Sucker Punch

I'm becoming more and more impressed with Zack Synder's continuing failure to make a good movie.  The guy seems to get so close so often:  "300" brought over-masculine Greek action but ultimately descended into little more than a silly cartoon.  "Watchmen" promised to deconstruct the Superhero genre like never before but only succeeded in being too long, having too many characters, and utterly lacking in a moral center.  And now we have "Sucker Punch", which is essentially a live-action anime.  How is Zack going to screw it up this time?  The real tragedy is that Zack Synder's best film still is the inferior remake of "Dawn of the Dead".

"Sucker Punch" is Zack Snyder's first attempt at an original story.  Now that we see inside the mind of the world's favorite comic book adaptation director, we find out that all that's inside there is strippers, giant robots with bunny faces, WWI German-zombies, and the opening scene of "Final Fantasy XIII".  Basically he's mixed together all the things that nerds love, including several anime cliches, in what seems to be rather shameless pandering to the geek audience who basically rule cinema now.  The whole thing is basically organized like a video game, with each major sequence being the next level in the wild circus of anime plot points.  Unfortunately, that's it, a wild circus.

I definitely wanted to enjoy this movie, there was no reason on Earth that Zack Snyder's vision here needed to be such a waste of energy.  I don't mind action fantasy.  I don't mind video games.  I don't mind anime.  As a matter of fact, these are things that I love, and are pretty much what Planet Blue are dedicated to.  Certainly "Sucker Punch" isn't failing for trying to be any of those things - but it sure as heck isn't original despite its pretensions.  But Zack Synder once again is all style, no substance.  The world inside his brain truly is a frightening place:  a sepiotoned world of flashy action scenes against hordes of random mindless creatures.  All without context.  All without reason.  All without any trace of humanity.

I knew whatever was going to follow "Evangelion 2.0" was going to have a tough act to follow, but come on.  "Sucker Punch" at least could have put in a good showing.

One of the main gimmicks of "Sucker Punch" is that the storyline takes place on multiple levels of reality, as in Terry Gilliam's classic, "Brazil".  In "Brazil" there's initially the story of Sam Lowry, a bureaucrat in the grim future trying to work his way through the mad society filled with ducts.  Then there's Lowry's fantasies, where he's a golden hero saving a maiden from various monsters, a beautiful world of high adventure that is everything that the real world is not.  "Brazil" managed to make this structure work, "Sucker Punch" does not.  It wants to be "Brazil" meets "Alice in Wonderland", but I got out of it was palm meet face.  The story begins with Babydoll, a blond bit of jailbait who has been locked into a mental institution by her evil step-father that murdered her little sister.  In charge of her is the corrupt orderly Blue (no relation I assure you), who is going to give her a lobotomy in five days.  Then all of sudden the mental institution becomes a brothel, Blue becomes its owner, step-dad is an evil priest, and Babydoll is a virgin being locked in there to service a high-roller client.  I was perfectly fine with this double reality.  Then Babydoll starts fantasizing that she's inside Snyder-Land, a magical fantasy world where she and her fellow prostitutes/inmates go ahead and fight zombies, or dragons, or robots to find various magical McGuffins that are essential for their escape.  And you know what, I was fine with the triple reality.  To a point.

The first action fantasy is by far the best.  Babyface has to fight a group of giant Samurai statues.  Since its the first time you see her fight, you actually don't know if she's going to succeed.  Here she slowly learns her inexplicable dream powers and overcomes the evil figures.  From there, each successive fantasy is somehow less and less interesting.  "Sucker Punch" could have counted me as one of its fans if it managed to keep up the energy from the first scene.  Unfortunately, the fantasies are heavily structured and go from exciting to massively tedious.  Since you know they're fantasies, you lose all sense of danger or tension.  Its not like the Girl Power team is going to lose, right?  The very gimmick itself destroys everything Zack Snyder was trying to do here.  More importantly in terms of pure action, the fantasies themselves run out of energy.  Snyder throws everything he has into the second one:  which takes place in fantasy WWI where Paris has been conquered by Imperial Germany's newest weapon, zombies.  Then the next fantasy is just a dragon battle, which is somehow less exciting.  And the "final fantasy" takes place on Sci-Fi train where a female heroine does high acrobatics to kill a group of random faceless villains.  Now where have I seen that before...?

What's hilarious about these action sequences is that they take place while in the "brothel world" Baby Bop is doing a sexy dance.  Apparently her dance is so enchanting that no man on Earth cannot help but want to see it, and it will hypnotize them long enough to get pick-pocketed.  But you never see this dance!  I don't know what Baby-in-a-Corner is doing up on stage, but I want to see now.  Whatever it is it has to be more entertaining than another journey through Snyder-Land.  All I know is that an hour in, I was watch-checking.  Eventually I empty chair next to me to be more interesting and intellectually stimulating than the giant IMAX screen in front.

Then to make things worse, the movie is PG-13.  "Sucker Punch" is supposed to be some kind of sexy ultra-action movie, why not go for R

Ultimately Snyder's vision in "Sucker Punch", despite its attempts at some kind of feminist superpowered girl message*, is utterly without character of any kind.  The men are all loathsome rapists, and the girls are nothing but wind-up dancing kick-ass dolls.  Gone Baby Gone is little more than a doe-eyed mannequin, I am utterly at a lose to think of any particular trait for her.  The other girls go from one-dimensional to no-dimensional.  My favorite was Jena Malone because she managed to sneak some screen presence past Zack Snyder's humanless artistic vision.  Or maybe it was because she had the best hair, I don't know.  "Sucker Punch" is just a joyless movie with a cast of characters as barren and stark as the ground they fight dragons on.

Unfortunately the fantasy sequences give nothing as to clues as to these character's inner thoughts or wishes.  Since the girls are dreaming of freedom from a mental institution, I don't know why they would want to imagine themselves just as imprisoned in a brothel.  The brothel plotline actually dominates the entire movie, taking up 90%, with the "real world" mental institution being only the beginning and end.  Then as for the action scenes, they make even less sense in the psychological framework "Sucker Punch" is trying to create.  Where did these girls see anime in the 1920s, and why is it their escapism fantasy**?  I guess fighting 10,000 orcs on the set of "Lord of the Rings 2" gives you something of good feeling and empowerment, but I really don't see why they wouldn't be instead imagine the outside.  You know, that place they're trying to get to?  What's weird is that you could actually cut out the action sequences from the movie and leave the story completely unchained.  At no point are character's influenced by the action parts, or even acknowledge their existence.  This is unlike "Brazil" where mot of the main character's motivation and actions are explained by him trying to live out his golden fantasy from his dreams.  You know what?  I don't even think the action sequences are the girls' fantasy.  These scenes are Zack Snyder's dreams, not the character's.

On the other hand, I will give Snyder one thing:  the man can pick a soundtrack.  "Sucker Punch"'s musical queues are by and large excellent, pouring much needed energy into this grey, humorless movie.  My favorite part of the entire film is when a pimp mayor walks into the brothel with a rap remix of several "Queen" songs.  Jefferson Airplane gets a good showing as well.  Snyder has improved considerably since "Watchmen" when his musical choices failed as often as they succeeded.

It comes as no surprise to me that "Sucker Punch" has basically failed in every way that a movie can.  The movie lost to "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" at the box office, my God.  And now they're given Zack Snyder "Superman".  I guess that's one movie I won't have to see.

I still don't know why this movie is called "Sucker Punch".

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* This movie made me miss the "Powerpuff Girls" more than ever.  Plus I suspect that Snyder added in the girls vs boys theme just to make everybody feel better about the abject misogyny that dominates most of this production.

** I'm a bit disappointed that Snyder didn't attempt to mix in some 1920s pop culture to the girl's fantasies rather than 21st century nerd cliches.  He does give a half-hearted effort by having a WWI fantasy rather than a WWII one... but then ruins it by including zombies and giant robots, things that had yet to be imagined in the 20s.  The 20s were hardly a barren time for movie making or mass culture.  A "Metropolis" fantasy would have been pretty awesome.  Same with "Ben-Hur".  And some German Expressionism would have been nice too.  I mean, I'm glad he didn't make half the movie a silent picture, because those things are pretty awful to sit through with modern eyes, but he could have at least acknowledged the time period.  ...Or just have set his movie in modern times with Babies'R'Us being an anime fan.  Why not?