Red Sonja

M. J. Bassett's "Red Sonja" (2025) arrives on screen with a heavy burden of expectation, one it struggles to bear. The film attempts to resurrect the spirit of the 1985 cult classic, but the result is a pale imitation, lacking the raw, visceral energy that made the original so endearing, despite its flaws.

The narrative is a predictable and often sluggish affair, ticking off genre tropes without injecting any fresh perspective. The action sequences, while competently choreographed, lack a sense of genuine danger or weight, feeling more like a series of rehearsed movements than desperate battles for survival. The lead performance, unfortunately, fails to capture the fiery spirit of the titular character, leaving Red Sonja as a stoic and somewhat distant figure.

Is it worth watching? Only for die-hard fans of the source material or those with a deep sense of nostalgia. For everyone else, it's a pass.

I've become so used to remakes of 80's movies being bad, and this one sits right there with the others. At first appearance you can see our main character actress who plays Sonya is not made for the role she's in. They should have given the role to an unknown female bodybuilder type actor. Not a soft skinned, unscared, model type. That, right away ruined the movie for me. I continued to watch hoping the rest of the movie would make up for this, but it didn't. I felt like I was watching a bad version of the Gladiator movie. When the other characters lack depth, or originality the movie became stale, boring, and un insightful.

Red Sonja (2025) is a new movie adaptation of the character of the same name from the comic books and it was awesome.

Positives for Red Sonja (2025): This movie gave me what I wanted and that is an great action adventure revenge movie with an awesome lead character and lots of blood. Matilda Lutz was awesome as Red Sonja and while that isn't a high bar, she is the best version oft his character that I've seen so far. I really enjoyed the supporting cast who join Red Sonja on her revenge mission and they got in the action as well. The villains are entertaining cartoons which should sound bad, but the actors playing them knew what they were doing and I loved it. M. J. Bassett did an excellent job with the action sequences and there was a lot of blood that made me very happy. There is a good mix of practical and digital effects that was done perfectly. And finally, I liked the pacing as everything had a nice flow to the story and it never overstayed its welcome.

Negatives for Red Sonja (2025): My only issue is that I wasn't a fan of how the villains were defeated and I do believe that M. J. Bassett could've done something better than what I watched.

Overall, Red Sonja (2025) is an entertaining sword and sorcery movie that made me very happy and while I can see some fans of this character not be too happy with some of the things done with this movie, I certainly had a fun time watching this movie.

First I wish to say the main actress did an admirable job of acting and portraying the character, well enough to earn her creds.

The very, very obvious problem is that she was not physically made for the role. She was attractive enough, but not the buxom beauty that made Red's enemies regularly underestimate her. Most importantly, she didn't have the athletic / muscular build that would be required for the part. The choreography was poor to start with, but her lack of power and stamina made it that much worse, as she either obviously pulled her punches or didn't have much punch to start with.

Include in this repeated, repeated, repeated stabbing through plate armor and we have constant reminders of "plastic" Storm Trooper armor that wouldn't stop a stone shot from a slingshot. Pffft.

Typical story, highly predictable. At least it had a semi-twist ending that redeemed it a little. (No spoilers.) Sadly, this is a typical sword-adventure film with an unfortunately unconvincing lightweight main character. Kudos to the actress. She just needed a bit more meat on her bones and (to be blunt) a bit more cleavage to make the part convincing.

That said, I'll give kudos to the armor designer who eventually put her in something a little more stout than a barely-there chain mail bikini. A barbarian warrior with armor that at least covers her vital parts is far more sensible than the fan-service comic ever was.