There’s a lot of things I don’t know about, and probably just as much I only know about in passing. For example, I know Conan is a barbarian, and I had fun with the Arnold movies. I also know there was some books, comics, games - that sort of stuff. Now, if you wanted me to go in more depth than that, there’s nothing to it - I know of all that stuff’s existence, but I haven’t really done much of anything with it outside of watch the movies. I also know a lot of movies get trashed by the common audience, and when I watch it I don’t end up finding them nearly as egregious or insulting as the common person. Combine all of that stuff and we can get an idea for what’s going to happen tonight, when we tackle a character I know of in passing as “baller warrior chick” that get’s crapped on because her fashion choice has statistically been flaunted as scale bikinis which aren’t exactly known for their high armor class value despite effectively being the female equal of a certain barbarian whose common outfit depiction is a fur cloth covering his dangly bits. I didn’t hear many good things about this movie, but I can’t imagine it’s going to be that bad - tonight we are watching the 2025 attempt at Red Sonja.

Before we get much further, yes I know there is an older Red Sonja movie and I have watched it, but it was years ago and I don’t remember a whole lot about it. Fair to say, I’ve already gotten the fact that I don’t know much about the history and previously existing comics and the like when it comes to story, so we won’t be having any real “compared to it’s source” moments in this one. Moving on, this is the story of a girl and her horse (kind of like “a boy and his dog”). Bad guys come in and ransack a village, murdering and stealing and slaving, as bad folks do. One little girl escapes, and she grows up to be a baller forest survivor, on the search for her people with her trusty horse. One day her path crosses some hunters, which leads to an encounter with the big bad and her getting turned into a gladiator slave for said big bad. Her goal is then simple - escape, rescue her horse, and get back to searching for her people. If she has to topple an entire regime to do it, then so be it.

Acting is the first batch of times you’ll hear me say that this movie is a mixed bag. Some folks do a way better job than others and I’m not entirely sure if it’s intentional, incidental, or accidental. It’s a pretty big difference between ‘meant to sound off”, “accent makes it sound off”, and “just plain sounds stilted in pacing of words” and I’ll leave it up to the watcher to really decide on that one. Other times, it’s pretty good - we get a variety of personalities with our gang of gladiators, and some of them get to be way more charismatic through their acting then others. Some actors who spend a bunch of time on screen don’t get to do a whole lot at all, which isn’t entirely surprising given there’s enough characters we don’t even get all their names. Our lead villain ends up being well done though - there’s something about the actors delivery that feels like it has the perfect combination of stuck up and whiny undeserving royalty type that can even make the lamest of line somehow feel perfectly fitting. He’s not grating, but you would still love the chance to punch him - that’s effective acting there. Our lead gets to have a range to her as well, in both the good and bad sense as times she can deliver way more than others. Tender moment with the horse, or a cool fight scene? Nails it. Interaction with another character - sometimes not so much.

Characters are all over in breadth of personality, but pretty solidly on the no development part. Our lead gets to go on a bit of a hero’s quest - although not really in the “doesn’t want to do it” starting step most those cliches run with, as she embraces her side quests until she can get back on track. She never really feels much like the dreaded Mary Sue, as most the things she ends up doing feels largely like something you could expect out of a survivalist growing up out there in the woods. The main villain is suitably evil-intentioned, but also so very bland in the grand scheme of things when he feels much like every other bad guy out to rule the world. Really, the only thing that feels unique about him is that he tries to do it with intelligence - but since that also amounts to mechanical contraptions like cannons and brain control, it doesn’t really feel all that unique either. Overall, it does have some levels of interest that can be attached to some characters, but for the most part it feels rather shallow in how it plays out any of it.

Another wonderfully mixed bag is the effects department. This also sort of falls into just general cinematography at times, but the entre movie isn’t free from feeling very much like a digitally shot movie. There’s lots of times it feels really clean, and just as many times when it feels like there could be a bunch of background replacements going on. None of that is really a downside necessarily, although I know there are folks out there who would scoff at it, but where it does come up more is with the direct effects work. Some things are very, very noticeably CG. Yeah, sure, the Cyclops and the giant scorpion beast make sense that they would be CG, and sometimes those look fine (even though you aren’t going to be convinced it is an on set prop at all. On the other hand, you the tank-like thing, which the first time you see is not a good looking CG thing - I mean, it’s better than the standard Asylum CG shark, but not much. The part that gets me the most about it though is later on you do see and actual prop one that’s destroyed that looks so much better, so I guess maybe it was just a budget or time thing for the CG machine car deal to not come out as great.

Props, Costumes, and other in-person stuff looks quite well. You get a couple of characters that have faces that remind me of a mandrill with the color and structure. You have that one lady with the shark-like teeth whom I’m still surprised didn’t chomp down on someone at some point, because the teeth gave me real fantasy cannibal vibes. You do briefly get a usage of the old scale-mail bikini in there, complete with the expected modern jab at how ridiculous it actually is (because in all honesty, it does in fact protect nothing worth while). It then gets upgraded to slightly more armor value without being too drastically different, which I could see going a few ways for other people. On the one hand, the “purist” types would complain because it’s not the OG party wear (remember the absolute hissy fit people threw when we got a cool crossguard on a lightsaber in Star Wars?). On the other hand, you have the folks that might complain it isn’t changed enough (her stomach is still out! Scandelous!) - and that could be either the realism purist who wants to harp on how inaccurate it is to history or usefulness, or the breadth of bad girl-power followers that get upset by any exposed skin on a girl even though they’ll still drool over that hunky shirtless Gosling over there. On the final foot, you have me - who really doesn’t care too much in any direction. I’ve always thought the bikini armor was useless as armor, because it is, but being a fan of stuff like Warhammer 40k I’ve also always prescribed to the rule of cool - Yeah, my everyday battle armor for this D&D character is gilded and fluted to the nines while he carries about seven different weapons on his back because he never knows which one he feels like using. It’s a movie where all the bad guys who do wear covering metal armor still get killed by sword cuts to the chest plate any ways, the goal is theoretically fun and flash over realism and historical accuracy.

Audio is there, and it does it’s thing. Some line deliveries are odd, but all audible. Soundtrack melts into the background with it’s big classic fantasy movie orchestral sweeps and booms. Thinking folks will get a throat-full of balance with nature, some stuff about religion, and prophecy mysticism commentary. It’s mostly going to perhaps feel shallow outside of the nature stuff that comes up way more often. Oddly enough, you won’t really find much that feels like any kind of “woke” girl-power stuff here, which is only odd to me since it was made in recent times. Some of my favorite movies were built on great female characters - like Alien with Ripley, or Terminator with Sarah Connor - but although those movie embraced aspects of a feminine nature (like motherhood), it never tried to remind you every three seconds that the main character is a girl and can do everything better just because she is a girl. Here, the fact she’s a lady out there kickin butt barely plays into it - in fact, her race (or tribe, as they refer to everything in this movie) plays more a role in the plot then her being a woman does. Likewise, the main lady villain has her entire little side plot, and outside of her wanting to be empress her being a lady barely influences anything either. I don’t know, maybe I’m just missing something here, but from the limited stuff I do know about Sonja this one (at least by the end) feels a bit accurate to what I’d expect - someone whose out for adventure, can kick the crap out of whatever is in her way, and doesn’t need to be anchored down to any one man because she doesn’t care how pretty he may be. Then again, I’m also a guy, so maybe I’m just stupid and not realizing the 30 different shots of her squatting down to check tracks or sneak around are actually the dreaded male gaze because I’m to busy laughing about how it reminds me how jacked the legs of video game characters would be when squatting is required to sneak for the thirty plus hours of gameplay.

To be fair, I would have to say it’s not the best movie out there. To do some comparisons, I’d say it isn’t worse then the remake of Conan that they tried to do, but not as memorable as some of the stuff done in the original Conan (to keep it fantasy themed, but also probably not without at least some level of nostalgia). I can’t say I really know the source material well, but I feel like by the end of the movie the character is on the right track to be what I always assumed the character was supposed to be - a baller warrior chick akin to what a person might make in D&D. It all flips back and forth often in the how good it is, like where some of the action scenes can be really cool - at least the parts you can see cleanly before the cuts start to come in (like one cool slow motion twirl block). The movie has an issue with letting the camera stand still and letting stuff play out, which is probably the greatest weakness of many movies where I can only guess the production company or backers don’t have enough faith in letting it get the time and resources it needs to be steadily as good as the good parts. Still, I had enough fun watching it that I don’t think it’s that bad (perspective check - IMDB has it at under 5 stars out of 10), but I can see the parts where people could be reasonably sad at times.

@IMDB

Red Sonja (2025)