Red Sonja 2025 has good story but bad execution
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
I gave a look at the movie nobody seen in cinema this summer called Red Sonja, because the main character is played by Matilda Lutz, an Emilia Clarke look-alike that was very good in a Coralie Fargeat 2017 film Revenge. You may know Fargeat from her other film The Substance. Lutz was so perfect in Revenge and Revenge was so good, that I wanted to see more of Lutz. And then the trailer of Red Sonja dropped, advertising it as a yet another revenge flick, this time set in a medieval fantasy world. So of-course I was hooked. ↩ Reply
It would have worked better if it was actually a revenge flick to be honest. Instead we get a girl stumbling upon a problem, while trying to do something else flick. As far as I understand the film, she was looking for her tribe, for like a decade. In what looks like one little forest. And while doing that she stumbles upon an evil tribe instead, which takes her hostage and makes her a gladiator. Would have been so much better if the evil place is the place of the evil guys who separated her as a kid in the first place. But no, there will not be any such revenge. Instead it is a movie about a girl who's just simply cool, or whatever. ↩ Reply
It doesn't mean that the script isn't trying to make it interesting. Like there is a good story somewhere in there, and quite a cool emotional setup between her and the villain. There are things that could have worked, if the people doing the movie weren't as incompetent as they were. The script by Tasha Huo is not good per se, but has good things in it. And feels like something where some effort was put into. ↩ Reply
This I cannot say about the director. M. J. Bassett feels like she's just doing her job and wants to go home. You have general coverage of scenes. The camera doesn't do much interesting. There are shots that are cinematically nice here and there. But they are an exception to the rule. ↩ Reply
For example, there is a lot of stuff in the script which seems to need some people looking at things sequences. Usually it is done by a few shots of a person's face, cut with a POV of this person, looking at a thing of interest, and then back to the person's face with a reaction, to foreshadow that something using that item will happen next. ↩ Reply
Directors like Spielberg can even pull this off in one shot with both modes in the same shot. He does it sometimes, by putting the camera close to the item, and shooting kind of from the item at the character's face, to have both in the frame, or by using reflections, by say making the character look at something through a window, that happens to reflect what the character is looking at. Non of that happens in this film. ↩ Reply
Instead what we get is this. We have closeups of actors doing their actor stuff. And we we have general coverage of the action in the scene. With maybe a shot or two of the item in question. But without a clear sense of the characters looking at, or thinking about said item. Those feel like a series of random shots glued together to maybe make sense. Non of it looks like there was an effort on set to direct the movie. ↩ Reply
As far as I can tell Robert Rodriguez was once attached to this movie. Which would have been a million times better. Even though Bob is usually making cheap films, he is a good fucking director that knows how to make a sequence that works. And he has a very good sense of edit, flow, and tempo which makes him way better in action than the majority of other directors. Especially Bassett. I would have loved to see a Rodriguez take on the film. ↩ Reply
I do really enjoy Matilda Lutz and her qualities make me think that this movie could have also been directed by Michael Bay. Now think about it. Lutz is a kind of super-model type actor that Bay really loves to work with. And yet Bay really knows how to make both good action and how to make everything look as the most cinematic moment possible. Imagine this movie, but directed by Michael fucking Bay. Holly shit!!! That would have been amazing. ↩ Reply
In any case, the movie is survivable, and by the end even somewhat interesting. ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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