4 gibbles out of 5
Director: Zack Snyder
The kids loved Dawn of the Dead, and were equally enthused about 300. Watchmen predictably split comic fans, but most people seemed to at least agree that it was an immense undertaking that was more successful than not. But before we talk about Sucker Punch, let’s mention the jewel of the Snyder collection: Legend of the Guardians. 5 effing stars, people, for a movie about CGI owls. My love for that film meant that Snyder had me: I would gladly give myself over to his slo-mo extended love scenes.
Thus: when the trailers for Sucker Punch started making the rounds, my heart was a’flutter and I felt that here was ol’ Zacky unleashed. No more comic scripts to live up to, and some proven dollars under his belt to go banana nuts on visuals. And I know many people were in the same boat as me. AND YET: these motherfuckers jumped overboard. Why? I’m not sure. Had they not seen the roots of Zack’s typical sense of gender balance in 300? Had they not heard his tweaks to Moore’s language in Watchmen to make it more palatable and grandiose? I would never say Snyder’s a genius, I would say he’s a nice guy. A dude. Who has a dude’s eye for making movies (I remember playing with my action figures and using similar “camera” swoops with my eyes to capture the action) and, unlike a lot of post-Matrix directors who get wrapped up in exterior elements, Snyder seems to have the key to the formula which makes for fun films: that he loves what he’s doing.
If you listen to any of his commentaries or read his interviews, he’s into it. He digs what he does, and more importantly, he hopes you do too. Not expects you to, but wants you to. That enthusiasm and energy PLUS – yes – awesome focused technical skill, has pushed his films out of “cool” territory, to me, and into accomplished and mostly rounded chunks of entertainment.
So I don’t get the big backlash toward this film. Here were the two main arguments against: that for a film claiming to promote strong female characters, we get boyish fantasies dressed in skimpy outfits AND that the structure of the film robs it of tension because there’s no sense of challenge in the dream sequences. Again, I would slap the millions of nay-sayers and ask them what precedent they had to expect something other than what the film presented, but any-fuck-how, here’s some responses –
1. See above: Synder’s a dude. I don’t think he’s a sexist, I just think he’s a dude who likes sexy girls and thinks that they should be confident while wearing dresses. I knew a dude once. It’s improper to tell you his name and I’ll protect his identity and everything but his name was totally Shane. Shane was all about women’s rights. I’d say something simple like “women are silly” or “all women are soulless” and Shane would get all up-in-arms for the rights o’ the breasted ones. However, then Shane would tell a story about the hot girl he was trying to bang, and that story would be slathered in sexist terms. Double-standard? Sure. Snyder’s not that blatant, but he’s still a dude. His idea of a strong woman is what you have seen on the screen in the majority of his films: sexy ladies kickin’ butt. Furthermore, the “skimpy outfit” claim must be made by people who haven’t seen any television or movies or read a magazine in the past ten years: These are good looking girls in the movie, but for all the chances to sexualize their actions (think the Charlie’s Angels movies), the farthest we get is Baby Doll’s school girl attire, which was more to flaunt the stereotype than rub it’s dirty parts on the screen. Watch the film without judgment and you’ll find you could swap these girls out for ripped guys in tank tops and it’d amount to the same level of titillation for either sex.
2. The boredom factor. The film is long, especially in its uncut version. So was Watchmen. And I agree that there’s no tension. But I again ask: what’s the precedent? A movie pitches itself as a thriller or a mystery or whatever by its tone. Sucker Punch, from its opening scene, always seemed to be about just watching a story. (If you want to go meta with how the “story” is layered and so that was intentional… well…) The fantasy elements are actual fantasy, and because 98% of the film takes place in some level of dream, it follows that it should unfold as easily as it does. A conceit I loathe in movies is forced conflict: A film told in flashback that expects us to be concerned about events that have already taken place, for example. Sucker Punch doesn’t trifle with such complications. Snyder chose his plot, set up his structure, and made some wonderful visuals to carry us through it in a way that you really don’t see on screen.
Which… brings us to my pluses and minuses. As mentioned above, I’ll admit that some of the story drags. Once we understand the in dream / out of dream pacing, the story in-between feels mostly simplified to carry us to the next event. Their are dashes of reality in there that hint that Snyder may learn from this experience to one day make a film not buoyed on visuals, but he still enjoys lingering, and at 2 hours (again, as occurred with Watchmen), when dialogue happens late in the game, even though it might be well written you’re sort of fading. Also, this is the most overtly video-gamey / music-videoy of Snyder’s films. Music plays a big part, so it’s inevitable, but with so much of the landscape CGI’d (and character interactions in those landscapes), some moments it seemed like I was watching a computer animated film. Lastly, and nit-pickily, the movie has the same intense color saturation as most Snyder productions, which made me surprised that he didn’t play up the differences in the fantasy worlds. The last couple landscapes really blend together.
But the plus is how good Snyder is at all of this. He chose a method and honed it, and we all agree he loves slo-mo, but fuck if it doesn’t work so gorgeously the way he puts it all together. His work – and this work especially – reminds me that there are still fresh eyes looking at film. So many people share common influences nowadays, with cool cinema and resources being that much easier to access than however many years ago, but it makes it that much more apparent when someone has the focus to pool those influences to make something substantial. This may not seem to counter everything I’ve said above, but I can re-watch Snyder’s films consistently and marvel at the artistry, and rewatchability is something even some of my favorite films don’t have.
Sorry for the wicked long review, cuckoos. Sucker Punch deserved some examination and praise. And if you haven’t seen Legend of the Guardians, you’ve been deprived of the best animated owl movie ever made.
This clip from the film shows Snyder's mastery of slow motion
vaguely-offensive 