Escape to the Movies: Sucker Punch

[lukeator]

I'm sorry but I think this movie looks awful. Although I find Bob's reviews entertaining, I don't take much stock in his opinion as a film critic. I get the feeling he is trying to make more out of it than what is actually there. Perhaps it's not fair to to pass judgment till I've seen the film. But it costs so much to go to the cinema these days, so I only part with my money if it's something that I really want to see.

Also I don't understand why dream worlds seem to be the "in" thing just now. It's not clever or imaginative. It's just a lazy plot device, because you can chuck any old shite in and not have to give it any context or explanation.

 

[pandasaw]

I was sold the moment I saw the giant samurai.

 

[Walt85]

I'm sorry, Bob, but you've lost me as a fan.

Calling this piece of crap a work of artistic vision, which has no heart nor mind nor soul nor PLOT, just goes beyond me.

Now, that opinion I might have been able to live with. But then referencing the extremely mediocre adaption of Watchmen as the "only good movie" Snyder has ever made, you could not have been more wrong. "300" kills that movie in every way possible. The characters, the style, the story (while simple in 300, very effective) and just the way it makes you feel while watching it.

Bob, I know everyone's entitled to an opinion, but yours is one I just cannot agree with, which has thus led me to feel I can't take you seriously anymore as a film critic.

 

[Seagoon]

Your review sounds just what my mother thought when we saw an extended sneak peek last night. Though instead of "intelligent and moving" she said "imaginative and artistic with a sprinkle of mild horror."(and she is aware its not horror)

So yeah we as a family might go see it for the awesome looking action, beautiful visuals, and how the main characters are all females fighting males for a change.

my mum saw it and went.. 'were not seeing this shit.'

 

[JayDeth]

You obviously didn't see the same movie I did. First I was confused, then disappointed, then confused again, and finally angry at what a waste of time this movie was. Only about half an hour of this movie actually happens, everything else is just a metaphor. The action scenes end up sucking because they lack any sort of tension when you know it's COMPLETELY imaginary, where as in Inception, a good movie, we knew that if the characters died in those special super dreams they would effectively be dead. And it's even harder to care about the framing for the action scenes because... well, I wont spoil the disappointment, but as I said, it felt like such a complete waste of time.

 

[moviedork]

I'm sorry but I think this movie looks awful. Although I find Bob's reviews entertaining, I don't take much stock in his opinion as a film critic. I get the feeling he is trying to make more out of it than what is actually there. Perhaps it's not fair to to pass judgment till I've seen the film. But it costs so much to go to the cinema these days, so I only part with my money if it's something that I really want to see.

Also I don't understand why dream worlds seem to be the "in" thing just now. It's not clever or imaginative. It's just a lazy plot device, because you can chuck any old shite in and not have to give it any context or explanation.

Bob sounds like a Snyder fanboy. Saying he's one of the best of his generation, when people like Nolan, Aronofski, Abrams, Del Toro, Gondry, Verbinski, Fincher, Tarantino, Jackson and more are in his age bracket.

 

[TheMatsjo]

I saw it.
It was truly amazing.
See it also.

 

[Pinguin]

Hmmmmm. Really not convinced. Sorry Bob, I usually agree with you but the way that even the trailer made the acting look cringe-worthily bad put me right off.

Also: If this film really is more than just gratuitous skimpily-dressed-girls-fighting-stuff action, and is in fact 'for girls', then: boy, did they market it badly. I can't think of many women I know who would see the trailer or posters and not say "er... no, we're not seeing that".

 

[yanipheonu]

My review: Pretty cool visuals and ideas let down by a poor and fundamentally flawed story.

The biggest problem is in the dream, the first thing that happens in a fight is she gets kicked through a building but is perfectly alright. While it doesn't kill her, it kills ALL TENSION in the scene. From here on it's just me looking at some neat images with no real investment.

Also, they stood to make us care about the characters more. I didn't really care about any of the characters, and they didn't try to make me.

I was just disappointed, with better writing this could have been a much better movie, as it is, it was ok, but I really don't want to see it again.

 

[Shirokurou]

Saw it. And what can I say, it's Snyder movie.
Not Watchmen, but I loved it nonetheless.

 

[bob1052]

This is a crap movie.

None of it really makes a lot of sense, all the supporting characters bar one dies and the main character gets lobotomised ffs.

There wasn't a real ending apart from a potentially pervy bus driver covering for an escaped mental patient (We don't even know what she did to get in there).

Actually it is explained in pretty big detail that Sweet Pea is in there because her sister Rocket had a rebellious childhood and Sweet Pea followed her to save her, leading both of them to run away from home and both of them to suffer the consequences

My review: Pretty cool visuals and ideas let down by a poor and fundamentally flawed story.

The biggest problem is in the dream, the first thing that happens in a fight is she gets kicked through a building but is perfectly alright. While it doesn't kill her, it kills ALL TENSION in the scene. From here on it's just me looking at some neat images with no real investment.

When we first see the therapist lady she is with another patient on the stage and she says (roughly) "I make sure they know that nothing can hurt them while they are on stage and I give them the weapons to [whatever]". Then when Babydoll goes in the therapist (through the bus driving man) gives her the weapons and nothing can hurt her. It isn't something that came out of nowhere for no reason

If I had to sum up 'Suckerpunch' in one word: boring.

The girls have no personality whatsoever, any fight scene is ruined by the fact that the enemies are utterly faceless and the girls are completely immune to all damage except for cutscene deaths, and the upskirts and cleavage lose their appeal when you realize how literally impossible it would be to see anything scandalous. The barriers are too clearly defined.

See above for the immune to damage. The enemies being faceless is the whole point:

Spoiler: First Action Scene

Two masked giant samurais and one with his face revealed, Baby Doll has to fight them. This is Baby Doll dancing to keep Blue (the one important "enemy") and his two henchmen (black guy and fat guy), who are completely unimportant (hence faceless), captivated

Spoiler: Second and Third Action Scene

Blue is the Nazi-whatever messenger who cannot escape to the zeppelin (his office) before they have the map. The fat orderly with the fancy lighter with a dragon on it becomes the dragon with the flame and they have to take the flame from the welp (his pocket) without waking the big dragon (him realizing they are pickpocketing him). Every other faceless enemy are the giant crowds watching Baby Doll dance.

Spoiler: Final Action Scene

No one is watching, and there are no more faceless human enemies. The cook isn't an enemy because (as shown by him cowering in the corner when Blue comes in) he is a total pushover. The only enemy in this last one is technology (the radio) which through its malfunction (frayed wiring short circuiting from the spilled water) defeats them

Minor secondary thought: as I had suspected I would, I had a lot of trouble telling the difference between Baby pre- and post-lobotomy.

Did you miss the part where she didn't respond to Blue's threats or his general talking to her. In every other scene she would tense up from fear and Blue fed from that, but in this last one Blue almost loses control of himself because he cannot get her to respond. By forcing her into the lobotomy Blue basically turns her into a foe he cannot beat.

 

[Clubsol360]

Saw this movie solely based on MovieBob's review. It was epic. I don't understand why it has such a low meta-rating. Maybe its because it was stylistically similar to games and the mainstream did not understand that part of the story was told through visual metaphor.

 

[SilentChief]

Well this is it, that movie review was the final straw. I am done watching Moviebob's reviews. First it started with the positive reviews on the rom coms, then it was the uninformed rant about PC gaming, and now this. Goodbye Bob, the past year has been fun but I can't watch these videos anymore.

Also here is a good review of Sucker Punch: http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-bag/sucker-punch/

 

[Aureliano]

I appreciate your comments, Bob. Here are some thoughts on what you had to say:

If I had to sum up 'Suckerpunch' in one word: boring.

The girls have no personality whatsoever, any fight scene is ruined by the fact that the enemies are utterly faceless and the girls are completely immune to all damage except for cutscene deaths, and the upskirts and cleavage lose their appeal when you realize how literally impossible it would be to see anything scandalous. The barriers are too clearly defined.

See above for the immune to damage. The enemies being faceless is the whole point:

Spoiler: First Action Scene

Two masked giant samurais and one with his face revealed, Baby Doll has to fight them. This is Baby Doll dancing to keep Blue (the one important "enemy") and his two henchmen (black guy and fat guy), who are completely unimportant (hence faceless), captivated

Spoiler: Second and Third Action Scene

Blue is the Nazi-whatever messenger who cannot escape to the zeppelin (his office) before they have the map. The fat orderly with the fancy lighter with a dragon on it becomes the dragon with the flame and they have to take the flame from the welp (his pocket) without waking the big dragon (him realizing they are pickpocketing him). Every other faceless enemy are the giant crowds watching Baby Doll dance.

Spoiler: Final Action Scene

No one is watching, and there are no more faceless human enemies. The cook isn't an enemy because (as shown by him cowering in the corner when Blue comes in) he is a total pushover. The only enemy in this last one is technology (the radio) which through its malfunction (frayed wiring short circuiting from the spilled water) defeats them

I would never try to argue that anything in the movie was put in there accidentally: Zack Snyder clearly crafted every shot to work in a particular way. But the fact that something has been intentionally put into a film does not necessarily make that part of a film either engaging or worthwhile.

In my opinion, for a movie whose goal seems to be to enact as visually as possible the 'show, don't tell!' principle of good writing, we hear an awful lot more about what happens in the asylum and the brothel than we see. Snyder may be trying to flout audience expectations by doing this, but when I saw the film all I felt was that he was trying his best to avoid making the rather old hat but emotionally engaging film that we never saw and instead just ended up losing the audience instead of titillating them.

So. It would not have been as out-there or as flashy, but I would have rather seen just the brothel-dream asylum movie than what Snyder made. And if I really had my druthers, reality seemed way more interesting than any of the dream scenes. Catfights, emotional turmoil, weirdo doctors, screwed up step-dads, lotsa meds, Jon Hamm. THAT would have been worth my time. I've seen it before, but considering how Snyder crafted the few real-world parts of the movie it could have been amazing if the whole movie was like that.

Minor secondary thought: as I had suspected I would, I had a lot of trouble telling the difference between Baby pre- and post-lobotomy.

Did you miss the part where she didn't respond to Blue's threats or his general talking to her. In every other scene she would tense up from fear and Blue fed from that, but in this last one Blue almost loses control of himself because he cannot get her to respond. By forcing her into the lobotomy Blue basically turns her into a foe he cannot beat.

Um, no. No, I did not miss that. This was called a joke, one implying that either Baby Doll was a flat, boring character or that Emily Browning is a bad actress. Mostly the latter but I certainly consider the former to be true. Mental illness in women in movies is, as a side note, generally a poor excuse for a writer's inability to create a believable female character.

 

[camazotz]

Just my two cents: a profoundly good movie which will (as Bob says) polarize a lot of people. I'd bet most women (especially any women who have dealt with mysogeny or domineering behavior from men to any degree) will "get it." Guys will break off in to two camps: those who realize that this movie is reflecting a dark portion of our historical soul, dressed up in vivid empowerment dreams....and those who are made far too uncomfortable by that fact and proceed to deride it as being something less than it actually is.

Once again, a rare movie that speaks volumes about those who like it vs. those who don't.

 

[LandoCristo]

I saw it last night. Beautiful movie, I kept thinking to myself, "Goddamn, that's good looking" (And not just about the characters Most of my friends also liked it, although one couldn't see it as anything other than "hot chicks kicking butt" and another totally hated it.

 

[Callate]

I agree with you for the most part, though I think Snyder shows himself to be a better visual director than he is a writer. The writing and the "characters" (definitely not enough dimensions to warrant the title) are the weakest links in the movie. The way the story is framed, leading to the Downer Ending, doesn't give us a lot of room to care about what happens to the girls.

However.

As a woman, when the movie ended I was aggravated. I couldn't explain why to my liking until I read an interview with Snyder where he explained his logical reasoning for his own creation. The idea came from wanting to reprimand sleazy guys who like to leer at women, and objectify them, and treat them like whores. So that first dream layer is literally setting up a slap on the wrist for men in the geek community who view women (and female characters) like whores, with the second dreamscape (the mashup) putting men (male geeks in particular) in the position of the male characters of the primary dream.

So...the movie isn't even about women, or its female characters. Showing support for the XX-chromosome cause isn't "female empowerment." In his own movie, Snyder is using women in the same manner he's accusing other men of doing--and "for a good cause" doesn't excuse it. It's still a dialogue between men. I mean, he threw us a bone, that's great, but I don't enjoy being the pawn in someone else's game. Particularly when the argument's going on over my head, I'm the subject, and only touted out as needed. Snyder may have had good intentions, but he missed the mark. The fact that both sides are accusing the other of being the exact same type of male says something, I think, about men and male sexuality that I'm having trouble pinning down. Until then, it's ironic in a hilarious kind of way.

Seriously though...the girls are strongest when furthest removed from reality?? I think my entire experience with this movie can be summarized as, "You're doing it wrong."

I would hesitate to condemn Snyder himself in this regard until I heard what he thought the movie was offering to a female viewer, though I can certainly sympathize with the idea that whatever the movie itself might have hoped to offer, it didn't succeed there. Not least that for all the action scenes centered on women, it's still left to a man (a character who, given others' comments, is clearly the most bewildering to viewers in his ambiguity) to give those women direction.

One could definitely get the impression from SP that if a male isn't out to control, objectify and/or abuse females, the best a female might hope for is a somewhat patronizing paternal benevolence.

 

[J1NXY0]

He liked it? Wow... I don't know, this bored me to tears. As soon as the action started I shut off. The characters weren't built up enough, I felt no emotion for them... This looked like my kind of film, but I was pretty let down by it. Don't know about you guys though?

 

[KingParappa]

I am so f-cking glad to hear someone likes this movie. When I heard the guys at Spill give it a Sum ol Bullshit my jaw hit the floor.

Off Topic:
I'm glad to see somone else likes spill, those guys arn't nearly as popular as they deserve. I've never met a bunch of guys so willing to get invoved with there audience. If i'm ever in austin i'm definatly going to one of their epic meet ups!

OFF Topic:

You're not going to Spilldotcon?