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

Markunator

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Nov 10, 2011
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I'm sorry, Bob, but I still won't watch this film. These guys' views on movies tend to mean more to me than yours (no offense):
 
Aug 1, 2010
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This is rather funny to me.

I didn't get it at all (if you are in fact correct), and I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

So yeah. I'm that slobbering nerd watching the cute girls in skimpy outfits dance. And it really doesn't bother me. At all.

They can point it out, but they can't really criticize it when they are the ones providing the entertainment to matter how much it's just to rob me.

By walking into the theater, I said, "Yes. You get to have my money. In return, you all put on hot clothes and kill things with swords."

A deals a deal.

Still, interesting episode. It isn't often Bob and I like a movie together.
 

Rainboq

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Nov 19, 2009
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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.
Quote because this was exactly what I was going to say.

OT: And this, Bob, is why you're one of the few critics I trust.
 

GloatingSwine

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jaymiechan said:
i DESPISE this film. Sure, there's the condemnation, but there's also a lack of positive icons that can be used to bolster the "satire" element.

This is almost always the problem. The problem isn't that there are bad portrayals of female characters, the problem is that there are few to no good ones. It's worth reading This blog post [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/08/the-things-that-used-to-be.html] about the female characters of Blake's 7, and why they were a good example of female characters in fiction.
 

Ed.

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Jan 14, 2010
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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.
I'm not capable of directly sympathising with your situation but I can tell you your not the only person that reacted to it that way I know someone who took it almost exactly like you did.
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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Jul 18, 2009
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Sucker Punch wanted to have it's cake and eat it, and then through it up all over the audience.

Everybody got this movie, I don't see how anyone couldn't, however some people liked what they got and others fucking hated it.

I have no problem with anyone liking this film, but saying people didn't like it because they didn't "get it", makes my skin crawl.

Plus, it's just a fucking terrible looking movie, with horrendously fake CGI, wooden acting performances, bastardized versions of classic songs, shitty fight scenes that go on forever (that train sequence, Jesus Christ), Bjork, a villain with no motivation other than "women, argh", and oversaturized colours.
 

IamLEAM1983

Neloth's got swag.
Aug 22, 2011
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Actually, the movie portrays a form of misandry. As in, y'know, the opposite of misogyny. The hatred of men, specifically. Only I won't brandish any kind of heated, reactionary "Feminists are bullshit!" argument, because Bob's right. The movie explicitly criticizes those types of men who watch movies like these for the sake of gawking at Fantasy bras and panty shots disguised as heroic epics centered around the tired old trope of the Strong Independent Woman.

Sucker Punch was a great movie, but its own visual aesthetic kind of plays against its own established goals. I know a lot of folks who watched it precisely for the sake of watching Abby Cornish in supertight miniskirts swinging swords around n' shit. It's hard to have an intelligent discourse on it when the only arguments you hear in its favour for the first few weeks after its release are variations on "Hells yeah, the girls are fuckin' HAWT!"

I think Zach Snyder seems to be interested in playing in the big blockbuster playpen for the sake of telling involving stories or exploring interesting facets of our nature; but he more or less keeps running into a more serious version of Christopher Nolan's own problems.

Nolan's movies are cerebral, calculative and some would say very "distinguished alpha male"-oriented affairs. They're "The Expendables" for guys who enjoy digging into characters, concepts and narrative tools. The problem is that in some cases, the whiz-bangs, pew-pews and chop-socky sequences are seen by some as being the only real reason to watch these flicks.

Let's be honest for a sec. People watched Memento because of the story and how anteriograde amnesia can act as a quirky narrative device. On the other hand, people watched The Dark Knight Rises because a) it's a Batman flick b) it's a summer action blockbuster and c) Anne Hathaway in a catsuit.

Yes, I'm sure a lot of us watched TDKR because we actually cared about the plot, but come on. Think back to how teens and preteens consider Batman. Batman isn't cool because he's conflicted and troubled or because he's a modern-day example of the classic tragic figure of the man burdened by Fate - Batman's cool because he's got gadgets and Kung Fu and awesome villains and crap!

It took a while before I could really appreciate the Paul Dini Batman series. Not because I didn't earlier, but because I couldn't pick it apart and analyze it quite well as I can now. The same applies with Sucker Punch. The hormones need to cool down, you need to condition yourself to look past the boobage, and then you'll find a pretty daring little piece of art waiting for you.

Captcha: om nom nom
Yeah, I guess I should have breakfast at some point. We're a half-hour past noon.
 

EgonCom

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Aug 5, 2009
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3:14 - now kiss...

4:20 - joke on them. I didn't spend a penny on watching this film :p
Also: since You advertise this movie as worth watching does it means that You, Moviebob, is a pimp?
 

Storm Dragon

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Nov 29, 2011
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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.
 

The Human Torch

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Sep 12, 2010
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I saw Suckerpunch several times after I bought it on Blu-Ray (it went out of movietheatres very quickly in my country, so I missed it there), and I really enjoyed it.

I got the fantasy within the fantasy, but not for one moment did any thought of feminism, opressed and stereotypical females and audience mocking come to my moment. My girlfriend watched this movie with me, she missed the message as well.

For a movie that is supposed to carry over this message, it really sucks at doing so. And perhaps that is it's major flaw.
 

sinsfire

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Nov 17, 2009
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Combine Rustler said:
Didn't watch the movie for more than 5 minutes. Space folded into itself and the Lord of Disappointing Chocolate-chip Cookies barked at me from beyond the edge of existence to stop watching this thing because I'm already super bored, disinterested and somehow vaguely annoyed. What was I to do?
(just wanted to get that out here before I watch Bob's video)
(fucking why is my eye hurting fuck gotta see doctor)

How can you hate a movie after 5 minutes. I get that you can hate the 5 minutes and the themes involved therein, but how can you hate the whole movie. I know people who got physically ill at the first 10 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. You know what they did, they walked out, got ahold of themselves and then went back in to watch the movie.

If you didn't watch more then 5 minutes of any movie then I don't know how you can say you hate the moive. You can hate the first 5 min but not the work as a whole.

OT: I liked this movie when it came out. I don't know that I was looking for depth or sadness but that was what I saw. Sometimes you can know there is something more to a film even if you don't "get it". I may not have thuroughly understood the movie but I understood there was something more to it then chick in school girl outfit and guns.

I appreciate BOB giving a rundown and I am curious to see where this ends up.
 

gardian06

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Jun 18, 2012
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obedai said:
My main problem with this movie is that the action scenes aren't integrated well into the movie. The movie makes its artistic statement reasonably well, but the action scenes feel completely pointless and tacked on because there is no reason for them to be there in the plot of the movie. The action scenes cut away from the characters and plot to essentially go 'whee explosions' for a few minutes so that it can make its artistic statement.
Really. go look up Schizophrenia (not on Wikipedia, but in DSM).

Schizophrenia boiled down means not being able to separate one reality from another that the person perceives to be happening around them, and at times these shifts can happen without warning, and within fractions of seconds.

usually these switches in perception occur as a result of a traumatic event (rape, abuse, etc...) as a safer place to be then where the person actually is.

so by them inter-splicing the action scenes as tacked-on they are simply depicting a schizophrenic episode, and it actually serves the point of seeing the events through the eyes of a schizophrenic, and with that being the plot those inter-splices are the point. then that is used to prove the sucker punch aspect. So yah that actually makes it work on a higher level.
 

PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
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Jan 30, 2011
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StriderShinryu said:
PsychedelicDiamond said:
Oh, i enjoyed Sucker Punch. Well, at least the Directors Cut. The normal cut lacked one vital and one pretty cool part. I know what Sucker Punch was trying to do and i appreciate it... but it lacked in dialogue and characterisation. People calling it misogynist though are just not getting it.
I have seen the movie a couple of times, but not the director's cut. Any chance you can spoil the additional material for me either here (perhaps in Spoiler tags) or by PM?
Sure:

The first scene is not really that important to the story but, again, just a really nice scene that fleshes out the setting. It's a musical sequence, a duet between Blue and Ms. Gorski singing "love is the drug" on the stage of the burlesque club. It shows the inner workings of the club, the dances of some of the girls (which all relate to the characters) and features some really good music and choreography. Here's a link to the scene on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlRmTKuEAG4

The other one... well, remember how the whole movie was building up to Babydoll sacrificing herself, which, in the burlesque world, meant selling herself to a man called the "High Roller"? In the normal cut that part wasn't really shown but in the directors cut there's a pretty interesting dialogue between her and the High Roller. Instead of being violent and sleazy like the other men taking advantage of her, he's a polite, soft-spoken gentleman who treats her really well and helps her come to terms with her fate. Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL1WGsuXqqk
 

DugMachine

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Apr 5, 2010
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I honestly didn't 'get it' when I first watched it but enjoyed the film for what it was, an interesting little action movie with hot girls fighting robot ninjas. After watching your review and break downs of the message I appreciate it way more than I originally did. Granted, the movie itself isn't that great and could have been done much better but I definitely see what it was trying to say now.

Great video Bob, can't wait for next week.
 

Akio91

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Dec 21, 2011
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Wow. Once again Bob shows why this is the only show of his that I watch. I can't wait for part 2 (and hopefully 3, 4, 5, etc.)
 

DJ_DEnM

My brother answers too!
Dec 22, 2010
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>Agree with MovieBob
>You Are Wrong About Sucker Punch


Am I though?