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seriousficLet me just preface this review by saying, even though this is a defense of the movie, I'm not saying anyone is a brainless moron for disagreeing with me or that they "don't get it." It's entirely possible that you get Sucker Punch and still don't like it. I'm just not in that boat. Okay? Clear? Cool.
One of the criticisms I think Sucker Punch is getting a lot of is that it's just a brainless action movie. I'm not sure how fair that is. It is most enjoyable as spectacle with an excuse plot (quick, last time you watched a kung-fu movie, how much did you care about the characters? Were you ever worried that Jackie Chan would die? Same principle). But the themes and subtext are there. Not developed as well as they could be, but there is a creative vision behind this movie, which is more than you can say for any of Sam Worthington's movies. What was the moral of Clash of the Titans, anyway? If someone rapes your mother, you should trust him and accept his help, because he'll turn out to be a pretty cool guy?
(Crap, I was being facetious, but that was the moral, wasn't it?)
So I think Sucker Punch is a very ambitious, fascinating failure, one that's still entertaining to watch. And the thing is, its reach achingly exceeds its grasp. As a visual storyteller, Snyder is great, but as a regular storyteller… not so much. If he'd just gotten an actual, you know, writer to do a pass on the screenplay and say "Okay, I see what you're trying to do here, but have you considered doing this instead of that?", people would be cheering this movie. In fact, get a woman to do it, have a female perspective on the whole thing. Couldn't hurt.
One of the pitfalls, I think, is the action sequences. They're very well done, which is after all what you want from an action movie, and there's some great showmanship there. Whether they're in the traditional Snyder speed-ramping, a jittery handheld camera, or one long CGI-assisted take, the action is always fun. It's empty calories, sure, but still tasty. But it would've been so easy to do more with it. Okay, so the conceit is that in this brothel, the heroine is doing dances to distract her captors while the rest of the cast gathers a necessary item for the escape. Only instead of seeing the dance, we see her fighting Commie robot terrorists (seriously, watch the backstory videos on this, it makes the whole film kinda a stealth parody). After a little thought, that makes sense. The film is condemning her captors for leering at her, so instead of hypocritically showing us what they're leering at, it shows us the power fantasy that Babydoll is feeling, sort of like how a musical's dance numbers would demonstrate a character's emotions. It still would've been neat to intercut between the fighting she's doing and the moves she's pulling off in the 'real world', but I get how it would be hard to visualize an interpretive dance so good that it hypnotizes men.
But the thing is, and now it really sounds like I'm ripping on the movie, if you're setting a whole movie inside a character's psyche, it should be an interesting psyche. The action scenes should be full of thematic connotations and fun "world-hopping," with events on one layer of the fantasy affecting events on another. That's just cool. And there's a little of this, but there needs to be more, and again, this is where Snyder's skills as a storyteller both fail and shine. He's great at actually doing the action, but when he's actually setting it inside a larger framework, not so much. So, with the admittedly awesome score in place, it kinda feels like we're watching a collection of music videos for badass action movies in the war, fantasy, and sci-fi genres. I like music videos, but I like good movies more. Again, the action scenes should work like songs in a really butch musical, showing us the character's journey instead of just being there. It works as is, but it's only good enough for government work. There's a real story to be told, even among the bullets and orcs and hover-trains, and it's a shame it was neglected.
Speaking of fantasy, let's go to the issue of the costuming, which is where a lot of the controversy comes in. You know, is Snyder actually making a feminist film or is he just covering his ass while putting young ladies in skimpy costumes? In my opinion… and keep in mind, I didn't even know that mind-rape was an offensive word, so clearly I'm just a few steps away from making a lady-suit out of a Senator's daughter… it makes sense from a feminist viewpoint. In the brothel, they're all smeared-on make-up and dingily exploitative outfits (which may explain the cutting of the film's dance numbers, which would've given the brothel a more glamorous feel). It's not meant to be sexy, and the camera doesn't leer at them, instead emphasizing their vulnerability. Then in the fantasy world, they look good, but the camera still doesn't leer at them. Their sexiness is part of their confidence and power, just like how looking good in a tux is part of the James Bond fantasy.
I realize that can come off as a bit having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too, with the bad exploitation of the brothel and the good exploitation of the fantasy worlds ("How dare you leer at these sexy outfits! Leer at these sexy outfits."), but there's another distinction I'd like to make, and that's genre. If you're into comics, you probably know that one of the feminist criticisms is sexualization. Female characters never wear jeans and a T-shirt when they can wear a belly shirt and the world's tightest pair of jeans.
For me, I look at the context and draw a line between comics that are trying to be taken seriously and that those are a bit looser. To jump into TV shows for a metaphor, if an episode of Law & Order had the female characters dressing in hot pants and low-cut bustiers for no reason, I wouldn't be able to take it too seriously. However, if Charlie's Angels did the same thing, I'd give it a pass because it's supposed to be cheesy and soapy. Likewise with Legend of the Seeker (which also balanced out the cleavage with plenty of shirtless scenes and revealing costumes for the male characters). So Power Girl having a revealing costume, for me, is okay, but Huntress having a revealing costume is stupid, because the Super Family and the Bat Family are in different genres.
So, back to Sucker Punch, there's a good deal of popcorn movie in its DNA, so I don't mind that the characters are wearing ridiculous outfits while they fight dragons and Nazi cyborgs. Of course their outfits are ridiculous. They're fighting dragons and Nazi cyborgs. It'd be even sillier if they were dressed in head-to-toe Kevlar. But that's just me.
Jumping back into criticism for a moment, one of the screenplay's failings is the final reveal that the entire story did take place in reality, just filtered through Babydoll's brothel hallucination. In its own way, this is even more unsatisfying than the Keyser Soze reveal in The Usual Suspects. There, at least we could kinda guess what had really happened. In Sucker Punch, we're meant to understand that Babydoll actually did have the power to enthrall men with a dance, that a hospital orderly shot two mental patients in the head (or something), and a chef could go back to work within a week of stabbing another mental patient to death. There's blurring the line between fantasy and reality, then there's just throwing fantasy and reality into the air and saying "fuck it!"
Okay, hey, elephant in the corner time. Let's talk about rape. Although Sucker Punch doesn't have any on-screen rape (or off-screen, for that matter), it is a constant threat in the characters' lives, which makes sense, given that the film's subject matter is misogyny and oppression. So, again, not saying anyone is wrong for taking issue with this, but just in my opinion, the fact that rape is organic to the story being told redeems the plot device. If there were a James Bond movie where the villain raped a girl just to show how evil he was, I'd be offended, because Bond movies are about spies, but since Sucker Punch has its spotlight on sexual politics, I feel like it's earned the right to start that conversation.
Final thoughts: This actually makes me excited for Superman. With a good, Goyer-written, Nolan-approved screenplay to burn through, I think Snyder could take his obvious command of action and visuals and bring out the best of both worlds. And I'm hopeful that Snyder's feminist leanings, however flawed they could be, manifest with an appropriately awesome Lois Lane.
BTW, for what it's worth, the movie passes the Bechdel Test with ease, and none of the female characters are defined by their relationships with men. So, you can always use that to troll people.
"I want to watch Predator, but does it pass the Bechdel Test?"
"Oh, like Sucker Punch?"
("I wish Inception had done more crazy shit with the dreams, like ninja pirate cyborg zombie—"
"Oh, like Sucker Punch?")
One of the criticisms I think Sucker Punch is getting a lot of is that it's just a brainless action movie. I'm not sure how fair that is. It is most enjoyable as spectacle with an excuse plot (quick, last time you watched a kung-fu movie, how much did you care about the characters? Were you ever worried that Jackie Chan would die? Same principle). But the themes and subtext are there. Not developed as well as they could be, but there is a creative vision behind this movie, which is more than you can say for any of Sam Worthington's movies. What was the moral of Clash of the Titans, anyway? If someone rapes your mother, you should trust him and accept his help, because he'll turn out to be a pretty cool guy?
(Crap, I was being facetious, but that was the moral, wasn't it?)
So I think Sucker Punch is a very ambitious, fascinating failure, one that's still entertaining to watch. And the thing is, its reach achingly exceeds its grasp. As a visual storyteller, Snyder is great, but as a regular storyteller… not so much. If he'd just gotten an actual, you know, writer to do a pass on the screenplay and say "Okay, I see what you're trying to do here, but have you considered doing this instead of that?", people would be cheering this movie. In fact, get a woman to do it, have a female perspective on the whole thing. Couldn't hurt.
One of the pitfalls, I think, is the action sequences. They're very well done, which is after all what you want from an action movie, and there's some great showmanship there. Whether they're in the traditional Snyder speed-ramping, a jittery handheld camera, or one long CGI-assisted take, the action is always fun. It's empty calories, sure, but still tasty. But it would've been so easy to do more with it. Okay, so the conceit is that in this brothel, the heroine is doing dances to distract her captors while the rest of the cast gathers a necessary item for the escape. Only instead of seeing the dance, we see her fighting Commie robot terrorists (seriously, watch the backstory videos on this, it makes the whole film kinda a stealth parody). After a little thought, that makes sense. The film is condemning her captors for leering at her, so instead of hypocritically showing us what they're leering at, it shows us the power fantasy that Babydoll is feeling, sort of like how a musical's dance numbers would demonstrate a character's emotions. It still would've been neat to intercut between the fighting she's doing and the moves she's pulling off in the 'real world', but I get how it would be hard to visualize an interpretive dance so good that it hypnotizes men.
But the thing is, and now it really sounds like I'm ripping on the movie, if you're setting a whole movie inside a character's psyche, it should be an interesting psyche. The action scenes should be full of thematic connotations and fun "world-hopping," with events on one layer of the fantasy affecting events on another. That's just cool. And there's a little of this, but there needs to be more, and again, this is where Snyder's skills as a storyteller both fail and shine. He's great at actually doing the action, but when he's actually setting it inside a larger framework, not so much. So, with the admittedly awesome score in place, it kinda feels like we're watching a collection of music videos for badass action movies in the war, fantasy, and sci-fi genres. I like music videos, but I like good movies more. Again, the action scenes should work like songs in a really butch musical, showing us the character's journey instead of just being there. It works as is, but it's only good enough for government work. There's a real story to be told, even among the bullets and orcs and hover-trains, and it's a shame it was neglected.
Speaking of fantasy, let's go to the issue of the costuming, which is where a lot of the controversy comes in. You know, is Snyder actually making a feminist film or is he just covering his ass while putting young ladies in skimpy costumes? In my opinion… and keep in mind, I didn't even know that mind-rape was an offensive word, so clearly I'm just a few steps away from making a lady-suit out of a Senator's daughter… it makes sense from a feminist viewpoint. In the brothel, they're all smeared-on make-up and dingily exploitative outfits (which may explain the cutting of the film's dance numbers, which would've given the brothel a more glamorous feel). It's not meant to be sexy, and the camera doesn't leer at them, instead emphasizing their vulnerability. Then in the fantasy world, they look good, but the camera still doesn't leer at them. Their sexiness is part of their confidence and power, just like how looking good in a tux is part of the James Bond fantasy.
I realize that can come off as a bit having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too, with the bad exploitation of the brothel and the good exploitation of the fantasy worlds ("How dare you leer at these sexy outfits! Leer at these sexy outfits."), but there's another distinction I'd like to make, and that's genre. If you're into comics, you probably know that one of the feminist criticisms is sexualization. Female characters never wear jeans and a T-shirt when they can wear a belly shirt and the world's tightest pair of jeans.
For me, I look at the context and draw a line between comics that are trying to be taken seriously and that those are a bit looser. To jump into TV shows for a metaphor, if an episode of Law & Order had the female characters dressing in hot pants and low-cut bustiers for no reason, I wouldn't be able to take it too seriously. However, if Charlie's Angels did the same thing, I'd give it a pass because it's supposed to be cheesy and soapy. Likewise with Legend of the Seeker (which also balanced out the cleavage with plenty of shirtless scenes and revealing costumes for the male characters). So Power Girl having a revealing costume, for me, is okay, but Huntress having a revealing costume is stupid, because the Super Family and the Bat Family are in different genres.
So, back to Sucker Punch, there's a good deal of popcorn movie in its DNA, so I don't mind that the characters are wearing ridiculous outfits while they fight dragons and Nazi cyborgs. Of course their outfits are ridiculous. They're fighting dragons and Nazi cyborgs. It'd be even sillier if they were dressed in head-to-toe Kevlar. But that's just me.
Jumping back into criticism for a moment, one of the screenplay's failings is the final reveal that the entire story did take place in reality, just filtered through Babydoll's brothel hallucination. In its own way, this is even more unsatisfying than the Keyser Soze reveal in The Usual Suspects. There, at least we could kinda guess what had really happened. In Sucker Punch, we're meant to understand that Babydoll actually did have the power to enthrall men with a dance, that a hospital orderly shot two mental patients in the head (or something), and a chef could go back to work within a week of stabbing another mental patient to death. There's blurring the line between fantasy and reality, then there's just throwing fantasy and reality into the air and saying "fuck it!"
Okay, hey, elephant in the corner time. Let's talk about rape. Although Sucker Punch doesn't have any on-screen rape (or off-screen, for that matter), it is a constant threat in the characters' lives, which makes sense, given that the film's subject matter is misogyny and oppression. So, again, not saying anyone is wrong for taking issue with this, but just in my opinion, the fact that rape is organic to the story being told redeems the plot device. If there were a James Bond movie where the villain raped a girl just to show how evil he was, I'd be offended, because Bond movies are about spies, but since Sucker Punch has its spotlight on sexual politics, I feel like it's earned the right to start that conversation.
Final thoughts: This actually makes me excited for Superman. With a good, Goyer-written, Nolan-approved screenplay to burn through, I think Snyder could take his obvious command of action and visuals and bring out the best of both worlds. And I'm hopeful that Snyder's feminist leanings, however flawed they could be, manifest with an appropriately awesome Lois Lane.
BTW, for what it's worth, the movie passes the Bechdel Test with ease, and none of the female characters are defined by their relationships with men. So, you can always use that to troll people.
"I want to watch Predator, but does it pass the Bechdel Test?"
"Oh, like Sucker Punch?"
("I wish Inception had done more crazy shit with the dreams, like ninja pirate cyborg zombie—"
"Oh, like Sucker Punch?")
