I know. I’m as surprised as you are that this movie actually got completed and released. And yet, after fifteen years in development, the film was shot in 2022 and locked in October 2023. Two years later, the film got a theatrical release that began and ended on August 13th of 2025 before getting dumped straight to video.

Yet for all of that… the film isn’t nearly so bad as you might think.

To be clear, the film greatly benefits from its own subterranean expectations. Remember, the main character is a literal barbarian, all the characters are one-dimensional, and pulpy fantasy is the order of the day. Hell, this isn’t even Robert E. Howard here, this is a Robert E. Howard fanfic!

(Side note: For the uninitiated, Howard didn’t actually create Red Sonja, though he did write a totally unrelated character named Red Sonya. It was Marvel — by way of Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith — who created Red Sonja in 1973. At the time, Marvel held the license to Conan the Barbarian — Howard’s far more famous creation — and Marvel wanted to create a female counterpart.

(As happens so often in comic books, it’s unclear as to exactly who deserves credit for creating the character, and who owned the copyright at any particular time. At various points throughout the years, Red Sonja has been claimed by Marvel Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, Howard’s estate, and “Red Sonja LLC.” I can only assume that getting the rights all squared away was a significant factor in why this movie took so long to make.)

The bottom line here is that no reasonable person would ask for this movie to do much. Seriously, what did a Red Sonja movie need to do?

• Deliver a straightforward “good vs. evil” high fantasy epic with monsters and magic and action sequences.
• Bring out the iconic chain-mail bikini in a way that modern audiences would accept.
• Show Red Sonja as a badass feminist warrior leading the charge against an oppressive patriarchy.
• Show Red Sonja as a compassionate and empathetic icon of feminine strength.

On paper, the filmmakers aggressively hit every single item on the checklist. In fact, by making Red Sonja (here played by Matilda Lutz) into a gladiatorial slave fighting for the entertainment of the exploited masses (hence the chainmail bikini), a lot of these requirements were taken care of in one swoop.

Oh, and Red Sonja is effectively an ecoterrorist. Her whole deal is that she’s connected with nature, with strong empathy for the flora and fauna of a pristine forest. The same forest that’s currently being razed by the industrialist Emperor Dragan (Robert Sheehan). So we’ve got our avenue to make Red Sonja a compassionate and honorable warrior while also weaving together ecological and anti-imperial themes with anti-chauvinist statements. All well and good.

The filmmakers were quite capable at covering all the bases and delivering everything that anyone could’ve reasonably expected from a film with this source material. But it’s still not a good movie. What happened?

Well, the obvious conclusion is that the source material is deficient. But that seems too easy, and it does a disservice to a character that’s somehow stuck around for over 50 years. We could also blame the lack of budget, which is difficult to ignore. Literally everyone in the cast looks and acts like a placeholder for some more qualified actor. Every last detail in this movie looks and sounds like the filmmakers were trying for something above and beyond their means (which I can honestly respect). But no, blaming everything on the budget is also far too easy.

Watching this movie, I kept thinking back to something I read on BlueSky with regard to the trailer. In effect, somebody (I’m sorry I can’t confirm who) pointed out that the trailer made the movie look like something straight out of the ’00s. And yeah, that’s the movie. The production design, the script, the CGI… literally everything about this movie looks 20 years out of date.

Moreover, it’s worth remembering that the ’00s were a time when half of Hollywood was trying to adapt to post-9/11 grimdark attitudes, while the other half was trying to make huge fantasy epics to ride some “Lord of the Rings” coattails. In the overlap between the two is where we found movies like Eragon, The Scorpion King, The Time Machine (2002), Dungeons and Dragons (2000), King Arthur (2004), and so on. Hell, Catwoman (2005), Aeon Flux, and Elektra (2005) were all female-driven superhero films of the time that were made with the same kind of sensibilities.

I don’t know if this film would’ve been better if it had been made back then. I don’t know if it would’ve aged any better than all those others did. But at least it would’ve been a better fit.

I’ve been saying for years that nostalgia for the ’80s and ’90s is long since tapped out. We’re due for pop culture nostalgia to cycle back around to the ’00s. But I don’t know if anyone really wants that. I don’t know if we as a culture are ready for a throwback to the nu-metal grimdark style of the Dubya years.

Granted, we have seen some notably successful examples in recent memory. Deadpool & Wolverine was built on callbacks to Marvel/Fox films that were made in that decade. Similarly, Spider-Man: No Way Home was loaded with callbacks to the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man film trilogy. And of course we can’t forget 28 Days Later, which got brought back for an ongoing film sequel trilogy!

In previous blog entries, I’ve noted how our current ongoing fascist MAGA years share a number of similarities to the oppressive warmongering Dubya regime of 20 years ago. But the aforementioned Marvel films brought back a select few awesome things from that decade that might’ve otherwise been unfairly forgotten. And the 28 Years Later trilogy revisits the setting nearly three decades later. That’s very different from what Red Sonja (2025) does, which is to actively take its audiences back to those dark post-9/11 times. Again, I have to ask who wanted that. And who the nine hells wanted that from a freaking Red Sonja movie?!

As inept as Red Sonja (2025) is, I can’t hate it. Sure, if this had gotten a full theatrical release, I’d be pissed. If I had paid full price to see this in a theater, I’d be pissed. But this was a straight-to-DVD release that I rented to watch, and that feels just right for this picture.

Ultimately, it’s a straightforward brain-dead good-versus-evil high fantasy romp, punctured with plot holes and deus ex machinas. (No joke, there is a literal deus ex machina in the third act.) But nobody with an ounce of reason could’ve expected more from this source material, and I can respect the filmmakers for sticking to their guns. I can also respect the filmmakers for reaching for the stars and going as hard as they possibly could. Even if they’re visibly reaching beyond their abilities and means, that’s still more commendable than the opposite.

It’s a shame we didn’t get this movie when it first started development in 2008. Based on how long this movie took to come out, and based on the final result, I can only conclude that a Red Sonja movie was a mistake that needed to happen. We couldn’t have known for sure until the film came out, and of course I commend any effort to deliver a solid female cinematic hero. But the proof is in the making, and Red Sonja is provably not the hero we need right now.