Arnold Schwarzenegger played second fiddle to Red Sonja 40 years ago

Yahoo

24-07-2025

With Women Of Action, Caroline Siede digs into the history of women-driven action movies to explore what these stories say about gender and how depictions of female action heroes have evolved over time.
Back in 2014, when Beyoncé performing in front of the word 'feminist' was a major controversy and Marvel was still going all-in on white guys named Chris, I used to tweet a lot about how frustrating it was that there were barely any female-led live-action superhero movies. And I'd almost always get some variation of the same reply. 'What about Red Sonja?' 'Well, you already have Red Sonja.' 'Don't forget the Red Sonja movie!'
These tweets were mostly trolls. Red Sonja is a largely forgotten 1985 Brigitte Nielsen movie that flopped at the box office, was reviled by critics, and hasn't even really been reclaimed as a cult classic. (Its average star rating on Letterboxd sits at just 2.5.) Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared it the worst movie he ever made. And though it's technically based on a Marvel Comics character, its sword-and-sorcery setting makes it way more of a fantasy film than something people would consider a superhero story. But it's funny how things work out. After years of reflexively ignoring Red Sonja after having it weaponized against me, I finally sat down to watch it for its 40th anniversary and enjoyed it way more than I suspect those trolls thought I would.
It's a fitting journey for a movie whose very existence was something of a troll. Fresh off making Schwarzenegger a star in 1982's Conan The Barbarian and its sillier sequel Conan The Destroyer, producer Dino de Laurentiis was hoping to keep the run going with a third Conan film. But the rights to the character were held by Universal and though de Laurentiis had signed Schwarzenegger for a multi-picture deal, he didn't have the budget to pay him for a full shooting schedule. So de Laurentiis came up with a workaround: He'd make a Red Sonja spin-off movie that positioned Schwarzenegger as a beefed-up supporting character (though still first-billed in the credits). Also, he'd rename Schwarzenegger's character 'Kalidor' to skirt the rights issue.
Thus Red Sonja joined Aliens, Supergirl, and Terminator as one of the few female-led American action movies of the 1980s, even though the real goal was to Trojan Horse another Conan film into theaters. It's one of many such compromises you have to accept when looking for female representation in the dude-driven action genre. For instance, like Conan, Red Sonja started as a creation of legendary 1930s pulp writer Robert E. Howard, who imagined her as a 16th-century gunslinger. Only, Marvel Comics took the name and signature hair color to create a buxom, chainmail-bikini-wearing babe for the 'Hyborian Age' Conan The Barbarian comics the company began adapting from Howard's stories in the 1970s.
The film adaptation at least lets Nielsen wear a bit more clothing in her thigh-baring gladiatorial look, but keeps her comics-accurate traumatic backstory. An opening prologue establishes that evil warriors destroyed Sonja's village, killed her parents, and gang-raped her—all because she refused the advances of the evil Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman). Left for dead, Sonja's prayer for revenge is answered by a glowing goddess who gives her superheroic sword-fighting abilities.
Not the best or most sensitive intro for what's ultimately a breezy romp. But things pick up as the story jumps a few years into the future, where Sonja has been living and training in the temple of a master swordsman. We get to see a quick battle in which he declares that Sonja is so skilled, he has nothing left to teach her. ('You are the master of the master. Never have I seen your equal.') Soon she's roped into a quest that involves saving the world from Gedren's magical manipulations, all while teaming up with an entitled young prince named Tarn (Ernie Reyes, Jr.), his clownish caretaker Falkon (Paul Smith), and—at least when the movie can afford him—fellow warrior Lord Kalidor (Schwarzenegger).
Beyond its unnecessary traumatic backstory, there are two main critiques held against the Red Sonja movie. The first is that it's too silly compared to the deeply serious original Conan movie, even though that's the direction the more family-friendly 1984 sequel Conan The Destroyer had already taken the franchise. (Richard Fleischer directed both Sonja and Destroyer after John Milius helmed the original Conan film.) The second is that Nielsen gives some sort of epically bad central performance, even though the first film features Schwarzenegger looking so dead-eyed it's a wonder he managed to find his mark. In fact, watching all three movies back-to-back, the bad acting just starts to feel like part of the Hyborian Age world-building rather than something Nielsen alone is guilty of.
That said, I certainly wouldn't list Red Sonja among my favorite big screen female action heroes. Nielsen was a Danish model who was cast in her first-ever acting role just a few weeks before production began, and you can certainly feel that in her performance. But like Schwarzenegger in the original, she translates her inherent stiltedness into something that reads like noble stoicism. (There are shades of Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman performance.) Nielsen's Sonja isn't quippy or sassy or seductive in the way we often expect our female action heroes to be. But that makes sense for the scenario. Sonja's spent the majority of her adult life living in a temple, training for battle—of course she's a little awkward!
Regardless, this isn't a franchise I'd recommend for its character work anyway. What Red Sonja does have to offer is some stylish production design from Danilo Donati (a frequent Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini collaborator), a great score from the legendary Ennio Morricone, and some really fun swordfights courtesy of fight choreographer Kiyoshi Yamazaki. Where Conan is a muscled brawler so souped-up he punches a camel in both Conan films (both!), Sonja has a more lithe, nimble style of combat. Her fights include the jumps and flips of a gymnastic floor routine, paired with some confident sword-wielding from Nielsen and her stunt doubles.
The movie's best fight has Sonja and Kalidor playfully square off against one another after she declares she will never sleep with a man unless he's beaten her in a fair fight. It's the sort of swordplay-as-foreplay sequence the swashbuckling genre often delights in, and it's a particularly nice touch that Sonja and Kalidor wind up fighting to a draw, with neither able to best the other. Inasmuch as Schwarzenegger has ever managed to have chemistry with a female co-star (so, not much), he and Nielsen feel weirdly well-matched in their stilted Euro stoicism. It's like watching two robots fall in love.
In fact, if you're grading on a curve and acknowledging all the oversexualization and gratuitous nudity, the Conan franchise actually doesn't have terrible female representation overall. The first film gives Conan a warrior love interest named Valeria (Bergman, who was offered the role of Red Sonja but chose to return to play the villain instead). And though she gets a bit softened into the self-sacrificial girlfriend role, Valeria's mostly depicted as a heroic equal for Conan. The second movie, meanwhile, keeps her spirit alive while adding the evil Queen Taramis (Sarah Douglas), the plucky Princess Jehnna (Olivia d'Abo), and the fierce female warrior Zula (an electrifying Grace Jones) into the mix. Conan The Destroyer even passes the Bechdel Test, which is a nice surprise.
I also appreciate how Red Sonja presents its heroine as a mentor and inspiration for a young boy, which is the sort of thing you don't often see in a female-led action story. Nielsen is at her best when paired with her 12-year-old co-star, who brings out a little more playful humanity from her. And even if the film got there by working backwards, it's still interesting to watch Schwarzenegger positioned as a supporting player in a female character's story rather than vice versa. Though he gets more to do here than your average female sidekick in a male-driven action movie, Valeria and Zula actually have quite a few heroic moments in the first two Conan films too, so there's at least some equality on that front.
Of course, the gold standard for female-led sword-and-sorcery storytelling remains Xena: Warrior Princess, which combines intentional camp with meaningful stories. (Plus positive depictions of implied lesbians, rather than the retro villainy of Gedren.) But that iconic '90s series might not exist without the more serious attempts of Red Sonja, 1983's Amazonian epic Hundra, or even Pam Grier's 1974 gladiator story The Arena. Like the Conan films, Red Sonja exists at least adjacent to so-bad-it's-good territory. But that's part of what makes it fun.
That makes the long-gestating big screen Red Sonja reboot, set to hit theaters in August, all the more interesting. After a much-delayed development process that at various points has included Robert Rodriguez, Rose McGowan, Simon West, Amber Heard, Bryan Singer, and Hannah John-Kamen, the project eventually fell to Silent Hill: Revelation filmmaker M.J. Bassett, directing Matilda Lutz in what sounds like a very eclectic production from Bulgaria-based Millennium Films. The new film at least has more depth of source material to pull from after Gail Simone launched a well-received comics reboot of the Red Sonja character in 2013.
Still, the 1985 original remains a (mostly) charming curio tucked away between the second-wave feminist movement of the 1970s and the third wave of the 1990s. With its female villain, male ally, and conventional love story, Red Sonja isn't particularly interested in challenging social norms. But it does have a sort of 'we're stronger together' ethos that ensures it's not totally vapid either. Though Red Sonja still isn't a superhero in my book, her big screen feats at least deserve to be remembered as more than a footnote.
Next time: Gina Prince-Bythewood delivered a fresh take on the classic Hollywood epic in The Woman King
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