I did a double-take. Red Sonja?! Like, that Red Sonja? The character from the Arnie film I watched far too many times with my friends as a teenager, and then quoted from for the rest of my silly little life? “I’m luuuking fah Reeed Saaaarrrrrnyah!” Yup. It’s that one. Except, in what looks like quite a twist since the 1985 film, the new trailer suggests this one might actually be about Red Sonja.
Movies go through all sorts of strange phases—strings of cartoons about sentient fish, for instance—but resurrecting classic Arnold Schwarzenegger movies from the 1980s, but without Arnold Schwarzenegger, is one of the weirdest.
First we have (the truly soulless-looking) The Running Man coming from Edgar Wright later this year, which recently released a trailer showing the empty frame of Glen Powell blandly running and ducking while the direction declared “THIS IS EXTREMELY FUNNY,” and yet at no point was there the appearance of a man dressed as a Christmas tree. And now we have Red Sonja? It was weird enough in 2012 when the never-climactic Len Wiseman (Underworld, Ballerina) thought it a good idea to try to remake perfect cinematic classic Total Recall, with a stunningly miscast Colin Farrell playing Douglas Quaaaaaiiiiid.
Unlike The Running Man, which has a big-name director and main star, Red Sonja’s 2025 revision is perhaps a little more low-key. It’s directed by M. J. Bassett, who has a healthy credit sheet when it comes to directing solid television shows (including four episodes of the wonderful Ash Vs Evil Dead), but she perhaps has a slightly less impressive record on the big screen. Remember 2020's Megan Fox vehicle Rogue? No? How about 2021's Endangered Species, starring Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O’Connell? That slipped by you too? But even critics didn’t see those films, so what about a movie that did get reviewed? 2012's Silent Hill: Revelation 3D? That had Malcolm McDowell, Sean Bean, Carrie-Anne Moss and Kit Harrington! And a Metascore of 16. Ouch.
It’s not exactly an all-star cast, either. Sonja herself is played by Matilda Lutz (Rings, Magpie), and the only other names I recognize are Trevor Eve and Rhona Mitra, and that’s because I’m British. Meanwhile, Arnie’s character from Richard Fleischer’s 1985 movie, Kalidor, doesn’t appear to be in the film at all!
You know what, that’s probably a good thing. As hilariously dreadful as Arnie was in absolutely everything, seeing someone else trying to reprise one of his roles is always so awkward. It was very much his scenery-chewing, bicep-popping, terrible-acting ways that made him so completely charming, and everyone else just seems like a cardboard cutout when stood in his shoes. And, rather crucially, a film about Red Sonja really ought to have been about Red Sonja, but even as early as then, Arnie’s star power made him the focus throughout. Things look very different this time out.
And yes, sure, it looks like absolute gibberish, but I’m totally here for it. There is perhaps rather a lot of “BUT SHE’S DOING IT EVEN THOUGH SHE’S A GIRL!” energy throughout the trailer, but that’s still better than Brigitte Nielsen fighting to ever actually appear on screen as the main character.
The source material was written by Robert E. Howard, he of Conan the Barbarian fame, and while he was a giant old racist, he was also an advocate of presenting powerful female characters. That leaves me hopeful that under M. J. Bassett’s helm, we can at least see Sonja be a more significant brute.
Oh, and let’s not forget that Fleischer’s version was absolutely bloody awful! He may have given us Soylent Green (1973) and Fantastic Voyage (1966), but they couldn’t all be bangers. It was deservedly mauled on release, with Gene Siskel handing it a single star in the Chicago Tribune. But try telling that to teenage me, watching it with mates, swigging from painfully cheap two-liter plastic bottles of cider.
The new movie doesn’t have a release date yet, beyond being some time this year.
.