suspicion is that they would have made for something far more interesting than the one that M.J. Bassett delivers here. Red Sonja 2025 isn’t a particularly bad film but it is one that misconstrues the character of Sonja.
The Red Sonja that evolved on the Marvel Comics page has a phenomenally statuesque figure, is tall approaching six feet and has long luxurious thick flowing red hair. Do a Google Image Search on ‘Red Sonja Marvel’ to see what I mean. By contrast to the Amazonian comic-book Red Sonja, the film gives us Matilda Lutz who is only 5’6”. She fills the armour out with no more than a B cup, while her hair is russet and mid-back length ratty rather than luxurious and flowing. When we meet her, she looks more like a schoolgirl gone all Lord of the Flies than the fierce warrior woman we known as Red Sonja. Now some of this may well be the dearth of Hollywood actresses who are over six feet tall – presumably Gwendoline Christie, who would have been perfect for the part, was unavailable. Even looking at some of the other actresses touted in the role – Rose McGowan, Hannah John-Kamen. Amber Heard – they all seem in the standard height range.
At the very least, you keep thinking Matilda Lutz could have worked out and given Sonja a muscular and well-toned physique. We sort of see this when Lutz strips down to go into the arena and displays a buffed midriff (where at least we do get a Red Sonja wearing the comics’ chainmail bikini). On the other hand, with no effort gone into the upper body, it looks as though her arms have barely got enough muscle in them to lift her sword. If nothing else can be said about Brigitte Nielsen, she at least filled out the physical demands of the role.
The other failing of Red Sonja is the watering down of the character. We had a character who vowed to never sleep with a man unless he bested her in combat – here that has been eliminated and it is in fact the prince (Luca Pasqualino) who makes such a vow. It is also an incarnation of Red Sonja where the whole warrior woman aspect has slid over into being a kind, caring earth mother – she refuses to fight anybody she has no quarrel with, is horrified at the treatment of animals and in a very modern touch takes on a would-be emperor who is seeking to raze her forest home to build the fantasy kingdom equivalent of condos. When she comes to lead the freed gladiators, what we have is less Red Sonja as fierce warrior woman than we do Red Sonja by way of Joan of Arc. Certainly, we do get glimmers of what Red Sonja should have been during the scenes in the arena with her in combat. Here M.J. Bassett throws around some generally capable sword-fighting and a decent duel with a cyclops.
The other aspect that drags the film down is Irish actor Robert Sheehan cast as Draygun, the villain of the show. Sheehan’s louche and entertainingly gregarious performance was one of the shining stars of tv’s otherwise uneven The Umbrella Academy (2019-24). Here Sheehan seems out of place. He is inhabiting a larger-than-life of a black-hearted conqueror – James Earl Jones did the part magnificently in Conan the Barbarian (1982). What Sheehan gives us is the evil black-hearted emperor as a cliché 2020s psychotic boardroom CEO swinging between grand megalomaniacal pronouncements and then leaning in to calmly focus on minor trivialities. It is bad over-acting verging on campiness that drags the film down.
Other adaptations of Robert E. Howard’s works include:- Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), both starring Arnold Schwarzenegger; the animated tv series Conan the Adventurer (1992) and Conan and the Young Warriors (1994); Kull the Conqueror (1997) starring Kevin Sorbo; the short-lived live-action German-made tv series Conan (1998) starring Ralph Moeller; Solomon Kane (2009); and Conan the Barbarian (2011) starring Jason Momoa. A portrait of Robert E. Howard’s life is dramatised in the romantic film The Whole Wide World (1996).
Trailer here