Sucker Punch

It's been a few months now since I watched Sucker Punch, and the movie has been--more or less--been put out of my mind. However, I said I would share my thoughts on it, and now I finally will.

I should probably note that I did not see it a second time nor do I ever plan to as that would qualify as torture in some lands, I'm sure.

First off, what does the title mean? Well, I'm pretty sure they tried to explain that near the end or something in scene in which Peter Griffin would have loved, but it didn't really stick with me. By that point I had already decided that I as sucker punched by this movie in general.

I'll be honest; I was highly anticipating this film after seeing the trailer a long while back. It seemed like they were going for an epic story with a strong leading female heroine set in a very beautiful fantasy world with legendary fight scenes.
That's not what happened.

Well, there were many female "heroines" but not many were very interesting. I'm not a female, some saying they're not something I was able to relate to is probably moot, so I won't discuss that in depth; however, I didn't really care about any of them. I had slight concern for the supposed main character (*spoiler* the sucker punch is that it's not her story...apparently). Yeah, yeah, I know what they were going for, but it didn't work.

I didn't care about ANY of the other characters in the slightest. They were all very one dimensional and (*spoiler*) by the end getting killed off left and right.

Setup: Abused daughter gets sent away to a mental institution after her stepfather framed for the death of her sister (he killed her, surprise). There, Baby Doll--as she is nicknamed--meets the other very sexy but crazy denizens of the institute; however, quickly the institute turns into a brothel. Obviously, this is the start of the inception like comparison many people like to pin on Sucker Punch.

Let's get one thing straight, there are no similarities between this movie and Inception. One (despite what some will try to say), Inception is a pretty good movie; and two, Inception explains what the hell is going on.

Think if you went into Inception, and they just started going into dream worlds without any kind of explanation or acknowledgement. That's what happens in Sucker Punch, and they also do go an extra layer deep as the brothel turns into many other fantasy based areas as the girls go on missions to collect random items to escape the candy land/brothel/mental institution.

With all the stuff happening here, you kind of wonder if they should be in an institute. Ok, ok, not fair. I know they're trying to explain the girls are escaping the abuse and hard reality of the world by going into these fantasies. Regardless, I don't feel like it works. I don't believe it. I feel like it is poorly explained and very clunky.

At the end of the day, the story was barely passable, disconnected and loosely put together, and ended with a big "meh". Not going to go into the details of the ending just in case you want to watch it, but be warned, it isn't a good ending by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, it's not bad, but again, overall a big "meh". And no story, epic or not, should end with the audience going "meh".

So, if it wasn't an epic story, what was Sucker Punch? I think it turned out to be what they wanted. A giant live action anime (albeit with less point than even the craziest anime) with sexy women in epic fight scenes set to awesome music. That's exactly the whole of this particular film. If that's truly what they were going for, they succeeded by tenfold.

I don't really know any of the actors in the film, none of them stands out to me; however, that isn't necessary to be a good film. Sadly, while the acting wasn't say as bad as The Last Airbender, it was just bland. Which I guess is the overall feel at the end of this movie. Bland and meh.

Sexy babes. Check. Awesome fight scenes. Check. Really great soundtrack. Check. Story. What?

Yeah, that's about how it goes. The really focused on the first 3 aspects and let the fourth fall to the wayside feeling like something hastily patched together to justify making the film in the first place.

I think, like many video games and comics as well, the female heroines are a bit exploited for the thrills of the male fans that obviously hoped to attract (nerds/geeks/gamers/anime fans) which are--in all honesty--predominantly male. Yeah, there are female fans in the droves, but they don't compare to the male fans in those demographics by the numbers.

I'm not a feminist or feminist supporter--and don't take that to mean I'm against equality or for the oppression of woman because I'm not, I just hate the way they approach things--but even I felt like this film that originally looked like it would promote a positive female heroine (ok, not completely but still); however, they just became sexy school girls fighting samurai robots (should have figured that out from the trailer, but one could hope, right?)

I think you either love or hate this movie. There's not really any middle ground. The soundtrack was really the best part. It was clearly focused on exploiting the geek/gamer demographic, and I think it worked to do that. I'm not sure of the profit it received, but sadly, it probably was greater than Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, which is pretty sad since it was a movie that demographic really should have supported (damn you Michael Cera).

I would suggest wasting your time on something else completely! Sucker Punch is very much fluff with little substance.