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Why The New Red Sonja Movie Is Right To Change Her Backstory
The Red Sonja remake starring Matilda Lutz as the She-Devil with a Sword will change one aspect of the original movie for the better, eliminating sexual assault from the warrior woman's backstory. While details on the plot of the remake are tightly guarded, it has been established as drawing inspiration from the 2013 Red Sonja comic book revamp written by Gail Simone, which similarly changed Red Sonja's history in the comics. This was confirmed by director M.J. Bassett, who stated in an interview that she had "no interest in fictional women who use [rape] as an engine of motivation" (per THR)
While the character of Red Sonja has existed for decades, she is still best known through the 1985 film starring Brigitte Nielsen. Loosely tied to the Conan the Barbarian movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, the film was a box office bomb and is credited with killing Hollywood's interest in epic fantasy until The Lord of the Rings movies. It is hoped that the Red Sonja remake will fare better, despite a troubled pre-production cycle that included nine scripts, four directors, and two leads before M.J. Bassett took over the production and cast Matilda Lutz as Red Sonja. Yet some have criticized Bassett for the decision to change Red Sonja's backstory.
Why Red Sonja's Background Is So Controversial
While first appearing in comics in 1973, Red Sonja did not get an origin story until 1975, in Kull and the Barbarians #3. "The Day of the Sword," written by Roy Thomas and Doug Moench with art by Howard Chaykin, revealed how Sonja was a peasant girl who was sexually assaulted by the same bandits who killed her family and destroyed their farm. Comparisons can be made between Sonja's background and the origins of Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, which also drew criticism for being based around the sexual assault of a teenage girl.
Fleeing the burning remnants of her home, Sonja had a vision of a goddess. She promised Sonja the strength to defend herself in exchange for an oath of chastity, save to any man who could best her in single combat. Roy Thomas defended this conceit as true to the same mythology and literature that inspired Robert E. Howard’s Hyboria setting, singling out the Scottish warrior queen Aife and the Greek heroine Atalanta. While there is a tradition of warrior women who set tests for their suitors, it's unclear why Sonja's goddess only helped her after her family died and why she'd demand Sonja risk further sexual assault.
Red Sonya Was A Historic Heroine First
Writer Robert E. Howard created Conan the Barbarian but is often erroneously credited as the creator of the fantasy hero Red Sonja. Howard created a character called Red Sonya of Rogatino for his 1934 historical short story The Shadow of the Vulture. Sonya was a 16th-century Russian warrior who pitted herself against the forces of the Turkish sultan Suleiman the Magnificent after he purchased her sister as a slave following her abduction by the same bandits who killed Sonya's family.
Roy Thomas brought Red Sonya into the Conan the Barbarian comics as Red Sonja, having secured permission from the Robert E. Howard estate to adapt his historical stories into Conan comics. Thomas did this because he wanted a strong female foil for Conan. While there is no shortage of spirited women in Howard's wildly successful fantasy franchise based around the burly barbarian, most of them appeared in Conan's later adventures. It should be noted, however, that there was no sexual assault or goddess in Sonya's background in the original Shadow of the Vulture or in Thomas' comic book adaptation starring Red Sonja.
Red Sonja Was Quite Different In Her First Appearance
Interestingly, Red Sonja had a drastically different personality in 1973's Conan The Barbarian #23-24. This Sonja was flirtatious, thinking nothing of dancing provocatively or removing her armor in front of Conan to swim unencumbered. While Sonja referenced an oath to kiss no man who hadn't bested her in battle, she was depicted as lustfully gazing upon Conan. This was a marked contrast from later stories, which depicted Sonja as uninterested in sex and violent toward any man who looked at her. While this was probably a more accurate way to depict a sexual assault survivor, it clashed with Sonja's established personality as a woman who owned her sexuality.
This conflict continued over the years as different writers tackled Red Sonja's adventures in comics and novels. Some writers tried to smooth over the more sexist implications of Red Sonja's oath by depicting it as a test of her resolve to stay true to her quest rather than a demand from her goddess that she presents herself as a prize to any bravo that could beat her in a fight. Others painted Red Sonja as a traumatized black widow who specifically tried to provoke "those who would force themselves on a woman, like a siren calling sailors to their deaths."
Red Sonja's New Background Is Truer To Howard's Conan
Red Sonja underwent a revamp in 2013, which was overseen by Clean Room writer Gail Simone. Her opening story arc, Queen of Plagues, changed Red Sonja's backstory by eliminating the sexual assault that many writers had used to define her character. Simone's Red Sonja was a tomboy, trained in hunting by her father, who used his teachings to avenge the deaths of her family when she was twelve. There was no goddess to give Sonja her blessings nor an oath of chastity. Indeed, this Sonja was openly bisexual and just as inclined to carousing after a quest as Conan the Barbarian.
While some decried Gail Simone's reboot as being purely motivated by political correctness, her new backstory for Red Sonja was far truer to Robert E. Howard's Hyborian cosmology than Roy Thomas' Red Sonja origin story from 1975. Howard was a friend of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft and the two established that their stories were set in the same world, though separated in time by several millennia. Howard depicted the gods of Hyboria as largely indifferent to the plight of humanity, with those few divine beings that had an interest in humanity being entirely malevolent, like Lovecraft's Great Old Ones.
Given that, Gail Simone's conceit that Red Sonja became a warrior queen by her own hand is truer to the Hyboria setting and a far better reflection of Robert E. Howard's Red Sonya of Rogatino than the backstory imagined by Roy Thomas. There is some irony in this, given the arguments that Simone's revamp and M.J. Bassett's decision to remove sexual assault from her remake of the Red Sonja movie contradict the canon of the comics. Regardless of the history, the decision to change Sonja's backstory to reflect modern attitudes is a good one.
