So I just watched: Sucker Punch

Warning Giant Battleship :Spoiler: is approaching, No Refuge!

Thanks to working at Blockbuster means I get to take home DVDs a week before release and for free.

I picked up Sucker Punch, now I really wanted to like this movie, I really did.

I just found it boring. No perhaps boring is the wrong word, unfufilling would be more correct. I wasn't even looking for a deep thought provoking film, just something entertaining. You're looking at someone who enjoyed the frankly ridiculousness of Hobo with a Shotgun as a piece of Grindhouse popcorn entertainment so my standards aren't particularly high here.

I didn't particularly care for any of the characters, I know I'm suppose to but something was off about it and I don't mean in the style of the film off but just plain off. I also found the action sequences kind of hollow, especially the second one called in the animated shorts on the DVD, the Trenches.

The premise, a sort of steam punk meets sci-fi rendition of world war 1 definitely got my (and I presuming other peoples) attention but they ditched the big selling point of the scene (the giant mech) within the first 2-3 minutes of the start of that whole sequence.

I know they're explaining why the big (and presumable expensive to animate) CGI mech is around by having it fight planes up in the sky but it just bugged me that throughout the whole of the trench sequence I just kept wondering why the hell the Mech wasn't just there stomping the crap out of things or why there wasn't more of them! I want to see giant stompy mecha fighting giant clockwork behemoths damnit!

If anyone has seen the animated shorts that are included in the DVD (and I'm assuming since they act as mini-trailers, were available online at some point) to provide backstory to the hallucination/dance action sequences it really made me go.

"Well that story sounds awesome...can I not have that for a film instead of this?"

The last action sequence, Distant Planet (which the girls fail to stop a bomb reaching the city and detonating), actually has an awesome if cliched 'rise of the robots' story. The ones guarding the bomb are part of the poor, being oppressed by the rich in the big city, forced to live in shacks.

It shows them acting, well human, just before the girls arrive (who in this sequence are actually the bad guys) one robot presses a gun into the hands of another. It sighs and watches a little holographic video of its loved one waving goodbye and turns to the door to take aim.

I want to see that movie, I want to see what led up to that point, I want to know more about that world, about that group of robots that have chosen to sacrifice themselves in order to bring their people out of oppression through a truly desperate act.

Infact, go watch any of the animated shorts, they provide at least some flesh to the bare bones of the action sequences and if fully fleshed out, I think any of them would have been a better movie than the disjointed one we ended up with.

It's just, well I wanted to like it, I tried my best to get into it and I found the bordello segments meh, the action sequences hollow and generally just...eh...about the film all round.

If it stuck with one narrative for both the Bordello AND the action parts of the movie I feel it probably could have helped the film flow better, IMO at least.

Anyway, that's my opinion on it, wouldn't mind hearing other peoples, like I said, check out the animated shorts to atleast get a feel of what I mean.

I was on the fence for this movie. It had alot of odds stacked against it with Miller's other movies. Its a good watch but it wasn't up to the caliber of 300 & Sin City.

I don't think Frank Miller had anything to do with this... unless I'm wrong?

It was certainly a missed opportunity. Seemed like one of those movies that was supposed to lure you in with the visuals and give you substance in the theater, but the substance either wasn't there or it was jumbled. They simply experimented too much with the experimenting, from the multiple levels of fantasy to lack of continuity between the action sequences.

Spoilers...

The movies starts with a girl about to be labotomized in an insane asylum...

We enter her fantasy world or memories or mind... and we watch a story about the characters from the insane asylum acting as ***** house operators.

We then enter a fantasy within her mind (level 2 of the fantasies) where she finds that everything she needs she has and she can fight to escape using her abilities

The story switches from these two worlds, both in the characters mind. One world she has absolute trust, loyalty, bravery, and all the power she needs to meet whatever task she is put up against. There is no need for trickery or facade, only brutal action. On the other hand these worlds are also very flashy and over the top indicating to the audience that this is a lie, false face put on by the character.

The other world is dull and lifeless. she's trapped. She's weak. She has to rely on trickery and the aid of friends that are also weak not completely loyal to her. She can't fight back here by doing anything other than submitting and hoping others will help her. This world emphasizes weakness, hopelessness, and reliance on others.

In other words this is the writer talking about the lobotomized mind... or more accurately in this case the divide in our culture...

The fact that these are both fantasy worlds and that the real world is her about to get lobotomized is the author talking about how we need a balanced view of the world...

However, we then switch to the scene where the escaped girl sees the man from the fantasy world speak as if he knew about the fantasy worlds. This is key. As far as we know that girl isn't from the real world and neither is that guy, but it is presented as part of world one and indicates that the girl that is the focus is not the focus of the story and is just part of another fantasy world and we are left asking "who's story is it" and if I am accurately understanding the views of the 2 deeper fantasies correctly I'd say that the author is saying

There are 2 ways that you can look at the world and these are both seen through a lens that is as much fantasy as the fantasies themselves, and are often focused on the wrong point.

That's the meaning behind the film as far as I can figure it out to be. Now even though I understand all that and think all the beats are hit there is just something about it that doesn't work. I'm not sure what it is and thats not too often that I can say that. This is my type of movie and it just didn't feel like it hit the mark. I liked a lot of the scenes and see how they fit together, but maybe they went on too long or they didn't quite fit or maybe something got cut and without that little thing it make it not work, i dunno. Everything was dead on, but failed to deliver in my opinion.

I felt that if they had edited out all the talky stuff and just strung together the action scenes, it would have been a pretty awesome movie.

I also watched Sucker Punch recently, and it didn't live up to my expectations. I wanted to like it, I thought I knew more or less what it was going to be. But it just didn't click together in the end. I don't mind the fantasy within a fantasy concept, but it didn't feel right to only include the real world at the very beginning and the very end. I never cared for... I don't even remember her name, but the one who survives at the end. She wasn't that strong of a character, which is ironic considering that's what the movie tells us she is.

And then the first fantasy just didn't gel for me. I would have been much more interested in the goings on of an insane asylum than the goings on of some weird bordello with dancing. And the second fantasy... where she is the hero and saving the day... is supposed to represent her doing a strip dance in the first fantasy, and I assume it's suppose to represent her psychiatry sessions in the real world. But that just doesn't make any sense to me.

I don't know, I'll have to check out those animated shorts sometime, they sound quite interesting.

It was a great music video, but a mediocre movie. Good on paper, bad in execution. Beautiful looking, great music, good concept; bad writing, bad acting. I wanted to love love love this movie, but it just didn't do it for me.

Oh there was a movie must have missed that..I was too busy watching the action and scantily clad babes bouncin around...

The best way I could recommend this wreck of a film is to describe it as a badly done horror film, maybe C or D-list quality. Essentially Sweet Pea's guardian angel misleads Baby Doll into doing his work for him, and along the way he orchestrates the events that sacrifice the lives or minds of the other girls in order to cover up his failures in performing his duties as Sweet Pea's guardian angel.

I loved it, I thought it was terrifying. The story of a girl so thoroughly abused even her mad-escape-world is dark and corrupt, even the person she imagines herself to be can't handle her imaginary world and breaks down into fantasy so wild and epic that only the allegories make sense.

If the "battle scenes" had been David-Lynch-esq weirdness instead of overblown-rocketfuel-action I think a lot more people would have "got" it.

Did people realise "the dance" was her getting craped (without the c), hence the 2nd level break each time?

I just Red boxed the movie, and I liked it more than I expected. I guess I went in with low expectations, and tried not to over think it. I guess part of me knowing how powerless being Graped makes you feel, and can understand what they were getting at. That you'd do anything to escape that hell. Then to have someone give up their very sentience to save someone else from that hell, really just left me sad. Someone pays the ultimate price and the world will never know. What an awful life Babydoll had.

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The best part of this movie: Emily Browning dressed in schoolgirl outfits. Other than that, it sucked.