Corona | Coming Attractions

PASTY IT!!!!!

I know, I've been a bit of a slug today & watching TV. Saw I Am Number Four - yawn. I need my soapy supernatural shows to come back on so I have something to watch.

Anyway - I actually hope Superman isn't like his other films. I love his films, I love his style but I'd love to see him push the boundaries of who he is. I have a similar affinity for Tim Burton but I was bored to tears with Corpse Bride. However, Big Fish was amazing. You could still tell it was Tim Burton but it wasn't a redux of Edward Scissorhands. It's time for Snyder to do the same thing. 

Here's the review/response for Sucker Punch:

My rebutall is a little different than I'd originally envisioned as a result of speaking w/Jake after he saw the film.

I need to preface this by saying that I love Zack Snyder. I love his style, the feel of his films. I'd be perfectly happy watching his version of a silent film.

I cared about Baby Doll in the opening sequence, but that's kind of the only time I cared about her as a person. I never saw the girls as 'girls' rather they were ideas. Every person, set, dragon, alien robot, doorway etc... was all an abstraction for layers of ideas.

I realize most people don't go to action movies for layers of ideas but if you don't want that from an action film then don't go to see a Zack Snyder action film. This is something Snyder is aware of too - he's stated that he's surprised this movie was given a greenlight & he expects most people won't like it.

I'm not saying 'If you don't like it you're just too daft to understand it.' What I'm saying is 'If you don't like it, you're probably looking at it the wrong way.'

So, let's start from the top:

There's a huge flaw in the promotion of this film which makes a point of saying it's set in the 60s. It's not. It's set 'somewhere,' both in time & in location or better yet, let's just say it's set in Steampunkville.

Back to the opening sequence - Dude, Emily Browning's version of Sweet Dreams Are Made of This is hella sexy & awesome. It also sets the tone of the film. Snyder could have used that song over & over again & it would have been appropriate for every scene. Overtures set the stage - they should be a microcosm of what you are about to experience. Right out of the gate we know that this film deals with sado-masocism. We also know that we're going down a rabbit hole, remember, we're in Steampunkville, & Snyder is telegraphing the worlds-within-worlds device with his song choice - it's called Sweet Dreams for goodness sakes!

At first I wanted to protest that Snyder wasn't making a video game he was making a comic book; but what are video games if not interactive comic books? How many comic books use the trite ploy of 'Parents are dead. Evil someone tries to steal their wealth. Evil stepfather/stepmother abuses child. Child accidentally does something horrific. All of the above thrusts the protagonist into an arc of redemption through torture.'

Or, you know, through a series of sucker punches.

Do you ever really care that Bruce Wayne's parents were killed in front of him? No, you don't. You care that he's got all of those wonderful toys. And you should also care that his superpower is himself. It's his mind. His ability to make the most of what he has - to be inventive & innovative. To dream beyond what life has dealt him. There's no radioactive spider with Batman or with Baby Doll & her band of crazy orphaned strippers. It's just a bunch of forsaken souls shaking their moneymakers until they receive redemption & kill the things that lurk in the dark

You have all the weapons you need.

That's the true character of any comic book - redemption. What you invest in is the push & pull between darkness & light.

(As an aside, Emily Browning played Violet in the movie version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, another Steampunkville series. Hell, things with Count Olaf could have gone the way of Sucker Punch & she could have accidentally off'dSunny.)

My brother says there are no stakes in the action sequences. That didn't escape me while watching the film but I also knew that would be lamer than lame & someone was going to die. I thought it would be one person & it wasn't. It was a whole mess 'o girls & only 1 death happened as I expected. Two of them blew me away (and if you've seen the film please pardon my pun.)

I'm sorry, I need to take a moment to say CARLA CUGINO.

You also need to remember that the action sequences aren't real. They are fantasies. It's the only place these girls can go to survive their abuse. If you think they aren't in danger then you aren't paying attention. They're in a fucking psych ward & Baby Doll is going to have her brain chopped up in 5 days. Maybe that's not danger to you, sure as hell is scary to me.

Also, look at the bigger idea here - abuse. The main way abuse victims survive is by creating an inner world. They escape. They go somewhere else. It's not just sexual victims, it's children who hear their father scream at their mother or hide in the closet while he knocks her around. When physically hiding isn't an option or isn't enough you hide inside.

If you can't win the external battle you win the internal one.

Isn't that why we see movies, read comics, play video games - We want to be someone other than what we are. Someone triumphant. Someone free from the darkest parts of our history.

The real world is the asylum. That's the danger. The dangers not in the dragon. It's what the dragon symbolizes. I know you people have more than noodles in your noggins - think beyond & pay attention. There's no save point after Baby Doll gets her labotomy. There's no save point after Blue forces another 'patient' to fuck him. That's already happened to all of this girls, except for Baby Doll. These girls don't get a save point.

There is no save point after that - Like Rocket says, they're already dead.

As for the lack of positive male characters - welcome to the world of women & the lack of positive female characters that exist in an exorbitant amount of films. Poor boys, you have to watch a film where your cocks aren't glorified. Go have a circle jerk & cry me a river.

Also - pay attention. Zack Snyder did that on purpose. After the meat fest that was 300 (no complaints from me there, fyi) he wanted to highlight the struggle of women, which is historically internalized. Men are taught to act, react, externalize every emotion. Women aren't taught that. We're supposed to swallow it down.

Are you paying attention? I'm punning better than Buffy Summers.

Baby Doll & her warrior orphaned harlots don't get to act out. It's why you get the worlds within worlds. Before they can act as they know themselves to be they need to act through the way everyone sees them. Baby Doll is stepping on the rungs of female stereotypes. After all, if a woman isn't at home she must be whoring & if she's not doing that she must be crazy because what else is she for?

I'm not saying that every guy thinks of women this way, we're talking historical framework here. But I will say that if what you take away from the girls isn't that they kick ass & overcome adversity but that they're wearing stockings, corsets & lookin' slutty... well, I think this is where Snyder, I, and a bunch of other people stare at you blankly & blink a lot because you've totally missed the point.

(Interjection - my brother didn't think of the clothing that way at all. Though, I suppose we could argue that it's because he has me for a sister & well... in the late 90s I did the thigh high socks w/mini skirts & these days I run around in stilettos, short pencil skirts & dark smokey eye make up - and oh yeah, I'm a trained religious archaeologist who's dug for bones while wearing Steve Madden platforms & I also placed out of 2 intro Physics courses at my college (Physics is Phun). So maybe Jake's just desensitized & used to women in corsets being hella smart & badass & nobody's toy. Or maybe our Mama just raised us right - or maybe he's just awesome.)

And also - why the hell can't a girl be in a corset & fishnets & still have worth beyond that? Really, is Superman only about the codpiece in his latex tights? I thought he was about helping those that can't help themselves... maybe I'm wrong, maybe he's called 'Superman' for only one reason.

God, so many things I want to say all at once in response to this. I'll try to give it some kind of structure. Please keep in mind that I haven't seen Sucker Punch yet and that my response is purely based on the reviews I've read here and elsewhere, on previous Zach Snyder movies I've seen, and on the theatrical trailer. My responses are more related to some things in Scarlet's review, though, so maybe the fact that I haven't seen the movie doesn't make that much of a difference.

Scarlet wrote:

I never saw the girls as 'girls' rather they were ideas. Every person, set, dragon, alien robot, doorway etc... was all an abstraction for layers of ideas.

Right, so the characters aren't supposed to represent real people, but rather ideas that take the shape of people or creatures in the movie. This happens in literature and film all the time, but it's not an excuse for a lack of characterization. Just because a character in a text stands for a larger idea doesn't mean that there is only one dimension that character can take. It's also just incompetent storytelling to create a symbolic character that fails to elicit from the audience any sort of engagement with her (as seems to be the case with Baby Doll) because the symbol then becomes meaningless.

Scarlet wrote:

We also know that we're going down a rabbit hole, remember, we're in Steampunkville, & Snyder is telegraphing the worlds-within-worlds device with his song choice - it's called Sweet Dreams for goodness sakes!

Oh, I get it! The song is about dreams and this whole movie happens in a dream world. It's totally related to the whole premise of the movie!

Scarlet wrote:

At first I wanted to protest that Snyder wasn't making a video game he was making a comic book; but what are video games if not interactive comic books?

Depends on the genre of the video game. Some video games are more like interactive movies. Sucker Punch to me seems like the video game based on Street Fighter: The Movie: it's completely unnecessary. Just like that Street Fighter game is a dilution of a movie that was the dilution of a video game, Sucker Punch is a dilution (or, perhaps, a distillation) of the type of video game that is itself based on cinematic archetypes. Sucker Punch essentially comes out to be a pastiche of a particular cinematic genre.

Scarlet wrote:

Do you ever really care that Bruce Wayne's parents were killed in front of him? No, you don't. You care that he's got all of those wonderful toys.

Maybe I didn't care about Bruce Wayne's parents when I was a kid (although I have to say I always felt that this helped humanize the character), I began to care about them much more as I got older. I wouldn't be able to count how many Batman storylines revolve around Bruce Wayne's confrontation with the death of his parents and the impact this event has had on his entire life. Most things that Bruce does both in his everyday life and in his life as Batman are motivated by the obligation he feels he owes to the memory of his parents. I don't think it's fair to dismiss this facet of his personality as a trivial sidenote, especially if you're trying to make the point that most comic books revolve around the theme of redemption.

Scarlet wrote:

After the meat fest that was 300 (no complaints from me there, fyi) he wanted to highlight the struggle of women, which is historically internalized. Men are taught to act, react, externalize every emotion. Women aren't taught that. We're supposed to swallow it down.

So what does Zack Snyder do? He creates yet another universe in which the only way for women to be active agents of their own destiny is to turn to their imaginations and escape to a fantasy world. How is that empowering? It merely perpetuates the idea that women can only be free within the confines of their internalized selves.
I also have to disagree with your claim that males are taught to externalize every emotion. Quite to the contrary, for much of modern history, showing any type of excessive emotion was considered a sign of weakness in males.

Scarlet wrote:

Interjection - my brother didn't think of the clothing that way at all. Though, I suppose we could argue that it's because he has me for a sister & well...

I would argue that it doesn't have so much to do with you but with the general desensitation of the male population when it comes supposedly sexy outfits. As Patrick already said in his review, we see those types of costumes every year around Halloween, and the rest of the year we're bombarded with similar imagery through various forms of media. I'd agree that Snyder uses these costumes for a reason, and that reason might even be to subvert the usual connotation one has with that certain type of clothing, but I doubt that Jake was the only (adult) male in the audience who wasn't fazed by the women's outfits.

What I'm getting at is I not once sexualized the girls at all.  There are plenty of times I've had impure thoughts about Jamie Chung, but watching this movie wasn't one of those times.

I really think that the script should've been tighter, and although I really liked Browning's rendition of Sweet Dreams, I thought it was a bit obvious and even cliche at this point.  But if the target demo is 12-25 year old girls, it might be less obvious.

Good point about the empowerment message, by the way, Mal.  Babydoll did fight back, sure, and maybe helped someone to actually escape, but her only real escape was inside her mind.  She fought back and lost, still subjected to the evils and whims of the male power figures in her world.

Zarquon!  I really want the blu-ray so I can a) see the director's cut and b) hear what the hell Snyder was thinking.

Perhaps the reason you didn't perceive the women in this movie as sexual objects was that Snyder's strategy worked and you actually felt bad for being a man. On an unconscious level, you couldn't let yourself objectify any of the female characters because that would have placed you on the same level as the molesters, pimps, and rapists in the movie.

I still claim that there is no eroticism left to exploit in schoolgirl outfits because they've become such a cliché of male fantasies that they've lost any effect unless they're used as some kind of ironic gesture.

Oh no, I loves me a good schoolgirl outfit.

Sweet Dreams was extremely cliche - hence my saying that Snyder was telegraphing things for us. He was overstating the obvious. I do think that was because a lot of people had trouble comprehending the worlds within worlds. I guess he thought the song would help with that... guess not!

As to men externalizing emotions - anthopologically, men are taught to externalize their emotions in a physical way. Men aren't supposed to feel they are supposed to act. If you're sad, you punch something. IMO, it often sucks to be a man just as much as it sucks to be a woman - for different reasons.  I didn't really explain that well, it's just that anthropologically men are external and women are internal. It's a generalization but that's a tool you sometimes have to use, even thought it is obviously flawed at the individual level.

I realize my review might have come across as slightly male bashing & I want to make it clear that I'm talking about a system, an archaic system, but a system that still permeates much of the modern psyche. 

I agree about the empowerment message - like I said, the only way any of them could win was to fight the internal battle. Even if they'd escaped they'd still be 'dead' because they can't truly 'come back' from where they've been (what's been done to them). I think that's his point, especially considering what happens at the end. Sometimes the only empowerment you can find is inside yourself. Your mental defense mechanisms are the only weapons you have. That's much of my point... and Snyder's too, I think.

And Jake, thinking about all of the girls as either parts of Baby Doll or Sweet Pea's personality makes this even more moving... especially with Sweet Pea & Rocket. Baby Doll=Sweet Pea and Rocket=her unnamed sister.  Sweet Pea followed Rocket & ended up getting thrown in the asylum. Baby Doll was trying to save her sister & got thrown in the asylum. 

Major suckage.

Scarlet wrote:

I'm not saying 'If you don't like it you're just too daft to understand it.' What I'm saying is 'If you don't like it, you're probably looking at it the wrong way.'

This position is logically unsound. If two people consider the same cultural artifact from the same perspective (or even a similar perspective, considering the unlikelihood of everything lining up "just so"), there's no guarantee they'll come to the same conclusion about it.

Like most people here, I've become an (often) unwitting student of narrative. In my case, I've done it both as a hobbyist and as an academic. I'm reasonably well versed, as a hobbyist, in how things might be playing out with any given narrative. We all are. We catalog narrative threads and potential resolutions in our heads without really meaning to, and we access these whenever we encounter a new narrative.

It's the rare occasion when our minds are resistant to a new narrative. It happens most often when something unrealistic--specifically with regard to the precedent established by the narrative in question--occurs. In other words, we go into it knowing to suspend a certain amount of disbelief based on previous experience. We suspend just a little for biography, just a little more for an autobiography (or, if you choose to trust autobiographers more than biographers, you can flip these two), even more for a work of reality-grounded fiction, a lot for science fiction, and a whole lot for fantasy. Oddly enough, we aren't all that phased when the unexpected occurs. Consider Goethe's definition of the novella:

Goethe wrote:

„Wissen sie was“, sagte Goethe, „wir wollen es die ‚Novelle‛ nennen; denn was ist eine Novelle anders als eine sich ereignete unerhörte Begebenheit.“ (From a talk given on 18 January 1827)

A loose translation of his definition would be "an unheard of event that, nevertheless, occurs."

Beyond defining the novella, he's given us what, in a nutshell, most composers of narrative strive toward. Some of them fail miserably, telling us tales we have heard or seen hundreds of times over. If they didn't think there was something original (be it plot or style) in their creation, they probably wouldn't bother. (There are exceptions. There are plagiarists and people who write more for the buck than for the experience.)

I've just said we've come to expect both the expected and unexpected, though I said it in a long-winded way. Apologies.

Along with expecting both these things, many of us have learned how to read narratives that might seem otherwise convoluted to the narrative novice. None of us here is a narrative novice, whether or not we want to be. Why not? Frankly, we've seen too many movies and shows, read too many books and stories, heard too many concept albums. We might get lost along the way with the occasional narrative, but with a little concentration, we can usually find our way back on the path.

We develop some sophistication along the way. We fill in narrative gaps, we recognize and comprehend metaphor, we catch references to other works, and we anticipate character's actions and responses. Sometimes we anticipate multiple possibilities. We don't always anticipate all. That's why a twist or surprise ending can take us off our guards. Still, they only take us off our guards so much. Twists and surprises are already on our narrative radars, thanks to our having encountered them before.

I mention being a student of narrative as both a hobbyist and academic. I covered my hobbyism, then went ahead and threw the same narrative hobbyism blanket over all of us. I won't do the same with the academic blanket. I've wasted enough of my time with formalism, narrative theory, and the theory of the novel (with enough queer theory, gender theory, deconstruction, new historicism, Frankfurt School, spatial theory, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, eco-criticism, hermeneutics, etc. thrown in to choke a Horso) to come to the conclusion that it is generally worthless claptrap invented by intellectuals and for intellectuals. We need *something* to do with our time, I guess.

Anyway, I don't think any academic study of narrative is necessary to "get" Sucker Punch, and you didn't claim there *was* any need for it. I'm only bringing up my familiarity with it (I'm extremely familiar with the Theory of the Novel, in particular, since I was more or less coerced into working it into my dissertation) to let you know I have that base covered. (Also, bringing it up makes me sound like a colossally self-important ass, and there's nothing I love more than coming across this way.) Again, though, I don't believe that base needs to be covered to look at Sucker Punch from the angles from which those who have enjoyed it have looked at it. I *do* believe most of us have the equipment necessary to comprehend it and enjoy it. Having this equipment doesn't necessitate its enjoyment, though. (I may get a pun and still find it unfunny.)

You might counter here by saying that wasn't your point, and that your point was that disliking it is symptomatic of looking at it the wrong way.

Is there a right way to look at it? You outline, to some degree, how you looked at it, and why you liked it as a result of how you looked at it. At no point did your description of how you looked at it strike me as a way at which it could not be looked. I watched Sucker Punch, in fact, I often found myself saying to myself, "Snyder is trying to [X]." A good deal of the time while watching, I felt he was only trying to do things you say he does successfully.

Is his movie a conscious pastiche of other movies? Yes. Is it rife with metaphor? Yes. I'm pretty familiar with pastiche and metaphor, and I doubt I missed many occurrences of either happening. Does having recognized these things make it so that I must enjoy it? I don't think it does. Just because a writer's text appeals to metaphor, it doesn't make that text deep or emotionally engaging. Just because a movie references another movie in a scene, it doesn't add any dramatic or comedic heft to the scene. Metaphor and reference aren't enough on their own. Some viewers are going to respond positively to any given metaphor or reference, some are going to respond negatively, and some are going to respond indifferently.

To the best of my knowledge, I considered the things you said I should have considered to arrive at an enjoyment of the movie. Still, I did not enjoy the movie. Still, after having read your post, I do not enjoy the movie.

Did I look at the movie the wrong way? If it's true one cannot look at it the "right" way and dislike it, then I guess I did look at it the wrong way. I have too much faith in my ability to look at narratives from multiple angles to think I short-shrifted Sucker Punch, though. Call it pigheadedness. Call it a preexisting dislike of Snyder's movies. I've given each one a chance. I gave Dawn of the Dead a chance because I love the Romero series, and I was excited to see it updated. I gave 300 a chance because I have some good will left over for Miller, despite my having disliked most of what he's done since the eighties. I gave Watchmen a chance because the comics meant a lot to me growing up, and I wanted Moore to get just one adaptation worth a damn. I gave Legends of the Guardians a chance because I was curious to see if he could temper some of his idiosyncrasies for a family movie. I gave Sucker Punch a chance (though I'm sure I came across as unwilling to on the boards) because I wanted to see what he could do with original material.

Is it all right for someone to look at it the wrong way and still enjoy it? What's the wrong way? Is liking it because it's hot chicks beating shit up the wrong way?

I've read a few words attributed to him (whether or not he actually said them, I do not know) in Sucker Punch's defense over the past few days.

When asked why, if he wanted to empower women, he had them dressing in skimpy outfits, he said something like, "I didn't dress them that way. You did."

Defending your work by claiming you're giving the people what they want is an old trick. Claiming you're doing it as a way of mocking and shaming people for wanting what they want (and, secondarily, showing you can "do" this kind of pop story, despite your artsy leanings) is a slightly newer, yet still old, trick. (If you want an older example, there's something like Pope's Rape of the Lock.) Michael Haneke said pretty much the same thing about Funny Games. "Isn't sex and violence all you really want? Well, HERE IT IS! Look at me! I'm being a provocateur by doing exactly what everybody else does, except ironically!" I wouldn't be surprised if people found this way of working smug and insulting.

It was Bertold Brecht's bread and butter. He hated plays more than any playwright I know. To his and his followers' way of thinking, he was shaking audiences out of their stupors. To some others' ways of thinking, he was just being a self-important, confrontational jerk. Godard did the same with movies. I can see where both sides have their points. I find a lot of Brecht's work to be boring and abrasive, and I don't find it to be all that intellectually stimulating. I feel the same about Snyder's work, though I must say I find him to be quite a few rungs beneath Brecht on the talent ladder.

I wouldn't bring up Brecht, but I've actually seen him name-dropped a couple of times in Sucker Punch discussions, so I figured I'd drop his name, too.

One of the mentions brought up the proscenium at the beginning of the movie. Basically, they did this to say, "Hey, there's a proscenium at the beginning of the movie. It's a movie within a play, then, which makes it brilliant. In fact, it's a dream within a dream within a movie within a play, so it's SUPER brilliant."

I don't see why this would make it brilliant. I never lost a narrative thread--I knew where I was at all times, and why things were happening the way they were happening--so I don't think I was reacting negatively to being left behind. I found myself anticipating what would be happening next a lot of the time, which I'm sure other people did, too. Like a lot of people, I was also often bored by this. If Snyder wanted, he could probably say, "That's the point!" (he kind of said this in one of those excerpts I read; that is, unless he didn't say this at all) and hope we're all cowed into feeling stupid for wanting to be entertained. But where does that leave us? That leaves us un-entertained by a director who set out not to entertain us. That's kind of lame.

If that's not the point, I guess it's less lame.

The proscenium thing was done pretty recently in Moulin Rouge, and I imagine that's where Snyder got his inspiration for it. With Moulin Rouge, though, it works better, because, to crib a phrase from Ol' Willie Shake-scene (Note: some say the "Shake-scene" mentioned in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit was Edward Alleyn, and not Shakespeare; I just wanted to drop some more names before my response was done), "the play's the thing." In Snyder's case, it seems to be there to be there. I get the feeling much of the time he just asks himself "Wouldn't it be cool if... ?" then, when he answers himself in the affirmative, decides to throw it in. I get that he's "setting the stage" so that we know to be "on our guard," but it doesn't work for me. It *did* work for me when Luhrmann did it with Moulin Rouge.

That's my biggest problem with Snyder's movies, really. He comes across to me as someone trying to be cool.

Scarlet wrote:

There's a huge flaw in the promotion of this film which makes a point of saying it's set in the 60s. It's not. It's set 'somewhere,' both in time & in location or better yet, let's just say it's set in Steampunkville.

I haven't seen any promotional material claiming this is set in the sixties. Then again, I've really only seen the theatrical trailers.

Is it really set in Steampunkville, though? There's an element of that in the dream sequences (most notably in the one with the Zeppelins and the steam-powered zombies), but outside the dream sequences, it's set in a fairly grounded, fairly contemporary reality. (That is unless--and I hope this doesn't BLOW ANYONE'S MIND!!!--the dream sequences ARE the reality!!!)

Scarlet wrote:

As to men externalizing emotions - anthopologically, men are taught to externalize their emotions in a physical way. Men aren't supposed to feel they are supposed to act.

Is this actual anthropology, or revisionist, Henrietta Moore-camp feminist anthropology? (Damn it. I've dropped another name. I'm feeling like a giant douche today.)

I'm not sure "anthropologically" is the word you want here.

I might say that, historically, taking action was considered a virtue among men. You have your Beowulfs, and you have your damned-for-not-acting-sooner Hamlets. But it seems to me you're suggesting acting is expected to be done without feeling, and I don't know that that is the case. In many cases (say, Quixote's, or even Luke Skywalker's) action follows from emotion. It isn't separate from it.

These days, brooding seems to be as popular as action once was. Remember how often Homer's Achilles used to brood? Maybe a little bit (he sits on the beach and refuses to fight for a bit), but he broods like a mother fucker in Troy.

Also these days, there's no shortage of the badass action chick. You see her at every turn. Angelina Jolie appears to be building a career out of it.

I think we've seen the badass action chick so many times, recently, that we're growing numb to her.

If nothing else, this movie's gotten us talking more than any other one in recent memory.

I think it has me talking the usual amount.

It's a Lady Gaga fan's tactic to say her music must be artistically rich--since people are so divisive over it, and since it has so many people talking.  I guess.  (It seems a little unfair to make this claim when her whole persona is geared toward getting attention, though.  Provoking people for the sake of provoking people is a surefire way to get people talking.)  Same thing could be said for Bieber, Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, Rebecca Black's "Friday," and American Idol. 

So I saw Sucker Punch on Saturday, and I pretty much thought it was empty sound and fury. I was expecting it to be merely okay at best, so I was pleasantly surprised by the opening scene. I thought it worked pretty well. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie happened after that.

I can see what Snyder was trying to do with the movie, but the execution was WAY off. There was nothing to actually ground the movie, make us care about the characters, or think they were in any danger at all.  I think it was a HUGE mistake to never visit the real world at all other than the bookends.  At some point, we should have seen what it was like in the real world, but all we get is a short bit of throwaway dialogue from Carla Gugino at the end about what Baby Doll did in her week there. By treating the imaginary brothel as the "real" world, the movie completely loses any sense of danger or stakes. This makes all the characters feel very hollow, and it makes it very hard to actually carer about what it going on.

Then, of course, you have the third layer of fantasy where all the gun-toting kung fu shenanigans go on. These sequences are even further removed from any sort of stakes. There is never any doubt that Baby Doll will get whatever macguffin she is after. There is never any doubt that the faceless bad guys will die in these sequences. This makes these sequences feel hollow, shallow, and boring. There's no tension to really pull you in. There's no reason to be on the edge of your seat. The eye candy is the only thing going an at all, and even that gets ruined by poor pacing, having the action too close to the camera most of the time, and some jarring cuts. What results is a mess of blurry pixels.  There are some cool visuals here and there, but most were seen in the trailers, and the movie gives you no reason to care about any of it.

It's even worse that these things happen exactly the same every single time. Baby Doll must dance to distract everyone while her friends steal something. We see her slightly sway for a few seconds while the camera slowly tracks in to her eyes. Ther eyes close for a few moments, and when they open, she is inside the action sequence. Scott Glenn gives a quick briefing and his "one more thing" before the girls head off to chop a few bad guys, shoot a few more, grab the macguffin, and get back out.

The biggest problem with Sucker Punch is that there is little to no connective tissue between the three layers of reality that are going on.  They all feel independent of each other. It never feels like whatever happens in one world is going to affect what is happening in the others.

I also ended up rewatching Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge this weekend, and I started wondering what Sucker Punch would have been like had Baz Luhrmann made it.  Moulin Rouge in particular seems to share a bit of the fantastical aesthetic that Sucker Punch seemed to be trying for, albeit much more colorful. In those films, Luhrmann was able to use a somewhat crazy visual style to tell a good story. There are actual stakes involved, you feel the danger, and you care about what happens to the characters.  Because of this, the tragic endings actually work.  Sucker Punch wants to be a tragedy, but the ending just falls flat because there's no reason to really care what happens to Baby Doll and the others.

For a film that tried to sell itself on the idea it was so unique that "you are not prepared" for it, I found Sucker Punch to be rather generic and kind of boring.

I haven't seen the movie yet. I thought it was great.

It changed the face of cinema.  

From a smile to a frown.  

Then back to a smile, again.  

Then to a weird sort of half frown/half smile, like what Harrison Ford does a lot of in Regarding Henry.

 Goiter, I'm going to respond to you tomorrow BUT no, I don't view things through the Henrietta Moore lens and you shouldn't assume that I do because I'm talking about gender roles. I had a professor once (a woman who often taught 'women in....' courses) who gave a long lecture every course about how we should be wary of certain modern anthropological takes on gender roles. Same with archaeological interpretations of artifacts - you know, some people would have you believe that any time there's a spiral on an artifact it immediately means the culture was originally matriarchal and if it no longer is then that's because of evil men usurping the true order of the universe & blah blah blah some people just need more therapy & shouldn't take their issues out on helpless artifacts. 

Also - I said you were 'probably' looking at it wrong, not that you definitely were. And truly, I should have said 'possibly' not 'probably.' 

(I'm totally thrilled about this discussion, btw. I've not been surrounded by intelligent discourse for a long time so this is awesome.)

I don't think you view things through the Henrietta Moore lens.  That was all a part of my "namedrop" shtick.  I continue that shtick in my "Found Notes of a Bad Graduate Student Comic" thread in the Lounge.

It's good to have professors who work to keep you wary, though some professors would have you never not be wary, which is a frustrating way to live.  It can lead to impenetrable namby-pambyism.

"Probably" carries with it the weight of a greater probability, and "a greater probability" is one of the earliest bricks in a structure built on a foundation of inductive logical reasoning.  (Even earlier bricks: input, context.)  That's part of why I said it was logically unsound.  The other part involved the taste judgment.  The intellectual community has been rejecting arguments for taste standardization since Kant (maybe before, though I'm not willing to go digging at the moment).  Just because the intellectual community does it doesn't make it right, of course.  (One could make the argument that they've standardized a distaste for taste standardization.  One has, I'm sure.  Of course, it's not as though each intellectual has rejected the idea of standardized taste outright.  There have been voices of dissent here and there.)

I'm happy you're thrilled with the discussion.  I'm not sure I'm willing to believe I'm contributing anything intelligent to the discourse.  I try pretty hard not to contribute things of intelligence.

When Goiter feels things are getting too heady, he heads over to the local drive thru.

Goiter, welcome to everyone else's drive-thru hell.  Bad drive-thru experiences remind me not only of Lethal Weapon 3, but also of Dude, Where's my Car?  That movie was more fun than it deserved to be.

Anyway, back to Sucker Punch.  The more I think about it, the less sure I am that I liked it, but the more sure I am that I want to see it for the 7,001st time.

Oh, and I'm back to Babydoll being the only "real" character.  I believe she saw the other girls in the asylum and then internalized them into the brothel, but in the real world, they're not a part of her schemings although it sounds like she helped Sweet Pea to actually escape but the final scene with Sweet Pea takes place in Babydoll's mind.

The movie was somewhat touted as a female empowerment movie -- that's certainly what my daughter took away from the trailers, but what really, the dance she does in the brothel is an internalization of her probably seducing people in the asylum to get what she believes she needs, and then the fantasy world is yet a further subconscious representation of her battling with herself to accomplish what she wants.  By simply having some sort of linkage between the realities, this movie would have worked better.  I don't see any of that as necessarily empowering.  As was mentioned earlier, they only escape is into your mind, and that's not terribly empowering. 

I liked the homage to Brazil, but in Brazil, Sam beat the system by escaping into his mind.  Sam wins because they never really broke him.  In Sucker Punch, Babydoll escapes into her mind as well, but she lost because she'd been lobotomized and can never tell anyone about her monster of a stepfather.

I fail at responding - overcome by cramps.

I thought all of you would appreciate knowing. I whip out some wittisms later.