Red Sonja [2025]

September 1, 2026

After superhero movies infected the brains of studio execs with their undeniable profit margins, all subgenres suffered. Among them was the once highly popular sword and sorcery subgenre. Still, we do get a couple of decent releases every year, like the one we’re going to be talking about today. Red Sonja 2025 is a decent, albeit painfully mediocre fantasy movie still worth watching. Since it’s been in developmental hell for more than 30 years, it looks and feels as if someone said fuck it, we’re making it and that’s it. We will be following Sonja, a capable huntress living alone in the woods and searching for her people. You see, when she was just a kid, barbarians raided her home, Hyrkania, and she was forced to flee.

Evil warlord Draygan interrupts her quest and captures Sonja. He sends her to the capital to fight as a gladiator. However, Sonja has plans to rally the warriors and kill the warlord. As you can see, it’s all pretty much basic stuff. Now, I haven’t read the comics, and I don’t know anything about the lore surrounding not just Red Sonja but also Conan the Barbarian. However, I do remember the original movie from 1985, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brigitte Nielsen. It was pretty cool, and it features a much more brutal world than this one. I mean, it opens with our protagonist recovering from a gang-rape and vowing revenge.

Since the premise for both of these movies is pretty simple- sword and sorcery, but with an attractive, red-headed female protagonist let’s see what we have here. In the lead role, we find Matilda Lutz, a beautiful but not-so-muscular and physically imposing Italian actress. This was a perfect opportunity to cash in on those muscle mommy lovers. Maybe even hire someone out of the world of wrestling, but I guess they went in a different direction. Matilda did her best, and she wasn’t bad, just like the rest of the cast. It was cool to see Rhona Mitra again in some fantasy action, some thirty years after Beowulf.

As I already mentioned, everything here is mediocre, but the script was the worst. On the other hand, I liked the CGI; it looks quite good. Then again, I’m a sucker for these worlds of strange creatures, magic swords, spells, and all that crap. Speaking of creatures, I think they’re one of the movie’s main assets. From bizarre ape-like mutants over alien creatures to finally a huge cyclops, they were these little nuggets of gold I kept waiting for. What I did not expect was steampunk and this sort of Warhammer 40k vibe when it comes to the bad guys. They also sprinkled some Fallout stuff in there, just for shits and giggles.

Mind-control devices are apparently very popular in the Hyborian Age. Sadly, Red Sonja 2025 features those cheap-looking B-movie sets and that annoying shiny cinematography. They’re just believable enough not to make you turn off the movie. I want that grime, grit, and dirt on everything, something that was the staple of eighties sword and sorcery movies. Even the cheaper ones looked pretty decent. Not to mention graphic violence and nudity. Here, we do have an R rating, but not so much in terms of gore or bloody battles. Oddly enough, the original had a PG-13 rating. In fact, the fight choreography could’ve been much better.

I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but mediocre all-around. In the end, most of the fantasy movies you remember from “back in the day” are messy, sometimes extremely trashy-looking, and quite simplistic. Was Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves really that different, apart from a bigger budget? In fact, Red Sonja 2025 is more similar to the vast majority of the fantasy movies. I haven’t yet checked out The Deathstalker 2025, but new Masters of the Universe is pretty entertaining. Finally, I feel like MJ Bassett, who replaced Joey Soloway, who replaced Bryan Singer, got the hot potato and did what she could with it. I liked her Solomon Kane adaptation from 2009.