Sucker Punch: Girls, Dreams, Guns and Lobotomies

Sucker Punch, by Zack Snyder        2/10 – 8.5/10

     When I first saw the trailer for Sucker Punch I was very excited for it to come out, and all I could think of was “This looks so good!” just because of how odd it seemed to be. And odd it is! And for that I have to give the movie credit. But at the same time, it is exactly because of that same reason that Sucker Punch barely comes close to being a good movie at all.

      Like many comic book fan-boys, I really came to admire director Zack Snyder in the last decade. His first movie was the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, and it turned out that it was a lot better than everyone had expected. That movie contains probably the most tense, most suspenseful and terrifying movie intros in zombie-film history and he came to be very acclaimed for it. His next two movies turned out to be two of the most remembered in the pop culture of our generation. Of course I am talking about his adaptation of two of the most famous graphic novels ever: 300 and Watchmen. 300 is, as we all know, Frank Miller’s version of the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartan soldiers, commanded by King Leonidas, battle against thousands (or a million?) of Persians to try and protect Sparta and the rest of Greece from invasion and colonization.  As famous and good as this movie was, it still kept many film critics and historians skeptical of the unrealistic battles and concepts that the film brought to screen. However, he got a lot of praise for it because the movie shows all the hard work, thought and motivation Snyder put into the movie. Excellent battle scenes, excellent actor, excellent makeup and costumes, excellent CGI effects, and most importantly, excellent storytelling.

[Insert famous quote here]

     But his most bold film yet is, and always will be, Watchmen. Everyone agrees that Watchmen turned out to be way better than everyone expected, nothing against Zach Snyder, but for a very long time the graphic novel Watchmen was thought of an impossible book to adapt into film. In fact, Alan Moore, the writer of Watchmen, wrote the graphic novel in such a way that it would actually be impossible to adapt into film, and when Snyder did adapt it, Moore wanted nothing to do with the film’s production. To this day, Moore still insists in never watching the film at all.

(Just a little joke.)

Still, Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen was amazing in every aspect of it, and though slightly different than the graphic novel, I think many of us fan-boys agree that no one could have done a better adaptation than Snyder did. It is simply brilliant.

     But perhaps Snyder is lacking originality. Let me clarify: Snyder is lacking originality in story and concept, not in style. His style is definitely eminent in every single one of his films. But his first actual original film turned out to be:

(Yep. You got it right.)

Sucker Punch. (sigh) Yes. Sucker Punch was the first film that Zack Snyder made that was not an adaptation, that he not only directed, but also wrote and produced. In other words, his first original movie.

     Sucker Punch can be described as every fat, slobby, acne covered, virgin  fan-boy’s fetishized dreams. But this can be argued. The film seems to have no point at all, and it certainly makes little sense all the way through. And this is why it’s so hard to take it seriously. The plots revolves around Babydoll (Emily Browning), a teenage girl who witnesses the death of her family by the hands of her evil stepfather (yes, they do not only exist in fairytales, they also exist in Zach Snyder films) who wants to lobotomize her so that she’s unable to turn him in. Disturbed by her situation, she gets institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital, which Babydoll imagines is an early 20th century burlesque whorehouse under the tyranny of a violent pimp (who is actually another patient of the hospital, or is he?). Meanwhile, Madame Gorski (Carla Gugino), teaches Babydoll, and the other crazy girls in the hospital “how to survive” by performing an erotic dance that the audience never sees. Instead, what we see is a trippy dream-like dimension where Babydoll and the other girls fight ruthlessly against terrible, nonsensical situations like giant dragons, armies of alien robots  and German soldiers and gargantuan samurai demon machines. These fight sequences are presented as a quest to obtain the tools needed to escape from the hospital before the doctor comes to give Babydoll the lobotomy. Without saying much, I am pretty sure everyone can agree that  the movie has a lot of great ideas and intentions, but even reading it’s synopsis or hearing about it sounds awkward and confusing. In the end, Sucker Punch turned out to be absolutely nothing at all how I expected. And I guess, in that sense, the movie really was a Sucker Punch.  Then again, it was way worse than I had expected.

     The plot makes absolutely no effort in explaining what all these strange battle scenes and  the burlesque  whorehouse  concept meant or symbolized. It makes the story confusing to understand or most importantly, care about. The acting did not help at all either. The only effort those girls made was to look cute or hot, which is fine, especially for us fan-boys, but it did not help the movie one bit. Snyder kept the movie PG-13 supposedly so that younger audiences could see it as well, therefore, in  his theory, a larger box office ($$).  But I feel that the movie was more of a PG rating for a concept that desperately screamed for an R rating. While Sucker Punch is promoted to be about girls in tight, short clothes fighting ruthlessly against monsters, robots and evil stepfathers in anime/videogame style by six girls living in a whorehouse, there is NO blood, NO sex, NO nudity and NO curse words. Besides the battle sequences that are not actually happening but in Babydoll’s pre-lobotomized head, NOTHING happens in this movie.

 

     All of that said, this movie was a tremendous experience to sit through! Yes, I know it’s contradictory, but it is the honest truth. The battle sequences were actually very well done, and like Snyder’s previous movies, the CGI effects and action sequences are spectacular. But that’s not all, Sucker Punch  has the best original soundtrack I have heard since Watchmen by far. Snyder definitely has an amazing taste in music and he really knows how to incorporate it  into his movies. The Sucker Punch OST contains in its majority electronic remixes and covers of the most surreal and/or psychedelic songs from the last forty years. From The Pixies and The Smiths, to Bjork and Eurythmics, to Iggy Pop and Queen, and most surprising of all, Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles and Jefferson Airplane’s famously spooky White Rabbit. All of these songs are put together in a mix of mind-blowing, psychedelic combination of sound that emphasizes the dream state of the epic slow motion fantasy action sequences. In a way, the movie seems to be a very long music video, and in that sense, the movie was an excellent experience to sit through.

     I still have hope for Zach Snyder’s next original films, and I really do admire him for his style and success of his previous movie adaptations, and I also think that Sucker Punch still shows that Snyder is one gutsy filmmaker, because Sucker Punch definitely shows originality, let’s face it, there is nothing else like Sucker Punch out there right now. Perhaps Snyder still has to learn how to organize all of his original ideas in a more coherent way (film-wise), so that his originality can be taken more seriously next time. However, the only real bad thing I really see with this film is really the most important when making a movie: the plot, the story, the screenplay. It simply sucks all the way through. In other words, besides beautiful visuals, music and action sequences, the story behind it makes absolutely no sense, which in effect makes the audience not care one bit for any of the characters or the story. There’s no moral to the story either, there is hardly a story at all, and that was the biggest sucker punch Snyder gave us with this film. I would definitely recommend watching it, but do not expect a lot from the story, but you will definitely have a lot of fun watching it anyways. I rate it 2/10 as a film, and 8.5/10 as an experience.

     Until next time, this is Freddy Lizardz with Words on Film. Peace.

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