Having conquered all the other lands, Emperor Dragan's (Robert Sheehan) minions turn to the forest to fell the trees for lumber to build the Empire's growing cities. They are also there to look for Hyrkania's ancient secrets, which the Emperor jealously covets.
Sonja attempts to fight them but is overpowered and sent to fight in the great gladiatorial arena in the capital.
No good will come of this.
CW: bloody violence but it's very comic book
M. J. Bassett's iteration of this sword and sorcery staple is cheap as fuck, looks it and struggles with a weak cast and clunky dialogue but hear me out: it's actually OK.
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take and this takes aim at every epic sword and sorcery target and gets every one of them on the target. Not a bullseye or a high scoring hit, but a hit. They also do things a less committed movie would have skipped like the baboon faced characters and all the magictech stuff that exists because Emperor Dragan is essentially a tech bro who's "disrupting" the old ways. These little additions give it a much less generic feel than it might otherwise have had.
It is a huge slice of cheese but intent matters and this reads as an uncynical attempt to deliver some classic uncomplicated heroic sword and sorcery although it's light on the latter. It's predictable but not tedious and but for some of the violence might actually be a good movie for families/teens.
To address the elephant in the room there's essentially no titillation and when they offer Sonja the classic chain mail bikini a (quite funny) joke is made of it and she just wears it for the rest of the movie. It just exists and the movie is less leery than many a thing with less contentious costume.
No it's not objectively good, but it's firmly in "fun B-movie" territory so it's a 6/10 because I enjoyed it. Maybe give it a chance.