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THEY
SAY
Red Sonja is based on the heroine created by Robert E. Howard and
adapted for Marvel Comics by Roy Thomas.
In her return we find Red Sonja, a young girl risen from the ashes of
tragedy to become the most feared woman warrior of all time. The mythical
red-head blindly seeks vengeance on those who destroyed her family. In her
path of destruction she discovers a larger purpose for her unearthly
powers: to save all Hyrkania from the villainous Kulan Gath.
WE SAY
Red Sonja is of course the feisty red-haired female
warrior inhabiting the same universe as Conan the
Barbarian. Most people believe pulp novelist Robert E. Howard created
the character, but the truth is that the character was more the creation
of comic book writer Roy Thomas than anyone else. (Thomas created the
character for a Marvel spin-off title in the late-1970s, taking some cues
from other characters and storylines borrowed from Howard.)
This of course won’t be the first time that this comic book
character has made it to the cinema screen. There was a horrendously bad
1985 movie starring Brigitte Nielsen, Sylvester Stallone’s then-squeeze,
with Arnie making a guest cameo. That that movie didn’t even bother to
replicate Red Sonja’s famous (or is that infamous?) chain mall mesh bikini
irked fans endlessly back in the mid-1980s - although it is unclear who
exactly would want to see Brigitte Nielsen in such an outfit!
Strictly this new version won’t be a remake as
McGowan and Rodriguez haven’t even seen the Nielsen original - and nor do
they apparently intend to. As the 34-year-old actress told USA Today: “Why
put that in my head?”
To be honest we’re not entirely convinced that McGowan
(best known to audiences as the chick with the machinegun leg in
Rodriguez’s Planet Terror)
has the, ahem, necessary attributes to play the pneumatic Sonja, but hey –
she is definitely an improvement over Nielsen and Red Sonja might
just work as a sort of sexy Scorpion King.
Our own choice for Red Sonja? A twenty years younger
Ornella Muti. (Muti played the villainous Emperor Ming’s daughter in the
camp 1980s Flash Gordon big screen
movie. She was no stranger to wearing skimpy outfits as that movie clearly
illustrated.)
Speaking of which, in author Brian K. Vaughn’s
Runaways graphic novel someone asks a
typically skimpily-dressed super heroine: “What’s with that slutty get-up,
lady? Don’t you have any self-respect?” In a recent issue of the Red
Sonja comic published by Dynamite Entertainment someone basically asks
the same question of Sonja, to which she replies:
“I always said it was a good distraction. Men would
watch my body closer than my blade . . .”
This is brilliant! Ha-ha. The truthful answer would
of course have been: “The artist draws me this way to appeal to our core
readership of horny teenager boys!”
(Production on this movie has been stalled according
to the latest reports because of injuries actress McGowan sustained during
filming.)
