When you’re watching Sucker Punch, I sincerely believe you’re gazing into the depths of Zack Snyder’s soul. The problem is that Zach Snyder’s soul is about a half-inch deep. Sucker Punch is an imbecile’s attempt at auteurism, a rehash of a couple dozen great nerd films smashed together into a way-too-long two-hour running time. To remind us that we’re just watching a movie, the film opens with parting curtains—deep!—and then launches into the story of Baby Doll (Emily Browning), a 20-year-old who attacks her lecherous stepfather and accidentally kills her sister in the process. She is institutionalized. She imagines the institution is a cabaret club in some confusing pastiche past. Every time she does a sexy burlesque dance in the cabaret reality, she imagines that she is a warrior woman in a series of fantasy worlds, acquiring different tools to help her escape the asylum in the first reality. See, you’ve got multiple levels of story, plus a voiceover at the beginning and the end of the movie about the power of storytelling and, um, angels. Which, of course, makes it deep. Um?
Sucker Punch doesn’t cohere as a movie from one scene to the next. Hell, sometimes it barely coheres from one frame to the next. The fantasy sequences are total compound nerd bullshit: ZOMBIE STEAMPUNK NAZIS! DRAGON/AIRPLANE FIREFIGHT! GLASS-FACED ROBOT (?) SCI-FI TRAIN ROBBERY! GIANT SAMURAI ROBOT MACHINE GUN BATTLE! This is the kind of shit that makes the nerd internet so annoying sometimes (look at this LEGO STAR WARS MEETS LEGO INDIANA JONES MASHUP VIDEO SET TO REBECCA BLACK’S “FRIDAY!” AWESOME!!!!?!?!?!?????!!!!!) but at least the nerd internet is fan-made, with an adoring, low-budget love. That Snyder spent as much money as he did ($80 million by some reports) and that the results are significantly less compelling than a good video-game cut scene, is a testament to his lack of directing skill. He cleaned out every nerd closet in existence and put all those toys together into one movie, and it’s still the most boring movie you’ve seen in ages.
I could spend days picking apart all the awfulness. Somehow, Jena Malone manages to be the worst actor in the whole foul bunch (you have never heard “we’re already dead” delivered with such inadvertent comedic gusto as when Malone bludgeons the line). The dialogue is all terrible—Phantom Menace-terrible. But the worst part of Sucker Punch, and, really, all you need to know, is that it thinks it’s being deep. Snyder believes he’s unpacking misogyny by being misogynist. He thinks he’s making the next Fight Club when he’s really just rebooting a lame Muppet Babies episode. And he packs the soundtrack with atrocious covers of great songs, without even realizing that that is the truest part of the whole Sucker Punch experience; it’s a bad cover of a bad cover of a bad cover of a bad cover, to the point where the original text is reduced to meaninglessness.
Agreed. Still – looking forward to all the youtube fan-made music videos utilizing the footage.
The previews make it look like ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ on a cocktail of ecstasy and shrooms.
Which I imagine might be the best way to watch this flick.
Sigh…I knew it was going to be terrible, but that didn’t keep me from hoping it would be fun, at the very least.
You just used Muppet Babies as an insult. Good stuff.
Speaking of music, the soundtrack he cobbled together for Watchmen was utter shit. Yeah, i get it. It’s the fucking 80’s. That doesn’t make it ok to slap 99 red balloons over the coffeehouse scene. Dude is fucking tone deaf.
As a Muppet Babies fan, I find this offensive.
I know you’re trying to talk me out of it, but this review made me want to see Sucker Punch more than ever, which is to say I kind of want to see it a little bit now.
I’m with #3 – the movie looks like a train wreck, but at least an entertaining one. Was still planning to go until you said Jena Malone was somehow the worst of the bunch. I love me some Jena Malone – I don’t want to see her be terrible in a mediocre movie.
Don’t bad mouth actors when it is a director’s nightmare of a movie. Poor Jena Malone thought that the acclaimed director of 300 could produce a decent and successful movie. She was wrong. Many actors who have since proved themselves capable have been bad in such a film. One recently won an Oscar.
I’ve heard it called SHOWGIRLS: THE ACTION MOVIE, which makes me want to see it.
rotten666@5: yeah, of the many, many mis-fires in “Watchmen”, the soundtrack was in many way the most astounding of all. With the exception of the opening montage, every single music choice was terrible: they all jolted you out of your suspension of disbelief and reminded you that you were watching a hack director shit all over his source material. He couldn’t even get any mojo out of “All Along the Watchtower”, and that takes effort.
I assumed Sucker Punch was exactly what Paul says it is the very first time I saw the preview. You know a movie’s gonna suck when even the preview looks like shit.
clearlyhere@10: to be fair, anyone who took a gig with Snyder based on him being the “acclaimed director of ‘300’” without actually watching “300” and noticing what a steaming pile of tripe it was pretty much deserves what they get.
@15: it’s rated PG-13 and you live in the era of infinite free online porn. pass.
Wait, there is a bad episode of Muppet Babies?
Saw it yesterday, and everyone in the audience seemed dumbfounded how such a film could be so … boring. I passed the time by noting each film that Snyder stole from: giant samurai from Brazil; steam-powered Nazis from Hellboy; the same goddamn Orcs from Lord of the Rings; even the robots from I, Robot. Mr. Constant’s review is dead-on except for one thing: Jena Malone’s worst line delivery is, “Oh, yeah. I forgot you’re an orphan.”
That Zak Snyder has been given the keys to Superman makes me very sad. The Man of Steel will likely find a way to be more cold and dull than Superman Returns. His idea of edgy will be to show Lois Lane getting beaten and raped by Bizarro.
Shitty movie is shitty? I’m shocked.
@17- Yeah right. Muppet Babies rocked.
@8- The AVClub.com review made me want to see Sucker Punch, this review kind of dissuaded me. I guess I’ll get the DVD from the library.
Heavy Metal had all the same flaws but it was awesome, if you were willing to enjoy it. You can’t review a movie like this if you think you’re watching one kind of film and it’s actually something else.
I can see why a critic would hate this kind of thing — they see everything and that sucks out all the fun. But if you haven’t watched every single film released in the last 50 years five times, you have a lot fewer alarm bells going of when a recycled motif shows up. Critics only want to see material re-used if they do it exactly the way Quentin Tarantino does it. Cribbing is A-OK if you’re cribbing from that guy, I guess.
And all this geek-this, nerd-that… what the fuck is that all about? Who are these geeks and nerds and since when did somebody’s made up geek and nerd rules become the gold standard of anything? At least notice that it’s a fucking freak and stoner film, dude. Led Zeppelin? Hello? (Which is not a Bach fugue in g minor, by the way, and any couple of guys can adequately cover it. QED.)
Look at Rotten Tomatoes. The critics gave it 21%. The audience 61%. What good is a critic who tells you to stay away from a movie that you would have liked?
ummm..y’all do know y’all can get y’alls money back if you leave in the first twenty minutes..we found this out after enduring 13 minutes of ‘10,000 b.c.’
oh.. another tip.. weed does not make a bad time better.
Um. Wait.
I like ZOMBIE STEAMPUNK NAZIS! DRAGON/AIRPLANE FIREFIGHT! GLASS-FACED ROBOT (?) SCI-FI TRAIN ROBBERY! GIANT SAMURAI ROBOT MACHINE GUN BATTLE!
So, IMAX is the best choice to see it, right.
Oh, by the way, Hop is not just for kids, it’s a great movie. And you can wait to see Gnomio and Juliette when it comes out on TV/DVD.
She shot her sister!? OH, so that’s what she wanted to take back… I just thought she didn’t hit anything but the wall and the blood came from the dad beating her. Ok, now things make a little more sense.
Abbie Cornish had Jena Malone beat by a mile in the corn catagory, though.
Speaking of Superman, they’ve cast Amy Adams as Lois Lane.
Bad casting, I know, but she can probably manage to pull it off.
“it’s a bad cover of a bad cover of a bad cover of a bad cover, to the point where the original text is reduced to meaninglessness.”
Oh. I see. It’s post-modern.
If it were just a movie about girls in skimpy outfits fighting robots and giant samurai and dragons I would’ve enjoyed it, even if it DID look like a cut scene from a shitty video game!
This movie portrays women as sad victims who can only kick ass in their imaginations. It is unbelievable that Zack Snyder, with millions of dollars to spend, couldn’t even make a movie as enjoyable those low budget women in prison flicks from the 70’s.
The cover of “Where is my Mind” on the soundtrack truly is an abomination.
Don’t forget about the horrible jittery camera-work during most of the fantasy action sequences. That made it far less possible to enjoy the shiny visuals.
Saw it, for free luckily. Would have worked better as straight fantasy.
To every person saying “screw these snotty movie reviewers and their high and mighty attitudes about movies! If they say it’s bad it’s probably awesome!!!!”:
Sometimes it’s just a bad movie. I am someone who was trained to appreciate the wonder and enjoyment one can derive from a schlocky, stupid, bad movie. I am also a videogame nerd and a lover of all things camp, science-fiction, fantasy, and campy science-fiction/fantasy. And I am commenting here to make something clear. It isn’t the fact that there are zombies, orcs, dragons, robots, samurai and all manner of whatnot being battered by skimpy women- most of these reviewers (not all, but most I’ve read) would be right there with you on saying that sounds like a campy fucking good time. The point nearly all of them, and myself are trying to make- or warn about- is that this movie manages to take what should be an instant no-brainer awesome-sauce and completely drains what could have been tons of fun completely dry. It is boring. It is poorly written with wooden dialogue that isn’t even fun to make fun of. It has an absolutely terrible moral that it makes VERY clear is more important than what SHOULD have been tantamount- which is to say making this a hysterical joy-ride of awesome.
To put it more succinctly- this movie is bad in much the same way Star Wars Episodes 1-3 were. What should have been a no-brainer home-run with material that should be fool-proof is ruined by really bad direction, action that makes you fall asleep when you should be on the edge of your seat, and dialogue that is so stiff and unrealistic that it completely removes you from the immersion of the movie.
It isn’t good-bad. It’s bad-bad. A fun-vampire. I say avoid it while sending a little email to the movie studio saying “we LOVED the idea- now try again with a director who doesn’t suck.”
I must admit, I rather liked the movie. Then again, I’m the target demographic, being a life-long nerd (hey, I met my wife at a game of D&D, can’t get much nerdier than that).
Then again, I do find some comfort in reading your review. Because please note: those weren’t zombie steampunk Nazis – they were zombie steampunk WWI-era Imperial German soldiers. And WWI Germans != Nazis. So at least I can come away with the sense of superiority that comes from realizing that, while I may have no taste in movies, at least I have a basic understanding of the history of the century in which I was born.
But you shouldn’t feel too bad. Judging from other reviews that I’ve read, it appears that such ignorance is a prerequisite for writing about movies for pay. It must be nice to be a film reviewer, to work in a field that has no standards.
I am most decidedly not a member of the target demographic, and I loved this movie. Is it hugely flawed? Yes. The Magic Stripper Shoes (5″ heels in this shot! Flats in the next! Back to heels!) for example, as a costume designer, made me laugh and laugh. So maybe it’s just me, but it hit me in such a weird, triggering place, and made me cry. And I’m pretty sure making middle aged ladies cry was not what the director had in mind. 🙂
@31
Star Wars 1-3 are an excellent example. Fanboys walk into movies thinking they own them, with the script practically written and storyboarded in their own minds. If anyone dares create something that doesn’t fit their preconceptions, they cry foul and claim they were cheated. They’re arrogant and spoiled, and their whining doesn’t make movies better, it ruins them.
Even if the genres popular with the autism/aspergers crowd did “belong” to them (and they don’t), I still say this is a stoner flick in the tradition of Heavy Metal.
I liked it. A lot. Zack Snyder gets me. I can’t wait to see the cut musical numbers on the DVD.
Only movie I’ve ever walked out of. Only made it 30 minutes.
@35: Oh me too! The snippets they showed explained the costumes in the fantasy/quest scenes. Jenna Malone’s little black nurse hat refers to her dance number as a sexy nurse, Sweetpea’s ecclesiastic get up (with the rosary no less) points back to her religious themed number etc.
@37 – And as I said to my brother, I would much rather have teenage girls watching this movie and getting stoked about it than watching ‘Twilight’ or ‘Beastly.’
@38: I agree. And it did pass Bechdel Test
I went into the movie in an apprehensive mood because of the reviews. I’m squarely in the target demographic, big videogame/fantasy/sci-fi nerd, Buffy fan, loved Starbuck on the new Battlestar Galactica, all that jazz. What I saw was so misogynistic and rapey that it spoiled the brief, enjoyable action sequences. The trailer makes it look like these are strong, empowered women kicking ass. But when you see it, you realize they’re all weak, powerless, degraded stereotypes. The thing is, I believe Snyder actually has convinced himself that this movie has a deep message about female empowerment, when the ending (and indeed most of the movie) says the complete opposite. It left me disgusted.
I am not the target demographic of nerdy/horny/teen/boys but I thought it was great. Also, they were cover songs? Nuh-uh. I thought is was pretty kick-ass to have that Bjork song in there.
OMG its an action movie with cute girls running around in skimpy outfits! stupid!!! ?!?!
i think it was just as good as the matrix. only difference is, we didn’t have morpheus there to explain the whole thing for us.
peeps need to get off their high horses. its film, folks. of course its shallow. name me one film that ISN’T shallow.
@32: No one cares.
Paul/@31: Exactly. I am not a professional reviewer. I had to take a “bathroom break” and go play on Facebook to avoid falling asleep during the iRobot meets Tron sequence. My companion kept checking his watch — I suspect his major popcorn spill was a distraction to prevent him from nodding off.
I’m not a snob. I’ve spoken at length about the joys of Red Riding Hood. Still incredibly crappy, but campy, schlocky fun, like: The CW PRESENTS Grimms Fairy Tales. I love nothing more than covers and mashups. This was just like a sad mimeograph of a tacky collage. Not. Good. Even. Ironically.
Go see Amanda Seyfried and wolves if you absolutely need some not-quite jailbait scifi titillation. Seriously. You’ll be glad you did.
@43: Kind of my point. Apparently people care more about cheesy movies then they do about any sort of historical understanding.
@44: How do you get to the logical conclusion that not recognizing a german uniform from the 19th century has any bearing on anyone’s historical understanding? Staring at glossy pictures in a history book (or magazine) doesn’t count for historical understanding anyway. How can you understand something that hasn’t actually happened to you. Conceptualizing it doesn’t count.
My gf was looking forward to the movie, think I’ll pass and take her to see Black Swan instead.
@44, what @45 said. There’s no point to anyone except a historian or a hobbyist in having that granularity of knowledge. For all we know Zack Snyder meant for them to be Nazis. They’re IMAGINARY.
Also, as a refugee from the future, I’d like to say “Those faceless glass robots were actually vat grown androids. JESUS, people, get (a)historically accurate!”
@44 and @46: The clues that this was WWI weren’t only the uniforms, and in fact that wasn’t what I keyed off of. (Though they were certainly WWI German helmets, complete with spikes: I can’t speak to the rest of the uniforms because I don’t know WWI from WWII uniforms – I’m not quite that bad. 🙂 ) The hints were:
– The Kaiser was clearly mentioned in the mission briefing.
– There were biplanes and dirigibles flying around as key elements.
– The setting was WWI-style trench warfare, complete with opposing lines of trenches and a no-man’s land.
– The soldiers were wearing gas masks.
Anyone who couldn’t get the clear hint that this was WWI, and who didn’t realize that WWI soldiers weren’t Nazis, has no understanding of 20th century history.
“it’s a bad cover of a bad cover of a bad cover of a bad cover”
INCEPTION.
@47: Ok. I stand corrected. The film is boring but historically accurate, unlike Paul who is interesting but lacks a knowledge of the early 20th century. 🙂
there was more crying and close-up face shots of their horrible make-up than action. FAIL!
I don’t get all the hate for this movie.
(spoilers throughout)
First of all, I think Paul and a number of other reviewers have gotten lost in the whole misogyny thicket, which is simply not the point of the film. The young girls, short skirts and midriff-baring outfits are all manga/anime shorthand, and that aesthetic permeates the movie in a thousand different ways. Obviously, there’s something in manga/anime that smudges the line between pedophilia and girl power, but that’s not Snyder’s fault, and he is not attempting to “unpack” anything with his use of the genre’s particular tropes.
The movie is completely and totally about the power of escape via imagination. The therapeutic potency of defining one’s own reality is the launching point, and while Snyder eventually gets a little too clever with this at the expense of his narrative, he also manages to create a compelling landscape for his maniacal action sequences. Unlike Paul and numerous other critics, I thought the wacked-out fantasy bits SERVED the story; each one is a metaphor about how powerful Babydoll feels when she dances, despite the horror represented by her lecherous audience. The dance is her escape, but more than that, it’s part of the overall escape plan. Her success in the fantasy parallels her success in the brothel “reality” (actually another fantasy) and so it has weight. Also, the interactions between her and the other girls as they fight together, and become increasingly adept at trusting each other in battle (best displayed in an absolutely stunning sequence during the “knife” theater), go along with the increasing levels of trust and peril they face in the brothel. It all made perfect sense to me, and I for one found it riveting.
The movie’s last act is problematic. We have been switching between the 2nd level (the brothel) and the 3rd level (fantasy/ninja/crazy action land) fantasies, but Snyder loses touch with the 1st level (the insane asylum), aka, reality. So we have no idea what happened in the asylum when, for instance, the two girls are killed by Blue in the brothel. The brothel is just a fantasy level, so what the hell’s going on back in the asylum? If the answer is “nothing…it’s all in her head,” then the entire narrative falls apart: Because the 3rd level fantasy affects the 2nd level one (and clearly, it does), then the 2nd level has to affect the 1st.
Another issue is the final resolution. Snyder’s “sucker punch” is that the story of the film is not really Babydoll’s, but Sweetpea’s, and yet Sweetpea clearly lacks Babydoll’s initiative and imagination. Why is she the hero of the piece if the movie puts such value on those very traits? There’s clearly something in here about sacrifice (a fact baldly stated at one point by Scott Glenn’s sensei-like character), and Babydoll certainly makes a sacrifice, so maybe that’s what Snyder’s getting at.
Still, if the point of the movie is the power of imagination, what does it mean that our hero (and no matter what Snyder says, Babydoll is the hero pure and simple) “wins” at the end by becoming a lobotomized vegetable, incapable, we assume, of imagination in the way Snyder so thrillingly depicts it? Seems to kind of negate his assumed thesis entirely. If I was feeling cynical, I might even conclude that this is Snyder’s comment on the audience; that we ourselves are “lobotomized,” too uncreative for Babydoll’s (or Snyder’s) vividness, and too slow-witted to follow his twisted narrative.
Anyway, some confusion about the ending doesn’t bother me. At least the film is trying to be original (in its trope-focused way), as well as thoughtful and bold in its storytelling. Every fantasy sequence is grade-A insanely fucking awesome, and while they may be “compound nerd bullshit” as Paul says, they’re in keeping with sequences set in someone’s imagination (assuming Babydoll is a big steampunk-anime-fantasy-loving nerd herself), and I think Snyder’s top-notch effects team found a way to recombine all their visual influences to make it exceptionally fun to watch.