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

Taronus

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Dec 31, 2011
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I am pretty sure that the film is told not from the perspective of Baby Doll but Sweet Pea; that seemed pretty obvious at the end. And it makes sense that Baby Doll would not create these scenes in her mind since she is the probably most sane one in the assylum.

Btw. am I the only one not turned on by the protagonist? Under-aged, flat-chested blonde chicks have no appeal to me.
 

Bladededge123

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Mar 21, 2009
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I am almost certainly in the minority on this, in fact I hope to god I am given the circumstances of this movie but here goes.

I went into the theater expecting 'I am gonna hate the first half of this movie, but the second half is suppose to be good when they get to the over the top action so I can bare sitting through the setup,' and I was right! What do you know the setup was disturbing and hard to sit through pretty much because of why you'd expect.

We got through most of it though, we were maybe 10 minutes from where the first real big dream-action scene hit..then the screen dimmed and went out. The projector blew out, I got a refund and walked out of the theater.

Sucker Punch might be a good movie, it might be worth sitting through the hard to stomach first act for the second and third. It is -not- worth sitting through that same disturbing opening twice. That's the whole of my opinion on the movie.
 

Darknacht

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May 13, 2009
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Abandon4093 said:
Darknacht said:
Abandon4093 said:
Darknacht said:
Abandon4093 said:
Revolutionaryloser said:
Abandon4093 said:
Darknacht said:
Abandon4093 said:
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.
I think about 95% of the people who enjoyed the movie would like a word with you.
He's right. It's not actually sexy. It's like a satire of what sexy looks like.
Sorry, I'll just defer to you on what people are allowed to find sexy now. Seeing as you're obviously thee authority on it and it's not like attraction is a totally subjective concept or anything.
Overly bleached hair with the roots showing, silly looking pig tails, the ill-fitted cloths of a child, and overdone makeup, yeah thats sexy to some people but everything is sexy to someone.
Not some people, a large amount of people. That's why there's such a market for that sort of shit.

The School girl trope is a trope for a reason. As is the bleached blonde look.

You're making the painful mistake of comparing popular opinion to your own. You don't find sexy =/= most people don't find sexy.
I'm not saying people don't find it sexy I'm just saying that it was intentionally overdone, and that does not mean that people can't think that intentionally overdone 'sexy', with caked on makeup and silly hairstyles and clothing, is still sexy, just look at some anime, but that does not make it any less overdone.

But overdone often goes hand in hand with sex appeal.

It's another cry to uniqueness... no matter how ironic that intent eventually comes off because of how many people imitate it.
That does not make it any less overdone. Its like the girls names, yeah people will find a girl in a movie having the name Babydoll sexy but its still over the top and and kind of absurd.
 

ZippyDSMlee

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It has a drug laced plot, its alot too all over the place. Other than that the fun stuff is neat.
 

Xifel

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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.
What's not to hate about it? It is horrible. It was also a reality 34 years ago in my home country. And we are considered to be one of the "nicest" countries in the world!

I'm sorry you felt so bad, I guess you got Sucker Punched by the ending (pun intended).

OT: The movies greatest mistake is drawn out action. It should have done like "Jarhead"; have exactly the amount of action scenes to make the trailer, to lure people to the theaters, then drop the bomb.

Anyway, really love this movie. Love people that love it, love people that hate it, because at least people discuss it more than 10 minutes after it ended! And that's more than you can say about most movies today...
 

Khada

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Jan 8, 2009
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I'm very happy that Bob is doing covering Sucker Punch in this way. I really liked the movie and saw it in much the same light that Bob seems to.

Though it's still not as good as Scott Pilgrim vs the World.
 
Mar 9, 2012
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I guess I could buy the notion that Zack Snyder tried to be all "clever, genius, and subtle" about the sexism in this film, but if it is the case he fumbled the execution and did a bad job. His comments about Sucker Punch being "feminist" just smacks heavily of lofty pretentiousness with a little bit of cluelessness mixed in.

I think people writing the film off as "Zack Snyder's Personal Wank Fantasy" are being too literal. If anything it just feels more like he made Sucker Punch to jerk off his intellect more than anything else.

To summarize my feelings; What creeped me out the most about Sucker Punch, was the feeling that Snyder sat behind my back all the time, breathing down my neck and occasionally learning in over my shoulder to bellow "I AM A GREAT VISIONARY GENIUS! ASK ME WHAT IT ALL MEEEEEEAAAAAANSSSSSSssss...!" at the top of his lungs.
 

Darknacht

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May 13, 2009
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Abandon4093 said:
Darknacht said:
Abandon4093 said:
Darknacht said:
Abandon4093 said:
Darknacht said:
Abandon4093 said:
Revolutionaryloser said:
Abandon4093 said:
Darknacht said:
Abandon4093 said:
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.
I think about 95% of the people who enjoyed the movie would like a word with you.
He's right. It's not actually sexy. It's like a satire of what sexy looks like.
Sorry, I'll just defer to you on what people are allowed to find sexy now. Seeing as you're obviously thee authority on it and it's not like attraction is a totally subjective concept or anything.
Overly bleached hair with the roots showing, silly looking pig tails, the ill-fitted cloths of a child, and overdone makeup, yeah thats sexy to some people but everything is sexy to someone.
Not some people, a large amount of people. That's why there's such a market for that sort of shit.

The School girl trope is a trope for a reason. As is the bleached blonde look.

You're making the painful mistake of comparing popular opinion to your own. You don't find sexy =/= most people don't find sexy.
I'm not saying people don't find it sexy I'm just saying that it was intentionally overdone, and that does not mean that people can't think that intentionally overdone 'sexy', with caked on makeup and silly hairstyles and clothing, is still sexy, just look at some anime, but that does not make it any less overdone.

But overdone often goes hand in hand with sex appeal.

It's another cry to uniqueness... no matter how ironic that intent eventually comes off because of how many people imitate it.
That does not make it any less overdone. Its like the girls names, yeah people will find a girl in a movie having the name Babydoll sexy but its still over the top and and kind of absurd.
I'm struggling to see how this means anything at all in context of the discussion.
Everything being overdone and kind of absurd was part of the satire of the movie and just because people still find it sexy does not stop it from being satire.
 

Darth_Payn

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Aug 5, 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?
You got the Lord of Disappointing Chocolate-chip Cookies? I got the Duke of Undercooked Hamburger Beef shouting at me from beyond when I tried to watch Sucker Punch for more than 10 minutes.

uanime5 said:
If a movie criticises the people watching it because of what these people like then it's obviously going to do badly. Similarly if the point of a movie is difficult to understand then this is the fault of the director, not the audience.

The problem with this movie is that any point it tries to make is lost due to all the fantasy images it contains. Women fighting against armies using magical weapons is not a good metaphor for women who make their living by stripping, which itself is a metaphor for being in a mental hospital. The movie doesn't know what it wants to be so it ends up being a convoluted mess.

This movie could have easily criticised the flaws with women in fantasy combat by sending a normal woman into one of these fantasy worlds and have her point out all the flaws, such as wearing armour that barely covers you. This way the director could still have all their fantasy nonsense while making a clear point.
You took the words right out of my head! Mainstream audiences do NOT want to watch a movie that hates them, just because they want to watch what's in the movie. I get from an artistic viewpoint, that's theoretically ballsy, but from a business viewpoint, it spreads bad word-of-mouth and makes other people not want to spend money for it. The trailers made it look to me like cynical pandering with no heart or soul, just flashy-and-dull CGI. Now I get why it's called SUCKER PUNCH, because if you paid good hard $ to see it in theaters, you are a huge SUCKER.
 

riftermcriftington

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Dec 11, 2010
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I loved and will always love Sucker Punch for all it accomplished and even just having the guts to "try". It's a real shame that it was so poorly received because now Snydernhas been pigeon holed as an adapter and it's unlikely Hollywood will give him a second shot on an original story for quite some time.
 

Trishbot

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May 10, 2011
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I "got" the film... but I still didn't like it. I thought the acting was dull, the pacing was off, the "dream worlds" had very little to do with the "real world" (and there were weird dreams within dreams), and whole thing was just a very dark, cynical, bleak movie.

Seriously, it was the least fun I've ever had watching girls in fetish school girl outfits slay dragons and fight zombie Nazi robots. How do you make that DULL? They pulled it off somehow.
 

Cobaltmotari

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Nov 30, 2009
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I'll admit, I thought this movie was a letdown nearer the end, but now that I've given this video a watch, I definitely have thoughts of watching it again with this new mindset. I certainly appreciate Bob's mention of the whole "self-satire" aspect being difficult to pull off as well - that's an issue I'd like to see discussed more often - how far can satire be taken, and what separates it from the straight examples? Maybe that's a topic for the future?
 

Caffeine_Bombed

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Feb 13, 2012
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When will people learn that just saying "Yeah but like it was still shit lolz" just makes them sound ignorant?
Love this movie and it's nice to see see it defended for a change.
 

Draconalis

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Sep 11, 2008
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I feel that Bob's analysis is making the movie sound more interesting than it was... but I saw the movie when it came out and only remember that it was like "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" but not done as well, and I hated it.
 

Nimzabaat

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Feb 1, 2010
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I really enjoy how many posts read like this;

"Oh I "get it" but [short to long winded explanation of how they don't actually "get it"]

Big air high-five to those who are seeing the same thing :)