The Big Picture: You Are Wrong About Sucker Punch, Part One

Diddy_Mao

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This is a weird film for me to admit I liked and I think it's because I like Sucker Punch more for what it did and less for what it is.

Taken on face value on it's strength as a movie alone, it's really not that great. The plot is tissue thin, the characters are poorly developed (there's a joke about breast size in there if anyone wants it), and the script is weak...it's pretty much just a 120 minute music video.

However, when viewed in conjunction with it's promotional material it takes on a lot of the qualities Mr. Bob discussed. It flat out tricked the overwhelming majority of it's audience into seeing it based on the allure of watching pretty little girls in fetish gear kicking high.

I'll be the first to admit that I fell for that. Being a collector of "Good Girl Art" and having worked with friends who are themselves performers of American and Victorian burlesque, I may have gone into this with a slightly different viewpoint than most. That's not to say that I wasn't still there to see the same thing as the rest of the audience.

But I loved the fact that the movie spent the majority of it's time criticizing it's audience. It blows my mind that Sucker Punch gets dismissed as juvenile and pandering while the equally great Cabin in the Woods get's praised for pulling the same trick with different cards. Or to keep things a little more current, this is the exact kind of marketing bait and switch that's getting Spec Ops: The Line so much praise right now.

So yeah, Sucker Punch, Cabin in the Woods and Spec Ops: The Line are all, on their surface pretty much middle of the road to sup par examples of their respective genres who took chances on using the tropes of their genre to turn a mirror on their audience. So why is Sucker Punch the only one routinely getting passed off as being nothing but a pandering mess?
 

Moonlight Butterfly

Be the Leaf
Mar 16, 2011
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Kargathia said:
Moonlight Butterfly said:
I feel like I 'get' this film mostly because I have been in abusive relationships with men and have used my imagination (and games) as a form of escapism. This film could have been taken from inside my head... I have real life parallels for both the step father and the doctor/brothel owner guy, unfortunately.

You are so right about this Bob, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

This film made me cry, I'm not sure how many people it had that effect on.
It appears perspective matters quite a lot on this, as personally I had the sense they were shooting for the whole imagination-as-escapism thing, but horribly failing at it. In my interpretation it should have been Baby Doll's imagination we'd get to see, in which the brothel easily could fit, but the action sequences felt horribly out of place, as they are such obvious male fantasies. That is not to say it can't be the preferred escapism of a woman, but it certainly does need additional background to explain for it.

In my personal opinion the best solution would've been to either make a movie about a girl using multiple levels of fantasies to escape from a wretched reality inside a mental hospital, or make an obvious satire burning the concept of "empowered" scantily clad sex fantasies to the ground - not both.
I think you are probably right about perspective, I'm in the position that I being a gamer those sequences are sort of familiar to me as well as having the ability to see it from the abuse angle.

I doubt that my experience is unique but it seems a very specialized pov to come at it from as you said.
 

ThrobbingEgo

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Scrumpmonkey said:
Is this ANOTHER one of those times that Movie Bob is sitting us all down and lecturing us about how his opinion is so much more valid than everyone else's? Urrrrrggggg... Honestly Bob this kind of stuff undermines your usually good work, you did this with Expendables, you did this repeatedly with the whole Mass Effect 3 thing and now you're doing it again.
It's a video essay. There's not much point to an essay if you don't think you're right. Bob has a central thesis as what the underlying intent of the film was, and he provided evidence within the film to back it up. Whether or not Suckerpunch was a good movie, or if it tried to have its cake and eat it too (which it did attempt), has nothing to do with it. Do you think Bob's analysis, which is grounded in the content of the film, is wrong?

Personally I enjoy this level of analysis. I'd rather watch a Big Picture episode where Bob digs into the content of the film, instead of giving us a Wikipedia-style summary of the surface facts.

...
One unrelated positive note about Suckerpunch was it made me re-listen to Yoav's cover of 'Where's my mind.' I didn't like it when I first heard it on Charmed and Strange, I thought it was boring, but I saw it in a new light after the movie.
 

SnakeoilSage

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The thing is Bob, the movie is kind of about misogyny, because the flick ends on the downer note you expected it to. Instead of finding some kind of inner strength to see her overcome the real-world threats, she gets lobotomized and its up to a few well-meaning men to save the last remaining girl and protect her from all those nasty bad men out there. The lesson learned? Good men need to protect women from rapists. Thank you Lara Croft for spelling it out so succinctly!
 

TazTheTerrible

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Feb 20, 2010
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Why do so many people seem to think you have to fully agree with all the underlying messages in a work of fiction in order to enjoy it?

I mean, yes, Suckerpunch is at the same time a condemnation/satire/parody of the sexy-powerful-girls-kick-ass genre, while at the same time being a prime example of the genre...

But why must it be impossible to enjoy it as both? Why would it be so hard to admit that sexy girls and explosions are fun to watch, while at the same time appreciating the movie's criticisms of it?
 

mdqp

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Oct 21, 2011
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I am going to ask something only partly related to this video: I watched Starship troopers once, and found it was crap, as I took it somewhat at face value and thought that, even if it was actually a parody/critique/whatever of the genre, it would have failed anyway because it was played too straight.

What I want to know is if there is something from within the movie that tells me this is a parody, or if I have to assume it that "since it is this bad, it MUST be a parody", a reasoning that doesn't fly all that well with me, since people are perfectly capable of doing shitty movies, so you can't expect me to telepathically extrapolate if you mean for it to be a parody or not.

I also want to know what purpose does it serve to play it straight, since that way you end up criticizing the genre directly, but without any strength behind such accusations (it's like if someone decided to kill someone in front of me to explain to me that is wrong to kill... This an hyperbole, of course, but you get what I mean, right?).

I am not a native english speaker, so I hope this isn't a case of "lost in translation", where the lines or the tone they were delivered in were so different after dubbing them in my language that it made it harder (or impossible) for me to really feel the irony.
 

Xman490

Doctorate in Danger
May 29, 2010
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Xman490 said:
"I'm not talking about not LIKING it. I know a lot of people who DID get it and still didn't like it, not so much people not appreciating the QUALITY of the movie as not appreciating its PURPOSE."

That sounds like your very positive review of The Cabin in the Woods. At this point in the video (first minute), I'm guessing that Sucker Punch has that underlying tone of "Yeah, we know you like this a certain way. But seriously, stop demanding it. It gets on our nerves." or something like that.
After watching this, I seem to be correct.

But anyways, I realized another parallel: Team Fortress 2's Meet the Pyro. The Pyro's enjoyment of his/her murdering spree is, like Sucker Punch's empowering war world, a completely warped version of the real world that swaps suffering and horror with happiness and magic. Maybe that's one of the reasons why people (myself included) love that Source Film Maker short.
 

shadowstriker86

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When i first saw this movie i instantly got what they were going for but only because i had played a game called "insanitarium" a long long time ago that pretty much did the same thing, only in the game it was to steal an invention instead of an inheritance
 

el_emmens

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Mar 23, 2009
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Never seen the movie but heres, what will probably be my only comment on this.
While 100 percent I will say flat out sexual and mental abuse is NEVER good ever. I really don't see a connection between it and a simply admiring of sexualized females in any entertainment medium. However it is bad that if you can ONLY think of women as sex objects and nothing more, than you need therapy.

Just my two cents. I'm sure I'm wrong.
 

UnderGlass

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Thanks Bob. It's nice to see a critique of the film for what it was trying to do. Even if the way it was trying to do it was clumsy. Personally I think Snyder's OTT music video style hurt the central themes a bit by overpowering the significance of the onion-layer metaphors.

I loved the movie asking me to question myself and my reasons for watching it and agree that the PG rating hurt it's ability to hit harder where it needed to.

I also thought the ending was a great idea but fumbled in the execution with some lousy, rushed dialogue and poor characterization of the surviving protagonist. Still a very worthwhile film to see provided you understand it's intentions going in.
 

ritchards

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Nov 20, 2009
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So... this is another one of those things whereby the only way to win is to not participate?
 

hermes

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mdqp said:
I am going to ask something only partly related to this video: I watched Starship troopers once, and found it was crap, as I took it somewhat at face value and thought that, even if it was actually a parody/critique/whatever of the genre, it would have failed anyway because it was played too straight.

What I want to know is if there is something from within the movie that tells me this is a parody, or if I have to assume it that "since it is this bad, it MUST be a parody", a reasoning that doesn't fly all that well with me, since people are perfectly capable of doing shitty movies, so you can't expect me to telepathically extrapolate if you mean for it to be a parody or not.

I also want to know what purpose does it serve to play it straight, since that way you end up criticizing the genre directly, but without any strength behind such accusations (it's like if someone decided to kill someone in front of me to explain to me that is wrong to kill... This an hyperbole, of course, but you get what I mean, right?).

I am not a native english speaker, so I hope this isn't a case of "lost in translation", where the lines or the tone they were delivered in were so different after dubbing them in my language that it made it harder (or impossible) for me to really feel the irony.
Its a fairly valid point. One way to differentiate it is by making it so over the top that it will make people uncomfortable about it. Of course, that can be lost in translation too... if not ridiculous or creepy enough, people may assume is just a straight example of the thing is trying to criticize.

Because of that, its extremely difficult to pull it off successfully; at least without being offensively simplistic and just spell it out for the audience.
 

2fish

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Sep 10, 2008
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I may have gotten the message if the movie had not induced zone out syndrome. I remember watching the start of the movie some insane asylum, brother dream, zone out, BUNNY RABBIT MECH HELL YEAH!, zone out, where is the bunny rabbit mech?,zone out, scene with the old guy, zone out, credits.
I got the idea that the men were bad for doing this to the women but I think the lack of caring about the movie or anyone in it prevented me from thinking about it. I can see your point mr. bob of movies.


DVS BSTrD said:
Yeah, my problem with Sucker Punch wasn't with it being "misogynistic".
It's that it was so schizophrenic nothing seemed significant.
Well this post is more or less my own views so I have to type less. YAY!

2fish awards bunny rabbit mech most relatable character.
 

jaymiechan

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Genuine Evil said:
jaymiechan said:
.

Then there is the point that the film, regardless of whatever lofty goals it might have had, revels in the very thing it is attempting to satirize. i mean, for cripes sake, you don't even find out any of the names of the women! AKA a very humanizing element, and something that could have cemented, even if held as a reveal for the end.
As far as I understood the movie all the girls in the brothel were actually Babydoll or more specifically representations of parts of her psyche. So whenever one of them got killed it was just a part of her dying and the girl who escaped was what was left after the lobotomy =(

They weren?t given names because they were all the same person.
Nope, they clearly show that each lady in the fantasies are also real in the Asylum; they clearly show the stabbing death of one of them in the Asylum level. The only questionable bit is the Mentor guy as a bus driver, but also note that that section is color-toned differently than the rest of what is established as "reality" (the cold blue-green tone).
 

Storm Dragon

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sinsfire said:
Storm Dragon said:
I liked this movie overall, but my biggest problem with it was the ending.
Babydoll stays behind so her friend can escape, and that's fine; heroic sacrifices and all. But then she ends up getting lobotomized and presumably spends the rest of her life as a vegetable. That's horrible! I would have been okay with it if she had simply been killed, but this... This is a fate worse than death. I'm not really criticizing the movie on a storytelling level for this ending, but I just can't stand it when a story ends this way. I feel the same way about George Orwell's 1984,
where the protagonist and his girlfriend are brainwashed and indoctrinated into the system.
I thought the book was good, but I hated how it ended.
Not everything ends happily. The ending to 1984 was perfect for the themes it was attempting to convey. I would recommend against reading "A Brave New World" (book) but you may like Terry Gilliams "Brazil" (moive)

As for the ending in Sucker Punch I think there may be more to it then that.
the heroic scarifice is not just for the friend who gets away, but in doing so the practice of unauthorized labotomy is discovered and presumably the director is removed from his position. Therefore her sacrifice is for all those that remain as well. I anticipate Bob may discuss this a bit next week as well. Side note, great cameo by John Hamm.
I'm not saying that endings like that are bad, it's just that I personally dislike them.
 

MB202

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Yeah, so many people who I talked to or talked about this movie got the wrong idea or took it at face value. I think it would help if some people look deeper into things...

Although I still haven't seen it yet, so I can't I can't really talk.
 

Guffe

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I like the movie.
I usually avoid digging into stuuf like this but it's nice hearing about others thinking their asses off.
I just watch movies and either enjoy them or then not.