Poor Red Sonja just can’t catch a break. The pulp novel and comics character often paired with Conan the Barbarian is currently featured in a movie adaptation that took more than a decade to make it to the screen, only to receive an inauspicious one-night-only theatrical engagement followed by a VOD release.
This isn’t her first trip to obscurity, either. The new Red Sonja movie roughly coincides with the 40th anniversary of the largely forgotten Red Sonja movie from 1985, perhaps best known as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s go-to choice when asked what his worst movie was. (He’s jokingly claimed he kept his kids in line by making them watch it if they misbehaved.)
He’s wrong, though. Arnold has made far worse movies than Red Sonja – either version, for that matter, though Schwarzenegger’s Conan (er, Lord Kalidor) doesn’t appear in the new one. The bikini-armor-clad hero’s real sin is being a woman in a male-driven sword-and-sorcery world, and the new movie matches the earlier film, for better and for worse.
It’s understandable that the 1985 Red Sonja would be known today primarily as a curiosity. It’s basically an unofficial third entry in the Conan the Barbarian film series, though the creators were legally prohibited from identifying it that way. Following Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), producer Dino De Laurentiis planned a companion film based on the character Red Sonja, who shares a creator with Conan and had been teamed with him in Marvel Comics adaptations. But the rights to Conan and Sonja were separate and complicated, meaning that Universal (which was not making the Red Sonja movie) had partial control of the rights to use Conan.
De Laurentiis did, however, have the rights to Schwarzenegger, in a manner of speaking; the actor was under contract with the producer for a total of five movies, and agreed to do a cameo in Red Sonja. That role was expanded into a supporting part, but he couldn’t be referred to as Conan – hence Lord Kalidor, a somewhat more sedate Conan stand-in.
By 1985, Schwarzenegger was popular enough to warrant top billing in the movie, though the actual star is Brigitte Nielsen, a statuesque Dutch model making her film debut. (She would become best-known later that same year for playing the wife of Ivan Drago in Rocky IV – and marrying star/director Sylvester Stallone!) Nielsen’s performance is often cited as a major mark against Red Sonja, and it’s admittedly not intensely charismatic work. But if the intent was to cast a lady equivalent of Schwarzenegger, well, Arnold has plenty of leaden line-readings to his name, especially in his early pictures.
That’s not the only common ground Sonja occupies with her pal Conan. The 89-minute 1985 Red Sonja shares director Richard Fleischer with Conan the Destroyer, and is closer to the lighter tone of that movie than the classic first installment in the trilogy. Like Conan, Sonja is pitted against an evil leader who killed those close to her. In a queasy addition seemingly designed to make the story more female-centric, Sonja has also been raped by the soldiers of Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman, who played Conan’s love interest Valeria in the first movie), who clearly harbors same-sex lust toward her, making the villain a model of the retrograde predatory-lesbian stereotype.
Less offensively, there’s an overlay of Lord of the Rings, as Sonja is tasked with retrieving and destroying the Talisman, an all-powerful relic that can only be wielded by women. She’s assisted by Bootleg Conan, who keeps wandering back into the story as if the filmmakers have refused to show Schwarzenegger the exit. They’re joined by the child Prince Tarn (Ernie Reyes, Jr.) and his guardian Falkon (Paul Smith), providing both ass-kicking and comic relief. There are swords and sorcery, as promised by the genre. It does what it says on the tin or, if you will, VHS box.
The 1985 Red Sonja is not a lost classic. But it is strikingly similar to the previous year’s Supergirl, an off-brand superhero spin-off that included a cast member from the Superman movies, but wound up coming out from a different studio, flopping, and quickly gaining a reputation as a low-rent distaff rip-off. (An Arnold-style role for Christopher Reeve was discussed, but eventually scotched by the actor.) Supergirl and Red Sonja are both silly, yet sincere enough in that silliness to make them more enjoyable than their reputations. They’re early attempts at female superhero movies from a time when filmmakers barely knew how to make superhero movies at all. With the proper context in mind, they’re endearing.
And that doesn’t mean Red Sonja is free of craft, either. For every flop scene, like the amusingly distended one where Sonja and her pals fight an underwater mechanical dragon (it looks like everyone is thrashing around on a malfunctioning theme-park ride), there’s a decent action sequence, like a dusky, playful sword fight between Sonja and Sort-of Conan. For every clunky performance, there’s a plethora of cool sets and costumes. After a while, it’s difficult to separate the cheesy bad stuff from the silly good stuff. Whatever its flaws, the movie feels uniform and unembarrassed.
The new Red Sonja embodies a similar spirit while making clear improvements in some areas. Matilda Lutz plays the title character, and as viewers of the terrific thriller Revenge can attest, she’s a better performer than Nielsen both in dialogue and in action. The 2025 version emphasizes Sonja’s connection to the natural world, which means there are scenes of our hero snuggling up to her beloved horse for a nap and defending forest creatures from interlopers.
Though not all of the visual effects are top-tier, even the jankier ones have a certain charm. Maybe that’s because the movie, while somewhat cheap-looking in spots, hasn’t been green-screened to death. (Green screen is used, but a lot of it is just good old-fashioned Made in Bulgaria cost-saving.)
It also has a better villain. In place of a woman whose desire for Sonja motivates her evildoing, Emperor Dragan (Robert Sheehan) has an unexpected kinship with Sonja. It leads to a late-movie scene between them that should be hoary and overplayed, but is played with unexpected sensitivity, dovetailing with the Sonja we meet when the film begins. Director M.J. Bassett clearly takes the material seriously and successfully teases some femininity out of a familiar fantasy-world storyline without compromising the character’s strength. (Refreshingly, she’s more tough and persistent than invincible.)
If Red Sonja had a couple of standout action set pieces, it would be solidly good in the realm of a Paul W.S. Anderson/Milla Jovovich joint rather than just watchable. Like its predecessor, the new movie was obviously compromised at some stage. In 1985, Red Sonja was supposed to be a companion piece to Conan the Barbarian, and turned into a close knockoff. In 2025, Red Sonja is supposed to be its own franchise-starter. (Or at least, that seems to have been the goal at some point.)
There have been some major lady-superhero strides made in the past 40 years, but a female character as singular as Red Sonja – that is, not a member of a five-hero team – still gets treated as second-tier or worse. (Supergirl is only just returning to theaters next year, though this time she’s armed with stronger source material.) It’s a bummer that the 2025 Red Sonja emerges without much ceremony, just barely escaping straight-to-video status. Yet that modesty does make the movie itself a breezy watch, unburdened with cinematic universes or fake Conans. Maybe that’s the level where a Red Sonja movie secretly works best.