Why critics hate Sucker Punch
Advanced warning - this will be fraught with contradictions and may be confusing. But with that said, it is very important to note that the subject matter at hand is confusing and contradicting. So, read it if you want, or, go find something more entertaining!
Oh, and ~Spoiler alert!~ for pretty much the whole thing.
The ending of Sucker Punch pretty much defines the movie. You aren't supposed to understand it, or have closure, because the movie wasn't MADE to have closure. Like the top spinning at the end of Inception, this movie was meant to be open ended.
I'm not going to get into the deepest complexities (thats for you to figure out), but I will cover this much - you are not intended to know which reality was the REAL reality.
So, the question of 'Why critics hate Sucker Punch'. Essentially, this comes down to.. brown. Sorry to go tangential on you, but, critics went in with an expectation of seeing an anti-feminist malecratic action movie. What they were given was a surprisingly deep film with layers of subltey and the unknowable forces of insanity.
How does this relate to brown, you say? Because it is the same way that games relate to hard subject matter. Simply put - this movie would have done very well if it was not stylized, not pretty, and done with people in business suits. This sort of incredibly heavy subject matter was presented in a package that made people want to watch it, with the option to ignore the plot if they choose to.
As an easy example, consider a hard movie like Philadelphia. If it has been portrayed as artistic battle instead of business suit battle, would it have been a different subject matter? Hardly.
Another hard feature of this movie was that it had pretty girls. As a (somewhat) attractive young miss, I fail to see the issue with this. Do we not all enjoy eye candy? Oh, I suppose it must be that they are all in revealing clothing. But lets dissect the revealing clothing for a moment;
1) Its anti-feminist. According to whom, I would ask. As a fem, it didnt offend me - I found it empowering how these women used their sexuality to bamboozle stupid men.
2) Its unnecessary - I would ask for any one scene where it is presented in an over-the-top manner. Where the any slow-mo upskirt shots? How about slow body pans, like in Chicago (very critically acclaimed)? How about even a single overly sexualized dance that they allude to constantly but never show?
I find this arguement to be what I call the 'Canadian' arguement - we are offended on behalf of someone who might be offended. Not on our own behalves. Behalfs? Anyways.
The biggest reason why critics hate Sucker Punch - for all of the beautiful shots, for all of the lovely gals, for all of the everything, *this movie is depressing as hell*. It is horrendously unsettling and utterly saddening. And critics were unprepared.
I would submit that 99% of people going in to this movie expected a slow-mo action romp with pretty girls. And, you got that. But the underlying subtext of losing freedom, sanity, and giving up everything you were working so hard for. This is very hard subject matter to deal with, and people who can see beyond the 'dream within a dream' thing were blindsided by how painful it was.
Oh, sidebar - it was a dream within a dream. It was a break from reality. They are NOT the same thing.
I'm not going to pretend like I am the expert on pain or dealing with hard things. I would say that I likely have more hands on experience than your average person with the concept of both, so maybe I can shed some light. And I can tell you that these concepts are not only difficult to deal with, but also to express. They break down into a few definable things, most of which your 'average' person does not have to handle over the course of their life.
Consider the unsettling concept of mind-space reality. The best example I can think of is an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Season 6, Episode 17 - Normal again. This episode is essentially the following; she wakes up in an institute, is told everything thats happened is imagined, and she needs to conquer it to be healthy. To do so, she has to kill her friends. At the end of the episode, she decides to save her friends, thereby irrevokably turning off 'reality' for the better world she has in Sunnydale.
This concept is presented in a terrifying manner in the movie Sucker Punch, but it seems to be lost on the critics. Instead of perceiving this movie to be within several spheres of conceptual reality, they perceive it as 'girl is dreaming lol'. Which reality is real though? Did she kill her sister? Did the stepfather kill the sister? Did she help Sweet Pea escape? Or did she ever even exist to begin with, and it was all in Sweet Pea's head? What reality IS reality?
Consider the equally unsettling principle from Shutter Island - if you find out that your reality is so horrible that the fantasy you created is better, would you want to leave it? This movie was largely about freedom, not from the other, but from the self. Ignoring the end about Sweet Pea, consider Baby Doll. The initial reality presented was.. brown. Her mother died, he sister died, she was going to be thrown into an asylum. This reality SUCKS. Who would want to stay there, in an inescapable place where only other people in a brown world live, when she can at least *try* to find personal freedom, either from what she did or what has happened to her?
Maybe I was watching an entirely different movie than the critics. But I feel that the narrative about sanity and personal freedom went well beyond cute girls fighting steampunk nazis.
To you critics who went in wanting an action movie and got Shutter Island meets The Matrix and couldn't handle it - maybe you should seriously reconsider how you perceive things. Because the writer sure did.
-AnneKrog from Burnaby.
Advanced warning - this will be fraught with contradictions and may be confusing. But with that said, it is very important to note that the subject matter at hand is confusing and contradicting. So, read it if you want, or, go find something more entertaining!
Oh, and ~Spoiler alert!~ for pretty much the whole thing.
The ending of Sucker Punch pretty much defines the movie. You aren't supposed to understand it, or have closure, because the movie wasn't MADE to have closure. Like the top spinning at the end of Inception, this movie was meant to be open ended.
I'm not going to get into the deepest complexities (thats for you to figure out), but I will cover this much - you are not intended to know which reality was the REAL reality.
So, the question of 'Why critics hate Sucker Punch'. Essentially, this comes down to.. brown. Sorry to go tangential on you, but, critics went in with an expectation of seeing an anti-feminist malecratic action movie. What they were given was a surprisingly deep film with layers of subltey and the unknowable forces of insanity.
How does this relate to brown, you say? Because it is the same way that games relate to hard subject matter. Simply put - this movie would have done very well if it was not stylized, not pretty, and done with people in business suits. This sort of incredibly heavy subject matter was presented in a package that made people want to watch it, with the option to ignore the plot if they choose to.
As an easy example, consider a hard movie like Philadelphia. If it has been portrayed as artistic battle instead of business suit battle, would it have been a different subject matter? Hardly.
Another hard feature of this movie was that it had pretty girls. As a (somewhat) attractive young miss, I fail to see the issue with this. Do we not all enjoy eye candy? Oh, I suppose it must be that they are all in revealing clothing. But lets dissect the revealing clothing for a moment;
1) Its anti-feminist. According to whom, I would ask. As a fem, it didnt offend me - I found it empowering how these women used their sexuality to bamboozle stupid men.
2) Its unnecessary - I would ask for any one scene where it is presented in an over-the-top manner. Where the any slow-mo upskirt shots? How about slow body pans, like in Chicago (very critically acclaimed)? How about even a single overly sexualized dance that they allude to constantly but never show?
I find this arguement to be what I call the 'Canadian' arguement - we are offended on behalf of someone who might be offended. Not on our own behalves. Behalfs? Anyways.
The biggest reason why critics hate Sucker Punch - for all of the beautiful shots, for all of the lovely gals, for all of the everything, *this movie is depressing as hell*. It is horrendously unsettling and utterly saddening. And critics were unprepared.
I would submit that 99% of people going in to this movie expected a slow-mo action romp with pretty girls. And, you got that. But the underlying subtext of losing freedom, sanity, and giving up everything you were working so hard for. This is very hard subject matter to deal with, and people who can see beyond the 'dream within a dream' thing were blindsided by how painful it was.
Oh, sidebar - it was a dream within a dream. It was a break from reality. They are NOT the same thing.
I'm not going to pretend like I am the expert on pain or dealing with hard things. I would say that I likely have more hands on experience than your average person with the concept of both, so maybe I can shed some light. And I can tell you that these concepts are not only difficult to deal with, but also to express. They break down into a few definable things, most of which your 'average' person does not have to handle over the course of their life.
Consider the unsettling concept of mind-space reality. The best example I can think of is an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Season 6, Episode 17 - Normal again. This episode is essentially the following; she wakes up in an institute, is told everything thats happened is imagined, and she needs to conquer it to be healthy. To do so, she has to kill her friends. At the end of the episode, she decides to save her friends, thereby irrevokably turning off 'reality' for the better world she has in Sunnydale.
This concept is presented in a terrifying manner in the movie Sucker Punch, but it seems to be lost on the critics. Instead of perceiving this movie to be within several spheres of conceptual reality, they perceive it as 'girl is dreaming lol'. Which reality is real though? Did she kill her sister? Did the stepfather kill the sister? Did she help Sweet Pea escape? Or did she ever even exist to begin with, and it was all in Sweet Pea's head? What reality IS reality?
Consider the equally unsettling principle from Shutter Island - if you find out that your reality is so horrible that the fantasy you created is better, would you want to leave it? This movie was largely about freedom, not from the other, but from the self. Ignoring the end about Sweet Pea, consider Baby Doll. The initial reality presented was.. brown. Her mother died, he sister died, she was going to be thrown into an asylum. This reality SUCKS. Who would want to stay there, in an inescapable place where only other people in a brown world live, when she can at least *try* to find personal freedom, either from what she did or what has happened to her?
Maybe I was watching an entirely different movie than the critics. But I feel that the narrative about sanity and personal freedom went well beyond cute girls fighting steampunk nazis.
To you critics who went in wanting an action movie and got Shutter Island meets The Matrix and couldn't handle it - maybe you should seriously reconsider how you perceive things. Because the writer sure did.
-AnneKrog from Burnaby.
