Sucker Punch.
(noun) A “sucker punch” is an unexpected punch or blow, it allows for no preparation or defense in respect it happens without warning and is a surprise.
Plot: In 1955, a 20-year-old girl nicknamed “Baby Doll” (Emily Browning) is institutionalized by her stepfather at the Lennox House for the Mentally Insane after being framed for shooting her sister. At the start of the film, her mother dies leaving the family’s wealth to the daughters. The stepfather goes to Baby Doll’s room and attempts to rape her, but Baby Doll fights back. He then decides to go to Baby Doll’s sister’s room, as Baby Doll escapes to get a gun. Her sister hides in a closet and as the stepfather kicks the door down, he sees Baby Doll point a gun at him. Baby Doll fires once, but the bullet ricochets from a light bulb and hits her sister, murdering her. Distraught, Baby Doll runs away from the scene. Her stepfather calls the police and then sends Baby Doll to be institutionalized at the Lennox House for the Mentally Insane. Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac), the asylum’s orderly, is bribed by Baby Doll’s stepfather into faking the signature of the asylum’s main therapist, Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino) and having Baby Doll lobotomized so she can neither inform the authorities of what really happened nor reclaim her recently deceased mother’s fortune.
In the five days that it’ll take for the Doctor (Jon Hamm) to arrive, Baby Doll retreats to a fantasy world inside her mind, created to help her cope with the harsh reality, where she is a newly arrived dancer at a brothel owned by the mob, who befriends four other dancers – Amber (Jamie Chung), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Rocket (Jena Malone) and her older sister Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) – and is told by her dance instructor, Madam Gorski, that her virginity will be sold to a client know as “The High Roller” by the mobster Blue, and that the man will be arriving in five days.
Impressions: Snyder picked this as his movie title, because he says it concerns a reference to pop-culture. Maybe he meant that as a direct reference to what is simply popular in today’s culture. I think at it’s core this movie is like Oprah, a mixed bag of all his favorite things.
I’m actually disappointed in Snyder. Disappointed that he wasn’t creative enough to go even more imaginative. Visuals, sure. Every review you’ll read will applaud Sucker Punch’s visually arresting landscapes. Hell, this movie is a concept artist’s wet dream. When the director tells you I want a scene, with sexily dressed young girls, toting guns, swords, mechs, in a war-torn environment and oh for good measure throw in some orcs, building tall samurai, aerial planes at war, a bomb big enough to decimate a city, more robots, zombies… oh and while you’re at it, put a dragon in there too.” That concept artist will reply “are you serious?” while having the biggest shit eating grin on his face.
If The Matrix came out in 1999 and was the quintessential film to reference every movie the Wachowski’s wanted to reference in popular culture. Sucker Punch is the next installment of this type of genre, instead here it references what leftovers the Wachowski’s might’ve missed, but picks up on everything from 1999 onwards and yes that includes The Matrix itself. If you look at the age gap between Snyder and the Wachowski’s they might’ve been in the same split grade or at the very least same school, in the same clubs. Snyder might’ve been that ‘other guy’ to the Wachowski’s and vice versa. The point trying to be made here, is these are two sets of film makers influenced by the exact same genres and own personal interests. Sucker Punch is the other movie being made in the same vein as the Wachowski’s conceived. A film that is their own brain child, essentially the dream project and it’s here where I go back and say, I’m disappointed in Snyder.
Beware now, there will be spoilers in this impression as I am about to spoil the entire film in brief to elaborate sequence.
Set in the 1960s, the movie starts with curtains lifting. Mimicking a stage as we are about to watch a movie with the elusive setup of being a stage performance. We have the female voice over dialogue talking about guardian angels who come in the most unexpected forms, in this case a young girl. And here we zoom in on Emily Browning who is sitting on her bed awaiting something. We assume at this point the voice over is possibly done by Browning herself.
The room she’s in is revealed to be a house and here we see that her biological mother has just died and all that she’s left with is her sister and her step-father who’s hoping to inherent everything as it appears and we assume as much from a last will and testament from the deceased mother, that she was wealthy. However, everything is left to her two remaining daughters and in a fit of rage the step-father decides with no one around, I’m going to abuse the two girls for revenge. Needless to say things don’t go as planned, Browning is locked in a room, complete with Snyder extreme zoom into a keyhole, she sees as her step-father goes after her younger sister. Younger sister gets away, locks herself in a closet but the step-father breaks in. Just as some child abuse rape is about to go down, Browning comes in holding a gun. BANG! Shot fired, but somehow despite it’s high trajectory, the bullet misses the step-father but manages to hit the smaller younger sister – killing her dead. Over wrought with grief, Browning points the gun at the step-father (who is has a rotary phone in hand who we assume is dialing for the police) is about to kill him, but cries in anger/grief/sadness/terror and runs from the house to her mother’s grave. The step-father has indeed called the cops and they show them catching up to Browning and on hand EMTs inject her with drugs to calm her down. The next scene is Browning drugged up in a car with her step-father who is driving them to the Lennox House for the mentally insane.
This is the first 5 minutes of the film, the story. Everything else you need to know happens in layers. The first layer, the real world is what we see initially. Browning is brought to the Lennox House and we know she’s not insane, just crazy shit has gone down and she’s powerless as a young girl. She’s fully aware of her surroundings and upon immediately entering the looney bin we can see she’s fairly acute. Already planning her escape she eyes a map of the Lennox House, a lighter being played with by a guard, a knife from the cook in the kitchen and a key around an orderly’s neck. The next scene takes place in the ‘theatre’ as giant room complete with stage where the residents of the Lennox House converse and socialize. We vaguely make out in the background what appears to be Jamie Chung (Amber), Jena Malone (Rocket) and Vanessa Hudgens (Blondie). Browning is brought into this room to be evaluated by Dr. Gorski (Carla Gugino), the doctor on hand who helps the troubled young girls overcome their inner demons. We see her on stage and she’s devised a method where each young girl is encouraged to actually act out on stage what they’re feeling on the inside, to instigate the acting she begins to play music. On stage at this time is Abbie Cornish (Sweet Pea) and her and Browning lock eyes. While this goes on in the background, we’re brought back to extreme closes up of Browning and the step-father. Still in the theatre, it’s revealed that the Lennox House is all but a good place to be, as the orderly with the key around his neck, Blue, played by Oscar Isaac is negotiating an illegal lobotomy to be done on Browning, to paid for by the step-father. Without Browning being able to testify her side of the story, the step-father will be able to get all the money. In the end it’s always about the money. The lobotomy will go down in 5 days and will be preformed by a doctor who will be coming in privately and will carry out the deed himself. This doctor is played by Jon Hamm. As Browning listens to the step-father and Blue discuss the lobotomy she imagines it happening and we see Jon Hamm’s figure over Browning on a chair as he is about to nail a medical tool up through her eye and into her brain. Instant lobotomy. As the medical tool is struck down, we are zapped back into the real world.
So if this is the first layer, the second layer occurs next and we never leave it again until the end of the film. For some apparent reason, visually imagining the Lennox House as a brothel where young girls sing/dance for clientele appears to be an allegory of escape. Dr. Gorksi becomes Madam Gorski and Blue becomes super pimp in charge of all the tricks. The utopia here is everyone does what Blue wants, Madam Gorski trains the young girls and they service the clients who come in. Again, it’s a brothel, no ands, ifs or whats about it. Sweet Pea is the star of the brothel, she’s the lead actress and Amber, Rocket and Blondie make up the rest of the tight knit crew. An eventual friendship evolves with Rocket and Browning who in this second layer is named Baby Doll. Baby Doll saves Rocket from almost being raped by the cook and naturally a friendship is born. Through a warm-up session in the practice room, complete with barre on the walls (stationary ballet handrails) Sweet Pea is unable to give a convincing performance to Madam Gorski and she’s called out to take a breather. It’s here that Madam Gorski calls upon Baby Doll to take the floor and to listen to the music, feel it and eventually just let the body dance.
Somehow Baby Doll’s dancing is so insatiably rhythmic it manages to capture everyone in the room’s attention. We’re not just talking capturing it, they are literally mesmerized by it, it is a weapon as Madam Gorski so eloquently puts beforehand in describing how to feel the music. We must utilize our thoughts and imagine and create and thus make that imagination whatever we want to be, be wherever we want to be and in turn make it a weapon we can use. Or this case just a mind fuck whoever is in the room. We’ll be so busy being mind fucked we’ll miss what’s really going on, that is for the people in the movie. If you’re a person watching this movie, you’re merely trying to understand what’s going on and why it’s happening the way it is. Because pretty soon, ladies and gentlemen it is about to make not one goddamn bit of sense.
Ronnie from the Jersey Shore says, “I need a head condom, cuz I feel like I’m being mind fucked” in reference to his relationship with Sammi. Again Jersey Shore, 2009. However in Sucker Punch we aren’t allowed to be mind fucked, it’s a sucker punch and before we know it as Baby Doll is about to get her so incredibly intense dance on, the camera zooms all the way to her eye and into it. Yes we get so zoomed in we go into what she’s seeing. It’s Baby Doll’s full blown out imagination. (Psst, here’s a secret! It’s actually Snyder’s dream world and the whole reason why he wanted to make this movie and have it try to make sense, he needed to place these fantasy world ideas in some type of context where he could use them. End Psst.)
Suddenly we’re transported in a feudal Japanese house. Baby Doll is now dressed in what appears to be a very low cut Japanese school girl outfit and she sees that building is open and goes into the warm light. Did I mention it’s snowing outside at this time. Oh and by the way, this dream world we’re in – is the third layer. I’m starting to think about Inception, the film by Christopher Nolan in 2010. Meanwhile in the second layer we just assume Baby Doll is getting some frenetic dance on, which we never see… like ever. Instead of her dancing we’re transported to the dream world of Baby Doll, where crazy shit goes down as I’m about describe.
As she enters into the building we are met by The Wise Man, played by Scott Glenn. The Wise Man asks her what she is looking for and Baby Doll says “a way out” and The Wise Man simplifies it in one word “freedom.” You get a feeling you’ve seen The Wise Man before, it could probably be the white man dressed in a kimono sharping a blade, so I’m going to guess Kill Bill, from 2003. Anyway The Wise Man arms Baby Doll with a katana blade and guns with several clips, but also tells her she’ll need to collect 5 items on her journey to earn her freedom. You guessed it, a map, fire, a knife, a key and one more item which is unknown to her but she will find out at the end of her journey. All four specific items are related to the first layer and not in some type of symbology or metaphor… Browning aka Baby Doll actually has to acquire those specific items we have already seen, initially slow mo’d and zoomed in on in the first layer by Snyder, in the real world.
As Baby Doll grabs the sword we’ve got our anime-esque character in place, let’s reference Blood the Last Vampire from 2000, simply because of the Japanese school girl outfit and sword. Baby Doll leaves the building not before The Wise Man lets her know she also has to do one last thing and that’s to defend herself. In courtyard of the feudal manner are 3 samurais who appear to be at least one story tall each if not two. One with a giant long spear, another with dual blades and one… with a gattling gun. After some intense battling, over the top action, slow mo, slow mo and more slow mo, Baby Doll defeats all three. It’s the usual Snyder thing, we see the style and the action. The camera zooms back into Baby Doll and we go back in around her head and in/out of her eye to see us brought back into the practice room where she was asked to dance. Are you still following this? Yes all of this occurs in her mind, while she is asked to dance in the second layer.
Baby Doll then suggests to Rocket that she wants to escape from the Lennox House and avoid the High Roller, who is a metaphor to the doctor who will come and lobotomize her. In the second layer everyone needs another name, High Roller makes perfect sense to the brothel they’re already somehow in. So in order to escape, they need to acquire those 4 items specifically mentioned, but Baby Doll never mentions the 5th item to the rest of the crew. Everyone is on board and they ask, “but how do we do it.” It’s here Baby Doll simply says, “we’ll get them to watch me dance.” If the movie hasn’t lost you at this point, well it very well should have. Let’s state this again…
The plan is to get whomever holds the item they need to watch her to dance, so they can be distracted by the incredible mesmerizing sweet moves which we never ever see and while that person is distracted, steal the item which they possess.
And this as they call it, is the movie. Since there are 4 items we know we’re going to have to endure those fantasy dream worlds at least 4 times. Since each time Baby Doll dances, we don’t see her dance we are brought into her dream world. So the first world is going through war trenches fighting zombies. Amber is even equipped with a mech suit which flies. All the meanwhile there is old fighter planes and Zeppelin’s in the air battling it out. The Wise Man has become their operations manager of the sorts and lets them in on the battle plan. This all goes down for the mission to get the map. So while Baby Doll is dancing, in the second layer Sweet Pea has agreed to go into Blue’s office and steal the map, which she actually photocopies. After the dancing ends, Blue talks to Madam Gorski about getting the mayor in to watch Baby Doll dance and somehow use his influence to help Blue make more money. Blue gets back to his office not before realizing his photocopier has been used and the map has been re-pinned into the wall. As we see Blue isn’t a dumb guy and knows something is up.
So with one item down, the girls then get Amber to steal the mayor’s lighter as he is distracted by Baby Doll’s dancing. Here we are brought to a somewhat medieval setting with Orcs pulled from Lord of the Rings (2001 film) as they battle into a castle’s keep. The girls need to go into the castle and kill a baby dragon and steal two crystals inside the neck of the baby dragon. The Wise Man informs them not to wake the mother. Again the girls are equipped with guns and swords and basically you name it, they got it. Naturally they wake up the mother dragon and they battle it out, eventually winning. We are then zapped back into the second layer and the mayor gets up to applause reaching for his lighter to relight his cigar… which has surprise gone missing. The girls celebrate prematurely and Blue enters the dressing room and lets them he knows something is up. With all the things out of place and things missing.
Next item is the knife from the cook in the kitchen. Through a series of events Blondie is having second thoughts as she is told to bring the portable stereo from the dance room into the kitchen so they can initiate Baby Doll’s mesmerizing dance. Again, just read that. The girls need to bring the stereo from the dance room into the kitchen so they can initiate Baby Doll’s mesmerizing dance. Really?
Anyway somehow Blondie’s internal conflict causes her to hesitate and collapses in the dance room and begins to cry against the wall. Madam Gorski hears her and asks her to tell what’s going on and says she can trust her. But Blue has been secretly listening and comes in an opportune time. Meanwhile in the kitchen the 4 remaining girls decide to continue with the operation despite Blondie being late. With past suspicions by Blue, Sweet Pea was against continuing on with the plan for escape but Sweet Pea is dedicated to Rocket who is her younger sister whom she always wants to protect. So imagine this scene…. the girls block off the kitchen doors by locking them with brooms, clear off the cutting table and then take the radio in the kitchen and begin to try to find a song Baby Doll can dance to. Baby Doll gets up on the cutting table and begins to swerve left and right. However before she goes into her dream world, we see that the wire on the radio is frayed and when clearing the cutting table, a bucket of potatoes had water in it has now been slipped and is now slowly creeping towards the exposed wire. So you just know something is about to go wrong.
Despite this, the dream world sequence of Baby Doll’s is entered into. This time the girls are 1 person short, as Blondie isn’t available. The girls have to get on board a moving train heading to a city which has a bomb that will activate within proximity as it enters into the city. On board the train are robots. Action sequence occurs, bullet time, choreography, slow mo punches, more slow mo and as it looks like the mission is about to be cleared something goes wrong. Here we see us being brought back into the second layer and the music stops and as such Baby Doll’s dancing stops and the mesmerizing of the cook stops. He sees Sweet Pea take the knife and then takes his second knife and proceeds to make a stabbing motion towards Sweet Pea. We then see Rocket jump in front and suddenly we’re back in the dream world aka third layer and Baby Doll interprets this as them not being able to deactivate the bomb and Rocket takes it into the city dying. The correlation is that Rocket dies in the second layer as well and asks Sweet Pea to promise to escape and say hello to their mother.
Blue breaks into the kitchen and sees what has happened and is furious. Sweet Pea is locked away in solitary and the remaining girls are taken back as the High Roller is coming and they need to perform for him. In the dressing room, Blue lets the girls know that someone has told him of the girls plans of escape and tell them to stop and to discourage them further he makes an example of Amber and shoots her point blank in the head – dead. To make further example he says we don’t like snitches and Blondie is shot dead as well. Everyone leaves the room except Baby Doll and Blue who have a conversation which leaves Baby Doll managing to get a hold of the knife stolen from the kitchen and she stabs Blue with it in the neck. Subsequently stealing the key around his neck as well. 4 items acquired!
Baby Doll runs to the solitary area and frees Sweet Pea, they then take the lighter to create a fire and a distraction, meanwhile moving through the Lennox House via the map to get out of the house. Once outside they realize there are other guards and they cannot proceed any further. It’s here Baby Doll realizes she’s the 5th item and has to sacrifice herself in order for Sweet Pea to escape. It’s also here we realize the narration at the beginning isn’t Baby Doll’s story, it’s Sweet Pea talking about Baby Doll as her guardian angel who helped her escape. This is end of the second layer.
We’re brought back into the real world and we cut back to when Baby Doll was imagining being lobotomized which in turn, turns out not to be imagination at all. The doctor proceeds with the lobotomy but is disturbed by the final gaze of Browning as she stares back into the doctor’s eyes, saying it was almost like she wanted to be lobotomized. Because the last memory we see from Browning is her killing her sister as it erased the instant the doctor lobotomizes her and becomes somewhat of a reference to her finding her freedom. The doctor then speaks to Dr. Gorski asking about this particular lobotomy procedure and asks why it was done. Dr. Gorski says that Browning has caused a lot of problems in the past week since she has been there, stabbing an orderly, starting a fire and helping another girl escape. The doctor continues the dialogue and questions it further but also reveals the previous lobotomies he has been coming in and doing at the Lennox House. It’s here Dr. Gorski realizes that Blue has been forging her signature, ordering lobotomies to be done. By Blue’s orders, orderlies are told to bring Browning into a room and sit her in a chair. The guess here is that Blue intends to have his way with her, but it’s not before cops break into the room and arrest Blue. Blue taken away yells saying he was helping these lost girls but also explains it wasn’t his fault, it was the step-fathers why Browning was in there.
The movie ends with Sweet Pea getting trying to board a bus to get out of the town. Cops are at the bus station looking for her and call to her trying to prevent her from getting on board the bus, suggesting that they had a few questions to ask. The bus driver intervenes who is none other than The Wise Man who helped the girls on their missions. The bus driver says that Sweet Pea had been on the bus for sometime and just took a restroom break. Sweet Pea boards the bus and says she doesn’t have a ticket. The bus driver says he knows, but tells her to find a seat in the back and get some rest. Safe and sound Sweet Pea escapes to freedom and finishes the movie with one last voice over. Telling the audience that we ourselves are guardian angels and we all have the weapons in our minds to provide freedom.
And that is Sucker Punch.
I really didn’t know what to expect from Sucker Punch, with cinema in the past year I’ve tried to stay clear as much as I can from trailers, as trailer cuts have simply ruined scenes for me in films. It’s hard not to watch them, you get caught up in them at previews and for some they can actually be their favorite part of the movie experience. Lately I’ve become more interested in vision for a film, be it from cinematography, the set design, costume design, marketing involved, who’s cast and ultimate the director involved. I went into Sucker Punch with the single thought, this is the guy who is going to be directing the next Superman movie. I figured this was going to be an exciting warm up to Snyder’s insight on what maybe he has planned for the Man of Steel. Dawn of the Dead to this day has some of my most favorite panning shots in respect to visual scope, 300 broke the barrier of how a movie could be told and Watchmen was that movie you just had to see.
Sucker Punch was sold as “Alice in Wonderland with machine guns” and Snyder also said:
Awhile ago I had written a script for myself and there was a sequence in it that made me think, ‘How can I make a film that can have action sequences in it that aren’t limited by the physical realities that normal people are limited by, but still have the story make sense so it’s not, and I don’t mean to be mean, like a bullshitting thing like (reference to the 2006 film) Ultraviolet or something like that… It’s as crazy as anything else that I have ever done. It’s a movie that nobody can get made with the ending that it has and the subject matter.
Those are his exact words.
The joke moving forward in the next decade or so for directors will be “how can I make my dream movie and convince any respectable movie company to somehow give me $82 million real dollars to make it, then somehow convince them it won’t be some like, and I don’t mean to be mean, like a bullshitting thing like (reference to 2011 film) Sucker Punch or something like that.” Ironically Snyder has given a new literal definition to the term ‘sucker punch’ only here it’ll be directly referred to by directors in their attempts to make their dream projects. I’m still thinking of how Sucker Punch could’ve actually worked a film.
Originally it was aimed to be a R-rated film and eventually was decided to be a PG-13 movie, so much so that cuts were made to the movie. I still have an odd faith in Snyder as a film maker, more so to the fact that I think as long as a film has proper source material he’s ok. If you give him an opportunity to go balls out and have complete free reign, the end result is Sucker Punch while in most ways you are left with something utterly disastrous. Because of the PG-13 rating, it was decided that highly elaborate dance/song scenes had been completely removed from the movie. Whether it was the burlesque setup of young girls performing in scantily-clad outfits, whatever reason it ended up being, those scenes were removed. It’s curious as to think what place those scenes would’ve had in the movie. Or more so where they would’be been, how would they have sequenced into the film and possible would the movie been any different?
Sucker Punch is so reliant on song and dance, that it’s absolutely abnormal as to why those scenes were removed at all. By so reliant, I mean both song and dance are the mechanisms used to propel the girls into the fantasy world that Snyder presents. It’s this thought where I think maybe Sucker Punch was intended to be a musical. Or maybe it wasn’t, but maybe it should’ve been a musical.
Moulin Rouge was cited as a direct example by Snyder as an influence for the film and again, and for pop-culture reference Moulin Rouge came out in 2001, post The Matrix era. These song/dance scenes removed were so elaborate that even Carla Gugino had to take singing lessons for certain scenes in the film. However as I said, these scenes are non-existent in the theatrical cut. In Sucker Punch the music presented in the film isn’t just used in the background. It has been meticulously chosen and played with purpose and intent. It’s meant to highlight a new scene, conform to the setting and adjusts with the pacing of the movie. However since we don’t have those song/dance scenes in the movie, there is no real grounding made with these songs. It just adds to the stylistic nature of the movie, where a film like Moulin Rouge would’ve had reason for the song being sung in both it’s music and lyrics. Sucker Punch just uses these songs as essentially the background noise. It’s too generic to simplify it as that, but it feels as though there is a real missing element especially when song/dance is used so deliberately like it is in this film.
It just ends up sounding like this odd soundtrack of really hip, cool songs, maybe from a playlist from that ‘other guy’s’ iPod. However here in itself the song being played is sensationalized by it’s use, the movie is stylistic. That’s Snyder doing his thing. So all it is, is style through camera of what is captured and then song, to add emphasis of what is heard. Hell it’s like from the Matrix Reloaded when they ask where Neo is and Link simply replies, “you know, he’s doing his Superman thing.” That’s Snyder in this film, the visuals are his thing, the stylistic nature of what we see and hear, that’s him going into your brain and trying to sucker punch you.
I mean I get it, I understand what I’m being presented with. I see what’s he’s trying to do with this film but it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea as a movie.
In some ways, it’s unfortunate this movie came out after Nolan’s Inception, this is Snyder’s Inception, the references are inescapable. The difference with Nolan’s movie is that he’s conceived an entire story and placed it in the real world in setting, but creates in the dream world in context. However despite the levels Nolan throws at you and the complexities there might inherently be, Inception promotes one very simple concept, the movie is based a single thing, an idea. That’s it, from the beginning to end of Inception, that’s the driving force, the very simple thought of an idea. Coincidentally enough, to continue with the pop-culture reference, Inception came out in 2010. Again fits within the referential material timeline wise. Although I don’t actually think Inception was apart of the movies to take from. In this case, it’s a case of bad coincidence. It happens.
Sucker Punch takes the notion of fantasy and shows us worlds that do not make sense whatsoever. However how it’s pieced together, it’s purpose, that also make no sense either at all. I’m disappointed in Snyder not based on his imagination of showing us these crazy worlds he’s concocted. I’m disappointed because he didn’t have the vision to provide us completely with a whole world of alternative reality. Why not just create fantastical reality? Why place fantasy within reality? He makes it a purpose to have wanted to design the movie to where there’s no limits on him at all and by allowing this to happen he writes the story himself. There is a strange irony here that a man who wants no limits actually places limits on himself through the story. James Cameron gave us the world of Avatar, Nolan gave us the world of Inception, we see worlds created all the time in books like Harry Potter, hell even Twilight. Just wanting to be able to film a really cool scene isn’t enough to pass it off as a worthwhile movie. The action sequences themselves with the stylistic nature, it’s been overdone to a point where as an audience, these “cool” scenes are the very least of what we expect, especially from this type of movie. More than that, especially from Snyder given his filmography.
The action is a device used only in dream sequences which actually serve no bearing because they don’t carry any real consequence. They’re referencing something we never see, it’s like sugar coating something real through fantasy. We assume what is happening has reference, yet we don’t fully know what it is. We know what they are doing, but in terms of the real world, again we don’t know how they’re actually pulling it off. We don’t feel that the girls are in danger because the world they are fighting in is imaginative. The zombies aren’t real, the dragon isn’t, the orcs aren’t real and so forth. Are they supposed to relate to anything in respect to what is actually happening in the film? The other problem is everything occurring in second layer and the answer to this is quite possibly this isn’t Browning’s character’s doing. I’d argue even further that despite at the beginning of the film we think we might see Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung and Jena Malone, but they don’t actually exist in reality. They “might” have been other girls in the Lennox House, but it’s doubtful Sweet Pea ever had a sister and if the lot of them were ever friends. It’s easy to surmise that the brothel second layer is actually Sweet Pea’s dream world and Sucker Punch takes place in two young girls minds instead of one. There is an instance in the beginning of the film where Sweet Pea and Baby Doll lock eyes and we can assume as much, if you want to use brain power to understand the movie, two dream worlds are happening simultaneously in various instances. However it’s only alluded to ever so slightly. Was this meant to be some master stroke of brilliance in storytelling? I don’t think I can give Snyder that much credit.
At the end of the film, Dr. Gorski doesn’t say to the doctor “oh and 3 girls got killed” I’m pretty sure that would’ve been a big deal in the real world. On top of it, despite how crazy Blue is, it’s shown that the rest of the orderlies would never go as far as harming any of the patients there physically, they literally say as much in actual script dialogue. It’s still the real world and because of the actions of the orderlies at the end of the film, you know they wouldn’t do anything terrible especially to the point of killing them. Even in this case, I think the lobotomies are just all Blue’s doing, doing what he wants with the girls without anyone knowing. He’s the head orderly and abuses situations to make money. By the end he could in fact be the only crazy person in the entire movie. And thus every patient there is a victim of circumstance, maybe they all had step-fathers who tried to abuse them when they didn’t get anything from their spouse’s wills. But basically that even adds more credence that Amber, Rocket and Blondie never actually existed and more so to the point of trying to make sense of Snyder’s mess.
This duality of dreams and the real world, it’s never really played with beyond allowing the movie to have crazy costume designs and sets. In the end for what purpose? For a heartfelt message at the end of the movie to let us know we have the power to create? The power to be free?
In it’s finality, this movie plays out like one man’s giant fetish or deviant love child. Maybe like that creepy cyclops looking kid that Harold and Kumar encounter in Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008 film). I would go as far as saying Sucker Punch in fact is quite a selfish film that doesn’t actually give anything back to anyone. Here’s one last thing that Snyder said:
“On the other hand, though it’s fetishistic and personal, I like to think that my fetishes aren’t that obscure. Who doesn’t want to see girls running down the trenches of World War One wreaking havoc? I’d always had an interest in those worlds — comic books, fantasy art, animated films. I’d like to see this, that’s how I approach everything, and then keep pushing it from there.”
Even if this film wasn’t meant to be a musical or was meant to be, why not just create a world where what he’s thinking exists. Acknowledge further the laws he wants to break and just create a complete universe where crazy happens and the simple explanation of why it can happen is because of the world we are in. That’s Alice in Wonderland. That’s The Matrix and that’s Inception. I’m not just talking being able to film something crazy like he wants to do, but make it work as a crazy story, a crazy world, a crazy everything. But in order to that, you need to control everything, control the rules, control the world and not just visualize, cover your plot holes and be beyond meticulous. Draw the viewer from every angle, story, visuals, music, characters, everything. Don’t just decide to segway and somehow mirror what is happening in the real world with what we see in the dream world. It makes no sense. The only thing it makes me think is this girl well, maybe she should actually be in an insane asylum. There were times I was trying to tie in events in the dream world with connections to the brothel dream world. You just assume what is going on is enough though, because we aren’t ever given enough reference to the real world, other than the 4 items that are required to collect that we see in the beginning of the film and the idea of freedom. The wool over our eyes, or twist is that the story isn’t Emily Browning’s (Baby Doll), but Abbie Cornish’s (Sweet Pea). We assume as much throughout the film that it’s about Browning trying to escape especially her as the main character, but even with The Wise Man saying she’ll need to find a 5th item, we already know as much the 5th item is herself. Because in the beginning of the movie Snyder decides to show us Browning get lobotomized. He tries to fool us with all the dream worlds, but things aren’t complicated in the slightest. We actually walk into his dream worlds and wonder when they are going to be over so we find out what’s really going on. That’s what happens when you create fantasy that has no consequence. That’s what happens when there are no limits. It’s good to have boundaries. It’s better to push those boundaries and see how much you can exploit them. However when you start breaking the boundaries completely, that’s when shit can start to just make no sense whatsoever.
He’s surprising no one with these fantasy worlds other than someone gave him $82 million dollars to create it and film it on screen. But fuck, you’re telling me this costs $82 million? Fund a video game instead where this format would’ve gone down as the greatest video game ever played with the greatest boss fights ever. It probably would’ve cost 1/4 of the amount and the storyline would’ve made sense. Maybe it’s the medium? At least in video games we walk into them truthfully expecting the worst storyline and just hoping it plays good.
And realistically if Warner Bros. can give Snyder money for Sucker Punch. For the love of god, someone out there at least given Guillermo Del Toro $82 million to help make At the Mountains of Madness and even if Tom Cruise is cast as the lead as least we’ll get a film that will be good because of the source material. Maybe that’s the problem though, Sucker Punch is an original movie. Or maybe the problem is more so Snyder is only good at what he does when there is source material involved. When the only thing he’s thinking about is directing what’s being told? Not worrying about how to tell it while directing? Or maybe it’s because this movie was originally planned to be R-rated? Or maybe it’s because those song/dance sequences were removed? Was this a musical? Or wasn’t it?
Despite my obvious dislike/hate for the film. It is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t the acting, the cast was good, the acting was delivered. It was everything else. The story, the lack of character development, the setting, just how everything was told. It’s terrible too, based on the real conceptual artists behind creating what we see when we enter the dream worlds. Even the second layer with the brothel and even instances of the real world. The film has the potential to captivate, but never does. I actually thought about walking out during this movie, the notion had never crossed my mind before, ever.
In the end I’d be interested to see if there is an eventual director’s cut, in respect to how this movie might’ve been intended. I’d give it another chance in that sense out of sheer curiosity and be welcomed to be proven wrong that it’s not as terrible as I think it is. I’ll give Snyder one more go with The Man of Steel. However, I am cautiously optimistic and as usual keeping my expectations low. I mean truthfully, any movie that makes me want to watch The Last Airbender again… that’s saying something.
If someone just wants to see pretty young girls in sexy alluring outfits while battling it out in fantasy worlds with Snyder style action, if that’s enough for a person to warrant admission and like Sucker Punch then, sure. Go for it.
All I’m saying is save your money, save your bandwidth, because Snyder be raping everybody’s mind up in here. Sucker punch indeed.
