Sucker Punch

[akashiver]

Oh, Sucker Punch. Your visuals have so much potential. But to quote a fellow audience-member, "watching this film is like watching a video game you're not playing."

All I can do is shake my head and wonder what those visuals could do were they actually linked to a plot.

Your film, Mr. Snyder, is taking up space in this universe that rightfully belongs to another. Because of you, there's a Naoimi Novaks novel that's not being adapted; a steamwork-nazi anime that will never be filmed. A thousand kittens weep silent tears at Sucker Punch's wasted existence.

Part of me wants to revisit the specter of female exploitation you raise, Mr. Snyder. Not out of anger, but out of a sad urge to invest your film with meaning. Some kind of meaning. But given that your plot hangs together with the consistency of goop, I fear that I will only waste yet more minutes of my life trying to figure out what on earth your bordello fantasy is suggesting.

I will observe this: your ending hinted that you truly believe this film is empowering.

Dude.



Your ending reveals that all your heroine had to do to get free was tell the doctor in charge of the asylum that the orderly had forged the dr's signature on the lobotomy papers. Which your heroine heard him admit at the beginning of the movie. Back when she was completely sane.

In short, all your heroine had to do was open her mouth to save herself. You know: be active, instead of a passive victim.

Instead, if I'm reading this right, in the real world she chooses to be molested by a bunch of orderlies as a "distraction" while other girls did things that might help them escape. And then she sacrificed herself, and got lobotomized.

So the message is... immerse yourself in fantasy: it will help you detach yourself from the abuse your passivity enables and ensure your mental destruction.

Dude. I don't know what the hell that is, but it ain't empowering.

AND ANOTHER THING.



You know, I like that Kim from Freaks and Geeks gets to "go back to her family" at the end of the movie. Except that your movie established that the girls can only be institutionalized by their guardians. Which means that Kim is running back to the people who put her in the asylum in the first place.

Really?

Oh well. At least it had some good tunes.

Comments

[ombriel.livejournal.com]

This movie sounds totally gross. I will not be seeing it.

[prosewitch.livejournal.com]

... I actually kinda liked it.

It had some really interesting nested narratives, and the fight scenes sure were purty. Additionally, the film gave us a glimpse of who the donor/helper figures in traditional narratives might have been before they managed to help the main hero/heroine. (sorry, that last bit may not make sense without having seen the film)

But yes, there was lots of violence against women, and girls kicking ass in fantasy sequences does not adequately address the problems of the audience knowing that they're pretty disempowered in the non-fantasy sequences. Totally a problematic film... but strangely, I enjoyed it and may see it again.

[teleidoplex]

Yeah, cross that one off my list. I have a major peeve about plots that could be resolved by a simple act of communication, and another about silenced women. Those elements together, and I think I might actually self-lobotomize through aneurysm if I were to see this film.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Especially given the five (by one count) or six (by another) attempted rapes that are apparently in the movie.

Yeah. NO desire to see this one.