Red Sonja

[Dogfish]

This thread, and the state of movies like this in general, has got me wondering about something.

Look at the original Red Sonja movie, or something else like Flash Gordon. Bad movies, definitely, but the ways they were bad at least made them interesting. And sure there's a lot of their peers that are bad without being interesting and are duly forgotten. But people don't seem to make bad movies like that any more.

Bad movies these days tend to be just, well, bad.

The only movies I can think of that manage to be bad but good these days are the Monsterverse ones. Just dumb as all hell. If they were made back in the day they'd have Doug McClure and Peter Cushing in them, plus a bunch of rubber dinosaurs. And I'd also argue that those movies are actually, y'know, good in a lot of ways and probably don't deserve the comparison.

I guess what I mean is there needs to be more bad movies that are still fun. I guess the recent Roadhouse fit the bill? But I want more.

Fantastic as Flash was "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Savior of the Universe!"

Nobody was TRYING to make bad movies then, nor are they now. A so bad it's good film is always an accident.

The director of Flash Gordon also directed Get Carter.

Yes. That Get Carter. The greatest British crime movie of all time Get Carter. The probably in the top ten crime movies of all time Get Carter.

Flash Gordon's director did that.

I love that, but it makes no sense at all.

[Malice]

Uwe Boll is a case in point. His movies are dogshit. And it's not because he's too 'safe' either, he's not trying to be inoffensive or go by the numbers, he's just incredibly shit at directing movies.

"Postal" wasn’t a complete disaster (maybe 85% of one), but I have to admit, the few "good moments" it had probably came down to Boll’s direction.

That said, I’ll never forgive him for "Alone in the Dark" or "BloodRayne."

And after watching "House of the Dead,," I’m convinced: nah, the guy’s doing it on purpose, mate.

[Dogfish]

Uwe Boll is a case in point. His movies are dogshit. And it's not because he's too 'safe' either, he's not trying to be inoffensive or go by the numbers, he's just incredibly shit at directing movies.

"Postal" wasn’t a complete disaster (maybe 85% of one), but I have to admit, the few "good moments" it had probably came down to Boll’s direction.

That said, I’ll never forgive him for "Alone in the Dark" or "BloodRayne."

And after watching "House of the Dead,," I’m convinced: nah, the guy’s doing it on purpose, mate.

It's a business model based on buying a game IP and making the least possible movie he can with it so he turns a profit. He's not just talentless, he's a professional hack.

[Femina]

Uwe Boll is a case in point. His movies are dogshit. And it's not because he's too 'safe' either, he's not trying to be inoffensive or go by the numbers, he's just incredibly shit at directing movies.

"Postal" wasn’t a complete disaster (maybe 85% of one), but I have to admit, the few "good moments" it had probably came down to Boll’s direction.

That said, I’ll never forgive him for "Alone in the Dark" or "BloodRayne."

And after watching "House of the Dead,," I’m convinced: nah, the guy’s doing it on purpose, mate.

House of the Dead was his like... 'breakout' bad film that created the Uwe Boll... thing... It's absolutely not on purpose, it's his worst film cause it's 'practically' his first film in any real... public sense.

House of the Dead holds a particular place in my theatrical history as the only film I've EVER walked out of the theater over on purpose (I once had horrific food poisoning from some bad chicken and blew so much chunks that I had to leave a film... I think it was 'Timeline' which wasn't a great film but I wouldn't have walked out on it). Typically speaking, if I pay for a movie ticket, even if I'm having a bad time, I have a stubborn sense of 'well I paid money for this so I'm gonna f'kn watch it!'

House of the Dead DEFEATED me on this. My friends and I went to see it cause whenever we went to the local arcade/mini amusement park place in town for school shit and stuff, House of the Dead was one of our favorite Arcade Games to waste quarters over.......... but it took less than an hour for all four of us to gradually choose to leave. xD. I could believe that some of his later films have some amount of self awareness that he sucks... but not House of the Dead. That was the movie he wanted to announce himself with!

And then... yeah... he more or less singlehandedly killed the Bloodrayne franchise and in its HEYDAY.

I think my favorite of his terrible films is "Dungeon Siege: In the name of the King" which gives me serious Jeremy Irons Dungeons and Dragon's energy.

[Malice]

House of the Dead was his like... 'breakout' bad film that created the Uwe Boll... thing... It's absolutely not on purpose, it's his worst film cause it's 'practically' his first film in any real... public sense.

To me, "House of the Dead" true name is "Filmmaking Mistakes 101." It's almost as if every frame was a deliberate exercise in bad decision-making, from the plot to the action sequences, dialogues, etc...

Honestly, there isn't a single valid frame in this entire movie.

Or perhaps...

Kira Clavell

It's a business model based on buying a game IP and making the least possible movie he can with it so he turns a profit. He's not just talentless, he's a professional hack.

Here's the thing. I do believe Boll leaned into the meme a little.

It's clear he didn’t understand the IPs he adapted. (Bloodrayne) I believe in the theory that he actually hated the properties, the fans,...which explains the butchering.

At the end of the day, it’s hard to deny that money was the driving force behind his work, more than anything else.

No matter what anyone says, it's going to be hard to top this incarnation...


Back to the topic at hand, I just wanted to express how relieved I was that Uwe Boll wasn’t the director of Red Sonja.

Regardless of where people stand, (whether they’re excited or reserved about the upcoming movie) I think we can all agree that this is a relief.

[Dogfish]

It's too big a franchise for him to get. He gets cult games that can be bought for peanuts

But yeah, as for Red Sonja, not hopeful, but who knows.

[jlocke]

I'd like to make a side point. Irine Meier is hot, and she cosplays as Red Sonja.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IrineMeier/

irinemeier1.jpg (444.91 KiB) Viewed 24467 times

irinemeier2.jpg (330.76 KiB) Viewed 24467 times

irinemeier3.jpg (288.03 KiB) Viewed 24467 times

What if the so bad it's good classic for our time is Secret Invasion, but we're all still too bitter about how fucking awful it was to ever revisit it and enjoy it for being a turd? It's still too soon. I can't.

[tmon]

She is hot!!

[Malice]

But yeah, as for Red Sonja, not hopeful, but who knows.

My only certainty is that Brigitte Nielsen will remain the best on screen Red Sonja when it's all said and done.

[brdiy]

Trailer's out...

https://youtu.be/-Oqql6RErHc?si=3XzgwDKpfC9NV3_h

[sneakly]

Trailer's out...

https://youtu.be/-Oqql6RErHc?si=3XzgwDKpfC9NV3_h

It looks better than I was expecting.

[shevek]

Trailer's out...

https://youtu.be/-Oqql6RErHc?si=3XzgwDKpfC9NV3_h

It looks better than I was expecting.

It looks like a movie from the early 2000s. Which is fine, but the comments are mostly saying that she's too short (5' 6"), and not sexy or buff (Amazonian) enough to play the role. I think they could have easily found a taller, sexier actress, but they decided not to on purpose. That's just my guess, though.

[brdiy]

She's gonna be in bondage based on the trailer, so I guess that's a good thing.

And looks like the bikini armor makes some sort of appearance.

[sneakly]

Trailer's out...

https://youtu.be/-Oqql6RErHc?si=3XzgwDKpfC9NV3_h

It looks better than I was expecting.

It looks like a movie from the early 2000s. Which is fine, but the comments are mostly saying that she's too short (5' 6"), and not sexy or buff (Amazonian) enough to play the role. I think they could have easily found a taller, sexier actress, but they decided not to on purpose. That's just my guess, though.

I kind of like the idea of her grabbed and manhandled by big nasty guys at the command of a physically imposing villainess... It makes her kicking ass all the better. Batgirl, Arya stark, Jenna Ortega all come to mind.

[sneakly]

Probably the best female lead trashy movie was The Barbarian Queen. Great looking heroine, gratuitous nudity and bondage and fun in spite of it's innate trashiness and may be some of the Sybil Danning flix.

barbq..jpg (13.51 KiB) Viewed 22888 times

13985-cla-a28.jpg (8.26 KiB) Viewed 22888 times

images.jpg (11.28 KiB) Viewed 22888 times

The Flash Gordon flick got it right also, and interestingly so did the Flesh Gordon movies. The most important part of any of these movies is the suspension of disbelief. If you can't get past the absurdity of a metal bikini or a lithe 20-something wielding a sword against 200 lb professional soldier, no amount of armor is going to fix that. The best part of the entire genre is its dissociation from reality. Hercules and Xena both also got it right.

I turn off low budget modern WWII movies. Why? because they are trying to show me something historical that has massive continuity errors. Stupid stuff. The US army was segregated in WWII, it was wrong, but it was a reality. A movie that has a black soldier acting as a squad NCO and being listened to by a white American soldier was just not going to happen. Can you a have a black soldier in the cast? Sure, but it would have to be in a way that makes sense for the plot. Ignoring the racist past makes all the other glaring inaccuracies in the film a big turn off. A black soldier in Hogan's Heroes? not a problem because the whole premise was absurd.

You could make RS wear metal war burka made of plate armor. It would work better in battle, but defeats the larger reason I am watch the movie in the first place. I don't see anyone here pointing out how Sandahl Bergman's armor was impractical....

13985-cla-a28.jpg (8.26 KiB) Viewed 22888 times

4189ab0adbbc9dac504c4025a1e70746.jpg (77.33 KiB) Viewed 22888 times

[shevek]

Sneakly, I totally agree with you that the spate of low-budget 1980s female barbarian movies were the best of the Red Sonja-style genre. I think at least some of them were Golan-Globus productions? (Cannon FIlms). Their likes will probably never come again, except maybe in the porn arena. The sensibility simply isn't there, unless someone deliberately makes a serious effort, and then possibly risks getting 'cancelled' for it.

[shevek]

Our comic book publisher buddy Vaughn Coleman (writer of 'Phenomenova') did a review of Red Sonja. He says they actually did the chainmail bikini, but the promo was trying to gaslight us into thinking it wouldn't be there. Here's his take. I'm definitely going to watch it soon.
'https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cbHccMrNL14

[brdiy]

A positive review:

https://collider.com/red-sonja-2025-review/

[shevek]

Disparu destroys it, though. My favorite line is "jealous bints got together and said, you can't have that!"

The director who made this movie actually admitted that they interviewed a bunch of sports models who had the perfect body to pull off
comic book Red Sonja, but purposely rejected those choices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4vcVPm1Zmo

Anyway, I watched it tonight!

Spoiler

Wallis Day is quite gorgeous as Annisia. Especially her perfect face.

Matilda looks OK as Red Sonja. You won't mind when she switches from the chainmail bikini to the slightly more covered metal armor.
She still has a shapely body, and that midriff with those tight abs...quite sexy.
The scene at the end where she walks away into the sunlight, her silhouette with a cape trailing behind like a superheroine? That was nice.

The only problem with her presentation is that she just doesn't have any cleavage, and that's where the reduction of the "male gaze" comes in,
which was mentioned both *before* the movie came out, and in the reviews such as the above one in Collider.
For much of the movie, she is 1) dirtied up, 2) wearing face warpaint or 3) having a somewhat matted hairstyle.
It's not extreme, and she's still generally beautiful, but the production definitely tamped down on the Amazonian level of stunning beauty which
Red Sonja possesses in the comics. That's caveat number one. Enjoy it for what it is.

The other precaution is that there are WAY too many characters.
Red Sonja has about a dozen named allies (both from the arena gladiators, and her Hyrkanian tribe) some of whom live to the end, and a couple who don't. None of them get enough character development for anyone to care about them. The closest we get to any romance whatsoever is
when she 'fakes' a kiss with the Prince of Shem. There's no indication in the movie that she will have sex with a man who bests her in battle, which is one of the core elements of her comic book background. Nor is there an indication that she is motivated to be wary of male motives because of her rape as a young woman. Neither of those aspects are mentioned at all. They're probably not progressive enough for 2025.

On the good side, the locations are stunning, the set pieces are good, and the CGI monsters are up to par for a mid-budget flick.

The other thing is, in the comics was she ever in love in her horse as much as she is in this movie? It really seems like half the time she wants to have sex with it more than with any man in the cast.

There are a few head-scratchers when it comes to continuity:

1) When she meets her allies at the top of a mountain, they're all standing on foot and you don't see hardly any horses, but in the very next shot, suddenly every one of them is riding a horse. Where did the horses come from?

2) The villain Draygan has a mystical techno-orb which powers his city like an electrical generator. It's obviously very important and expensive,
so why would he leave it so woefully unguarded that he would just so easily abandon it and have one of his enemies destroy it?

For most of you, I think this will be worth a watch, although I doubt it's going to garner enough interest to spawn a theater sequel.
Maybe a TV series like Xena, though?
Let's see if we get some good cosplay out of it at Comicons.
I'd really love to see a cosplayer dressed as Sonja who has gorgeous tight abs *and* massive cleavage!

[Dogfish]

Xena is an apt comparison, could easily have been a double episode of Xena.

The actual story was more interesting than it had any right being, especially the villains, but it wasn't a very Red Sonja story. Plus it was delivered very poorly. Which is unfortunate because the idea had life to it.

Action scenes were really weak.

Played it too safe I think.

You don't need a lot of money to make a great action movie, but you need to have an idea. My benchmark is always The Raid. Made on a shoestring, and it's a classic. And it doesn't look cheap, because it was made cleverly. The original Conan The Barbarian had better fight scenes, not because of coordination or effects (although you can't go wrong with having a bunch of amputees in the cast and gallons of fake blood) but because they committed to it, there's power to it. Red Sonja is the same spinning nonsense that we've seen a million times before at this point.

Red Sonja was uninspired where it counted. I did like that they lampshaded the chainmail bikini though.

One moment that particularly annoyed me, and I don't normally go in for the nitpicks like this, but there's a bit in the arena where Sonja refuses to fight, so one of the guards intervenes, but nobody orders him to intervene in the way he does, and I was like, I get that it's done for dramatic effect but how did he know to take that shot not the more obvious one. Normally I don't care about picking the nits, but that one stuck out.

Past that though, less an exercise in nit picking and more just poking a weak movie with a stick and hoping it does something.

Don't expect anything to come of it, but at least they made the thing, it's done.

[Mr. X]

Red Sonya review. I didn't know it was that old.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHfnePG3LKE