http://www.facebook.com/treknologist Clifford T. Hall
OMG. I can’t wait to see what you said about my most favorite film of 2011, Sucker Punch. Now, I haven’t even seen 100 films from 2011, yet; but only “Submarine” came close in portraying emotional depth. However, the visual overloads of this film are simply beyond imagination. I cannot belief 1 man was behind it all. Snyder has secured is position as a film god with this one. Now, let’s see what you had to say…
http://www.facebook.com/treknologist Clifford T. Hall
Oooooooh, NOOOOooooooooo. OK, well. You at least helped clarify a few things about the film for me. I still really enjoy it. I think it handles inter-nested fantasy a lot better than Inception; but you would probably disagree because Inception makes the stakes explicit. I would rebut that Inception has too much exposition, and gets confusing where it could have been clear. Sucker Punch doesn’t bother with all them words and dialogue. The intelligent viewer can extract from the film what he or she wants. In this way, the film is the ultimate post-modern spectacle film.
It interesting how we disagree on this one, but I think I can see your point; however, I still can’t accept how Jay would actually recommend the 2012 film, Prometheus. (I add that qualification because I am sure Prometheus will be forgotten by the time this comment is read.) After watching Prometheus, I spent a good 2 weeks obsessing and discussing it, and my best conclusion is that it was just a poorly lazily written schlock horror film dressed up as science fiction for maximum revenue. Prometheus does not contain a single interesting tidbit of philosophy, religion or science. Whereas Sucker Punch is brimming with psychological engagement and visceral experiences.
Atem 0225
An interesting alternate interpretation from Bob Chipman.
I thought the movie was paying homage to Anime set in live action. But I never directed a film, I am an aspiring writer and have more than two brain cells to rub together and can grasp for the most part what might be going through the writer/director/producer’s head for certain obvious parts blatantly shoved into a scene.
Here is my take and a breakdown of my understanding of the movie Sucker Punch:
1. She was wrongly put into a mental institution as a result of some strange and horrific circumstances
2. To try to cope with being put where she felt she did not belong and being treated for mental disease she did not ail from, she escaped into fantasy that she was in a brothel.
This represented that she felt she was being raped by the court system, her stepfather’s manipulation of the court/justice system, and having her world torn from her. So she could be whored out so her stepfather could collect the assets of the will.
3. As many minds do under traumatic stress situations, your brain tries to analyze your stressful situation and offer any and all possible solutions to remedy and eliminate the issue or issues causing stress, real or fantasy.
If you have ever been in a situation where:
A. You were imprisoned and did not know if you would ever have freedom again
B. Tragically were involved in any way with the death of someone close to you and again felt like your world/life would never be returned to you
Then you would have experienced more than a moment where your brain would flood you with multiple fantasies playing out where you would either be able to resolve your current dilemma through a miracle of outside force or through you gaining super-human or super-natural abilities to resolve your issue.
Some of these fantasies would intertwine as your brain races to comfort and remove the stress that is causing you mental and possible physical harm.
While she was being admitted to the ward and then probably (although the film does not show this and it is inferred) left alone in a padded room, so-to-speak, we get the fantasy of her being in a brothel devising an elaborate escape plan.
To carry out this plan would require abilities and devices that are not readily available to her in order to overcome the real-world obstacles she is facing. (Orderlies, Nurses, Guards)
Hence why she would be invincible during her elaborate fight scenes, because when you are imagining you are escaping from an insane asylum or a brothel selling women, would you imagine yourself mirroring the vulnerabilities you currently posses?
I for one would imagine I was Superman, or in her case Supergirl and beat the piss out of everyone involved. That’s me though.
Anyway, it didn’t matter in the end because all her fantasy ended with a spike being driven through her frontal lobe and her distractions allowed one patient to escape.
I was once in a Behavioral Health Center visiting and one patient almost escaped, my brother was standing near the door and had to wrap his arms around the waist of the escaping patient before she slipped through the door as it was shutting. So this type of thing is not unheard of. It does happen.
http://www.facebook.com/kviehmann Kyle Viehmann
Easy there insinuating that anyone who doesn’t happen to like this movie is stupid.
Stakes matter in every story. By creating fantasy worlds in which there seem to be no consequences or rules, Snyder removes all tension from the movie. Audiences and readers find it really difficult to care about heroes who are invincible. Why not just have a realistic asylum and then only one brothel fantasy world where there actually were consequences? Was that not “cool” enough?
Example: People liked flawed and vulnerable Neo in “The Matrix” way more than invincible, Super Neo in “Reloaded” and “Revolutions”.
“Sucker Punch” is good if you want to watch crazy action and incredibly intricate set pieces. It’s not good if you’re looking for a decent story.
Jørgen Eggen
It’s not good for crazy action either. The only interesting visuals are always the bad guys, and the protagonist retard is just a stiff porcelain doll with no acting whatsoever.
Yes, babydoll and lobotomy and all that shit, but when the main character looks like she’s asleep through the entire movie, and the movie is all about visuals, it’s a bad movie.
All I wanted was dark, fucked up, crazy, beautiful action fantasy insanity. Instead I got a cast of random actors too pretty to muddy up or make any facial expression that can’t double as an orgasm-face, a bunch of retarded characters and a story so bad it should never have been included.
The only characters who looked like they kind of belonged in the story were the chef and the dance teacher, though she seemed way too zen about repeated abuse and training girls to be fucktoys. The chef is angry, fat, ugly, dirty, and even though he was presented as a shitty miniboss, he was still more believable than most of the cast.
The music was pretty good though. During the opening, the only part about the entire movie I’d like to see more times, I set the volume way up, killed all the lights and laughed, hoping this was setting the tone for the rest
LowTech
No! … Female empowerment. It makes *complete* sense, in the same way that Dragonball Z represents male empowerment. Over-the-top stylized, ideal-type body image and action, with nigh invulnerability.
proghead777
I wonder how the whole women-empowerment-fuckhole segment looked to the apparently vast majority of human beings that don’t know what the word “sarcasm” actually means despite the fact that they use the term nearly every day. Of course, those people are stupid so it was probably something like, “huhuhuhuh… he said ‘fuckhole’. Huhuhuhuhuh. I like gurls’ fuckholes. Huhuhuhuh. But I ain’t never seen one in real life. Huhuhuhuhuh.”
i_spit_hot_fire
It takes a lot to get me to see a movie in a theater anymore, and I felt so ripped off after seeing ‘Suckerpunch’ in the theater that I never returned for a good 9 months after. I was sold into it after seeing the “rocker-chicks-fighting giant-flaming-samurai” scene in the trailer put to one of my newer favorite bands’ music (Silversun Pickups). However, the story felt like it was written by a 13-year-old goth girl who wasn’t understood by society. And you guys were right: the only way the writer/director made the women’s rights an issue is when they were learning to seduce the men then kill them. The movie was good visually (especially in the fantasy scenes) but failed to deliver a meaningful film altogether, I felt. And too much use of Bjork in every fantasy scene; I’ve already seen ‘Tank Girl’ back in the 90′s.
yes, the battle scenes had no tension or consequences, but it went a bit deeper than that
zero_miles_per_hour
Maybe Babydoll is bipolar, and the action scenes represent the manic phase, and the sanitarium represents the depressive phase. If you think about it the brothel is the least weird choice to be the story’s reality, and since it’s in the middle you don’t need fantasies nested within other fantasies for it to work, which is good because I don’t think that’s a thing.
Greebo
I wouldn’t consider this movie anything more than a series of visually good anime like action scenes with pretty girls loosely tied together. The action isn’t bad, it’s just the kind of action you would expect from Japanese animation rather than an action movie. And it does this quite well, this is exactly the kind of movie built on how cool something would look.
There’s no point looking for anything else in this movie, in the same way you wouldn’t look for anime-like combat in a Rocky movie and you wouldn’t look for giant samurai warriors in Citizen Kane.
http://www.facebook.com/itnac.mac Itnac Mac
It’s basically a bad anime with bimbos and guns instead of cute little magical girls.
AlcaldeEste
No doubt Kill Bill in hands of a lesser director could have been completely awful, but Kill Bill has a mission: It has a list of specific B-movie genres to pay homage to over the course of 4 hours, and it transitions seemlessly from genre to genre in terms of story, style and casting.
What made Kill Bill great for me was the subtle directing choices and attention to detail, like the ever-so-slightly off-center snap zoom on Pai Mei that is never used in other scenes. In every scene you just think “I can’t believe that Quentin Tarantino noticed that that is exactly something they would do in the genre we are currently paying homage to.” But yeah, a lesser director would have fucked it up for sure.
this movie started out so good and interesting…and then suddenly when the mental hospital turns into the first fantasy, it just went downhill. why couldn’t we stay in the mental hospital? i was so mad when we find out at the end of the movie, babydoll and the other girls are really doing all these things, getting in trouble in the hospital in attempt to escape. that seemed far more interesting, but WE NEVER SEE IT! The first layer of fantasy was not needed. They could’ve stayed in the hospital and imagined the world they fight in. Same point would’ve gotten across Zack Synder. When there’s a direct link between the fantasy and real world there’s stakes. If set up correctly at least.
Movie Bob: the living proof, that it is possible for men to have sand in the vagina
wingitprod
Good review but I gotta say I was very surprised I didn’t get bored watching Sucker Punch when I fully expected to. This is why I went to see it at a $1.00 theater. I assumed it wouldn’t hold my attention on a TV and wasn’t willing to pay full price. It was well worth $1.00 + $2.50 soda and 110 minutes of my day. Still (like most movies these days) why 110 minutes??? This should have stopped at 90-82 minutes. This was a fetish/video game, visually remarkable movie. That is all. Sure ain’t no female empowerment here. Just adolescent fun.
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