There’s a word I scribbled in my notes about the new “Red Sonja” that stands out among the rest. After pages full of sentences like “Science = Bad?” and “Why are scientists setting a fire during a rainstorm?” and “Sonja’s kidnapped horse is inexplicably imprisoned next to the important science orb of unspeakable power, because reasons?” there lies a single word. Underlined. And that word is … “Papyrus.”
Papyrus is not the most respectable of fonts. Even before “Saturday Night Live” correctly roasted James Cameron for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the CGI in “Avatar” only to cheap out on the subtitles, papyrus was generic shorthand for kinda-old-looking-but-not-really. It’s the font middle schoolers use for the title of a history report, and an early sign that they’re going to get a B-. The fact that “Red Sonja” uses this font in its closing credits isn’t itself a problem. But it’s emblematic of the film’s whole vibe.
The new “Red Sonja” is a sword-and-sorcery epic that can’t swing the “epic” part. It’s got big ambitions but can’t realize most of them, seemingly for lack of budget. The flat lighting and generic sets evoke pleasant memories of “Xena: Warrior Princess” and SyFy Original Movies from the 2000s, but this isn’t a made-for-TV production. It’s kind of supposed to be a big movie. It’s not very convincing. It’s the papyrus of the peplum genre.
“Red Sonja” has an unusual history. “Conan” creator Robert E. Howard introduced a character named “Sonya of Rogatino” way back in 1934. Almost 40 years later, Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith reimagined the redheaded warrior from the ground up in the pages of Marvel Comics, and she’s been an icon on the page ever since. The first attempt to make a “Red Sonja” movie, starring Brigitte Nielsen and Arnold Schwarzenegger, was — since it was based on the comics version, not Howard’s original story — technically the first live-action theatrical Marvel movie. Not that it gets any credit for that.
The first “Red Sonja” adaptation isn’t as awful as you might have heard. It’s got a few memorable characters and undeniable camp value. But there was serious room for improvement. In many ways, M.J. Bassett’s new version is that improvement. Matilda Lutz (“Revenge”) has more range than Nielsen, and Bassett eschews most of the sleazier notions Thomas and Windsor-Smith bestowed upon the character. Sonja no longer vows to sleep with any man who bests her in battle (not that they ever did). That weird character trait can now be found in her modest love interest, Osin the Untouched (Luca Pasqualino). And yes, if you move the letters around “Osin” is an anagram for “Sonia.” How coy.
In the film, Sonja is the last member of a tribe obliterated by barbarians. She now lives idyllically in a forest, looking for her people — but apparently always in the same place, so maybe she could be trying harder. She’s so one with the land that she takes honey from a beehive and the bees seem cool with it. When hunters invade her territory and brutalize the animals, she tries to teach them a valuable lesson, only to get abducted and shipped to a gladiator arena by Emperor Draygan (Robert Sheehan) and his badass warrior girlfriend Annisia (Wallis Day).
Draygan was a slave who deciphered an ancient book and used that knowledge to build tanks and an unlimited electrical power source and mind-control devices he activates with his scepter. How he managed to acquire the power and resources necessary to fund all those projects and take over the kingdom in the first place is a mystery left unsolved, but it certainly didn’t involve charisma. He’s introduced dismounting from his war machine, looking around in confusion and quietly asking “What?” to no one in particular, about nothing in particular. It’s like they didn’t tell Sheehan what movie he was in until he got there that day, and they filmed his disappointment.
Anyway, Sonja becomes a gladiator and frankly isn’t great at it. Draygan doesn’t need her to compete, he just needs her to guide him through the forest so he can find the missing pages of his book. So why, if he’s so smart, is he letting her compete at all? It seems like he’d probably want to get on her good side, or at least make it less likely she’d get randomly killed by a cyclops. But she fights anyhow, she leads a rebellion, and that’s the rest of the movie in a nutshell.
“Red Sonja” has a lot of ideas that are worth exploring. An emperor with anachronistic war machines that would challenge even the most legendary warrior is an amusing conceit, even though the film winds up arguing against science in almost every form. There are also vivid fantasy creatures who are, sometimes, a little convincing. Usually not. And hey, there certainly is a lot of action.
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Bassett has already made some memorable action films, usually on the lower end of the budgetary scale, so it was possible that she could work wonders with what little she’s given here. It hasn’t worked out that way. “Red Sonja” is stretched too thin, unable to spare the time and resources necessary for any one part to stand out. Instead it just looks kind of OK. The tenacity Bassett brought to the Mercenary Megan Fox vs. Killer Lions movie “Rogue” — which is a hoot and a half — never materializes in “Red Sonja.” That’s a pity.
“Red Sonja” does get something right, and refreshingly so, by eschewing the exploitative history of the character and treating her as an action hero, never a sex object. But apparently someone involved didn’t get that memo. Sonja’s forced to wear a useless armored bikini in the ring to appeal to the prurient masses, and yet when she upgrades her armor, it still leaves most of her skin unprotected. At least her shoulders will be safe. It would have made more sense to update her look completely, but sacrifices must be made to the Gods of Nostalgia. I guess.
The new “Red Sonja” isn’t terrible, it just isn’t much. It aspires to grandeur but it’s never grand. It’s action-packed but the action is just OK. Were this the pilot episode for a TV series, it would be promising, but even the prerequisite sequel set-up is arbitrary and vague to the point of pointlessness. We’ll have to keep waiting for a great “Red Sonja” movie. It took 40 years to upgrade from cheesy to mediocre. 2065 should be one hell of a year!
