Why Is It So Hard for Hollywood To Make a Good Red Sonja Movie?

It took Hollywood a shockingly long time to realize that female-centered blockbusters could be both a worthwhile commercial and critical investment. Even as comic book adaptations took over, the heroines were left lacking for lead roles and decent opportunities from an industry that has never advocated for gender parity. It's not as though comic books were ever bereft of great characters to adapt, even in the pre-franchise days when everyone was chasing that sweet Star Wars cash. Forty years ago, one of the medium's greatest and most misunderstood women got her big screen debut, and it reminded us of just how easily Hollywood could stumble with female representation.

Created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith for Marvel Comics in 1973, Red Sonja was a warrior woman gifted with incredible fighting abilities by the goddess Scáthach. She made her debut in Conan the Barbarian and was an instant hit. Following the two-time success of the big-screen version of Conan, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sonja was given her own movie, directed by Richard Fleischer of Doctor Dolittle fame and starring Danish model Brigitte Nielsen. The Conan movies had done well so why wouldn't a Red Sonja swords and sandals fantasy action epic, especially with Arnold as Nielsen's co-star?

Sadly, Red Sonja is pretty terrible. Where the Conan movies, particularly the first one directed by John Milius, felt genuinely epic, this seems dishearteningly half-baked. It’s a total drag full of miscasting, tonal dissonance, and plot holes. Usually, it’s more unintentionally funny than exciting. Poor Brigitte Nielsen, who was only 21 and had never acted before, looks gorgeous but flounders in front of the camera. She’s also saddled with the least interesting version of this character, one who is more victim than heroine and is frequently reliant on the support of men. Schwarzenegger even went so far as to call it the worst film he ever made (strong words for the star of Junior.)

It doesn't help that they kept Sonja’s origin story from the comic books, wherein she is sexually assaulted. Her fighting skills are gifted on the condition that she never lie with a man unless he defeats her in fair combat, which, of course, means that Arnold has to battle her (at least it’s shown as a draw so she isn’t forced to submit.)

For many female fans, Red Sonja was a character to love in spite of the misogyny baked into her mythos. Yes, the cheesecake images of her chain-mail bikini were blatantly leering but there was fun to it, and a lot of readers were wearily used to fantasy narratives where women were sexually assaulted, either as a tragic backstory or to give the male hero motivation to slaughter the bad guy. As many readers of golden age SFF can attest to, none of this was rare, not in a genre where women were often depicted on the covers kneeling at men’s feet. But Sonja’s best stories let her rise above that. Sadly, the movie feels weighed down by seeming obligation to its assault origins that still has her play second fiddle to Arnie (and he’s not even in the film that much, because he didn’t want to do it!)

Red Sonja was rebooted in the comics when Dynamite took over the publishing rights. This version was a reincarnation of the original, and she received a much-acclaimed reinvention through the legendary comic book writer Gail Simone. Her Sonja was what fans had been crying out for: she was powerful, funny, empathetic, bisexual, often inebriated, but extremely good at her job. She’s still unapologetically the She-Devil with a Sword, slashing open enemies’ heads while clad in her chain-mail bikini, but this Sonja was also introspective and layered in ways that made her so much more than Conan with breasts. Simone has continued to write Sonja, including with her debut novel, Red Sonja: Consumed, published last year.

We’re getting a new, long-delayed Red Sonja movie at some point this year. Perhaps this one can break the curse for the character, but it’s such a wasted opportunity that she hasn’t already gotten her dues. It’s been all too easy to dismiss her as a pinup with a weapon, the lady Conan rather than her own being. High fantasy has long been a tough genre for Hollywood to do well, and combining it with a hyper-violent tone and sexual assault only further muddies the waters. It’s not impossible to make a fiercely feminist fable starring a woman in a chain mail bikini but Hollywood, never brilliant at developing leading heroines in any kind of clothing, barely seemed to try.

Red Sonja has evolved and so has the film industry. That could be enough for us to get a big-screen version of the character who is as interesting and contradictory as she became in the 2010s. We’ve moved beyond the seedy origins and towards an invigorating reinvention that is ripe for cinematic exploration.