Sucker Punch Post-Release Discussion - Page 4

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcnooj82 

Interesting.  What exactly was the question that resulted in that answer? 

 

Your style is very polarizing, but how tough is it to make sure those flourishes have something to say as opposed to just being empty or even embodying what it seeks to deconstruct?

I guess that’s the irony that I enjoy. I couldn’t make this film and I feel like the film is incredibly dishonest if you film it like in a real institution and you really are in WWI and the girls are of the period and everything feels like [reality]. There’s that version of the movie that’s like heart-attack serious, and by the way, way more manipulative, and probably everyone would be like, oh, this is cool, I totally get it and it’s awesome – it’s original and crazy.

But to me it’s a more dishonest movie because the irony is so important to me; someone asked me, why did you dress the girls like that? And I said, I didn’t dress them that way, you did. That’s what pop culture demands, not me. And that’s fun for me — I love that when confronted with the exact formula that they request, they get all freaked out by it, because they’re like, “wait a minute – he’s right. I do like this, and maybe that’s my fault.”

Taken from http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/03/25/%E2%80%98sucker-punch%E2%80%99-director-zack-snyder-defends-the-substance-in-his-stylish-films/

He said that someone asked him why he dressed the women that way. (EDIT: Park Chan-wookie beat me to it.)

From the same Film School Rejects interview someone quoted on the other page, he puts it a little differently:

Would you say the film is a critique on geek culture’s sexism?

It is, absolutely. I find it interesting, in a lot of ways, that this movie – of all the movies I’ve made – has been universally hated by fanboys, which I find really interesting. It’s like a fanboy indictment, in some ways. They can’t have fun with the geek culture sexual hang ups.

I thought it was basically you commenting on those attendants at Comic-Con who shout, “You’re hot!” at beautiful cast members.

Yeah! 100%. They don’t know how to be around it. It’s funny because someone one asked me about why I dressed the girls like that, and I said, “Do you not get the metaphor there? The girls are in a brothel performing for men in the dark. In the fantasy sequences, the men in the dark are us. The men in the dark are basically me; dorky sci-fi kids.”

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Originally Posted by Sebastian OB View Post
How is this a good thing for art?

So, wait a minute. A filmmaker who attempts to make a big budget rumination on female oppression (specifically towards those in the target audience of this kind of film) isn't good for art? I subscribe to the belief that a filmmaker trying to excise his demons through film is in no way detrimental to "art". This isn't a great film or anything of the sort, yet this is the only Snyder film to date that I could genuinely feel the passion behind the story and visuals. I absolutely thought I would hate this film, but its strange dream-logic and themes kept me intrigued and made me think. Whether or not you want to massacre me as a retarded devotee to Snyder, I will always take interesting failure over the polished but lifeless shit that floods cinemas year-round.

I don't know, I just find the "is this good for art?" question hollow. What does "good for art' even mean, exactly? Anyways, I digress.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parker 

Uhhh, okay....

Well, I think you had it right.  The movie is something of a cruel joke.  Both on the girls, and on the audience.  There is no point where Baby Doll is ever going to be free.

I think it's helpful to look at each level through the person who is supposed to be her guide or mentor.  The most "real" level, she is a counselor who only can teach the girls to cope with their surroundings, rather than have any hope of transcending them.

The second level Baby Doll imagines that ineffectiveness as akin to someone whoring the girls out to give them a purpose for existing in the first place.

On the final level the guide is Scott Glenn, who starts out as a cliched "wise man", but settles into more of a Charlie's Angels kind of role.

In every case the mentor fails the girls.  In every case the actions the girls are set upon require are a lot of effort to little purpose.  Even when one of them is "free" in the end, she's getting on a bus driven by Glenn.  The girls never overcome the world of men.

It could have been a good movie if Snyder had made the story and characters something besides utterly perfunctory.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bailey 

 

Well, I think you had it right.  The movie is something of a cruel joke.  Both on the girls, and on the audience.  There is no point where Baby Doll is ever going to be free.

 

I think it's helpful to look at each level through the person who is supposed to be her guide or mentor.  The most "real" level, she is a counselor who only can teach the girls to cope with their surroundings, rather than have any hope of transcending them.

 

The second level Baby Doll imagines that ineffectiveness as akin to someone whoring the girls out to give them a purpose for existing in the first place.

 

On the final level the guide is Scott Glenn, who starts out as a cliched "wise man", but settles into more of a Charlie's Angels kind of role.

 

In every case the mentor fails the girls.  In every case the actions the girls are set upon require are a lot of effort to little purpose.  Even when one of them is "free" in the end, she's getting on a bus driven by Glenn.  The girls never overcome the world of men.

 

It could have been a good movie if Snyder had made the story and characters something besides utterly perfunctory.

I see what you're saying, but I think you're giving Snyder too much credit.  Even if there is that much thought into every single fantasy level, it just renders the movie more and more pointless, and there isn't enough sense of irony at play to make any of this work.  If the story is meant to suggest there is escape from male oppression, then that makes the whole thing even more of a myoginistic mess then it already is, with a triumphant sounding Sweet Pea on the soundtrack telling us we have the tools we need, and that now is the time to fight.  If Snyder is actually saying "hahaha, you think you can fight your way out of this ...BUT YOU CAN'T" then he's putting a sincere cherry on top of that with that voice over that suggests that they can, which means his thoughts about feminism is more troubling then otherwise suspected.

On the other hand, if he's serious about Sweet Pea getting free, then the male dominated ending is suspicious, as is Baby Doll's willing lobotomy, as are her male dominated fantasies.  I don't buy that Snyder is saying that even a woman's imagination are dominated by male cliches, and if that's what he is saying then portraying it like that isn't doing him any favors. 

Also, the more quotes I read about his take ("excuses" I'd call them) concerning the film distance me form them even more.  The guy is patting himself on the back way too hard for this abysmal failure and then saying "the fanboys dont' get it" in the same breath.  I'm not a fanboy, I "get" the movie (what there is to get) but that doesn't mean that there were too many missteps to count. 

I do think there's a sense of irony in the movie.  Snyder is not saying you can't fight your way out of it, he's saying you can't fight your way out of it using this very specific method of turning yourself into an "empowered" sex object.   And I don't think it's saying that even Baby Doll's fantasy life is dominated by thoughts of men, because the dreams happen just as she's being lobotomized, so, in retrospect, they take on a sense of bitter irony.  She doesn't even kill any men in her fantasies.  They're all faceless or grotesque representations of masculinity.  I think that's important.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Park Chan-wookie 

 

Your style is very polarizing, but how tough is it to make sure those flourishes have something to say as opposed to just being empty or even embodying what it seeks to deconstruct?

 

I guess that’s the irony that I enjoy. I couldn’t make this film and I feel like the film is incredibly dishonest if you film it like in a real institution and you really are in WWI and the girls are of the period and everything feels like [reality]. There’s that version of the movie that’s like heart-attack serious, and by the way, way more manipulative, and probably everyone would be like, oh, this is cool, I totally get it and it’s awesome – it’s original and crazy.

 

But to me it’s a more dishonest movie because the irony is so important to me; someone asked me, why did you dress the girls like that? And I said, I didn’t dress them that way, you did. That’s what pop culture demands, not me. And that’s fun for me — I love that when confronted with the exact formula that they request, they get all freaked out by it, because they’re like, “wait a minute – he’s right. I do like this, and maybe that’s my fault.”

 

Taken from http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/03/25/%E2%80%98sucker-punch%E2%80%99-director-zack-snyder-defends-the-substance-in-his-stylish-films/

 

Funny, I don't remember getting consulted on those costumes.  Why can't you nerds let Zack Snyder make great movies? If he wasn't mock catering to you, this would have been an Oscar shoe-in.

On a related note,  I'm a pretty die-hard Watchmen apologist, and was willing to write-off Sucker Punch as an experiment gone dull, but stuff like this is quickly pushing me into the "Zack Snyder's kind of a dumb ass" camp. Either make a smart, entertaining movie, or make something that's balls-out, exploitative fun. Don't flub both then make excuses about how it's the fans' fault for not getting it.

EDIT: I think this sums it up nicely. I realize you're not going to get everyone with every film, but when your goal is more than none I think the bar's a little low.

Have your films been regarded or judged in the way you intended?

I honestly feel like a great majority of the time people just missed it — they missed the movie entirely. They missed the point of the movie. Like when I talk to people about “Sucker Punch,” they would say this is a hollow romp with these girls dressed like they’re from Frederick’s of Hollywood — and I’m like, really? You just need to watch the movie more carefully. But if zero percent of people said, it’s not a de-constructivist comment on pop culture, then I might go, you know what? I blew it.

Snyder certainly isn't subtle, but did anyone else notice his subtle mirror shot where the girls are talking and the camera basically rotated around the wall and the second half of the shot was mirrored? Not sure if my description makes a lick of sense, but I thought that was pretty cool. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by JuddL 

It was a noble failure, but it's still a disaster of a film.  I like Snyder.  I think Watchman is flawed, but I think there are sequences that are genuinely brilliant.  I wanted to like Sucker Punch but it is sloppy and incoherent.  I don't know exactly where production went wrong (probably at the script stage), but the movie fucking blows even if it is interesting to watch as a cinematic curiosity.

 

Pretty much nails my thoughts on Sucker Punch, and Watchmen as well. I was bored to tears during Sucker Punch despite some of the gorgeous visuals. I still think Watchmen is just about the best film version of the material we could have gotten, despite it's flaws.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nexus-7 

Snyder certainly isn't subtle, but did anyone else notice his subtle mirror shot where the girls are talking and the camera basically rotated around the wall and the second half of the shot was mirrored? Not sure if my description makes a lick of sense, but I thought that was pretty cool. 

 

Yeah, I caught that.  Cool trick that may indicate that everything in this world is backwards!?  Oh, Snyder...  you do go on!  

I think I would've caught it regardless, but I think it helped that my attention was hardly on what the girls were talking about.  It's so not interesting!

Another interesting take.

Quick question.  I was under the impression that Baby Doll accidentally shot and killed her sister while trying to shoot her stepfather.  Am I wrong?  Or was that meant to be ambiguous?  Or was it simply unclear storytelling?

I ask because I had a friend who thought the stepfather killed her little sister.  The writer of the article from Martin's link seems to think that is definitely what happened as well..

EDIT:  Fascinating and articulate review from someone with a very specific view on the subject matter.  Definitely gets me thinking back on the movie.  Never seen 'rape' mentioned so much in a review.

EDIT2: Some good comments after the review as well.  One of them does mention their opinion that Baby Doll did accidentally shoot and kill her sister.

It's certainly implied that Baby Doll's bullet ricocheted and hit her sister. I watched it again at that "watch the first six minutes" thing and while it's easy on first viewing to assume the stepfather did it (the last time you see the sister alive is when Baby Doll is still outside), it's pretty clear that Baby Doll did it by accident. You see the light bulb shatter, you see the steam pipe hissing with a hole in it (foreshadowing the creatures who emit steam when killed).

Snyder had to cut 18 minutes to get a PG-13 and, I presume, for time reasons, so if there's a director's cut on disc maybe some of the criticisms of its being incoherent might be assuaged. Maybe one of the things he had to show more obliquely in order to avoid an R was the sister's death.

Some stuff the MPAA objected to was, as usual, stupid. The dude who played the brothel pimp/asylum orderly said, "There were things that they found questionable, in quite an abstract way. For instance, I’ll give you this one, at one point I say to the girls 'you’re plotting to take away my most precious possessions, your very selves'. The ratings board said 'you can’t say your very selves'. There was some sort of implied sexuality in 'possessing' them. But I can shoot people point blank!"

Oscar Isaac has officially screwed his Hollywood career.  He dared speak out against the MPAA!!!

As bored as I was with the film, I'm pretty interested in seeing what Snyder had originally intended.  Interesting that the MPAA's issues with the film come across particularly strict.  Almost as if they treated it like an 'independent' film without major studio backing as opposed to the big budget WB movie that it is.  They're usually pretty lenient with the objectionable content in bigger movies.

Baby Doll hit the bulb behind the father while the sister was on the right, so it's not exactly clear visually, but I guess we are supposed to think it was ricochet.

I really think the whole thing is a huge well-made criticism of geek culture and females in it, without ever being overly dark, and Snyder seems to confirm this in his interviews. He gets shit for not having made an emotional action flick and he gets shit for creating a lousy drama in overstylized MTV visuals that attempts to be clever. It's no wonder people are disappointed, because most of them don't see what Snyder actually had in mind. Of course, it's his fault that it's not clearer to see, but then I guess it's supposed to be quite hidden.

I mean, it ends with the lead rapist singing a love song with the girls dancing to it, all in joy. That alone says all.

Also Baby Doll touches her sister and her hand comes away bloody. The stepfather isn't armed. I really wouldn't be surprised if a previous cut made it clearer and the MPAA had a thing about an underage girl getting killed in a PG-13 film.

How old is Baby Doll supposed to be, anyway? I know all the actresses are in their twenties (in a couple of cases, closer to thirty than to twenty), but Baby Doll in particular read as teenage to me.

When she gets in the institute her entry paper says she's 20.

Ah. I'd forgotten that.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Myers 

I mean, it ends with the lead rapist singing a love song with the girls dancing to it, all in joy. That alone says all.

Not just any love song, either. Think of the title. Then think of how women in institutions are put in the ideal state to be raped.

I assumed that the intention was that the Step Father wrote a bullshit age on the asylum sheet, and that Baby Doll was actually under 18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Blank 

Ah. I'd forgotten that.
 

Not just any love song, either. Think of the title. Then think of how women in institutions are put in the ideal state to be raped.

Well, technically, Snyder wanted the movie to end on this:

While Love is the Drug is supposed to play in the first 1/3rd of the film

I don't agree with it, but here's a fairly well written defense of the movie that shares some things in common with those of you who defend it.

I link it here mostly because one of the comments to the piece really speaks to my argument against the defenders.  Quoted below. 

I've read this article twice and still feel unconvinced. The author talks about how everybody else in the critic field is misreading the film, and then proceeds to give us his own (correct) reading, which pretty much seems to be: "surely the filmmaker wasn't serious when he made this". The rest of the article is a search for the twinkle in the eye that will reveal us that, yes, it all was ironic and tongue in cheek and meant to make us feel dirty and guilty that we enjoyed such a hollow and exploitative narrative. Sin is in the viewer's eye, not in the filmmaker.
Is it so? The narrative can be hollow, derivative, cliche-ridden and fragmented because the narrator wants it exactly like that, and has gone through great pains to make it so. Or, in a much simpler explanation, it is exactly like that because the narrator failed to make it deeper, richer, more coherent and original.

I've been searching for reactions to the movie different from my own, and I admit being shaken by reviews where female viewers confess an emotional connection to the plight of the protagonists, and find all those "fetishized" action scenes exhilarating and rewarding. They disagree with the derisive reactions of most critics, and yet they praise the movie for the opposite reasons of the author of the article above.

A narrative either is ironic or it is not. You can't have it both ways. So perhaps this is a perfect Kuleshov movie, where each viewer extracts from it the meaning s/he wants, or needs. In which case NO reading is a misreading.

The article has a lot valid points that I subscribe to, however I think he goes a bit too far in regards to stuff like dialogue or the done on purpose cliches.

The dialogue I think...is all Zack, I dont think there is any kind of agenda in regards to subverting bad dialogue...and about supposed cliche emotional scenes or whatever, again, I dont think Zack is taking the piss in a scene like

As someone who may be thought of by others in the thread as defending the film too much, I will disagree with that (largely excellent) article on one point.  While I thought that the film was fairly successful on a conceptual level, and characters who are purposely empty and talk in cliches would fit very comfortably into that concept (and I said as much about the guru character, at least); even if that was Snyder's aim, and the movie executes it perfectly, that doesn't make it good.  Maybe it sounds good on paper, but in practice it's still non-characters speaking bad dialogue in service of a trite story.  Someone like Tarantino can subvert genre cliches while still writing great characters and stories for them to live in. (Although, there is Death Proof. But still, that has Stuntman Mike... and the girls, even if you don't buy into the "authentically bad" argument, are at least better characters than those of Sucker Punch.)

Also, if Snyder's doing that, it worked much better in 300.  Because of the propaganda framing device, for one thing.  But also because he got to play with the visuals more, which made for a trippy effect-- instead of his concept dictating that all the action sequences were, by their very nature, totally familiar to us.  (He worked a few gestures of self awareness in there, but largely the action scenes were something you didn't actually need to watch once you understood what he was doing... and that is a pretty big flaw.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bailey 

As someone who may be thought of by others in the thread as defending the film too much, I will disagree with that (largely excellent) article on one point.  While I thought that the film was fairly successful on a conceptual level, and characters who are purposely empty and talk in cliches would fit very comfortably into that concept (and I said as much about the guru character, at least); even if that was Snyder's aim, and the movie executes it perfectly, that doesn't make it good.  Maybe it sounds good on paper, but in practice it's still non-characters speaking bad dialogue in service of a trite story.  Someone like Tarantino can subvert genre cliches while still writing great characters and stories for them to live in. (Although, there is Death Proof. But still, that has Stuntman Mike... and the girls, even if you don't buy into the "authentically bad" argument, are at least better characters than those of Sucker Punch.)

 

 

Agreed.  I still don't buy that Snyder was going for all of this, but even if he was it's sort of besides the point because the film is still an ugly, messy chore to sit through (my opinion). 

And I think what Tarantino was doing in Death Proof was embracing exploitation movies as someone who truly understands them.  By embracing them, he embraces his obsessions and fetishes and themes and elongates them, stretches them out, indulges in them.  You could argue that Death Proof is indulgent, but that's the point of the film.  Why does it have relentless shots of feet and endless dialogues scenes punctuated by short, brutal violence (even more so then usual)?  Because that's what a Tarantino grindhouse movie would be like.  Not like Hobo with a Shotgun or Machete but  slow, talky, and...footy.

That's a good point.  Tarantino is doing what floats his boat, not chastising the viewer for their obsessions*.  Again, this is one of the reasons the propaganda film context made 300 more successful in that regard.  It went down easier.

* Once again, assuming that Snyder is even doing that- which I think he is, but I can see why others don't.

But I don't think that, even if that was Snyder's intention (and it probably was at least to some degree. I know he says it was), he fully understands what it means to "implicate his audience" like that. Kind of like how he seemed to think throwing nipples on Ozy's suit was suitable "deconstruction" of superhero films. He gets the broad idea and concept, but doesn't seem to understand the nuts and bolts. Or at the very least, he has no fucking clue how to execute these ideas.

Whatever his intentions may or may not have been, he fumbled it badly.

Someone mentioned the steam coming from the pipe foreshadowing the Nazi scene which made me consider something. I wonder if the three bloody fingers represent the red eyed samurai and is her getting over her guilt? I mention it because they flash back to the bloody fingers, pipe, lighter and gun right before the final lobotomy scene with Hamm.

In a movie that is so thematically and narratively fuzzy... I don't think that's a bad interpretation of the samurai.  I actually like the concept of it.

Quote:

 

Originally Posted by joeypants 

But I don't think that, even if that was Snyder's intention (and it probably was at least to some degree. I know he says it was), he fully understands what it means to "implicate his audience" like that. Kind of like how he seemed to think throwing nipples on Ozy's suit was suitable "deconstruction" of superhero films. He gets the broad idea and concept, but doesn't seem to understand the nuts and bolts. Or at the very least, he has no fucking clue how to execute these ideas.

Whatever his intentions may or may not have been, he fumbled it badly.

This.  I guess I admire Snyder's attempt to elevate his extravagant light show with an undercurrent of potentially interesting thematic ideas (gender politics, objectification, commentary on geek culture, etc), but I dont think any of it is as profound as he thinks it is and he is definitely not a good enough storyteller to make coherent sense of any of it.

The music really bothered me too.  I was a fan of the way Snyder used popular music in Watchmen (aside from the jarring inclusion of Hallelujah over that sex scene), but here its so conventional.  Stuff like 'Where Is My Mind' over the asylum montage was so painfully contrived and on-the-nose that it completely undercuts all the surreal strangeness hes trying to bring to the table with these musical numbers in the first place.  I'd be willing to cut Sucker Punch some significant slack if it were an actual musical (ala Moulin Rouge) - it has the potential to be something truly transcendent - but its not.  Instead its a series of slickly edited music video montages with boring remixes of songs I've already heard a million times.

Its been a while since a movie I really wanted to like collapsed in on itself in such a frustrating way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fuzzy dunlop 

This.  I guess I admire Snyder's attempt to elevate his extravagant light show with an undercurrent of potentially interesting thematic ideas (gender politics, objectification, commentary on geek culture, etc), but I dont think any of it is as profound as he thinks it is and he is definitely not a good enough storyteller to make coherent sense of any of it.

 

 

Again, I agree.  I think if he was trying to indite the audience for what they want out of this sort of movie, all he really ended up doing was indite himself.

I don't see why Sucker Punch would deserve more slack if it was a musical. Allowing for the fact that the musical numbers could add something not indicated, as presented in the film they're simply not necessary- and the article explains why very well.

As for Watchmen, I think there was a little more tweaking going on than simply putting nipples on the costumes.  That strikes me as too dismissive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bailey 

I don't see why Sucker Punch would deserve more slack if it was a musical. 

Maybe I misspoke.  I just think if this was an actual musical, Snyder's 'stream-of-consciousness' defense might be applicable; even if the narrative is just as muddy and nonsensical and the characters are just as hollow, singing and dancing (and, you know, interesting music) might feel much more organic and surreal in place of Snyder's awkward dialog and boring VH1 montages.  Right now, Snyder is definitely under the impression that his movie is a lot crazier than it actually is. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bailey 

 

 

As for Watchmen, I think there was a little more tweaking going on than simply putting nipples on the costumes.  That strikes me as too dismissive.

Yeah. I didn't want to do the whole laundry list thing. But I think it's a somewhat fair summation in that nothing else in the film goes any deeper than that in terms of "deconstruction." At least, nothing that isn't just being carried over from the book. 

For the most part, Snyder's pop song choices are often such a complete musical statement by themselves (or too loaded with their own cultural significance) to really work in concert with the images as mood or tonal enhancement. Not to mention that he uses edgy pop music often as a stand-in for THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE COOL. I don't know if it's because he doesn't have confidence in the visuals that so often the music, which happens to drown out the diagetic sound, is a surrogate for the emotion I should be getting from the storytelling. The opening in Sucker Punch is a perfect example of how muddled the effect is. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be thinking or feeling. The music's all creepy badass and slickly produced, the images are all operatic slo-mo and beautiful, but what I should be feeling is the tragedy that this girl's life and family are imploding within a matter of minutes. Instead, I'm thinking about how cool that gigantic pink button that fell on the floor is in real life and how Emily Browning sure looks purdy at 60fps.

The soundtrack here is like the alt-rock version of Forrest Gump, except swap out Where Is My Mind for Brown-Eyed Girl. Speaking of which, that song really works at the end of Fight Club because it's a strong full stop at the end of the film. To use a similar positive example from a Zack Snyder film, The Times They Are A Changin' feels like a confident gauntlet thrown down at the beginning of Watchmen. Partially because the montage is great, but also because it's an appropriately fresh context for the song. And I even love some of the score to that film too but, man, the rest of those pop songs don't really work there or here. (Okay, Army Of Me was pretty decent but it doesn't justify the rest of the song choices.)

Without wanting to derail this completely over to a WATCHMEN discussion, I'd have to say Snyder's use of "Boogie Man" was pretty inspired. (And I'm someone who views WATCHMEN as something less than a "noble failure" - as has been noted ad nauseum, he got all the surface details right but zoomed right past the heart of the story.)

I'm finally seeing this tonight and still don't know quite what to expect, the fact that this has generated four pages of discussion though pretty much guarantees I won't hate it

Ok so I didnt hate it, but I didnt love it either. As an audio visual experience in Imax its hard to beat but whether it actually means anything is open to debate. May have to watch it again to see which side of the fence I fall on....

It took me two viewings but I think I loved this movie. My favorite thing since Scott Pilgrim--obviously I love a good action fantasy. But I loved Pilgrim right away; Punch took some time to digest. Pilgrim, I think, was made for me and other receptive fellow nerds in a celebratory way, but Punch is self-reflective--it wants you to doubt your nerdery to some degree. How successful it is at that is obviously a YMMV situation, which explains the really divergent critical reactions. But my point here is that the movie with the girl in the sailor suit with the gun and the sword might be less of a pander than Scott Pilgrim.

Anyway--at the very least it's a really great live action Heavy Metal with a way better vignette-linking setup than that stupid locknar, right? Obviously intermingled with that Snyder's trying to do other things--perspective on his own obsessions, questions about the nerdy male gaze, the limits of fantasy and much of an "escape" the geek fantasy genres really provide, how empowering the action heroine really is (young geek girl reactions seem to view this film favorably, which I don't think Snyder would be opposed to--I don't think he's saying the female action/fantasy heroine is always a male prisoner...just that she is a lot of the time. Similarly--I don't think he's saying we're supposed to hate the action fantasies because Blue is loathsome--he just wants us to think about it), etc. I mean it doesn't hurt for ambition. And as Depton mentioned upthread--it's got heart. I'm really glad it exists and I wish it wasn't getting a fairly thoughtless critical pileon.

Now I think Snyder was going for his version of, like, a seriocomic tone? Not quite out-and-out camp--though that lounge cover of Love Is The Drug that we see bits of in the credits is blatant, joyful camp--but cool camp, detached camp. Which may be more obvious when we get the full version with the dance sequences...I think it would have been totally obvious with his original Ooh Child ending which will probably never get to see since this movie might make back its stated budget, but not more than that. (He said in that Film School Rejects interview he'd finish the original ending if Punch did well, and I don't think its done well enough for that.) But there's enough fun here, just with what we have. That scene with the Mayor rolling up with those glasses and that Queen/hip-hop mashup in the background is ridiculous, in a great way. And, um, Amber's plane! One wing has a propeller, one side is a jet! Vanessa frigging Hudgens firing a machine gun and screaming "TAKE THAT YOU UGLY MOTHERFUCKER!!!" With the -FUCKER cut off. (The PG-13ization of this movie also hurt it a lot, obviously.)

Specific things that annoyed me are Blondie's out-of-nowhere breakdown, and her and Amber's similarly out-of-nowhere deaths, and possibly those two characters in general, which I guess you can partially blame on the actresses (Amber's repeated "WHOA!"'s got on my nerves, but Snyder doesn't have to put them in there either) but they also aren't given nearly as much to do as Cornish and Malone. The breakdown seems to be purely for plot purposes--there's nothing before that to suggest Blondie is the weak link--and the deaths are of the "kill characters to make the bad guy look worse" type, which is always cheap (for me.) I get that he wanted some menace in the fantasies, but yeesh, two executions at once? And of two characters who are paired but I'm never sure why they're a pair, other than "they're the two that aren't sisters." In one of the interviews he mentions the brothel on-screen is less menacing than it's supposed to be (and I don't want to sound like I'm reflexively buying all his excuses for the current state of the film) so maybe before it looked less abrupt. Whatevs! I had a great time. Really curious now about the fuller version we'll get on disc. Right now the credits are teasing us with, like, glimpses of alternate versions of the characters (except Baby? I never notice her in the stage scenes--maybe her "stage" is always the high fantasy scenes) so we'll see how it all feels with those scenes fully integrated into the film.

You're correct, they never filmed a musical sequence for Baby Doll.

I agree about the Ooh Child ending.

In a way, I think I might feel that this movie will never be complete without that ending. Its just sounds so...right.

Hopefully we at least see it as an unfinished deleted scene on the blu-ray

As far as the multiple dance sequences, Im pretty positive they have all been collapsed into a single montage, played during Love is the Drug, pretty much like how it seems in the end credits.

Re: the original ending, I wonder how much of Abbie Cornish's voiceover was in it, or if it was absent entirely, and since it bookends the narration in the beginning I wonder if that was a later addition as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justinslot 

Re: the original ending, I wonder how much of Abbie Cornish's voiceover was in it, or if it was absent entirely, and since it bookends the narration in the beginning I wonder if that was a later addition as well.

Maybe, Maybe not: (SPOILERS for the films ending, obviously) (http://www.movievortex.com/feature/zack-snyder-sucker-punch)

That big chunk of black is in the current ending as well, for the voice over. So it may well have always been there

Kind of interesting, pacing Sweet Pea's escape through several scenes rather than show it all at once (Theres another part of it, missing in the final cut, where we see Sweet Pea is in a farm taking a dress off of a clothesline, the shot was even in a trailer, that IIRC takes place in between Baby Doll getting knocked out, and her waking up in the High Roller's Room, another deleted scene), with the Ooh Child musical sequence aligning with the Bus driving into "paradise"

Heres a pic of the missing Sweet Pea scene:  http://i.imgur.com/U0wzJ.png

As an aside, there is a picture in the Artbook of all the girls singing in rehearsal, presumably for the films final musical number. Definitely sad that the scene was cut, as I think it was the original ending in the first place that made Snyder want to see if Emily Browning could sing.

I like the idea of cutting up Sweet Pea's escape with other parts of the final minutes of the movie, certainly. Thought I remembered reading something somewhere that Blue taking her to the chair was supposed to be cut to the two policemen questioning her by the bus. (Oh, and Scott Glenn's last "and one more thing" line--"She's been a JOY the entire journey"--continues to crack me up.)

The more I read about what's missing the more unsatisfying the current "random henchman punch = lobotomy" setup we have now appears to me.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Depton 


As an aside, there is a picture in the Artbook of all the girls singing in rehearsal, presumably for the films final musical number. Definitely sad that the scene was cut, as I think it was the original ending in the first place that made Snyder want to see if Emily Browning could sing.
 

Maybe I'll get to see that picture if the artbook ever comes down from the scalper-level prices it's fetching right now. Or maybe Amazon will get some more stock in--it can't really be out of print already, can it?

For the Directors Cut, Im as excited about the all the re-inserted plot stuff as I am for the action scenes.

I mean, there is a whole chunk missing from the Castle Siege, where after the girls drop in the courtyard, they kill off tons of orcs "commando style" and then all switch to sword fighting against them (this scene was why Sweet Pea had a sword)

I was totally unsurprised when I found out about this scene, because upon refelection, there is pretty much no upclose action in the Castle Siege scene, and as a whole it felt like it lacked something.

My favorite breakdown of this film.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/howdidthisgetmade/HDTGM_8_MAIN_1.mp3

I read Peter Travers' Rolling Stone review last night.  He seems to think that Blue and the rest of the asylum employees actually turn the asylum into a brothel/cabaret at night where the patients are forced to dance.  Now, I now the movies is a hot mess, but C'MON!

Quote:

Originally Posted by justinslot 

Maybe I'll get to see that picture if the artbook ever comes down from the scalper-level prices it's fetching right now. Or maybe Amazon will get some more stock in--it can't really be out of print already, can it?

 

Supposedly there's a softcover edition in the pipeline.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but know what would've made this movie better? Fewer action scenes. I was bored out of my mind while watching the film, but even so I could feel there was something there in the brothel section of the movie (badly written and acted as it is), but then the dancing begins and we get Inception-ed to death. There is no reason for those fight-scenes to exist apart from allowing Snyder to release his inner 5-year-old.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kriegaffe 

 

 

Regarding the subtext of the film, it's something I've chewed on over the last few days. I feel there are some contradictory messages. The "creeps-watching-Baby-Doll paralleling audience-watching-geek-overload-action-scenes" seems to be a criticism. But those action scenes are mostly a postive expreience for the girls, where they are strong and have acheiveable goals.

The goals are completely empty.  They're collecting the kind of meaningless symbols found in video games.

Aren't the items necessary (in conjunction with Baby Doll's sacrifice) for Sweet Pea's escape? And regardless of their practical uses, having a purpose seemingly inspires the girls to do something about their situation.