Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder)

[eternity]

The next morning, yeah, this is mostly putrid. The script is awful, but that was almost a certainty when this project was announced. That wouldn't be much of a problem if it wasn't a stylistic mess. 300 and Watchmen, despite their flaws (300 moreso), are both well-made movies. Sucker Punch is definitely not.

But it's still nice for a filmmaker to tell a story in whatever odd way he wants to because the cinematic medium allows him the freedom to. Isn't art wonderful?

[Eleven]

Also, is this most ironically-titled movie (to theatergoers who actually end up paying to see it) since What's the Worst That Could Happen?

Upon further review, that John Woo-Ben Affleck movie Paycheck was slightly more recent.

[eternity]

[

Show Spoiler

This movie has three levels:
1. Real World
2. Babydoll's dream
3. Zack Snyder's dream

Sadly, Snyder's dream is so huge and comprehensive that it's mindblowing how uninspired and insipid it is.

Also, why the fuck is Babydoll the fifth item for the escape, other than...well, the movie having nowhere else to go and needing an ending?

]

[Ezee E]

This is the first time that I think this word applies to a movie:

LOLwut?

Although, I will say that it is rare that we get a movie like this. Zack Snyder gets to do whatever he wants here, and he has the ambition to do something that Richard Kelly or David Lynch does. Problem is, Snyder shows the intelligence of a fourth-grader that just learned to like girls.

The third world scenes just never make sense from the getgo, and are predictable the whole way through. But they sure do look nice. Everything looks nice. There's just nothing interesting behind it.

Except Jon Hamm of course.

[EyesWideOpen]

I really dug Sucker Punch. I don't care for action movies at all but something about Zach Snyder's stylized action I love. Also great use of music, Bjork playing over the fight with the giant samurai's, The Beatles on the train/bomb mission.

[Ezee E]

I really dug Sucker Punch. I don't care for action movies at all but something about Zach Snyder's stylized action I love. Also great use of music, Bjork playing over the fight with the giant samurai's, The Beatles on the train/bomb mission.

The music made me laugh the most. I really have no idea when this movie was suppose to take place. They have old record players and radios that make it seem like 30s-50s, and then they turn on the music, and it's a flawless version of a Queen mashup.

[EyesWideOpen]

The music made me laugh the most. I really have no idea when this movie was suppose to take place. They have old record players and radios that make it seem like 30s-50s, and then they turn on the music, and it's a flawless version of a Queen mashup.

I don't understand that complaint. Sucker Punch isn't Schindler's List. It's not about realism. She's fighting 30 foot samurai for christ's sake.

[Watashi]

This is like Moulin Rouge for the anti-musical crowd.

This isn't the two-dimensiomal girls-kicking-ass film the trailers have showed. There is depth to this film about women's suffering and the right to fight back, but it's never interesting and Snyder never fully separates the fantasy from the reality, because neither has any stakes or rules to follow. The music is way out of place and laughable. I would perferred just a regular score instead of being a 2 hour long music video.

I can't think of any redeeming factors about this. How could something with hot scantily-clad women fighting nazi-clockwork-zombies be so utterly boring.

[Ezee E]

I don't understand that complaint. Sucker Punch isn't Schindler's List. It's not about realism. She's fighting 30 foot samurai for christ's sake.

And that fight represents her sexy dance somehow. (which would be more interesting, right?) Thematically, it fits more with the movie as well. But instead, it resolves to action sequences instead of even attempting to see that such a sexy dance can be performed.

The action sequences are all the same. Simple setup, with a "trick" at the end. Why is that old man there anyways? If you thought the fights in Scott Pilgrim were tiresome, just wait for the third twenty-minute action sequence... By the time we stay in the "second world" we're actually cheering that they show the action that goes on there, which actually causes tension and interest.

[Watashi]

The only character I had an emotional connection to was a baby dragon who's in the film for 10 seconds.

[EyesWideOpen]

And that fight represents her sexy dance somehow. (which would be more interesting, right?) Thematically, it fits more with the movie as well. But instead, it resolves to action sequences instead of even attempting to see that such a sexy dance can be performed.

Yeah, but like how those action scenes aren't really happening the music playing over them isn't coming out of the radio. It's part of the action scene.

[Ezee E]

Yeah, but like how those action scenes aren't really happening the music playing over them isn't coming out of the radio. It's part of the action scene.

That music idea is never conveyed in the movie though. In fact, you have Carla Gugino banging her stick to the beat of Bjork.

[Ezee E]

I'll still defend the movie for at least having a look that works all the way through, and Jena Malone/Abbie Cornish are better actresses then the movie probably intended them to be. Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung are simply outmatched.

I really wish Oscar Isaac went to Nicolas Cage levels of craziness. His role was perfect for it. Especially in the scene [

Show Spoiler

where he turns the chalkboard to foil their awesome plan.

]

[Bosco B Thug]

I would perferred just a regular score instead of being a 2 hour long music video.

This. Snyder spends two hours in self-parody and hardly notices.

And that fight represents her sexy dance somehow. (which would be more interesting, right?) Thematically, it fits more with the movie as well. But instead, it resolves to action sequences instead of even attempting to see that such a sexy dance can be performed.

I see why the decision to make it "unrepresentable" was made, since it's a poetic device more than anything (what with the dance's super-power-like effect), and the choice to obscure it gels with the morals of the film (if the story's about her escaping from her sexually selling herself, doesn't it make sense the audience should not be allowed to see and "enjoy" her sexual dance?) - but I can't deny the film's repeated fade-outs from showing it are guffaw-worthy.

I really wish Oscar Isaac went to Nicolas Cage levels of craziness. His role was perfect for it. Especially in the scene [

Show Spoiler

where he turns the chalkboard to foil their awesome plan.

]

Haha, yeah. I personally enjoyed them panicking in the kitchen because Sweetpea hasn't showed up, as if they really needed another person to clear the tabletop for Babydoll to dance on.

I still have some good will towards the movie, though. It's poetic-minded, with its Lynch-like abstraction of characters and womanhood across scenarios, time periods, etc. And then the ending,

[

Show Spoiler

with Cornish closing it like a Sylvia Plath survivor.

]

Too bad it is so boring and unfolds like a video game.

[D_Davis]

The music made me laugh the most. I really have no idea when this movie was suppose to take place. They have old record players and radios that make it seem like 30s-50s, and then they turn on the music, and it's a flawless version of a Queen mashup.

I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be anachronistic.

[number8]

What the fuck.

EMILY: I had a very tame and mild love scene with John Hamm... I think it's great for this young girl to actually take control of her own sexuality. Well, the MPAA doesn't like that. They don't think a girl should ever be in control of her own sexuality because they're from the Stone Age... So essentially, they got Zack to edit the scene and make it look less like she's into it. And Zack said he edited it down to the point where it looked like he was taking advantage of her. That's the only way he could get a PG-13 [rating] and he said, "I don't want to send that message." So they cut the scene!

http://www.nylonmag.com/?section=article&parid=5928

[megladon8]

A girl who wants to have sex is less questionable than a girl being taken advantage of?

Wow.

[Ezee E]

Yeah, there's at least three scenes that you can tell are cut down so that it can be PG-13.

-Vanessa Hudgens' muted f-bomb.
-Jamie Chung most likely giving somebody a handjob?
-The lack of violence in the dressing room. Cross also has a lot of his dialog cut out here when he goes up to Browning.

[Ezee E]

I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be anachronistic.

Sure, but it's never shown to be that way. Like I said, when you have Carla beating her stick along with it, as well as Browning starting her dance to the beat of it, it still gets silly.

[megladon8]

I never really caught the "Asian bug" (so many of my friends have this absolute, well, fetish for Asian girls) but Jamie Chung is undeniably cute.

[Winston*]

Cross also has a lot of his dialog cut out here when he goes up to Browning.

David Cross is in this movie?

[Bosco B Thug]

A girl who wants to have sex is less questionable than a girl being taken advantage of?

Wow.

Rape culture alert. Someone blow the rape culture whistle.

But, then again, I also wonder how and where exactly such a scene fits in. Isn't one of the more odd and blatantly feminist elements in the film the way

[

Show Spoiler

Babydoll's oncoming and clearly undesired deflowering by the High Roller (played by Hamm) is appropriated as the film's ticking clock?

]

[baby doll]

I never really caught the "Asian bug" (so many of my friends have this absolute, well, fetish for Asian girls)

Speaking of the Asian bug, I've only been in Hong Kong a few hours, but I already hate it with a passion. The layout of the subway stations is needlessly confusing, and the city planning is a disaster--which is to say that there doesn't seem to have been any planning whatsoever. I'm so glad the PRC didn't reject my visa application, because I'd blow my brains out if I had to stay here an extra day.

[/slightly off-topic rant]

[Henry Gale]

Yeah, the movie's not too good, disappointing for sure, and maybe Snyder's weakest film yet, BUT I really am still holding out hope for his director's cut, because I feel like there are existing pieces in the movie that could lend to a much more cohesive story where each aspect of the film finds ways to function towards a more meaningful framework overall. Not to say I'm positive adding 20 minutes will do this, but I could easily see it becoming the better version. There's still problems at the core of it that couldn't be fixed with editing, like majority of the dialogue and structure of the script, especially the decision to have things play out through three realities instead of just two, some of the musical are either hilariously on-the-nose or just awkward against the scenes they're used, and when it comes to some of the casting... could they have picked a less menacing guy than Oscar Isaac?

I actually believe Snyder when he says that a big part of this movie is trying to deliver a criticism on fanboy culture's objectification and sexism towards women through things like video games and movies, because I think a lot of people have overlooked the humour in the device of transforming Baby Doll's dancing (which the male characters in the film see as sexual gyrating, possible stripping) into sequences the audiences sees as specific genre ass-kicking with the girls scantily clad as they invade these giant worlds, plowing through endless zombies, robots, trolls and dragons, which is what is pre-established as the real-world ticket buyer's expected PG-13 entertainment and titillation.

But most of all, it's really sad to hear how Snyder originally wanted to end the movie and tie all the threads together, because aside from giving Jon Hamm a bigger role, it would have easily been a more satisfying conclusion to the movie:

The very first ending I wrote the order was: [

Show Spoiler

Babydoll was being lobotomized, she got chained in the basement, Sweet Pea escapes – well, let me back up. There’s a scene you’ll see on the Director’s Cut with Jon Hamm. When Jon Hamm arrives as the High Roller – and we took this scene out because of the MPAA – when that guy punches Babydoll in the face, she wakes up in the High Roller’s suite. He basically makes a deal with her that if she gives herself to him, and willingly and not against her will, then he’ll give her freedom and get [her] out of that place. He’ll make it so that Blue will never touch her and she’ll be free. She’s seduced by that concept, and right when they go to kiss each other, that’s her being lobotomized. When they kiss, it’s her being lobotomized.

The very end of the movie was: you see Sweet Pea steal a dress from a clothesline, then after she’s lobotomized and Blue says, “Do you remember me? Take her downstairs,” and then you see Sweet Pea getting on the bus, then after her getting on the bus, it cuts back to Babydoll in the basement and that whole scene happens of the cops taking him away. When he shines the flashlight on her, she gets up, and the camera dollies in on her and then goes around her head – and you see that she’s on a stage in the theater and she signs “O-o-h Child” at the very end. After that, all the dead girls come out and they sing together, then the curtain closes.

] That’s the end.

Why was that cut?

We tested it, and people just did not know how to… I don’t know. I thought it was awesome, personally. Maybe there’s a cult version of it that’ll exist that I can put together sometime [Laughs], but for a mass audience, it just played as this super culty, bizarro ending. I love it, personally. I could tell that people just didn’t know how to take it, though.

Was it difficult conducting test-screenings, not only in the sense that Sucker Punch has a lot of effects, but because of how much of a love it or hate it type of film it is?

What I learned on this was that, you can’t test a movie like Sucker Punch. It really defies the whole concept of being tested. In a lot of ways, I think the movie would have been a million times better off if we just made the hardest, craziest version of the movie we could and not trying to please every audience. I do think that the movie is crazy, in a great way, but it’s just funny that I think it’s 30% as crazy as it could have been. I think that’s the world it lives in. It lives in a crazy world.

Interview link.

I don't care how the studio looked at it, that should have been the ending no matter what. But that seems to sum up the whole end result of this movie in a way: muddled, neutered and stripped of its focus by forces beyond what anyone involved may have been able to control or see as it was happening.

**, maybe **1/2

[Watashi]

People at test screenings are dumb as fuck. I know from first-hand experience.