Sucker Punch Post-Release Discussion - Page 5

I guess it depends on if you view the movie as at all hopeful.  What did Sweet Pea escape to?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bailey 

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

Or, you know, cinema!

Extended Cut's been rated "R" by the MPAA in case any one was wondering whether or not WB would slap on a huge UNRATED sign accross the Blu-ray's cover

Quote:

Originally Posted by Renn Brown 

 

 

Or, you know, cinema!

Except, you know, Snyder was intentionally trying to evoke the levels of a video game.

ETA- Just for clarity, the post I initially responded to was making a point about the action sequences specifically.  Obviously the items were collected in slightly different form on the brothel level, which wasn't referencing the playing of video games.

So, the extended cut.

There's only two big changes, besides the extended fantasy sequences. The full Love Is The Drug dance sequence is in the film, shortly after Baby Doll awakens in the brothel. It's perfect Moulin Rouge elaborate/sleazy, and the girls being very blatantly objectified here provided some needed contrast to Baby's "dances".

And the High Roller scene at the end. The goon at the end knocks Baby Doll out. She wakes up in High Roller's bed. He goes on that they're meant to screw but he finds it distasteful, and that the real reason he bought her was that he wants someone who's not faking, who is actually themselves. He wants "truth", and acknowledges that the way this has gone, he won't get that. He's not earning anything this way. She agrees and, in fact, tells him herself that he's not getting anything she doesn't allow him to have. However, he does promise her freedom, of various kinds. He seduces her. She seduces him. Things start to get heavy, but before even his shirt comes off, the lobotomy happens. That line about the way Baby Doll's looking at High Roller at the end makes a lot more sense, but it's still really hard to tell what was going through her head there.

And just like the rest of the film, it's a damn fascinating place Snyder's attempting to go, but nobody's telling him to stay focused, and make things clear.

I have come to love the film on repeat viewings, though.

Such a shitty movie.

Damn I wish people put half the amount of thought into other movies as they do into this piece of crap.

Pure shit. This is the furthest thing from a "female empowerment" movie it's ridiculous.

At the very least the most interesting Hollywood film of the year, and for my money, the greatest.

(Just to balance out the three previous random hate posts.)

A giant, masturbatory turd.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PBar 

Pure shit. This is the furthest thing from a "female empowerment" movie it's ridiculous.

It's not a female empowerment movie.  It's about how female empowerment has been co-opted by the male gaze.

And that's not a statement about its success (or lack thereof) at exploring that theme. It's just, if you're gonna slam a movie, at least understand what it's trying to be about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bailey 

It's not a female empowerment movie.  It's about how female empowerment has been co-opted by the male gaze.

 

And that's not a statement about its success (or lack thereof) at exploring that theme. It's just, if you're gonna slam a movie, at least understand what it's trying to be about.

I feel like that defense is similar to calling porn a statement on female objectification... 

Just because you intercut a few scenes of the (still scantily clad) girls being sad about being objectified doesn't make it any less of a borderline masturbatory piece of crap.  And this is coming from a guy who has REALLY liked the rest of Snyder's work.
 

I'm sure there have been pornos that tried to make statements about female objectification.  It doesn't mean they were successful at it.  Whether or not it ended up being a masturbatory piece of crap has nothing to do with what the movie was attempting.  If you think Sucker Punch was meant to be a surface level grrl power adventure, you misread the movie.

A noble, but catastrophic, failure. The ALEXANDER of 2011.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bailey 

I'm sure there have been pornos that tried to make statements about female objectification.  It doesn't mean they were successful at it.  Whether or not it ended up being a masturbatory piece of crap has nothing to do with what the movie was attempting.  If you think Sucker Punch was meant to be a surface level grrl power adventure, you misread the movie.

Sucker Punch is absolutely meant to be about female empowerment. Snyder's not just criticising the male gaze, but also trying to undercut it and have the women reclaim it as their own. He's said so in countless nterviews.

The film is constantly saying that the culture surrounding this type of sexualization and fetishism is just playing into the hands of the men that are seeking to control women.  So, while Snyder might pay lip service to the idea of wanting to transcend that (the film never offers any insight on how to do that), the thing people seize upon as bogus, as masturbatory, and non empowering is the stuff that isn't meant to be empowering, but a critique. (Again, whether it's a good one or not is not germane to this point.)

Bailey, I think you're reading too much into a movie that doesn't deserve it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PBar 

Bailey, I think you're reading too much into a movie that doesn't deserve it.

If you're going to post that for this movie in particular, please repost that here or here. I beg you.

I'm surprised so many people are keen to declare exactly "what the films about". IMO there's multiple ideas going on in here, unfortunately a few of them a contradictory.

I'm keen to see the directors cut, though.

Holy lord this was shit.

That is all.

So I checked the blu-ray out from the library; having seen this only once in the theater (and sorta liking it), I wondered how it would hold up on a second viewing (and viewing the DC).

Shortly: it didn't.

Visual panache aside for the moment, the first and second levels of the story - the asylum and brothel, respectively - are flat, poorly written scenarios. There are no characters, only placeholders or stereotypes (archetypes, if we're going to be very kind) with no discernible depth or facets. Emily Browning, in this film at least, is essentially a null presence, and fails to elicit empathy, loyalty or any reason to care. Of the other girls/women (and I honestly don't know what to call them here, because normally I'd call them women but the way they're portrayed in the film makes me want to use the word girls, as they seem to be at least emotionally younger and simple), only Cornish and Gugino, unsurprisingly, manage to wring anything out of the flat, not-nearly-as-smart-as-it-thinks script.

Visually, of course, Snyder does some amazing shots and cool tricks, but they didn't seem in service to the plot at all; they seemed more like his default cinematic language, employed regardless of how (in)appropriate to the story. One exception: the 360 mirror shot (which took me a few minutes to figure out how he did it) - and I think this was done to somehow comment on or represent the double sides of reality in the story. Maybe.

The third level of the story - the fantasy fighting sequences - were damn cool, and the parts I honestly enjoyed watching a second time. The mish-mash of eras, monsters and machinery worked well, I thought, because in these sequences retaining some sort of historical or technological logic didn't matter in the least. In these sequences, I think, we're closest to what Snyder wanted to do (and failed, I opine) with the film regarding the male gaze, women's empowerment, and metaphoric/symbolic problem solving. Frankly, I think if the film had been the three main fantasy sequences (maybe with one or two more) without the "upper levels" of the story, it would have been a better and more positively thought-provoking movie. If Snyder could have worked with a really gifted screenwriter, we could have the distant cousin of The Fountain, on Ecstasy and LSD, making its insanely visual point.

What I don't understand is the virulent hatred this film seems to elicit. Yeah, it's a failure. Yeah, Snyder thinks the movie's a lot smarter than it actually is. But he tried, and there are some truly great images and sequences in the film, ones I'm glad I've seen. I can understand hating a movie like The Smurfs or Big Mamma's House II or The Women (the remake from a few years ago). But this seems more like a "sorta cool, sorta meh" film to me - one that has a lot of good intentions but no real clue as to how to achieve them. Those other films are soulless by design, movies that cynically play on the LCD with no good or noble intentions.

I won't be owning this one, nor revisiting it any time soon. But I don't think it's deserving of passionate hatred, either.

Well Michael, you and I simply are not going to agree on this one, and that's OK. But to try to explain my position better as to why I hate SUCKER PUNCH (and I do hate it, more than any other film I've seen this year), I'm going to quote myself from the Extended Cut thread:

When the movie first came out, the term "noble failure" was the buzzword in describing it, which annoyed me. I don't mind if you like the movie, and I don't have a problem with Zack Snyder and have liked two of his films (WATCHMEN, DAWN OF THE DEAD). But depending on what you think Snyder was setting out to do, he was either pandering to a perceived audience or provoking to implicate said audience in the shallow (and frankly, lame) exploitation elements, or both. Neither ethos is "noble". 

But really I just think this movie is a deeply stupid piece of work which thinks it's smart, which in my mind, is worse than a pandering piece of garbage like TRANSFORMERS that knows it's stupid.

Maybe it's just a personal preference thing, but I feel like a stupid person who thinks they are smart is more dangerous than a stupid person who knows they are stupid. I don't feel pandered to by TRANSFORMERS or THE SMURFS or TWILIGHT because they aren't meant for me. They're meant for kids or teenager girls or dummies. But SUCKER PUNCH thinks it's playing in the same court as INCEPTION, which is my court, and not only that, it has bullshit intentions TO IMPLICATE ME IN IT'S STUPIDITY.  It's a moron telling me he knows my own mind then trying to turn it back on me as some sort of half-baked indictment on objectification or some shit. It has it's head up it's own ass, and frankly, it doesn't even do what it does particularly well. Unless you think girls in baby doll dresses being jerked around on wires in front of green screens is great cinema or some shit.

God, just thinking about it makes me mad.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sebastian OB 

Well Michael, you and I simply are not going to agree on this one, and that's OK. But to try to explain my position better as to why I hate SUCKER PUNCH (and I do hate it, more than any other film I've seen this year), I'm going to quote myself from the Extended Cut thread:

 

When the movie first came out, the term "noble failure" was the buzzword in describing it, which annoyed me. I don't mind if you like the movie, and I don't have a problem with Zack Snyder and have liked two of his films (WATCHMEN, DAWN OF THE DEAD). But depending on what you think Snyder was setting out to do, he was either pandering to a perceived audience or provoking to implicate said audience in the shallow (and frankly, lame) exploitation elements, or both. Neither ethos is "noble". 

 

 

But really I just think this movie is a deeply stupid piece of work which thinks it's smart, which in my mind, is worse than a pandering piece of garbage like TRANSFORMERS that knows it's stupid.

 

Maybe it's just a personal preference thing, but I feel like a stupid person who thinks they are smart is more dangerous than a stupid person who knows they are stupid. I don't feel pandered to by TRANSFORMERS or THE SMURFS or TWILIGHT because they aren't meant for me. They're meant for kids or teenager girls or dummies. But SUCKER PUNCH thinks it's playing in the same court as INCEPTION, which is my court, and not only that, it has bullshit intentions TO IMPLICATE ME IN IT'S STUPIDITY.  It's a moron telling me he knows my own mind then trying to turn it back on me as some sort of half-baked indictment on objectification or some shit. It has it's head up it's own ass, and frankly, it doesn't even do what it does particularly well. Unless you think girls in baby doll dresses being jerked around on wires in front of green screens is great cinema or some shit.

 

God, just thinking about it makes me mad.

This, this, a thousand times this. I have absolutely zero expectations for a Smurf movie and hey, if it's great fine, if not whatever. Sucker Punch irked me on multiple levels because it sold a bill of goods, tried to make you feel skeezy for buying said goods, then failed to either deliver the goods or provide any sort of intelligent or interesting commentary. At least Transformers threw some decent robot punching in between all the terrible. While I agree there are a (small) handful of worthy moments, overall this just failed to click with me on any level from the intellectual to the most basic action catharsis.

It can all be summed up with some Farnsworth wisdom:

"That is a less stupid question, although you said it in a profoundly stupid way."

Sebastian, Splatoon and others : I conceptually understand what you're saying. And I've had films evoke some deep rage in me, too. But not this one. I sorta feel sorry for Snyder, actually.

I keep coming into this thread, writing a line or two and then backing out. On one hand whilst I didn't hate the movie I wasn't head over heels in love to really want to mount an active defence, on the other hand.

I think my main problem with the film is that its attempts to pander were kind of obvious and kind of trite. It wants to engage a geek/nerd audience with images that seemed cool and it seems to showcase that Snyder only has a base understanding of why people react to images and ideas in certain ways. I think his completely lack of subtley when trying to pander to his audience is what undoes the film and I think is the chief reason for the backlash. It's a misstep, but there's a thesis behind the misstep which I find kind of fascinating. Snyder's attempts to equate the provocative dancing with the action-sequences the film was built on is kind of interesting and it's the sort of thing you'd expect from Haneke or Trier.

The problem is that I don't think Snyder is trying to troll his audience, but I do think he wanted to comment on the objectification of images. I don't think this film really has anything to do with female empowerment, except in the basest 'chicks with masculine characteristics = impowered' thinking, but I do think the film has a lot on it's mind about imagery and perception. Stuff like  the Old Man* explaining that it's OK to shoot the clockwork German's 'cos they're already dead, to the way the mama-dragon taps it's dead baby with it's snout seem to make us want to question what we're actually watching.

The problem is that the action-sequences, for me, just aren't engaging enough to actually make the key thematics work. There's a sense of rhythm and beauty to the action-sequences but they feel almost entirely weight-less (although this is, barring the opening brawl in Watchman, something of an ongoing problem for me with Snyder). As such what should be visceral and unrefined (as per Sweetpeas criticisms of Baby Doll's dancing) is stuffily elegant.  Then again I've had intellectual issues with the last three Snyder movies I watched. I think he's an amazing craftsmen in-terms of his aesthetic (and also casting, Watchmen and 300 feel perfectly cast for what they are and Sucker Punch is full of potentially great actors with little to actually do) but I've had fundemental problems with the core of his films (the politics in 300, the tone of Watchmen, the attempts at intellect in Sucker Punch).

I think Sucker Punch is the sort of thing that shoots itself in the foot almost immediately. The opening curtain-call gives a sense of unreality to what is essentially reality and then we have two more layers of unreality beyond that. However the few times I synched with the films rhythm (I absolutely adore the opening, even if it is completely ham fisted) I really got into it and I'm genuinely fascinated by the extended cut.

My biggest issue is that Baby Doll is a terrible protagonist in that she's essentially mute the first act, then she's presented as spectacularly talented without actually showing that talent, and then show as a lynchpin of the girls despite not seeing her really interact with them. The Sweet Pea/Rocket plotline actually feels weightier than the main plot and handwaving that with Baby Doll saying, 'no, this is YOUR story' doesn't work.

*The Old Man is a real issue for me, largely because the film is all about authority figures abandoing and fucking with these girls and yet the ultimate authority figure, who speaks in nothing but rules and commands, is presented as benevolent.

The movie will not be understood in its own time. Not even by Zack Snyder.

David Cronenberg once said, "You make a movie to find out why you wanted to make the movie." Zack Snyder made Sucker Punch to find out why he wanted to make it. I don't think he ever did find out. Which adds, for me, a productive layer of tension that people seem not to know quite what to do with.

If anyone other than Zack Snyder had made it — specifically someone critically respected — maybe the response among film buffs (if not the mass audience) would be different. I don't know.

There's just too much going on in it, beneath it, and alongside it to wave it off as stupid or whatever. The text interrogates itself and its maker as well as its putative audience.

Yeah, I'll die on this hill. Sucker Punch is still the most interesting and cinematically pure American film I've seen so far this year. Certainly the most ambitious.

And no, I'm neither on drugs nor Duke Fleed.

IMO Snyder has yet to make anything that confirms all the praise he gets.  He's a disaster.  Didn't this clown come from car commercials? 

Fincher seems to be a rare breed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Blank 

The movie will not be understood in its own time. Not even by Zack Snyder.

 

David Cronenberg once said, "You make a movie to find out why you wanted to make the movie." Zack Snyder made Sucker Punch to find out why he wanted to make it. I don't think he ever did find out. Which adds, for me, a productive layer of tension that people seem not to know quite what to do with.

 

If anyone other than Zack Snyder had made it — specifically someone critically respected — maybe the response among film buffs (if not the mass audience) would be different. I don't know.

 

There's just too much going on in it, beneath it, and alongside it to wave it off as stupid or whatever. The text interrogates itself and its maker as well as its putative audience.

 

Yeah, I'll die on this hill. Sucker Punch is still the most interesting and cinematically pure American film I've seen so far this year. Certainly the most ambitious.

 

And no, I'm neither on drugs nor Duke Fleed.

I'm actually with you on this, I think it's an interesting, flawed, movie which certainly didn't deserve the mauling it got. Although the knives seemed to be out for the movie months in advance.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ambler 

IMO Snyder has yet to make anything that confirms all the praise he gets. 

What praise? Even this thread is predominantly anti-Snyder. Out among the critical community it's just as bad, and the fanboys have nothing but dread-ridden things to say about Man of Steel and what Zack "ADD speed-ramping style-over-substance schmuck" Snyder is going to do to it, even with Christopher "I shit cinematic greatness" Nolan producing.

For the record, I'm not totally in the tank for Snyder. Dawn of the Dead I tolerated; some decent moments, didn't make me want to kill with the fist of death even as a Romero fan, and at least it's better than the Texas Chainsaw remake, which granted is not hard to be; if it absolutely had to be remade, we could've gotten a lot worse. 300 I thought was ridiculous military porn, but then so was the source material. Watchmen I enjoyed and admired, feeling that if it had to be a movie, this was about as good as it was realistically possible to get as a feature film through a major studio, and sometimes better than that. Haven't seen the owl movie.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Blank 

What praise?

What praise?  Snyder is (or was) a fairly praised geek favorite after 300.

300 was and has been fairly divisive even in geek circles, and it currently enjoys a mere 59% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. For many the appreciation for it, if one can call it that, is highly ironic and derisive, at least in my experience outside geek circles.

Plus it depends which geek circles you're talking about. There are some Romero geeks who'll never forgive Snyder for Dawn, some history geeks who'll never forgive him for 300, some Alan Moore acolytes who'll never forgive him for even attempting Watchmen, 95% of the fanboy kingdom wants his balls on a platter after Sucker Punch and weeps openly at the thought of him doing Superman, and I bet there are even sixth-grade fans of the Ga'Hoole books who hate him. Snyder is, has been, and probably always will be a pretty polarizing director.

I'd like to hear some female Chewers who've seen Sucker Punch weigh in on it, if they're out there.

I really dig 300, (sub)text and all. I think it works very well for what it is - a hyperbolic campfire story, told to rouse the troups and build morale. Haven't seen Snyder's DEAD remake. Thought Snyder earnestly misfired with WATCHMEN; too faithful in some spots, and too off in the others. It looked great, though, and was cast amazingly well (Akerman aside - I really don't think she can act).  My thoughts on SUCKER PUNCH are above; it's a big, hot mess, with some bravura sequences that completely lack weight or meaningful connective tissue.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/furtively-feminist-mostly-misunderstood-case-file,61684/

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelM 

http://www.avclub.com/articles/furtively-feminist-mostly-misunderstood-case-file,61684/

 

Amazing analysis. I'll give the movie credit for sparking the most intriguing Internet discussion of the year (so far).

Unfortunately, the film itself is mostly joyless, like VW van with a Frank Frazetta painting on its side crashing into a brick wall at 90mph. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelM 

http://www.avclub.com/articles/furtively-feminist-mostly-misunderstood-case-file,61684/

 

Don't want to derail, but after reading that I immediately read 4 or 5 more of the "Year of Flops" and now I may have to do the whole shebang. Great stuff.

This movie proves that Zack Snyder is as a director like the Star Trek movies, meaning every other one is great and every other one is not good. Thois one was not good and was horrible and self-indulgent. I was bored after the first few obnoxious minutes.

...Well. That was certainly a fascinating failure. But a failure nonetheless. I'm not as down on Snyder as some are; I thought 300 worked perfectly for what it was, and I love a lot of what he did with Watchmen on both a casting and directing level, while acknowledging that there are many flaws (never saw his Dawn of the Dead). Sucker Punch (note: I watched the Extended Cut right off the bat) shows that while he has many strengths as a director, he should stay the hell away from the writing arena. True, I don't know how much of the script is his and how much is Steve Shibuya, but he can still certainly shoulder the blame. Laundry list!:

-I think the acting is more of a mixed bag than all around terrible. Oscar Isaac truly fascinates me as Blue; he's not so much hamming it up as delivering a deliberately arch, florid performance that would be more at home in something like Dick Tracy. I can't wait to see what this guy can do with a script that isn't a total mess. Scott Glenn seems to be enjoying himself, delivering pompous statements with an edge of self-parody. And Carla Gugino is solid, though I don't know what the hell is up with her Natasha Fatale accent. The girls... I liked Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish as sisters, but Emily Browning is a total blank slate, Jamie Chung is overreaching her admittedly ample charms, and Vanessa Hudgens sticks out like a sore thumb in her amateur-hour theatrics.

-The most insulting thing to me about the script is that Baby Doll's first fantasy world is a fucking brothel/nightclub. Yes, because clearly that's a step up from a mental asylum. That's far from the only problem, though. The characters are either stereotypes, complete idiots, or both. The dialogue fluctuates between naked exposition, cartoon villainy, and statements that Snyder and Shibuya think are smart and profound, but are actually dumb and meaningless. Also, if this is meant to be sooooo empowering to females, why do almost all of them either die or get lobotomized? That seems to be working at cross-purposes. Finally, the ending is COMPLETE horseshit.

-I thought Snyder's picks for the Watchmen soundtrack was a mixed bag; sometimes it worked ("Unforgettable", "The Sounds of Silence", "The Times They Are A-Changin", "I'm Your Boogie Man"), sometimes it, uh, didn't ("99 Luftballons", "Hallelujah"). This is pretty much all "meh", with either weird, unsatisfying covers of songs like "Sweet Dreams" and "Where Is My Mind?" or generic rock music. I did really like the "Love is the Drug" number, mostly because Oscar Isaac and Gugino sing and dance to it pretty well, and it actually seems to be on-point with what Snyder is trying to say.

-The action sequences are simultaneously the few times the movie shows life and ultimately one of the big problems. They don't feel specific to the character of Baby Doll, although even that's a paradox since we know virtually nothing about her. There's almost no tension since our heroines are nigh-invincible. Even Rocket's sacrifice comes off as empty. The designs and sets also end up looking generic rather than "cool".

-There's a way to use female sexiness to criticize the male gaze. Dressing up your actresses in generic fetish outfits and lingering over them pretty much all the time is not the way to do it, methinks.

I can't really hate this movie, but I don't really like it either.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Spider 

...Well. That was certainly a fascinating failure. But a failure nonetheless. I'm not as down on Snyder as some are; I thought 300 worked perfectly for what it was, and I love a lot of what he did with Watchmen on both a casting and directing level, while acknowledging that there are many flaws (never saw his Dawn of the Dead). Sucker Punch (note: I watched the Extended Cut right off the bat) shows that while he has many strengths as a director, he should stay the hell away from the writing arena. True, I don't know how much of the script is his and how much is Steve Shibuya, but he can still certainly shoulder the blame. Laundry list!:

 

-I think the acting is more of a mixed bag than all around terrible. Oscar Isaac truly fascinates me as Blue; he's not so much hamming it up as delivering a deliberately arch, florid performance that would be more at home in something like Dick Tracy. I can't wait to see what this guy can do with a script that isn't a total mess. Scott Glenn seems to be enjoying himself, delivering pompous statements with an edge of self-parody. And Carla Gugino is solid, though I don't know what the hell is up with her Natasha Fatale accent. The girls... I liked Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish as sisters, but Emily Browning is a total blank slate, Jamie Chung is overreaching her admittedly ample charms, and Vanessa Hudgens sticks out like a sore thumb in her amateur-hour theatrics.

 

-The most insulting thing to me about the script is that Baby Doll's first fantasy world is a fucking brothel/nightclub. Yes, because clearly that's a step up from a mental asylum. That's far from the only problem, though. The characters are either stereotypes, complete idiots, or both. The dialogue fluctuates between naked exposition, cartoon villainy, and statements that Snyder and Shibuya think are smart and profound, but are actually dumb and meaningless. Also, if this is meant to be sooooo empowering to females, why do almost all of them either die or get lobotomized? That seems to be working at cross-purposes. Finally, the ending is COMPLETE horseshit.

 

-I thought Snyder's picks for the Watchmen soundtrack was a mixed bag; sometimes it worked ("Unforgettable", "The Sounds of Silence", "The Times They Are A-Changin", "I'm Your Boogie Man"), sometimes it, uh, didn't ("99 Luftballons", "Hallelujah"). This is pretty much all "meh", with either weird, unsatisfying covers of songs like "Sweet Dreams" and "Where Is My Mind?" or generic rock music. I did really like the "Love is the Drug" number, mostly because Oscar Isaac and Gugino sing and dance to it pretty well, and it actually seems to be on-point with what Snyder is trying to say.

 

-The action sequences are simultaneously the few times the movie shows life and ultimately one of the big problems. They don't feel specific to the character of Baby Doll, although even that's a paradox since we know virtually nothing about her. There's almost no tension since our heroines are nigh-invincible. Even Rocket's sacrifice comes off as empty. The designs and sets also end up looking generic rather than "cool".

 

-There's a way to use female sexiness to criticize the male gaze. Dressing up your actresses in generic fetish outfits and lingering over them pretty much all the time is not the way to do it, methinks.

 

I can't really hate this movie, but I don't really like it either.

--Oscar Isaac: You *have* seen Drive, right? He's not in it long...but he mines everything out of that role.

--The fetish outfit is one of the complaints I totally dont get. Fetish implies titillation over function. This is the Sucker Punch cast:

This is Harley Quinn, Catwoman, Voodoo, and Starfire fromDC's New 52.

Major difference.

On top of that: Since you saw the director's cut, what they were wearing in the Love Is The Drug sequence? THOSE are fetish outfits. Point being: In their own dance, the girls are wearing what they wear for themselves.

Sadly, I have not seen Drive yet. I look forward to it. Regarding the fetish outfits, yeah, I'm talking more about what they're wearing in the brothel scenes. The dream outfits aren't as bad, though they're still more revealing than functional battle outfits. Baby Doll's dream outfit is pretty "Catholic Schoolgirl" as well.

And you really don't find the brothel/nightclub being a step up from a mental hospital a little insulting? That's honestly one of my major issues with the film; if, say, the first level had been the brothel and the second level had been something more like a legitimate orphanage or foster home, I don't think I would be as bothered.

There's also the fact that, frankly, I didn't give a shit about anyone in the movie. Snyder and Shibuya spend so little time actually giving these girls personal characteristics, and I just did not care about any of them.

That would undercut Snyder's point. An orphanage or foster home as "Level 3" would be implying that her sexuality, her sense of fantasy, her  will to fight is nothing but a burden, something to mourn. Boy's fantasy certainly doesnt work that way, neither should a girl's.

I think you're articulating Snyder's point better than he did, Justin. Which, as you've gathered, is one of my major problems. Any thoughts on my other complaints about the script/design/music? I get the feeling you either don't agree about stuff like not really caring about the characters or seriously weak dialogue, or that those didn't sink the film for you.

Man, I really did "enjoy" Sucker Punch, but I'd need to see the film again to even attempt at joining the discussion on it here.  However, I do remember liking it because it had a sort of weird ambition that you don't really see in a modern blockbuster--even if it didn't always pan out the way Snyder wanted it to.

While I may enjoy Snyder's snyderisms (speed-ramping and all) more so than most, I will defend that movie as having some of the best staged action I've seen that year.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Spider 

I think you're articulating Snyder's point better than he did, Justin. Which, as you've gathered, is one of my major problems. Any thoughts on my other complaints about the script/design/music? I get the feeling you either don't agree about stuff like not really caring about the characters or seriously weak dialogue, or that those didn't sink the film for you.

It's definitely a thin script, but nothing that seemed out of place or eye-rollingly bad. It's just simplistic, and only Gugino, Isaac, and Hamm are great enough to make it sing.

I actually love the soundtrack for the most part. The Queen mash-up's terrible, but intentionally so. The rest works for me. That Smiths cover in particular is just perfect.

The characters are ciphers and symbolic for sure, and you definitely have to allow Snyder to just run with this point as opposed to expecting a great story to be told. It would have helped, but I dont think it's as imperative here as it would be for another film.

Basically, for me, I'm way willing to forgive a film's flaws for ideologically shooting for the moon in an ambitious way and not quite getting there than I am the most basic Saturday night action run-through if it were guilty of the same things.

*shrugs* Different strokes, then. I can admire a film for being ambitious and not quite getting there, but this is a case where I think Snyder didn't even get close.

You're right about Hamm, though, he does a good job in what amounts to a cameo.

I interpreted the brothel as being how the male-dominated world views Baby Doll & co. (or how Baby Doll thinks they view her), and the fantasy realm is how Baby Doll pictures herself and friends. 

Admittedly, the movie isn't all that clear...

Maybe that's the bigger problem.