Sucker Punch: Sweet Pea Edition

Don't worry, this is the last Sucker Punch post for a while (at LEAST until it comes out on DVD and I get to see all the fun stuff Snyder wanted to put in, but couldn't or didn't). This is the entry I promised from my review, where I tell you all what I think the movie is really about, so here's the obligatory SPOILERS warning.

There are SPOILERS HERE. If you haven't seen the movie, and you want to keep yourself fresh, DON'T READ THIS. Wait until my next Trailer Talk.

Anyway. When I reviewed Sucker Punch, I intimated that there was a lot I wanted to say about the character of Sweet Pea, played by Abbie Cornish. The thing is, as Babydoll tells us at the conclusion of the film, this is not her story.

It's Sweet Pea's.

And it's a little deeper-running than the fact that Sweet Pea is the only girl left alive at the end of everything. There are really only three characters that we're meant to care about: Babydoll (negligible), Sweet Pea, and her sister Rocket. Blondie and Amber are sidekicks, and they're disposable; when Blue caps them in the head, we not only don't get to see it, but we don't really care. There isn't much to them. But Sweet Pea and Rocket we're made to care about. The moments of sympathy, the quiet moments of character development, happen between them. And when Rocket sacrifices herself to save her sister, it's drawn out and touching. It's sad in a way the other deaths are not.

Babydoll is the mask of the movie. We start the story with her, but we don't stay there; the least amount of screen time is given over to the asylum of the real world. Babydoll herself is a blank, almost emotionless doll (I see what you did there, Snyder) of a character, and I don't think that's because Emily Browning is a bad actress. I think it's because Babydoll is supposed to be the facade of the film so that in the end, when she takes the mask off and tells the audience that "This isn't my story," it's a revelation to find out we've been in Sweet Pea's story the whole time. And Babydoll does tell us this explicitly, that she was always only meant to be a tool, always only the fifth object needed for escape.

Sweet Pea, on the other hand, has a stake in the outside world. She has parents, she could have a life. Babydoll can't, Rocket can't, or at least, she believed she couldn't, which is nearly the same thing. Rocket tells us that "We're (the girls) dead already," but Sweet Pea isn't. She doesn't want to risk her life to get out because she values her life in a way that Rocket doesn't any more. Rocket fucked up her life in the past we don't get to know much about, and hasn't found a new reason to keep living...but she knows her sister hasn't made those mistakes and can still find a place for herself in the world.

I would like to posit, then, that the bordello circle of this nightmare doesn't exist in Babydoll's head. It's in Sweet Pea's. That's why she's the star of the show, she's running things inside her own head. I think that Babydoll's "dances" are a substitute for sexual assault, which Sweet Pea either can't or doesn't want to witness, which is why we don't get to see them, either. (I also think this is why Blue is SO upset at the end after Babydoll's lobotomy - he's the main culprit in molesting her.) The fight scenes are Babydoll's escape from what's happening to her.

I'm not sure how much of this makes sense, but I tried to compose it as coherently as possible. Join us next time, when I will probably wax rhapsodic about how Chris Pine should make more movies (we're watching Unstoppable tonight).

And I promise, no more Sucker Punch for a while.