Sucker Punch

"1984" is one of the most famous literary examples of a dystopian future where the government has crushed individual freedom. Basically ANY movie or book since that has had anything to do with a "big oppressive government" can cite 1984 as an influence. Heck, even Star Trek has done episodes related to it.

Isn't the term "influence" what people on this thread is equating to "ripping off"..or..err..."knocking off"?

I agree on both counts. The Watchmen was very accurate to the book, except the end.

As for Suckerpunch. I saw it and I have to say I didn't think it was great over all. The action sequences were inspired, well choreographed, well executed, very visual, the music worked, just all around some of the coolest action sequences I've seen in a long time, some of the most imaginative too.

That said, the rest of the movie didn't work so well. I felt like they tried to do too much with the Asylum, but she was imagining it as a weird brothel, but she was imagining herself in these battles. It just didn't work out so well because by the end you have little idea on how it all translated to the asylum, other than it apparently did some how because she lit the place on fire, but there was just too much stuff that didn't jive there for me, the narrative didn't really make a lot of sense. I think this movie could have benefited from an R rating, since I felt the opening scene was rushed and there could have been more stuff that would have made sense, but would have been able to be more graphic.

All and all, the action sequences were fantastic, the girls were beautiful and the acting was pretty good, but the story is lackluster outside the action sequences. It's one of those things that I think would probably work better in graphic novel form.

As I said eariler I personally don't care how much (or little) Snyder "borrowed" from other sources.
All I know is that whatever he did to produce Sucker Punch didn't work out too well.

No, but then again I ended up not really caring about those "details" regardless. *shrugs*

The brothel was analgous to how the staff of the institution was using the girls. It started with the tour of facilities, when Rocket was telling Baby Doll how things work around there..and illustrated by the staff portrayed as the customers of the brothel.

Accurate yet empty, the changed ending notwithstanding. Visually, it was a near-perfect panel-to-storyboard adaptation, but dramatically, it was all bombast.

No, Snyder specifically talks about his inspiration for Sucker Punch from Brazil, which implies a deeper creative link, even though there's patently none. (And if there's any film director out there today adapting comics who's less concerned with "anxiety of influence", I'd like to know, if only to avoid their work.)

So Snyder talking about being influenced by Brazil is somehow different from Alan Moore listing 1984 as an influence for V for Vendetta?

She's not lucid, so she does not have control where she goes next. Like Alice going through Wonderland, she precesses to her next reality.

Originally Posted by Hyperstrike English does not borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar.

As I've said (so as not to appear as a fanboy of Sucker Punch with me defending it so), I thought the brothel sequences tied well to what was actually going on in the mental institution. It's the dance sequences that felt disjointed (as imaginative and awesome as they were), only in the kitchen scene are we given a glympse of how it interconnects with reality, however even then when you look back at all the other dance sequences its hard to see any such connection.

I'm not knocking Snyder's flare for the visual (it's what he's obviously great at), just his writing, especially when better similar works like Pan's Labrynth exist. With this I'm actually looking foreward to his Superman due to the fact that it's Nolan and Goyer who wrote it.

Yes.

When Snyder, in an interview months before Sucker Punch, claims Brazil "really inspired me" in making it, he's hyping his movie by bringing up a touchstone of geekdom. Of course, his final product now turns out to be qualitatively miles away from Gilliam's landmark movie.

When Moore wrote that afterword to the collected V for Vendetta (which had seen separate publication in the UK and then, years later, the US), he had an established success and could note the many influences on the making of the series without self-aggrandizement. (I'll have to look up precisely what Moore wrote before going further.)

"Zack the Hack" has been doing this for years, by the way. With his Dawn of the Dead remake (which lacked the satiric bite of the original), he was trying to claim the idea of "running zombies" for himself, although that innovation belongs to Dan O'Bannon's cult classic "Return of the Living Dead".

Which is what we've been saying...Snyder didn't rip off or knock off Brazil in any way what so ever. At least the movie, didn't show any such blatant "influences". I could just as well say I was influenced by the V for Vendetta movie today to make breakfast, which is accurate as I thought about making eggy's in a basket...but went with sunny side up instead.

I think the irony here is that some of us wish Snyder had be much more blatant in his "borrowing" from Brazil because his movie definitely needed the help.

So why did Snyder bring up Brazil at all? I suppose it's better that he did ahead of Sucker Punch's release instead of everyone pointing out the thematic and visual similarities, from the escapism-as-brain-damage climax to the protagonist's battle with a giant armored samurai.

"Eggy's in a basket" was an interpolation from the mediocre screenplay adaptation for the V for Vendetta movie that Alan Moore found absurd, with its ersatz attempt to portray realistic English details to offset the sci-fi dystopia.

It's not a question of having influences, which is inescapable; it's of recognizing and appreciating them and then making something new and interesting out of them.

Cause like Brazil, fantasy escapism is a main theme of Sucker Punch.

I did say I was influenced by the movie to make breakfast...didn't I? Addendum: Regardless, I did make eggs so the main theme of my influence carried.

Swiping the basic idea and some of the visual elements of another movie is a time-honored tradition. However, only the movies which actually take the source material in a new direction stand the test of time. Ripping off Brazil's look while missing its point just means Sucker Punch will be forgotten rather quickly.

The aggregate opinion of all of the reviews I've seen essentially boil down to calling Sucker Punch a "hot mess."

I think if you put GOOD science fiction out there, people will go see it. For example, "Inception" made quite a bit of money last summer. Keep in mind that I hold to the axiom that "90% of everything is crap." I would actually bump that up further. There was awful sci-fi in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and I'm sure the 10s won't be any different. The difference is that, largely, enough time has passed that only the good stuff has pretty much survived from those older decades.

I have not seen "Sucker Punch" as of yet, and after reading through this thread I'm pretty sure I won't until it hits home video. It seems there are a lot of similar comments that this thread could almost replace "Sucker Punch" with "Transformers 2," the latter of which was garbage and I remember that discussion pretty clearly. I see a lot of the same comments along the lines of "good action scenes, so good story isn't needed," and the like. I beg to differ. Of course, there wasn't as much scrutiny regarding the hypersexualization of transforming robots, but I digress.

When the very proportions of the giant armored samurai vs. the protagonist are virtually the same in a movie with the same theme, then the term "knock off" is entirely applicable. If Sucker Punch were any good, and the consensus is that it's not, it might get upgraded to "hommage".

But in claiming influence, you've chosen a detail that's simply wrong. "Eggy's in a basket" is a failed attempt at verisimilitude to anchor the science fiction elements, something that Moore, who was quite explicit in creating a very English dystopia, found emblematic of the way his graphic novel was badly adapted. That example nicely illustrates the problem of claiming influence while not fully grasping the source material, something that's a particular problem for Zack the Hack.

But...but...it....didn't rip off Brazil's look. /throw hands up in the air...I give up.

The giant armored Samurai in the movie was more an hommage to anime then Brazil. The different fantasy sequences in the movie were homages to different fantasy and sci-fi genres...though mainly were obviously anime influenced.

Huh...what? That makes no sense in context.

The summer before, with District 9 and Moon, also was rather good for smart science fiction, wasn't it? And those films' production bugets combined didn't amount to even half Sucker Punch's.

One could get away with the anime argument if the movies' themes weren't the same. When Gilliam has a giant samurai, though, he's using the visual image to shrink his protagonist down to a child's scale, undercutting the heroic fantasy at the heart of the escapism. When Snyder has one face off Baby Doll (and let's not try to unpack that misfiring nickname), he's only thinking of how cool it looks.

If you're going to claim influence, don't use an example that suggests you don't get the original. (I'm struggling to avoid a derail into how poor the movie adaptation of V for Vendetta was, but that's a separate thread.)

Remember remember the eggs of November...

Wait, what? You're calling District 9 "smart science fiction"? That steaming pile is one of the worst scifi movies ever. Horrible, horrible flick and ranks right up there with Watchmen in my, "I want those hours of my life back" list.