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

[Zoe Castillo]

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[Canadamus Prime]

Whoa, that's heavy. Of course I haven't seen the movie, but I might go see it now.

 

[Nimzabaat]

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?

I haven't played Spec Ops yet, but I understand your comparison to Cabin in the Woods. Basically Sucker Punch is getting slammed more because it turns that mirror directly onto the audience and most people don't like what they see. That's what people are knee-jerk reacting to. Cabin in the Woods pulled the same trick but in a more subtle way. Most people watching Cabin in the Woods don't get that, as the audience, we are the great despicable evil that wants the "protagonists" to suffer and the world to end. Cabin in the Woods left that part implied, while Sucker Punch actually followed through. Though in Sucker Punch's defense, it's more like the cave in Empire Strikes Back, the only evil is what you bring with you. There's no mention of rape (in fact, if you pay attention to the end, anything provable would have real world consequences and therefore didn't happen), but if you're a wanna be rapist at heart, you'll see that in the movie. So I can see where people saw something ugly within themselves that makes them want to hate the vehicle which brought about the revelation.

That and I think Samurai with mini-guns are cool.

 

[mdqp]

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.

But that's the point: if you play it "straight", you also can't make it over the top, because if you do, you have only 2 possible outcomes, I think:

1)It becomes ridiculous, and humorous, as a result or;

2)It becomes really blatant, and you would be better off making a documentary, by that point, as it would allow you to articulate your opinion, instead of simply pointing the finger. This second version is also basically impossible to be made entertaining, as it should be bad, even if it's on purpose (if you make it entertaining, than you are doing it wrong, how can you criticize it?).

So I can't seem to be able to imagine such a situation played straight and being really meaningful.

P.s. I saw someone post above on how the fact that the propaganda as it's shown in the movie should make it clear that it was satire, but I can't help but feel that for me it kind of reinforced the "straight" feeling I got from the movie, and the fact that it would be uninteresting, even if it was satire (as in, it wasn't really subverting the scenario, at least for me).

 

[jaymiechan]

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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).

the reason she sees the mentor character at the end is because she was still in the dream , so was the whole final scene in the Asylum . also the bright colors at the end were nothing like the dark grim tones we were shown at the beginning and the only parts of the movie that had any bright colors were the dream sequences, I doubt it was the real world .

also Im pretty sure the girls were only shown after the lobotomy scene.( and even if they weren?t you can still bullshit around that)

No, the Asylum scene at the end fit in with the themes and patterns for the different 'levels' of reality as well. It's only the bus scene that is more questionable. Also, the LADIES (not girls, they were adults) were shown just before the very first transition into the Brothel level of escape, where the Lobotomy scene becomes Rocket (i think) doing a scenario for the Brothel show.

Of course, the Brothel alone pisses me off, due to the fact that someone who has been sexually abused does not escape that sort of thing via a scenario where THEY ARE ONLY THERE AS A SEX OBJECT.

 

[Darknacht]

And if people are overwhelmingly confused about the purpose or message because the satire was too subtle, then the satire DID NOT DO ITS JOB. That should be film school 101: if you have a message or satire, make it effective and clear, because satire that no one gets isn't really satire at all.

The movie literally yells 'STOP' at one point early on and everything comes to a halt while a character explains to the audience the point of the movie. How much clearer could it be, if people did not get that, then its a problem with the people watching it not the movie.

Except Bob is spending not one but two videos trying to "explain" it to us all, because apparently people didn't get it enough for him and obviously critics weren't so sure, and those aren't idiots unfamiliar with subtext.

I'm not sure what part of the movie you're referring to precisely, but a satire loses its satirical edge when it becomes indistinguishable from the thing that it's satirizing.

This is a joke right?
Don't you get the point of this?
Its to turn people on.
I get the sexy little school girl, I even get the helpless mental patient, right that can be hot.
What is this, lobotomize vegetable?
How about something a little more commercial for god sakes?

I'm not saying that everyone that did not get the point of the movie is an idiot, they maybe a bit dense or they assumed that this was a 'turn your brain off and enjoy it' kind of movie so they missed the point or something. I'm not really sure why so many people can't tell that its a satire it is very easy to distinguish it from what it is satirizing.
I'm not saying that its necessarily a good movie, it has lots of flaws, but it is a satire and it does not stop being a satire just because some people did not get it.

What if I "got" the movie, and still thought it was shit?

If you paid attention he said that he is not arguing whether or not its good, he is arguing that it is a satire.

 

[Zoe Castillo]

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[TorchofThanatos]

Just a quick note: Having to explain what the hell the movie was trying to do means that the movie failed in explaining it.

I just hate artsy carp like what this movie tried. I didn't really get it nor do I care to. If this movie really did try to go for that big of a message well it failed. So why bother explain it?

To be clear I under got what was explain in this episode but I have no idea what Bob has planned for next week.

 

[Nimzabaat]

I am enjoying just how many comments there are from those people who just didn't "get it" though. Highly entertaining.

I am honestly not sure how I should take that. Did I amuse you?

How should you take it? Not very seriously

You enjoyed a movie without reading anything terrible into it. That's awesome. There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying something because it's beautiful or entertaining. There is more to the movie that reflects things about the character of the audience, but you only get back what you put in. So no offense intended. I was really just mentioniong a whole bunch of the earlier posts.

Then there's a whole bunch of people who saw something beautiful and fantasized that there were dicks forcefully inserted between scenes (even though it was stated at the end that Mr Big wanted to but never had). Now those people... there's something wrong with them.

 

[zvate]

Bob, I got to disagree with you on sucker punch. If a tree falls in the forest but know one gets the message then that message really doesn?t mean squat. If hoards of people watched the exploitable physiques of the ladies hop about on stage without any sense of irony or introversion than the film is either a pitiful failure or a noble endeavor transmogrified into cash grab midway through.

If the hot ladies were secretly normal looking women or it was a cartoon or anime maybe I could almost see it, but in this the director laterally sat down and went through a host of portfolios, only picking out the ?hottest? ones. At that point any ironic feminist message has already been tossed in the crapper. Even the baldest and ugliest of actors got to have his moment on screen and take his check home but only the most attractive of ladies, willing to bounce around in skimpy costume to the orders of their male director got to do the same. If the whole dream sequence was revealed to have occurred in the mind of a tragically hideous women at the end, or some non ?baby-doll? female had been allowed to have any role, than maybe it might have delivered some ?sucker punch? but without any nod beyond the most cursory of story tropes the movie is an exploitation piece. For the viewer their is no consequence or cost to viewing it as an exploitation picture and if the deeper statement was so easily missed it probably wasn?t particularly integral or well crafted in the first place.

Its complete and abject failure makes it worse, not better; if the titanic had been designed as an ocean dredging tomb then nobody would give a crap.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Great breakdown Bob. Haven't seen the movie yet, so I don't know if I would agree with your interpretation, but you make a compelling case for the film. This film's message reminds me a lot of Cabin in the Woods and Spec Ops: The Line, both of which were also critical of their supposed target audiences.

 

[Depulcator]

I'm sorry, but to quote George Lucas, " A special effect with out a story is a pretty boring thing." also, it took you this long to say why its good (to you)? I'll pass.

 

[Darknacht]

They're dressed in fitishised outfits and dance for patrons. Half of the action scenes have them in freaking school girl uniforms or some shit.

Do the math.

They are dressed up in fetishized outfits but its so over the top that its not actually sexy.

Just a quick note: Having to explain what the hell the movie was trying to do means that the movie failed in explaining it.

I just hate artsy carp like what this movie tried. I didn't really get it nor do I care to. If this movie really did try to go for that big of a message well it failed. So why bother explain it?

To be clear I under got what was explain in this episode but I have no idea what Bob has planned for next week.

Having to explain to some people what the movie was trying to say does not mean that the movie fail just that it was not made for the enjoyment of those people, it was made for the enjoyment the people who did get it.

If a tree falls in the forest but know one gets the message then that message really doesn?t mean squat.

Just because you did not get the message does not mean that no one did.
Its like Funny Games a movie about 2 psychos that take a family hostage at a cabin and kill them while chastising the audience for wanting to see a movie about 2 psychos that take a family hostage at a cabin and kill them, many people did not get it, but it was not made for their enjoyment, actually the original was not made to be enjoyed at all.