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kamreadsandrecsI am a self-confessed geek. I love comic books, video games, manga, and everything and anything linked to them. I read lots of sci-fi and fantasy and horror. I love dragons and steampunk and zombies and samurai and over-the-top fight scenes. But I especially, especially love it when it's girls who do the ass-kicking.
So when I heard from a good friend of mine that Sucker Punch was coming out, and I found out what it was all about, I was excited. Extremely. Here are all the things I loved, squished together into one movie, with girls in the lead.
After seeing it today, though, and having had some time to actually think on it, I think that it was trying to do something great and interesting, but it got lost somewhere between the zombie-clockwork German soldiers and that final, decisive tap of the orbitoclast.
Visually, I thought that Sucker Punch was a ridiculously fun ride. I was rather uncomfortable with what I feel is the overuse of slow-mo, but as for everything else, I don't think I can complain much. There's a great deal here that echoes the over-the-top action seen in anime fight scenes, and if you're the type who enjoys that sort of thing, then this movie is a treat. Matter of fact, Baby Doll's very first fight scene (with the giant samurai statues) could almost have been lifted right out of an episode of an anime like Bleach or Shakugan no Shana - right down to her sexy schoolgirl uniform and twin pigtails.
Actually, much of what's so visually fun about this movie can be found in these little fantasies that Baby Doll has within the burlesque club fantasy she uses to mask the harsh reality of the mental institution she's been sent to. My absolute favorite is the steampunk-and-zombies fantasy, which looks like it's set during an alternate version of World War I, with Germany on the rampage and London burnt to the ground - or at least I think it's London because I could swear that the fantasy opens in what appears to be the burnt-out shell of Westminster Abbey. That one little "episode" alone just hits all the right buttons for me, really: zombies that run on "steam and clockwork," WWI-era airplanes flying amidst zeppelins, and a post-apocalyptic scenario.
But what about the rest of the movie? What about the storyline, the plot, the themes? Well... That's where my issues come in.
I thought the movie was promising. When the very first image was the stage and curtains, my first thought was that I should look at this movie as a play of sorts, an entertainment, a temporary departure from the realities of the world. I thought that perhaps I should expect a twisting of that reality, even as that twisting showed me new angles from which to view reality, as so many plays and movies and books do. And I think I was right to hold these expectations, and they saw me through the movie and a little bit after it. However, some hours after the fantasy has come to an end, I find that it's not quite as strong as it could have been.
Sucker Punch attempts to ask questions about reality, unreality, and the power of the latter over the former. It attempts to say that perhaps, with the right mentality, one can use unreality to shape reality to one's own choosing. This seems to ring especially true when one pays attention to Sweet Pea's speeches at the beginning and end of the movie. When the screen goes black in the end, and it's just her voice, exhorting the viewers (for who else is she speaking to?) to fight, there's the potential for something positive and powerful right there.
These speeches are interesting, and contain ideas that ought to have been the backbone of the movie. Unfortunately, you can't really bookend a movie with fascinating speeches and then not really work on the middle part. It just winds up feeling saggy, despite all the pretty explosions and sexy women. If there had been more character development and less fight choreography, if there had been less focus on fantasy and more on reality, then it seems likely that this movie would have gotten Sweet Pea's message across quite well. Unfortunately, a lot gets lost in what now feels like a really long string of big-screen music videos.
What I feel now, hours after, is disappointment. There was so much potential in this movie, so much possibility, and yet it did not come up to scratch - at all. It tries, but I'm not even going to say that it tried hard, because it didn't even do that. Which is sad, really. As a geek, I feel a severe disservice was done to me.
There only seems to be one bright spot in all of this: the soundtrack. As with many bad movies, the soundtrack seems to be the saving grace. It's not to everyone's taste, to be sure, but Emily Browning's version of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" at the beginning of the movie, and the "I Want It All/We Will Rock You" mash-up somewhere in the middle are just some of the musical highlights in this movie. When I compare the majority of this movie to a string of big-screen music videos, I do so because the music is pretty darned good. The only downside to the soundtrack is that it does not include the classical music pieces that were also in the movie, but those are probably in the score.
But sadly, great visuals and a great soundtrack aren't enough to rescue this movie. The potential is definitely there, but it doesn't even manage to make a bid for freedom. In that sense, it's kind of like Baby Doll: stuck in a madhouse and unable to go anywhere, even in the end.
So when I heard from a good friend of mine that Sucker Punch was coming out, and I found out what it was all about, I was excited. Extremely. Here are all the things I loved, squished together into one movie, with girls in the lead.
After seeing it today, though, and having had some time to actually think on it, I think that it was trying to do something great and interesting, but it got lost somewhere between the zombie-clockwork German soldiers and that final, decisive tap of the orbitoclast.
Visually, I thought that Sucker Punch was a ridiculously fun ride. I was rather uncomfortable with what I feel is the overuse of slow-mo, but as for everything else, I don't think I can complain much. There's a great deal here that echoes the over-the-top action seen in anime fight scenes, and if you're the type who enjoys that sort of thing, then this movie is a treat. Matter of fact, Baby Doll's very first fight scene (with the giant samurai statues) could almost have been lifted right out of an episode of an anime like Bleach or Shakugan no Shana - right down to her sexy schoolgirl uniform and twin pigtails.
Actually, much of what's so visually fun about this movie can be found in these little fantasies that Baby Doll has within the burlesque club fantasy she uses to mask the harsh reality of the mental institution she's been sent to. My absolute favorite is the steampunk-and-zombies fantasy, which looks like it's set during an alternate version of World War I, with Germany on the rampage and London burnt to the ground - or at least I think it's London because I could swear that the fantasy opens in what appears to be the burnt-out shell of Westminster Abbey. That one little "episode" alone just hits all the right buttons for me, really: zombies that run on "steam and clockwork," WWI-era airplanes flying amidst zeppelins, and a post-apocalyptic scenario.
But what about the rest of the movie? What about the storyline, the plot, the themes? Well... That's where my issues come in.
I thought the movie was promising. When the very first image was the stage and curtains, my first thought was that I should look at this movie as a play of sorts, an entertainment, a temporary departure from the realities of the world. I thought that perhaps I should expect a twisting of that reality, even as that twisting showed me new angles from which to view reality, as so many plays and movies and books do. And I think I was right to hold these expectations, and they saw me through the movie and a little bit after it. However, some hours after the fantasy has come to an end, I find that it's not quite as strong as it could have been.
Sucker Punch attempts to ask questions about reality, unreality, and the power of the latter over the former. It attempts to say that perhaps, with the right mentality, one can use unreality to shape reality to one's own choosing. This seems to ring especially true when one pays attention to Sweet Pea's speeches at the beginning and end of the movie. When the screen goes black in the end, and it's just her voice, exhorting the viewers (for who else is she speaking to?) to fight, there's the potential for something positive and powerful right there.
These speeches are interesting, and contain ideas that ought to have been the backbone of the movie. Unfortunately, you can't really bookend a movie with fascinating speeches and then not really work on the middle part. It just winds up feeling saggy, despite all the pretty explosions and sexy women. If there had been more character development and less fight choreography, if there had been less focus on fantasy and more on reality, then it seems likely that this movie would have gotten Sweet Pea's message across quite well. Unfortunately, a lot gets lost in what now feels like a really long string of big-screen music videos.
What I feel now, hours after, is disappointment. There was so much potential in this movie, so much possibility, and yet it did not come up to scratch - at all. It tries, but I'm not even going to say that it tried hard, because it didn't even do that. Which is sad, really. As a geek, I feel a severe disservice was done to me.
There only seems to be one bright spot in all of this: the soundtrack. As with many bad movies, the soundtrack seems to be the saving grace. It's not to everyone's taste, to be sure, but Emily Browning's version of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" at the beginning of the movie, and the "I Want It All/We Will Rock You" mash-up somewhere in the middle are just some of the musical highlights in this movie. When I compare the majority of this movie to a string of big-screen music videos, I do so because the music is pretty darned good. The only downside to the soundtrack is that it does not include the classical music pieces that were also in the movie, but those are probably in the score.
But sadly, great visuals and a great soundtrack aren't enough to rescue this movie. The potential is definitely there, but it doesn't even manage to make a bid for freedom. In that sense, it's kind of like Baby Doll: stuck in a madhouse and unable to go anywhere, even in the end.
