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

[Raioken18]

Nah, we got it. Essentially, we understood the meaning and what the movie was trying to do in it's portray of the characters and stuff. It's just that it was booring, and use one of my most hated modern tropes, the lobotomised girl. It's the very reason I also disliked Dollhouse.

It's meant to show how evil men are in that they will even sexualize a woman who has no memory or ability to defend herself... But even in this the male staff are the ones who speak out first in the movie, so this idea then gets focused onto the one bad guy and subverts the whole men as assholes meaning.

Dollhouse... does a waaaay better job at doing what this movie was trying to do and even then it's pretty lackluster. The thing that makes it better is Adelle who is a badass and powerful woman who takes very little crap.

Anyway getting off topic. If it were trying to essentially send that sort of a feminist message it totally wimps out at the ending where the focus shifts to that one character. Sure you could say that he was a personification of nerd culture, but it's pretty clear that there are other men who behave in the opposite way.

 

[josh4president]

JesuOtaku, Nostalgia Critic, Film Brain and Bennett the Sage from That Guy With the Glasses respectfully disagree with you, Bob:

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/fbv/bmbe/34445-bad-movie-beatdown-sucker-punch

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

I didn't hate Sucker Punch for its feminist/misogyny angle, whether or not that existed; I hated it for its absolute narrative incoherence, poor acting, lack of character development and how it failed to strike the right tone.

 

[PurePareidolia]

Even ignoring the blatantly mysogynistic stuff, the movie is boring. There's no tension because it's all imaginary. From the very first fight the action scenes become dull, drably tinted filler because nobody involved is in any danger. No matter how impressive the visuals were (meh) the movie failed on it's core premise because the exciting parts lacked any excitement. The movie about people's imaginations couldn't hold suspension of disbelief beyond the first fight scene and that's terrible.

 

[Moeez]

Bob, keep on digging that hole. Yes, we all get it (although I'm not the audience for watching this for masturbatory material but more for the genre-pandering worlds they were trying to create with no reason like a music video). You can't just be the bigger man and see why most people can excuse your opinion for this one movie and still watch your reviews because opinions and all that, but you have to actively troll them and make this your mission. You comparing this to Starship Trooper is hyperbole, no one will think of this movie's badly executed genre subversion because many exploitation movies have done this route and still they're just bad films. Sucker Punch from top to bottom, is a bad film with a badly executed message THAT WE ALL GET.

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).

Spoiler

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.

You're thinking of PTSD, not schizophrenia. There's nothing about schizophrenia in this. There are no delusions or hallucinations any character gets. Not at any point of the movie does Babydoll confuse which reality she's in. You can't have a hallucination when you've closed your eyes, which she does for every dance. She doesn't have delusions that there's some mad conspiracy against her or other irrational beliefs.

If you want a movie about schizophrenia, go watch Take Shelter (the best movie of last year).

 

[Lono Shrugged]

OK this has bothered me for the longest time. I have a few points about why even if it IS a good film, it's not.

Marketing. When I saw the marketing for this film I thought it was going to be like Dead Or Alive or any of those boob fighting films. It didn't help that Zack Snyder himself was saying that he wanted to make a fun Anime style film and the cast were all talking about the costumes and the fighting. The press photos were all sexy ladies and fighting. I thought "ah ok not for me but yeah 95% of comic books fans would like this" The marketing was incredibly focused on these aspects. Just so we are clear. The Director often has a pretty big input into the marketing and in Zack Snyders case I would bet a years pay to a dozen doughnuts he was.

Snyders previous dealings with sex.
In 300 the comic the scene with the oracle was surprisingly tame (for a Frank Miller comic anyway) In the movie it was a dreamy 30 second peep show. For some reason the oracle also featured in some marketing. In the comic Silk Spectre hated her outfit (which was tamer, Some of the marketing for the film focused on how sexy her outfit was) and walked around like a bitter veteren showgirl. The sex scene on the blimp was romantic and quite tame (have you ever read Alan Moore!?) In the movie it was softcore porn. Compare that to a similar scene in the movie Super which does a much better job at highlighting the sexual fetish involved in wearing costumes. (Also who thought a sex scene with Ellen Page could be the least sexiest thing ever?) This guy is all about making teenagers happy.

How the movie is shot.
This for me is the clincher on moviebobs argument. All the girls look hot all the time. If in the supposed reality of the movie they had body hair, were not as toned skinny/fat like a girl in reality would be at the movies time frame. I might have bought it when they go into fantasy land and turned into comic book playboy models. They are unashamedly sexualised throughout, through a modern lens. Lit and graded to meet textbook beauty standard I found it totally distasteful and disliked the girls the second I saw them cos they looked like they were on a fashion shoot for a perfume ad and did not look real. Compare that to a show like Deadwood where the prostitutes look like death and you actually understand the misery their life is.

The guy argument.
Yeah I don't buy this either. The guys are sleazy horrible guys, but shy nerdy guys see themselves as nice guys who just never seem to get the girl and want to save nice girls from horrible guys. I saw the audience projecting themselves into it thinking "It's ok Baby-Doll I'm not like him, I have feelings!" And the other half of the guys wanting to be the empowered sleazeballs being taken advantage of because there is sure as shit a market for that too.

I see what you are trying to say moviebob, but for me it's like taking a MacDonald's hamburger and showing how it actually IS better than a Mom and Pop diner burger. At the end of the day that burger is marketed and produced in the most cynical way possible. I think it's cool you have such an interesting perspective on this film. I just don't buy it. Maybe I am too cynical but I just don't buy the film was being that subtle.

edit- I have pages and pages more but I think my TLDR is The film didn't give enough reason to totally buy Bob's defence

 

[SnowBurst]

the ironic thing is they get "suckerpunched" them selves because most people who saw the film more then likely pirate copied it so thats just lovely xD

 

[thom_cat_]

I liked this movie overall, but my biggest problem with it was the ending.

Spoiler

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,

Spoiler

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.

I quite liked that ending.
I loved the film, then I watched the directors cut and fuck, I hated it so much. It ruined EVERYTHING for me. Everything. Seriously:

Spoiler

Babydoll ends up in a dream world -after being punched out by the guys outside of the institution- with the lobotomist (he's as a dream character) and pretty much just desperately gives herself to him, he is the guy most of the movie has been building up to.
He says he has everything and only lacks truth, and he seeks that moment and somehow whilst being extremely creepy, with other women stripping him, talks about the freedom he can give her if she gives herself to him. IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE AND IT MADE ME ANGRY. WHY DOES SHE FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM WHEN SHE'S GETTING LOBOTOMISED!?

It made sense without that crap and it wasn't creepy and forcibly sexualising.
It also puts a random song a dance moment in the middle that got on my nerves for other reasons.

 

[Archer666]

I went to see Sucker Punch in the cinemas expecting to get awesome scenes and as the movie ended I noticed several things:

1) I got my wish of awesome action scenes, but I realized that for them to be good it needs to have some sort of context. You can't just pile on STEAMPUNK ZOMBIES DRAGON HELICOPTERS SHOOTING GETTING SOME EGG without any sort of context and expect them to be good. So I guess the movie taught me that (Although the feeling I got was that the movie was expecting me to love them, which I didn't. Also, the action scenes having no real effect on anything ruined it too).

2)The director wasn't good enough to create good satire. While I could see throughout the movie he was aiming to tell the audience something, it come across like a blind guy trying to draw a police sketch. It sure looks like something, but I have no idea what. Saying in an interview afterwards NO YOU SEE THIS WAS MY BIG MESSAGE NERDS ARE SEXIST AND MISOGYNY is stupid and makes him look even more incompetent because I didn't see it.

3) The ending made me angry, but I don't remember why...

So yeah, I was pretty pissed off by the movie. It did give me a Sucker Punch, but it was more "Zack Snyder is a bad director and should stick to comic book movies" instead of "Fuck nerds".

 

[Inkidu]

Well, you can have the best damned message on the planet, but in the end if the delivery of the message is utter tripe, it's still utter tripe. The movie dragged out and it's message probably wasn't "un-got" as much as you think, Bob. It was actually blatant, and blatantly repeated, with every single seen. I never felt uncomfortable, I didn't say, "Oh, they sure got me!", I was just bored to tears. I got all the symbolism and the "various and systematic" abuses and all that. It was just it was done so obviously and badly.

I'm not saying that I endorse the exploitation of women in any way shape or form, I actually like to subvert the fetishistic "empowering" of women. I don't like the word empowered because it means that women aren't powerful to begin with (which isn't true).

My problem with Sucker Punch is not that it was boring (to tear inducing levels) it's because I'm sure its message didn't make any of the people it was criticizing think about who was sitting there, or that they just didn't care if they did get it. It was ineffectual.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I watched it on HBO. And you know what Bob, it's a boring fuckin' movie. Cute chicks though.

 

[SNCommand]

Should I feel relieved because after watching the trailers my only thought was "Pass!"?

I didn't even know there were more to it than the fantasy action part before just know.

 

[RedDeadFred]

So, if Sucker Punch was unsuccessful in conveying its satire of pandering male nerd fantasy cynically pretending to be somehow feminist by making its fetish dolls into action heroes, what does distinguish it from pandering male nerd fantasy cynically pretending to be somehow feminist by making its fetish dolls into action heroes?

Not much. Really.

That's the thing with satirical condemnation, if you aren't very clever, like Zack Snyder, you end up straight up making the thing you were condemning.

This plus the fact that most people didn't even like the movie kind of throws its own ideas of us being slobs in its face. I've always thought girls wearing almost nothing while fighting horrible monsters is pretty dumb and this movie was no different for me. I did not watch it in theaters because I had no interest but I watched it at a friend's house.

So not only does it sink to the level of what it hates, it actually fails to be a god enough movie to prove that it's message is true in this case.

Honestly I'm kind of insulted that the movie is apparently aimed at me. Oh well, just another reason not to like the movie.

 

[Henkie36]

I saw Sucker Punch, and I think that Bob is looking too much behind it. We should all remember that we only see what we want to see. When you look at it as a metaphore for all kinds of stuff, you easily lose track of the fact that this is still a movie, completely devoid of life. The story goes everywhere, it's never explained how she ends up in those dreams and even more noticable, the characters are completely flat. That was the main thing that botherd me about his Escape to the Movies review of this and he still hasn't mentioned it, where as normally, any movie which makes either of those mistakes gets drilled into the ground by him.

 

[DTWolfwood]

I enjoyed the movie the same way i enjoyed the Transformers movies. Just watched it for the CGI.

 

[Nimcha]

Hmm. I actually enjoyed the movie while disagreeing with the statement it was trying to make. And I call myself a feminist. Sheesh, maybe I'm the one who's schizophrenic?

Anyway yeah, I kinda got it but not entirely. I enjoyed the action scenes with girls in skimpy outfits and I enjoyed the way it was trying to make its point.

 

[Nimcha]

This plus the fact that most people didn't even like the movie kind of throws its own ideas of us being slobs in its face. I've always thought girls wearing almost nothing while fighting horrible monsters is pretty dumb and this movie was no different for me. I did not watch it in theaters because I had no interest but I watched it at a friend's house.

So not only does it sink to the level of what it hates, it actually fails to be a god enough movie to prove that it's message is true in this case.

Honestly I'm kind of insulted that the movie is apparently aimed at me.

But... it's not. You said you don't enjoy these sort of movies anyway, while the movie is aimed at people who do.

 

[zombflux]

Amazing how many people in this thread still don't get it even after watching this video.

 

[Markunator]

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):

This... has to be the most annoying movie review I've listened to. And from the little that I could stand (I couldn't stand his "Zack Snyder" voice after the third minute) it sounded like he is exactly the kind of person that CinemaRobert is talking about in his video. Not only that, the review was as much about the reviewer bashing Zack Snyder for Watchman and 300 with laughable opinions as it was to bash Sucker Punch. Even allowing for the British media's habit of communicating via insults ("This is rubbish!" being the English equivalent for "I quite enjoy this breakfast, thank you very much." as an example), this was so over the top that it's just plain not worth taking anything he has to say seriously.

other three

I might go through these videos later, but if they're anything like the first one then probably not before CinemaRobert's next Sucker Punch video comes out.

First of all, what's so "laughable" about his opinions of Zack Snyder? That he is an awful storyteller? That he can't see past the costumes? That's just what Mr. Kermode thinks, relax.

Second of all, what do you mean that "This is rubbish!" is the English equivalent of "I quite enjoy this breakfast, thank you very much"? That doesn't even make any sense.

Third of all, no, the second review is not like the first one at all, actually. It's much longer, and the two guys reviewing it go into great depth about what doesn't work about the film.

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):
snip

That first reviewer was incredibly annoying. Is it part of his schtick to act like a hyperactive kid? I can't comment on how much I agree with him because I haven't seen the movie but his claim that there's nothing below the surface and that you can't even give the film the benefit of the doubt makes an interesting contrast to Moviebob's analysis.

It's part of his schtick to go on high-powered rants whenever he reviews a film he really hates. The reason he's acting like a hyperactive kid throughout much of this review is because he's doing an impression of what he thinks Zack Snyder might be like based on his body of work.