Sucker Punch?

[Doug McCrae]

The fan service is great, it's when Zack Snyder pretends there's more to the film than that that it fails.

I'm not sure if it's an interesting failure or not, but at least you get to see beautiful women in fetish gear fighting steampunk zombies, and a WWII bomber versus a dragon. Though the whole thing is strangely unsexy, partly, but not entirely because of the PG-13 rating.

The 50s/60s setting is pretty incomprehensible. The women don't look right for that time period, no one then would be imagining the kind of wahoo katana mashups we see in the action scenes either. I think the only reason for it is so Babydoll could be threatened with lobotomy. And I find it unlikely that a woman would create a fantasy about being a prostitute in a brothel as a way to escape the horrors of an asylum. That's obviously a male fantasy.

Sucker Punch wants to be The Matrix but its fun parts, the action scenes, are so wonderfully extreme, such pure geek Id, that Snyder feels he has to pull it back the other way and juxtapose that with really dark stuff in the brothel and asylum. Imo he should've had the confidence to embrace the fun. The whole movie should've been like Flash Gordon, lighthearted, camp, with a bit of sex, the whole thing raised up by some really good character actors. Sucker Punch should know it's stupid, but it doesn't, it thinks it's smarter than it is.

So I guess it is an interesting failure, very much a missed opportunity.

 

[jonesy]

If you watch the ending carefully you'll notice that

Spoiler

either NOTHING is real, or EVERYTHING is real. That's the only way the clues in the ending can fit together.

And that's Snyder's sucker punch.

 

[Felon]

Comparable to a Terry Gilliam film trainwreck? Better or worse?

 

[Crothian]

Better. It does make sense.

 

[the Jester]

It was pretty meh.

If you have both a school girl fetish and an upskirt fetish, it would probably be kind of sexy.

 

[Dog Moon]

I enjoyed it, kind of. But I wouldn't watch it again. I just wish it had been as good as the trailer.

So true. I remember watching the trailers back in the day and of course the trailers only showed the scenes where she's fighting and doing all the kick butt stuff and not the rest of the movie.

Then I heard about the plot and thought it could still be interesting, but I had my doubts because the plot didn't match the trailers at all.

Then I watched the movie and I think my greatest dislike was what had been mentioned before that I somehow don't see her thinking about herself in a brothel. You'd think if she was going to create a fantasy world, she'd be like a famous actress or singer or something, but then I suppose then why would she need to think about herself AGAIN in cool action scenes?

Ah, if only the entire movie had been like the original trailers...

 

[Krug]

Comparable to a Terry Gilliam film trainwreck? Better or worse?

Worse. At least Gilliam has a sense of wonder in his films.

 

[CotV]

Yea, if only the story had lived up to the visuals...

 

[wolff96]

I was also disappointed in the way the action scenes were strung together -- more the order than the connecting tissue.

The fight with the samurai was incredibly cool. The attack on the Nazi zomibes? Wicked cool. The castle full of orcs? Not as good as the others, but at least the Bomber/Dragon fight was slick.

Then we get the train -- which just sucked. And *that* is the last of the fantasy sequences, with the rest of the movie bogged down with the horrid connecting tissue that was trying to pass off as a story.

It was like they showed the movie in reverse order -- the best parts are supposed to come at the END. Instead, it felt like there was the most amazing bit at the beginning... and all downhill from there.

 

[Relique du Madde]

The whole movie should've been like Flash Gordon

PRINCE VULTAN APPROVES.
​