While I didn't find Red Sonja as infuriating as the 2011 Conan (which squandered a beautifully feral performance from Jason Momoa, and a near-perfect opening sequence, by turning into a bad riff on The Mummy), it's disappointing to see yet another eager cast failed badly by the production team.
If and when someone finally manages to treat sword & sorcery material with Game of Thrones gravitas and LOTR energy, we may finally get a film worthy of that genre's legacy. Not for lack of trying, this one ain't it. Lutz is good, though. And so are much of the supporting cast. So close, yet...
Definitely some good bits. The forest battle and the arena sequence show what the rest of the movie could have been. There's a clever nod to Lutz's role in Revenge, echoes of Princess Mononoke, and I rather liked the magi-tech vs nature-warrior theme. One especially good fight scene...
...showed how a fast, skilled knife fighter could disable armored opponents by going for the joints, hamstringing opponents, and stabbing their faces and throats once they're on the ground - a welcome break from the usual "stab and slash through plate armor" trope that unfortunately returns later.
Those complaining about silly bikinis never address how armor never works in TV or film. Xena bare knuckle punches armored warriors into unconsciousness without breaking her hands. Soldiers of Gondor get feathered through plate mail. The stuff is meant to stop things like that happening.
Yeah, but Xena has superhuman strength (for reasons never explained), so... 🤷
I recall in the early episodes before they brought in Kevin Smith to play Ares hints that Xena was Ares' daughter which would have explained her demigod powers. Icky idea by the end of the first season but not by mythological standards at any point later, really.
Interestingly, the show had no rule on what Ares was, so each writer could do their own thing, which is why it jumped between father and sexual attraction. They for sure never wanted to state she was a demigod in any way though. So, again, never explained. It was also entirely inconsistent. 🤣
I think by the 90s there was a rejection of the Red Sonja powered by a deity source of power for a superior woman like Xena, particularly a male deity. On the other hand, derived from the Hercules show, the writers might have not wanted a derivative divine origin like Hercules. Or a mix of the two?
Hercules was a demigod, so they did not want Xena to be, correct.
Which is ironic for a show taking its source from Greek Myth or any cultures, really. Divine favor or origin was a mark of excellence as far as I know (which is not much) but sexism in modern TV, yeah, can't have Xena be like Hercules. Madness.
One of the film's many welcome changes to Red Sonja "canon" (changes which, I think, began in the comics with @gailsimone.bsky.social's work) involved going from "SA survivor blessed by Mitra" to "genocide survivor blessed by the Earth Mother." Even in the 1970s, though, the comics favored...
Brian Reed in volume one at Dynamite made got rid of the SA and vow. Sonja learns her skills in order to avenge her murdered husband in his run on the book which starts around #35 of volume one.
...a genderqueer manifestation of Mitra rather than the usual masculine "Hyborian Jesus" portrayal favored in most other Conan media. Intentionally or otherwise, the movie echoed a subtext in Lutz's breakout film, Revenge. (Trailer and film serious CW territory.) youtu.be/LppUjf1PmLs?...
Exactly. As with guns, knives and injuries, armor in action media is set dressing that does whatever the plot requires it to do. And complaining about sexualization in sword & sorcery misses the point. The entire genre, regardless of gender, is one big kink fest. It's erotic by nature.
A vital aspect of "new edge" sword & sorcery (for which Xena may be the progenitor and guiding influence) involves retaining that erotic quality while removing much of the colonial, racist and misogynist aspect of the genre's origins. Helping libidinous fantasy appeal across ethnic and gender lines.
Sword & sorcery is innately chthonic ("relating to the underworld, death, and fertility"). It's wet dream nightmare fuel. It's not SUPPOSED to be "realistic." Horror, sex, violence, mystery, death, liminal spaces, ancient secrets - it's dark, damp, and thoroughly disreputable. Goth in a loincloth.
Talking about new sword and sorcery, I feel obligated to a movie recomendation: The spine of night, with voices acting of Richard E. Grant and Lucy Lawless. A sword and sorcery whose main heroine is a middle age woman who is completely naked but not sexualised.
Thank you! Saw it, liked it but didn't love it, largely because Tzod is a victim of circumstances who becomes the pawn of forces beyond her control. (Red Sonja has a similar problem but she's far more proactive than Tzod.) The Spine of Night got the tone right (to a dour, gruesome degree), but...
...lacked the cathartic ass-kicking that comes with a defiant antihero wrecking the fuck out of antagonistic forces even if that antihero (as with Elric and [-SPOILER-] Mistborn) dies at the end. Poor Tzod and her companions are just doomed ragdolls, and that took much of the fun out of it for me.
Unfortunately, the bits can't save the whole. Though it's hardly a howling fiasco like Fire & Ice or Sorcereress (or, for that matter, the Red Sonja from the 1980s), Matilda Lutz deserves a better vehicle than this. Maybe she can convince Coralie Fargeat to shoot the sequel. That would RULE.