Sucker Punch
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vcassel
Veteran
Wow, he really went for its throat. It's hard for me to imagine walking out of any movie I pay to go see at the theater no matter how awful I find it to be. The only time I remember walking out was during Panic Room, and that was mostly because of two people talking and laughing very loudly.
Eric Boellner
Well-known member
Just saw this film today. Honestly, f..k critics. Ebert, Roeper, Maltin... whoever the hell that Massawyrm guy is.
Why does everyone keep pulling up the "13-year old boy's wet dream" card? Seriously? Even at 13, my wet dreams were a lot more explicit than Snyder's very respectful handling of the easily-exploitable subject matter. I honestly think if Snyder had just gone full R and had T&A and c*m shots all over the place, critics would just shut the f..k up and not give a damn. But because he tries to do something respectable, they get up in his ass because they have issues with their own prepubescent hormones.
The film was f..king fantastic. That opening sequence, no dialogue, just Emily Browning singing a haunting version of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" on the soundtrack as a very dramatic scene plays out. Snyder handles a very disturbing issue here with such delicacy it's almost disturbing to see coming from the guy who directed 300 and Watchmen. The film is very PG-13, despite dealing almost entirely with sexual abuse and its criminal effects on a person.
I'll grant that the style of the film can be hard for some people to take. It's set up like a video game, very similar to Scott Pilgrim vs The World - only unlike SPvTW, this film is not entirely VG style, and it's not just for kicks. The film transitions into video game style as a means of the main character fantasizing about an escape from not only this horrible place, but from her tragic fate and her life. There is a slight bit of cheese, but it's meant to give us a laugh ("Oh yeah, one more thing..." got a lot of laughs) and almost provide a similar escape from the sad narrative.
Browning did a great job as Baby Doll, but I think Jena Malone (as Rocket) was the real one to watch here. Also, Oscar Isaac, who played King John in "Robin Hood," did a fantastic job as the pimpish orderly - both menacing and easy to hate. Jon Hamm and Carla Gugino were fascinating to watch, even if Hamm's actual screen time was pretty small.
Vanessa Hudgens was probably the most annoying casting choice. Not really sure why, but she just annoyed the hell out of me. She also kind of served no purpose. Everyone else was great.
Visually, the movie isn't quite 300 or Watchmen, but it's still quite stunning and great fun to watch. On a technical note, while slow-mo is still prevalent, the incessant time-ramping that Snyder is (in)famous for is almost nonexistent in this film. I thought this was a good thing, as it let me enjoy the (highly criticized, but truly quite wonderful if you give it a chance) story without being distracted by the visuals.
I really enjoyed this film and thoroughly plan on seeing it again ASAP.
Oh, did I mention there are steampunk Nazis?
Michael Traven
Why does everyone keep pulling up the "13-year old boy's wet dream" card? Seriously? Even at 13, my wet dreams were a lot more explicit than Snyder's very respectful handling of the easily-exploitable subject matter. I honestly think if Snyder had just gone full R and had T&A and c*m shots all over the place, critics would just shut the f..k up and not give a damn. But because he tries to do something respectable, they get up in his ass because they have issues with their own prepubescent hormones.
The film was f..king fantastic. That opening sequence, no dialogue, just Emily Browning singing a haunting version of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" on the soundtrack as a very dramatic scene plays out. Snyder handles a very disturbing issue here with such delicacy it's almost disturbing to see coming from the guy who directed 300 and Watchmen. The film is very PG-13, despite dealing almost entirely with sexual abuse and its criminal effects on a person.
I'll grant that the style of the film can be hard for some people to take. It's set up like a video game, very similar to Scott Pilgrim vs The World - only unlike SPvTW, this film is not entirely VG style, and it's not just for kicks. The film transitions into video game style as a means of the main character fantasizing about an escape from not only this horrible place, but from her tragic fate and her life. There is a slight bit of cheese, but it's meant to give us a laugh ("Oh yeah, one more thing..." got a lot of laughs) and almost provide a similar escape from the sad narrative.
Browning did a great job as Baby Doll, but I think Jena Malone (as Rocket) was the real one to watch here. Also, Oscar Isaac, who played King John in "Robin Hood," did a fantastic job as the pimpish orderly - both menacing and easy to hate. Jon Hamm and Carla Gugino were fascinating to watch, even if Hamm's actual screen time was pretty small.
Vanessa Hudgens was probably the most annoying casting choice. Not really sure why, but she just annoyed the hell out of me. She also kind of served no purpose. Everyone else was great.
Visually, the movie isn't quite 300 or Watchmen, but it's still quite stunning and great fun to watch. On a technical note, while slow-mo is still prevalent, the incessant time-ramping that Snyder is (in)famous for is almost nonexistent in this film. I thought this was a good thing, as it let me enjoy the (highly criticized, but truly quite wonderful if you give it a chance) story without being distracted by the visuals.
I really enjoyed this film and thoroughly plan on seeing it again ASAP.
Oh, did I mention there are steampunk Nazis?
Michael Traven
Eric Boellner
Well-known member
Okay, I just read that review... Nordling is now my savior. <grin>
Dear Sucker Punch,
Just when I thought that blockbusters could not get any worse, you had to walk into my life. It was a wild, sickening ride and unfortunately, there is no way that I can get back the two hours I wasted this evening watching you. Your company was about as pleasant as a sucker punch to the balls. I will be honest babydoll, you make Battle LA look like a masterpiece. At this point, I'm pretty sure that only a lobotomy could rid my mind of your awfulness. I'm considering it, I really am. I am currently punching myself for spending $10 on my ticket but Warner Brothers are the real losers for spending $100 million on you. Anyways darling, I wish you a slow and painful death at the box office.
Love,
A film fanatic who is now considering taking up competitive knitting in lieu of weekend trips to the theater.
I saw this movie with a group of the intended audience, Halo Reach and Gears of War fanatics who have subscriptions to Maxim. Not one of them liked it. They all hated it, every single one of them. I rank Battle LA higher because it knew what it was. Aliens land in LA and and the military rolls in to stop them. Plain and simple. Battle LA was horrible but at least you knew what the hell was going on. Sucker Punch was just just a craptastic montage of bad (IMHO) cg work, seizure-cam fight sequences, slow motion objects hitting the ground and girls in skimpy clothing dancing all mixed together with bad cover songs as background noise. I can't even begin to describe what a monumental disaster this film was, it was mind numbingly stupid. I am not sure if Snyder was trying to be deep but he directed possibly the most shallow, misogynistic and empty-headed film I have seen in a very long time. Avoid this one like the plague. Anyone who thought it was good needs to get their head checked.
Just when I thought that blockbusters could not get any worse, you had to walk into my life. It was a wild, sickening ride and unfortunately, there is no way that I can get back the two hours I wasted this evening watching you. Your company was about as pleasant as a sucker punch to the balls. I will be honest babydoll, you make Battle LA look like a masterpiece. At this point, I'm pretty sure that only a lobotomy could rid my mind of your awfulness. I'm considering it, I really am. I am currently punching myself for spending $10 on my ticket but Warner Brothers are the real losers for spending $100 million on you. Anyways darling, I wish you a slow and painful death at the box office.
Love,
A film fanatic who is now considering taking up competitive knitting in lieu of weekend trips to the theater.
I saw this movie with a group of the intended audience, Halo Reach and Gears of War fanatics who have subscriptions to Maxim. Not one of them liked it. They all hated it, every single one of them. I rank Battle LA higher because it knew what it was. Aliens land in LA and and the military rolls in to stop them. Plain and simple. Battle LA was horrible but at least you knew what the hell was going on. Sucker Punch was just just a craptastic montage of bad (IMHO) cg work, seizure-cam fight sequences, slow motion objects hitting the ground and girls in skimpy clothing dancing all mixed together with bad cover songs as background noise. I can't even begin to describe what a monumental disaster this film was, it was mind numbingly stupid. I am not sure if Snyder was trying to be deep but he directed possibly the most shallow, misogynistic and empty-headed film I have seen in a very long time. Avoid this one like the plague. Anyone who thought it was good needs to get their head checked.
Billy Pilgrim
Stye in my eye
Spoilersish.
You have to be crazy to love this movie. See what I did there? The whole movie was just so...odd. I don't know. Every aesthetic and storytelling choice just didn't sit well with me. And the terrible covers of good but overused songs bothered me, but that's the least of my problems. I'll even concede that I'd glad they're covers and not the originals, which have been used a lot. But the covers just kind of sucked. Plus, the song choices were just so obvious. But again, I'll try not to get too hung up on the form. All the action scenes reminded me of movie ideas I had when I was 12 (so there's these girls, and they have awesome guns, and it's WWI, and you have zombie soldiers and mech robots. And there's dragons, and robots on a train on Mars. Oh and there's giant Shogun Warriors, and planes, and bombs! And-and BLIMPS!). I kinda' just wish it showed what was really happening. I'd rather see that movie. Or at least keep it in the brothel. Those scenes were kind of corny, but I was more entertained by them than the action scenes. I understand that the film is about people creating fantasies as a coping mechanism. But why even bother with the asylum in the first place? They could have just made the brother the reality, which is a pretty terrible situation. They're prostituted in both reality and the brothel fantasy. So we have fantasies within a fantasy. And then a twist ending that isn't a twist because we already know they were in an asylum to begin with. They would have made the same point, and been just as effective. It's another puzzling choice. I guess they couldn't include Mech Robots and other "badass" stuff that would have been anachronistic in the '30s or '40s. But I can't really fault the film for what it isn't. The only really big problem with the film is that I didn't connect to neither Babydoll nor Sweetpea. I never felt like I learned enough about them to connect. I really adored Jenna Malone as Rocket though. I'm not as angry about this movie as some seem to be, but it was just kind of meh.
You have to be crazy to love this movie. See what I did there? The whole movie was just so...odd. I don't know. Every aesthetic and storytelling choice just didn't sit well with me. And the terrible covers of good but overused songs bothered me, but that's the least of my problems. I'll even concede that I'd glad they're covers and not the originals, which have been used a lot. But the covers just kind of sucked. Plus, the song choices were just so obvious. But again, I'll try not to get too hung up on the form. All the action scenes reminded me of movie ideas I had when I was 12 (so there's these girls, and they have awesome guns, and it's WWI, and you have zombie soldiers and mech robots. And there's dragons, and robots on a train on Mars. Oh and there's giant Shogun Warriors, and planes, and bombs! And-and BLIMPS!). I kinda' just wish it showed what was really happening. I'd rather see that movie. Or at least keep it in the brothel. Those scenes were kind of corny, but I was more entertained by them than the action scenes. I understand that the film is about people creating fantasies as a coping mechanism. But why even bother with the asylum in the first place? They could have just made the brother the reality, which is a pretty terrible situation. They're prostituted in both reality and the brothel fantasy. So we have fantasies within a fantasy. And then a twist ending that isn't a twist because we already know they were in an asylum to begin with. They would have made the same point, and been just as effective. It's another puzzling choice. I guess they couldn't include Mech Robots and other "badass" stuff that would have been anachronistic in the '30s or '40s. But I can't really fault the film for what it isn't. The only really big problem with the film is that I didn't connect to neither Babydoll nor Sweetpea. I never felt like I learned enough about them to connect. I really adored Jenna Malone as Rocket though. I'm not as angry about this movie as some seem to be, but it was just kind of meh.
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vcassel
Veteran
Did any of that stuff connect or at least allude to the narrative, or was it all just sort of random excuses for effects?
Jawa Ex Machina
Veteran
I haven't seen this film, but I respect both Massa and Nordling. They're both very serious about film and know a great deal and neither of them ever talk out of their ass.
Sucker Punch hasn't opened here, so I haven't seen it, but what this film reminds me of is HEAVY METAL.
Sucker Punch hasn't opened here, so I haven't seen it, but what this film reminds me of is HEAVY METAL.
Billy Pilgrim
Stye in my eye
They weren't at all alluded to. Just a bunch of confounding, random choices.
vcassel
Veteran
That's what I figured. Judging from the trailer, I thought that it was either going to be a helluva ambitious film to encapsulate all those elements intelligently into the plot, or that it was going to be horrifically insulting to its audience. Then I learned that Zack Snyder was directing it and figured it was the latter.
Billy Pilgrim
Stye in my eye
Eric Boellner
Well-known member
Nordling was definitely right on this one. Very few people will like or love it, but those who do will be adamant fans. I'm proud to consider myself such.
Also, as a side-note, pretty much everyone who hated it seems to have either hated Snyder beforehand, or had some moral objection to "girls in skimpy clothing." Considering the movie is about sexual abuse, I think girls in skimpy clothing is actually a really respectful way to handle it - literally any other director would have shown real skin, but Snyder didn't despite his reputation for being the exact opposite of subtle.
This movie is amazing. If you don't like it, or it's not your style, I respect that even if my posts seem to indicate otherwise. It's hard for me to see an awesome movie get dragged through the s..t because people just don't get it. And Sucker Punch is an awesome movie.
Also, as a side-note, pretty much everyone who hated it seems to have either hated Snyder beforehand, or had some moral objection to "girls in skimpy clothing." Considering the movie is about sexual abuse, I think girls in skimpy clothing is actually a really respectful way to handle it - literally any other director would have shown real skin, but Snyder didn't despite his reputation for being the exact opposite of subtle.
This movie is amazing. If you don't like it, or it's not your style, I respect that even if my posts seem to indicate otherwise. It's hard for me to see an awesome movie get dragged through the s..t because people just don't get it. And Sucker Punch is an awesome movie.
Eric Boellner
Well-known member
Hyperbole FTW.
(Would you sign the paperwork for me, though? The Institution won't actually let me commit myself.)
OK, I haven't seen it, but I plan to (though I'll wait for Blu-ray), and I expect to like it. However, one of the lamest retorts to critics is indeed "you just don't get it." 
I often want to slap people who say that to me.
I often want to slap people who say that to me.
So very sad today.
I guess I had unrealistically high expectations for this. My man-date friends (a revered comic book character sculpting artist, among them) all left the theater saying the same thing: that what we'd just seen was nothing more than a live-action video game resulting from one or more drug-enhanced "development sessions". This, the only comment on a movie we'd been salivating to see... since last fall.
What bothers me most is that Zach could have easily made the narrative aspects of this script better. I feel like it was a first draft, where none of what was wrong was ever revamped - or even reconsidered with an eye toward bringing common sense and congruity to the story.
If the brilliant experience that was the opening montage, which set the highest-possible watermark, could have been duplicated through the rest of the picture... well, you'd be reading much better reviews today. Visually, it was pure eye-candy. Some action sequences were masked with incredibly high shutter rates and ramping, but I thought it was gorgeous anyway.
SPOILERS FWIW
The transition into the asylum was strange and jarring. Why alude to an institution at this point anyway? It would have been better to have the step-father sell his charge into the sex-trade. If he were simply disposing of her anyway, nothing is lost in setting the film in a brothel. I believe that the clashing-worlds-problem comes down to a lack of discipline on Zach's part - akin, really, to shopping when you're hungry, where you rush through the aisles with no list or directive and end up with a cart full of crap. At some point, during one of these chemically-enhanced development meetings, Zach suffered some associative recollection of a Delicatessen-inspired world and he decided to shoehorn it into Sucker Punch - "remember how f-ing cool that movie was?!"
In my reimagined world, the psychologist (Carla Gugino), for the majority of the film, simply becomes the girls' madame. Then the audience doesn't have to juggle the stylistic and story clashes between the institutional setting and the lavish nightclub / brothel. It would make her character's uneven disposition toward the girls make complete sense - she is their pimp and their mother, their punisher and their confidant.
The cast was good enough. Broad strokes, highly-derivative characters. Oscar Isaac was mean. Unbalanced. Bad like a character from a dark HBO Sunday series. Hamm was there, for a moment, and it was good. They treated his character as they did his cameo. It was built-up as a big deal, but when it came right down to it, he was just there for what felt like moments - five days after the movie started.
Scott Glenn was there - strangely - to bump the girls into their next quest. The movie is a blur of confused action and he serves as a bridge from one moment of imagined reality into the next.
Emily Browing (that can't be the same girl, can it?!), Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa and Jamie Chung all did what they could in this apocalyptic Charlie's Angels scenario. Rocket (Malone), who must have started her career playing a young Meg Ryan, gives the most nuanced performance of all of them. But I loved watching Browning and Chung most.
I am completely forgiving of whatever shortcomings any of the five ingenues might have shown from an acting standpoint. They pouted when they needed to and cried believably. They were fun to watch. In their close-up work, where I should have been glued to performance, I was distracted with studying their eye makeup more than anything else. Moody... sparkly! The long and short of it is, that despite the thin acting, I want one to take home - any one of them would do. And that's the point.
I'm sure more will comment about this movie, and I'm certain that most of it will be lackluster at best. Still, part of me liked it. I guess the real highlight was seeing the full Super8 trailer on the quasIMAX screen. Spielberg. Aliens. '80s. Potential formula for a perfect summer movie!
I guess I had unrealistically high expectations for this. My man-date friends (a revered comic book character sculpting artist, among them) all left the theater saying the same thing: that what we'd just seen was nothing more than a live-action video game resulting from one or more drug-enhanced "development sessions". This, the only comment on a movie we'd been salivating to see... since last fall.
What bothers me most is that Zach could have easily made the narrative aspects of this script better. I feel like it was a first draft, where none of what was wrong was ever revamped - or even reconsidered with an eye toward bringing common sense and congruity to the story.
If the brilliant experience that was the opening montage, which set the highest-possible watermark, could have been duplicated through the rest of the picture... well, you'd be reading much better reviews today. Visually, it was pure eye-candy. Some action sequences were masked with incredibly high shutter rates and ramping, but I thought it was gorgeous anyway.
SPOILERS FWIW
The transition into the asylum was strange and jarring. Why alude to an institution at this point anyway? It would have been better to have the step-father sell his charge into the sex-trade. If he were simply disposing of her anyway, nothing is lost in setting the film in a brothel. I believe that the clashing-worlds-problem comes down to a lack of discipline on Zach's part - akin, really, to shopping when you're hungry, where you rush through the aisles with no list or directive and end up with a cart full of crap. At some point, during one of these chemically-enhanced development meetings, Zach suffered some associative recollection of a Delicatessen-inspired world and he decided to shoehorn it into Sucker Punch - "remember how f-ing cool that movie was?!"
In my reimagined world, the psychologist (Carla Gugino), for the majority of the film, simply becomes the girls' madame. Then the audience doesn't have to juggle the stylistic and story clashes between the institutional setting and the lavish nightclub / brothel. It would make her character's uneven disposition toward the girls make complete sense - she is their pimp and their mother, their punisher and their confidant.
The cast was good enough. Broad strokes, highly-derivative characters. Oscar Isaac was mean. Unbalanced. Bad like a character from a dark HBO Sunday series. Hamm was there, for a moment, and it was good. They treated his character as they did his cameo. It was built-up as a big deal, but when it came right down to it, he was just there for what felt like moments - five days after the movie started.
Scott Glenn was there - strangely - to bump the girls into their next quest. The movie is a blur of confused action and he serves as a bridge from one moment of imagined reality into the next.
Emily Browing (that can't be the same girl, can it?!), Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa and Jamie Chung all did what they could in this apocalyptic Charlie's Angels scenario. Rocket (Malone), who must have started her career playing a young Meg Ryan, gives the most nuanced performance of all of them. But I loved watching Browning and Chung most.
I am completely forgiving of whatever shortcomings any of the five ingenues might have shown from an acting standpoint. They pouted when they needed to and cried believably. They were fun to watch. In their close-up work, where I should have been glued to performance, I was distracted with studying their eye makeup more than anything else. Moody... sparkly! The long and short of it is, that despite the thin acting, I want one to take home - any one of them would do. And that's the point.
I'm sure more will comment about this movie, and I'm certain that most of it will be lackluster at best. Still, part of me liked it. I guess the real highlight was seeing the full Super8 trailer on the quasIMAX screen. Spielberg. Aliens. '80s. Potential formula for a perfect summer movie!
Eric Boellner
Well-known member
OK, I haven't seen it, but I plan to (though I'll wait for Blu-ray), and I expect to like it. However, one of the lamest retorts to critics is indeed "you just don't get it."
I'm usually the same way, but I honestly don't know any other way to say it. If I see something as a fantastic ode to filmmaking, complete with visual metaphors and subtle and not-so-subtle undertones, and someone else sees it as a wet dream... what do you call that? :undecided