Originally Posted by
AndrewCrossett
Elements of a successful Red Sonja movie:
1. Cast a lead who doesn't just look good in a chainmail bikini, but who can act, perform action sequences, and handle fight choreography.
2. Give the character some personality... not a stony-faced cypher who speaks in Conanesque monosyllables. And give her some moral ambiguity... she shouldn't be a heroic goody-goody.
3. Don't rely on a solid wall of CGI. Use practical effects and save the CGI for when it's really effective. See: Game of Thrones, or the fantasy movies of the 1980's. Think of how good the Harryhausen films still look today, without a computer in sight.
4. Don't go to slo-mo and jump cuts every time there's a damned fight scene. Choreograph it, get actors and stunties who can do the choreography and a director who can direct it, and let the action flow. You don't enhance dancers by showing them in slow motion, and you don't enhance fighters that way either. Study episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess.
5. Use humor, but not to the point of parody. Get a writer and director who can derive humor naturally from the story (like Whedon, Gunn, etc.) and not just shoehorn jokes in here and there where the formula says you should insert a wisecrack (Michael Bay).