Red Sonja

They’re every bit as natural a fit for cinema as superhero stories, and yet the classic tales of sword and sorcery have struggled to get their due onscreen. Aside from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first outing as Conan The Barbarian, almost all of them have fallen short of expectations, disappointing audiences and also studios, which have therefore been disinclined to invest in getting it right. At least, that’s the way it was when they depended on cinema. Despite their affinity for the big screen, many have become sleeper hits in home entertainment formats. The new Red Sonja is getting just a brief moment in cinemas before making that transition. You should see it on a big screen if you can, but it’s a film that, if it works for you, you’ll enjoy watching again and again.

This is not to say that it is perfect. It may well make fans nervous early on, partly due to some twee stage setting and partly because star Matilda Lutz seems far too slight and sweet to play the legendary heroine. She certainly doesn’t have the physical presence that Brigitte Nielsen brought to the previous onscreen version. Then again, she can act – and that’s critical, because this is an origin story, and the Sonja she shows us at the start is not the one we will see at the end. She can already fight pretty well – we’ll get to see the first display of that just 15 minutes in – but despite having faced raiders in childhood, she has yet to have her mettle tested as an adult. Her first proper experience of this will be in the gladiatorial arena.

Lutz may be slender but she’s fast, and there’s a wiriness about her that translates well into action. She gives Sonja a wild ferocity that is at first tremendously endearing and then properly heroic. This combines with a complete lack of emotional regulation, and a total openness, to create somebody whom even seasoned gladiators, who have learned the hard way to shun attachments, can’t help but be fond of. It also lends itself to exciting action sequences, especially when she takes on the film’s most interesting ‘villain’, Dark Annisia (Wallis Day). Haunted by the voices of everyone she has ever killed, the wild-eyed Annisia is an intriguing character whom it would be good to see more of, and Day has a chemistry with Lutz that adds something special to their confrontations.

Less successful is Robert Sheehan as main villain Draygan, the emperor to whom Annisia is in thrall. His technologically-driven empire building is an interesting reversal of the engineer heroes of much pulp science fiction, and works in part because the film is careful not to come across as anti-technology, instead settling on the message that it’s what you do with it that counts. It’s trying to do something different with Draygan as a personality, highlighting the fragility of many dangerous, powerful men, a little like what Joaquin Phoneix did with Commodus in Gladiator. This is difficult to pull off, however, and here Draygan is just a little too childlike for it to be believable that his armies would continue to support him as a commander. Sheehan just doesn’t have the presence to compete with the women.

This version of Sonja is one shaped by female writers, here and in the comic books, and brought to the screen by a female director. It shows not only in the film’s mature approach to issues around leadership, violence and responsibility, but also in the way that she is presented – the famous scale mail bikini is there, but carefully contextualised. The legend of her as somebody who will be sexually available only to a man who can defeat her in combat is nicely flipped as fellow gladiator Osin (Luca Pasqualino) turns out to have made a similar vow, and by way of this we get to see her as someone who has a healthy sexuality but far too much of an appetite for life to let romance get in her way. This balancing act is handled well, letting her take on the mantle of a Dianic figure without making her tediously pure. The post-credits sequence expands this approach further, centering her sense of fun in a way that we have seen done for Conan in the past but never, really, for a woman in this genre.

Other elements are also well handled in keeping with the traditions of the genre, from the mystical experience two thirds of the way through to Sonja’s deep emotional bond with her horse. We see an assortment of fantasy creatures, some more convincing than others, but there is definitely the potential here for some satisfying world building. Most importantly, despite the sometimes cheesy dialogue and the unsophisticated nature of the story, it’s a fun ride, Sonja becomes a charismatic heroine, and one cannot help but hope that we will get to see more of her adventures depicted by this team in future.

Reviewed on: 13 Aug 2025