Sixteen years after bringing Robert E. Howard’s seminal fantasy story Solomon Kane to screens, British filmmaker MJ Bassett returns to Howard’s fantasy realm for a reinvention of sword and sorcery’s most famous female warrior, Red Sonja…
STARBURST: Was Red Sonja a film that you rented back in the day?
MJ Bassett: I was a huge fantasy fan. Michael Moorcock’s kind of ‘80s muscular fantasy, high fantasy, as we call it, was absolutely where I was at. And obviously, Robert E. Howard and Conan, and that kind of pulp fantasy stuff was there as well. I watched John Milius’ Conan, and then Conan the Destroyer, and all those movies. And I never really liked them, to be honest. I watched Red Sonja, and I didn’t like that movie either. I love Bridget [Nielsen]. She’s a wonderful woman. They were just never my kind of fantasy, but I loved the fact that they were out there. Subsequently, I’ve become friendly with Arnold, and I love him. They’re all a bit kind of clunky and campy, right? I’m a trans woman, but I’m not campy at all. Not in my filmmaking at least, maybe in my everyday life, but in my filmmaking, not even the tiniest bit. But they were never what I thought fantasy should be. And I think that’s good, because you apply your own sort of framework, aesthetic and narrative framework to the genres you love.
How does Sonja compare to Solomon Kane?
When I made Solomon Kane, which was the first fantasy thing I did, it was deadly serious. It takes the world seriously. It takes the moral dilemmas of the characters seriously. And it’s pretty dark at its heart. Then fast forward 10 years, and I get a chance to make Red Sonja. Now, I don’t believe Red Sonja is the dark character that Kane is. Kane is very specifically drawn by Robert Howard. There’s no doubt about who he is and what his motivations are. With Sonja, it’s interesting because Robert Howard, though he’s credited with creating her, it’s not the Red Sonja that anybody’s familiar with. She was reinvented in 1973 by Roy Thomas and his team. But every version of Sonja is a different version of Sonja. For 30 years, it was just men writing this buxom barbarian woman in a chainmail bikini. It had nothing to do with anything other than how you show her cleavage. It was, in my opinion, essentially men writing a man who looked like a woman. And then Gail Simmons comes along, and she totally changes that and reinvents Sonja again. But there’s no canon on Sonja particularly. She seems like a blank slate or a cypher.
The Red Sonja remake has a rich past, how did you get involved?
She’s been through so many versions during the 17 years this movie has been in development in one form or another. Robert Rodriguez was attached with Rose McGowan, and then Bryan Singer was going to do it. Thankfully, he stepped away. And then Joey Soloway was going to do it. So those are just the publicly known ones. When Joey’s version kind of fell apart, they couldn’t get it together the way they wanted to. I was in a position to go to Millennium Films and just say to them, “Just give it to me. There’s nobody more qualified to make this than I am in the world, in my opinion. I love the character. I love fantasy. I’ve made good fantasy. I’m a trans person. So, I can exist in all these spaces. And I know what I want to do with her”. And they gave me the script. It didn’t really work for me, but I could utilise it as a starting off point for something that I do want to do.
What elements of the initial script did you not connect with?
I don’t want to make a movie about sexual politics where she’s a woman, that’s a man. I wanted to make the movie where her femininity and her womanhood has nothing to do with anything. She’s just a person in the world who’s tough. And she’s looking for chosen family because she believes she’s lost her tribe in a horrible incident of violence. And then I can utilise her to tell a story that I’m interested in telling and make her a person that I believe, I guess, I’m going to say reflects me. But ultimately, at the end of the day, I believe empathy and kindness is far more important. Historically, Sonja was a product of rape, and I was never interested in that at all. I think using sexual violence as an excuse for a woman to become powerful is a terrible, very dated narrative.
How did you find working with genre-favourite Robert Sheehan?
Well, he’s the brightest light on any set that I’ve been on. He is by orders of magnitude, one of the most talented young actors I’ve ever worked with. He is extraordinary. And the great thing about Robert is that he’s a playwright. He’s a writer, an author, a creative spirit. I was astonished he even wanted to do Red Sonja. I mean, I was like, this doesn’t feel like a good fit, but he went for it. And even though he treats it (with the greatest respect Robert if you ever read this) he treats it as a piece of fluff, he still absolutely brought everything to it. There were days on the set when he would make a mistake on the script, but he didn’t stop. He just goes with the mistake, and he explores the character through these moments. To me, as a director, the words are not sacrosanct. The performance is sacrosanct. The intent is sacrosanct. I’m not Manet. I’m not Aaron Sorkin. I mean, with the greatest respect to Matilda and every other cast member who worked in this movie, Robert Sheen raised the bar on this film. He made me understand my own film better.
So now that Red Sonja is out in the world, what’s next for you?
My holy grail is a book by Michael Moorcock called The War Hound and the World’s Pain, which is about a knight in the Hundred Years’ War in 13th-century Germany, and he’s tasked by the devil to go and find the Holy Grail so that the devil can make peace with God. It’s this wonderful Bergman-esque fantasy philosophical movie, and I’ve loved it ever since I was 15 years old. And I’ve been chasing it. Moorcock, who was a fan of my Solomon Kane, said “Go do it!” and then David Goyer had the rights to all of Moorcock’s books bought for him by Skydance. And I wrote to David, who I’d worked with, and asked, “Can I have Warhound?” and he said, “No, I’m using that character in the pilot.” And I was like, “Oh shit!” Now I’m not sure if that’s going ahead, so I need to get back in touch with Skydance, who do Reacher and Altered Carbon and ask if I can just carve out this one thing and spend the rest of my life trying to make it.
RED SONJA is on digital platforms from August 18th and Blu-ray and DVD from September 8th. Distributed by Signature Entertainment.
