Out of Production Hell: Red Sonja Reboot Finally Heads to Movie Theaters
The power that drives Red Sonja’s sword arm is the same spirit that pushed Frodo to
climb Mount Doom, that helped Harry Potter face Voldermort in a magical duel, and that
animated Gandalf when he faced the Balrog. We experience a strong visceral response
to such great moments in fantasy storytelling, not because the characters meet arbitrary
standards of physical perfection, but because of the fire that fuels them. This is how we
should see Red Sonja: as an ordinary person with a strong will to live, not as a female
bodybuilder on steroids.
Now that a distributor has been found, the new Red Sonja movie will hopefully appear
on movie screens in the near future. Last March, Samuel Goldwyn Films picked up the
US distribution rights to the film. Signature Entertainement also picked up the rights to
the UK and Irish releases. I’m as excited as if a new Conan movie was on the way.
Following Brigitte Nielsen’s Red Sonja released in 1985, there were several attempts at
bringing the character back to the silver screen, most notably Robert Rodriguez’s 2008
version starring Rose McGowan. Despite some early enticing poster art, I was never
able to picture McGowan as Red Sonja. I did not like Brigitte Nielsen in the role either.
Nielsen was tall, fit and imposing, but her minimal acting skills (and the mullet) really
didn’t do much to portray a convincing Red Sonja.
So far, Angelica Bridges has given the best onscreen interpretation of the She-Devil
with a Sword. Even though she only appeared in one episode of the Conan the
Adventurer series starring Ralf Moeller in 1998, she made a strong impression on the
fans. (Some fans were only attracted to the series because of Bridges’s appearance in
that one episode.) While she wasn’t muscle-bound, as some fans picture Red Sonja to
be, Bridges made an impressive and convincing Red Sonja; her physique was more in
keeping with some of the early Marvel portrayals by such legendary artists as Howard
Chaykin, Neal Adams and Barry Windsor Smith. Bridges’s Red Sonja was fiery, which
was much more in line with what fans had come to expect from years of reading her
adventures in the pages of Marvel comic books. It’s too bad we only got the one
glimpse of her in that episode. Her performance screamed for a spin-off that fans never
got.
This brings me to Matilda Lutz.
The latest Red Sonja adaptation went through so many iterations that it felt like the
movie would never see the light of day. The film seems to have broken out of production
hell when director M. J. Bassett took over in 2022. When Matilda Lutz was also
announced as the lead later that year, many fans felt she was the wrong choice for the
role. The release of some early production pictures showing Lutz in her Red Sonja outfit
did not do much to convince those fans; Lutz simply did not have the physique for the
part, and I must admit I was one of those fans—at least at first.
Some fans seem to be very opinionated about Red Sonja’s physique. Some fans
envision a very “beefy” look for her, sort of a female counterpart to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan. Dozens of cosplayers have portrayed her over the years,
and some of the most popular were the ones with the most well-defined musculatures.
Where I find this intriguing is that Red Sonja was never really portrayed that way—at
least not during her Marvel Comics heyday. Starting with Barry Windsor Smith, Red
Sonja was always portrayed as a lither warrior. Artists such as Chaykin, Adams, Maroto
and Buscema followed suit. Even Frank Thorne’s Red Sonja, while fleshier, was not a
muscle magazine cover model. The highly popular cover paintings by Boris
commissioned for the Red Sonja book series published by Ace in the ’80s portrayed
Red Sonja almost as reed-thin.
The desire to see a more muscled actress take on the role might stem from the fact that
some fans are tired of seeing 90 lb waifs beat the crap out of 200 lb males in the
movies. However, to apply that reasoning to Red Sonja is to ignore how she came by
her powers to begin with (at least, in the original Marvel Comics series). Red Sonja was
said to have been endowed with battle prowess by the goddess Scáthach, which made
her nearly unbeatable. Only once in her Marvel Comic days was she ever bested in a
sword fight, and that was by Conan himself.
I think a lot of fans’ expectations about Red Sonja’s physique may also come from the
multitude of cosplayers who have been portraying her ever since Wendy Pini donned
the chainmail bikini for her skit at conventions. A fair number of very fit models have
cosplayed Red Sonja and they may have skewed fans’ perception of what the character
should look like. Somehow, along the way, fans have forgotten that cosplayers portray
idealized (or fantasized) versions of Red Sonja. The Comic book covers have also
contributed to this highly muscled physique. Over the past 20 years, Dynamite has
regaled fans with hundreds of covers depicting various artists’ takes on the Red
Goddess. Dynamite even published an art book of some of those covers. All paintings in
that book depict an interesting version of Red Sonja.
So, fans will display a wide range of expectations as to what Red Sonja should look like.
It will be impossible to please them all. A fair number of them will think that Matilda Lutz
looks the part. And after seeing her in Revenge (released in 2018), I can only agree.
The Scáthach-granted powers may not apply under Dynamite’s 2005 reboot, but
diehard fans of the She-Devil with a Sword should have no problem believing she can
defeat larger foes. Her skills, after all, are the result of surviving a thousand crossings of
swords, which have made her a match for most warriors in her time.
We must also remember that this is fantasy. The power that drives Red Sonja’s sword
arm is the same spirit that pushed Frodo to climb Mount Doom, that helped Harry Potter
face Voldermort in a magical duel, and that animated Gandalf when he faced the
Balrog. We experience a strong visceral response to such great moments in fantasy
storytelling, not because the characters meet arbitrary standards of physical perfection,
but because of the fire that fuels them. This is how we should see Red Sonja: as an
ordinary person with a strong will to live, not as a female bodybuilder on steroids. As
Conan said in the Conan the Reaver graphic novel: “It’s not skill or mastery. It’s how
much you can endure in the time it takes you to learn.”
As such, Red Sonja is foremost a fierce survivor, and this is what hit me when I saw
Matilda Lutz’s performance in Revenge. Revenge is a brutal movie, and Lutz’s
performance is brilliant. Her character in the movie is worlds away from Red Sonja, but
she projects the same strong will. She shows the same fire as Red Sonja. Her eyes in
some scenes scream of Red Sonja’s spirit.
I recently saw another picture from the set of Red Sonja that sealed the deal even
further for me. In this picture, Lutz is surrounded by scenery on fire. She is clad in what
is probably the closest thing to Red Sonja’s signature chainmail bikini we will ever see
onscreen. She seems battle weary but ready for more. It’s a powerful image, highly
reminiscent of some of the best splash pages or covers illustrated by Frank Thorne and
other great Red Sonja artists. Lutz simply nails it as Red Sonja in this scene.
The image also shows the same grittiness we saw in another movie M. J. Bassett
directed: Solomon Kane, based on the puritan adventurer created by Robert E. Howard
(who also created Conan and Red Sonya, the character comic book editor/writer Roy
Thomas used as a basis when he created Red Sonja).
Solomon Kane is the perfect example of a sword and sorcery movie done right. It was not a big box office success, but Bassett has shown what can be done on a small budget. I am sure she will bring the
same production value and artistic quality to Red Sonja. Between Bassett and Lux, I think Red Sonja is in good hands.
About the Author
Jules-Pierre Malartre Jules-Pierre Malartre currently lives in L’Île-Perrot, a small island west of Montreal (Quebec), which is as close to the Great White North that he will ever dare go, but still cold enough to save him from big-ass spiders, alien abductions, undead dinosaurs and tourists who find his French accent charming. In 2005, he quit a promising aerospace engineering career to go into freelance writing, which was a very, very bad idea according to his mother. Since then, he has become considerably poorer, but he has grown much happier. Along the way, he adopted cats—lots of cats! When he is not writing technical manuals, newspaper articles, press releases or blogs on anything from comic books to yoga, he is busy working on his first novel, a semi-autobiographical fictional account of his life that dares to ask the question, “where did God go wrong with me anyway?” His first short story, “The Rest Was Easy,” was published by the online literary magazine Amarillo Bay in 2013. The five people who read it liked it. He’s well aware that it took him over a decade to publish another one, so he’d really appreciate it if you'd cut him some slack about it! He loves coffee, cats and reading, mostly because those three things go very well together.
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