The Four Color Media Monitor

40 years after the abortive original screen adaptation of Red Sonja, whom Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith created in the pages of their take on Conan in the Bronze Age (based on a character featured in one of Robert E. Howard's stories), Inverse is asking why Hollywood couldn't make a good adaptation of such a comic as much as Conan (even though the 2nd Conan movie at the time wasn't successful either, and was certainly the last for many years after), but unsurprisingly, can't seem to offer any convincing answers:

It took Hollywood a shockingly long time to realize that female-centered blockbusters could be both a worthwhile commercial and critical investment. Even as comic book adaptations took over, the heroines were left lacking for lead roles and decent opportunities from an industry that has never advocated for gender parity. It's not as though comic books were ever bereft of great characters to adapt, even in the pre-franchise days when everyone was chasing that sweet Star Wars cash. Forty years ago, one of the medium's greatest and most misunderstood women got her big screen debut, and it reminded us of just how easily Hollywood could stumble with female representation.

Do they realize that, without sturdy merit in the screenplay and acting, the films won't be considered worthwhile? Such a point is not clearly made here. So why do they think the interest will eventually wear off if filmmakers won't concentrate on curating serious talent? That wasn't the case with the original Sonja movie, and they at least admit as much:

Sadly, Red Sonja is pretty terrible. Where the Conan movies, particularly the first one directed by John Milius, felt genuinely epic, this seems dishearteningly half-baked. It’s a total drag full of miscasting, tonal dissonance, and plot holes. Usually, it’s more unintentionally funny than exciting. Poor Brigitte Nielsen, who was only 21 and had never acted before, looks gorgeous but flounders in front of the camera. She’s also saddled with the least interesting version of this character, one who is more victim than heroine and is frequently reliant on the support of men. Schwarzenegger even went so far as to call it the worst film he ever made (strong words for the star of Junior.)

From what I recall, the Conan sequel wasn't considered "epic", and certainly not in the way this column implies (the sequel film's screenplay, interestingly enough, is credited to Thomas and Gerry Conway). But then, as if that wasn't awkward enough, the writer goes on to imply that the chain-mail costume itself was wrong, though I suppose there is something to ponder in the original motivation written up for Sonja:

It doesn't help that they kept Sonja’s origin story from the comic books, wherein she is sexually assaulted. Her fighting skills are gifted on the condition that she never lie with a man unless he defeats her in fair combat, which, of course, means that Arnold has to battle her (at least it’s shown as a draw so she isn’t forced to submit.)

For many female fans, Red Sonja was a character to love in spite of the misogyny baked into her mythos. Yes, the cheesecake images of her chain-mail bikini were blatantly leering but there was fun to it, and a lot of readers were wearily used to fantasy narratives where women were sexually assaulted, either as a tragic backstory or to give the male hero motivation to slaughter the bad guy. As many readers of golden age SFF can attest to, none of this was rare, not in a genre where women were often depicted on the covers kneeling at men’s feet. But Sonja’s best stories let her rise above that. Sadly, the movie feels weighed down by seeming obligation to its assault origins that still has her play second fiddle to Arnie (and he’s not even in the film that much, because he didn’t want to do it!)

Let us be clear. If you think too many writers employ sexual assault as a motivation for a woman to battle evil, sure, it can be tasteless and dreadful as much as cliched. A premise where a woman's family is murdered by villains that doesn't involve sexual violence per se can work just as well, and IIRC, Batman and the Outsiders employed something like that in Katana's origin back in 1983. But if she's saying the chain-mail bikini itself was inherently wrong and there's nothing fun even for a woman in that, she's only turning to another form of cliche, the sex-negative feminist propaganda type. So, no woman considers bikinis a wonderful form of fashion, let alone a legitimate form of swimwear? Do tell us about it. Lost in the whole mishmash is whether the comics creation by Thomas and Windsor-Smith was even intended as a "feminist" statement per se to start with. And if it wasn't, why is it even such a big deal for these feminist writers to have Sonja adapted, let alone serve as a comics publication? On which note:

Red Sonja was rebooted in the comics when Dynamite took over the publishing rights. This version was a reincarnation of the original, and she received a much-acclaimed reinvention through the legendary comic book writer Gail Simone. Her Sonja was what fans had been crying out for: she was powerful, funny, empathetic, bisexual, often inebriated, but extremely good at her job. She’s still unapologetically the She-Devil with a Sword, slashing open enemies’ heads while clad in her chain-mail bikini, but this Sonja was also introspective and layered in ways that made her so much more than Conan with breasts. Simone has continued to write Sonja, including with her debut novel, Red Sonja: Consumed, published last year.

We’re getting a new, long-delayed Red Sonja movie at some point this year. Perhaps this one can break the curse for the character, but it’s such a wasted opportunity that she hasn’t already gotten her dues. It’s been all too easy to dismiss her as a pinup with a weapon, the lady Conan rather than her own being. High fantasy has long been a tough genre for Hollywood to do well, and combining it with a hyper-violent tone and sexual assault only further muddies the waters. It’s not impossible to make a fiercely feminist fable starring a woman in a chain mail bikini but Hollywood, never brilliant at developing leading heroines in any kind of clothing, barely seemed to try.

Honestly, I think there's questions to be asked in whether a story with a lady lead written by a woman has to rely upon jarring violence any more than what a man could write. And Simone's long proven overrated as a scribe. Why does it matter if Sonja's bisexual? At this point, when these news sites bring that up, it suggests more than they dig it because in their view, it could allude to man-hating. Is that a good example? Also lost in this whole discussion is that, while Marvel did subsequently launch a series for Red Sonja around 1976, it ran little more than 3 years, and was cancelled at the end of the 70s, with the lady lead only returning for a short miniseries in 1983 (an almost similar case was had with Kull the Conqueror, which was only intermittently published at the time). After that, to my knowledge, Marvel had the permit to publish an ongoing series for Sonja cancelled by the Howard estate in 1986, even as Conan comics continued under their labels until 1995.

Also, pretty funny how this column obscures Star Wars' use of princess Leia as a woman who could prove effective at gun combat, if anything, no matter her dress outfit. I guess it's because they'd have to bring up the 3rd movie, where she turned the tables on Jabba the Hut and throttled him with his own enslaving chain, huh? Weird how feminists had any issue with what point could be gleaned from that screeplay. Also, there have been science-fantasy movies in past history where sexual violence wasn't employed in the plot (does 1983's Krull count?), so whether those films were successful or not, why not give them some citation, and whether you think they were handled goodly or badly?

I'd already read what the new film based on Red Sonja could be like, and frankly, I'm not interested in seeing it, and much too weary at this point to care about yet another comics adaptation that could be far too clogged with heavy special effects anyway. And maybe the people writing these news columns would do well to ponder whether it's even worth it to spend what could be 20 dollars at the movie theater for something that'll probably be forgotten to the winds and sands of time pretty quickly by the end of the decade.

Labels: history, indie publishers, licensed products, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, politics