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.

Sucker Punch Was Made For Girls

Sucker Punch is pretty bad. But it's bad in a MAGNIFICENT way, and it actually has a lot of good things going on.

We have seen over and over again from Snyder that he can do big, exciting, and beautiful. Up to now, he's dealt with some pretty awesome source material; as his first project from an original source, I expected Sucker Punch to live up to his visual style and maybe offer something intriguing in the way of story - but to be totally honest, I never really cared about the story Sucker Punch was trying to tell. The trailers, through their ambiguity, encouraged you not to ask too many questions. Which made it pretty shocking when I realized that there was actually a story of some depth going on, it just wasn't happening to our "main" character and it wasn't the forefront of the action (more on this later). The rest of the ride is a sensory overload. Sucker Punch shines on two wavelengths: the over-the-top, visually and aurally rich action sequences, and the subtle undercurrent of Sweet Pea's (Abbie Cornish) story.

I want to talk about Sweet Pea here, but since almost everything I want to say is a spoiler I've decided the best course for this is to do a second entry with a big fat SPOILER ALERT tag that people can read if they've seen the film or if they don't care. This review, then, is spoiler free.

There are three levels of reality being dealt with here, and the one in which the film spends the most time on (the secondary level, dressed up like a burlesque house/prostitution ring) is the least interesting. I thought we could have benefited from spending more time in reality, the quasi-60's insane asylum for troubled teenage girls, but the important bit is that Snyder doesn't skimp on his third level, Babydoll's high-octane war zone. This is where the good stuff is: shrieking planes, zombie robot Germans, orcs, catapults, a fire-breathing dragon. Amber (Jamie Chung) pilots a gun bunny mech. There's a train with a bomb on it. It's good times. And these sequences are permeated with Snyder's typical bullet-time slow-downs, but it works here. You can really see the action (I HATE the speed-shaky action cam that makes it impossible to tell who's hitting whom), and you can see where the girls pull their own stunts (all five of our heroines went through extensive physical training for this flick, and it shows).

The other signature trait Snyder brings to these scenes is his color palette. The whole movie is shot in a gray tone, but the action sequences are highlighted with pops of color: gunfire, regular fire, the pink on Amber's mech, the gold in Rocket's (Jena Malone) hair. It plays into the overall fantasy effect, but it also makes the scenes beautiful in an interesting way (like the ever-falling snow). The snow, in fact, gives it a decidedly shojo feel, which I like. It gives the very masculine backdrops a feminine feel, reminding the audience that we are watching a girl's (and a young girl, at that) fantasy play out, rather than a boy's video game dream.

The soundtrack is brilliant, and would have saved the movie for me even if I hadn't had as much fun watching it as I did. Emily Browning covers two of the tracks and her voice is thin, a little reedy, very sweet, and completely haunting as it plays over the rain-soaked gray dreariness of the hospital. Especially in the opening sequence, where we see the circumstances through which Babydoll finds herself at the hospital, and there's no dialogue except Browning's rendition of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)." It's beautiful. Also, whether by accident or design, almost all of the music is sung by women. I don't care what the reviewers are saying, this movie was made for girls.

That's the good, now for the bad: in a cast of about 10 characters, there are three really good performances. Emily Browning is a blank doll of a character, never showing more emotion than a small smile or glazed-over look. Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung are never required to do more than smile secretively and fire really big guns, but the film suffers for never asking more of them (although neither actress convinces me that they could have given more - Hudgens is all doe eyes and crocodile tears, and Chung is most emotive when she sucks on her lollipop). Carla Gugino, who I know is better than this, hides behind her absurd Germussion accent. John Hamm might have been effective, but he was onscreen for maybe two minutes - there was supposedly a scene between Hamm and Browning that got cut to keep the PG-13 rating, and I'm interested to see it just to see Hamm actually work a little.

Cornish and Malone together are rapturous. As sisters (supposedly, in the whorehouse reality), they are best when acting off each other. For getting surprisingly little space to actually act, they become the girls we care about and get invested in. The real winner, though, is Oscar Isaac as Blue, the orderly-cum-pimp: he is sleazy, smarmy, and, like a car wreck, impossible to turn away from on the screen. He's a fabulous villain, and he really owns the "Baby, why you gotta make me hit you?" abusive attitude in a shameless way.

Undoubtedly, Sucker Punch would have benefited from Snyder going all in and embracing the R-rating it so desperately wants; there are places he obviously pulled his punches to keep the PG-13, and the quality of the film suffers for it. However, I find it hard to disagree totally with his decision: this movie was made for adolescent girls. I know, the fetishist clothing and extraneous guns might disagree with me, but this is a movie about girls trying to take back their own lives and their own bodies. And I can't really blame Snyder for wanting the movie to reach the largest audience possible in the teen girl demographic.

Let's Talk About Sucker Punch Some More

Brad Brevet of the wonderful website Rope of Silicone posted a brief article today entitled “There’s Something Dirty About ‘Sucker Punch.’” In it, he describes going through about 50 movie stills (two of which he includes) and feeling vaguely disturbed; his impression, on viewing photos of our team of girls in various costumes, is that “screenings of Sucker Punch will be filled with dirty old men, sitting in the back row pulling a Paul Reubens.” He expresses dismay that the women, though all over the age of 18, are typically (at least in the stills he has viewed) half-naked; in one of the images he includes in his article, Emily Browning is clad in a pale pink camisole, in another, Vanessa Hudgeons sports a brown corset and fishnets.

It seems to be the mix of innocence with the harder elements of the film that have troubled Brevit. When describing the stills, he says “The image of an innocent Emily Browning in her pink tank top above. Appearing as a porcelain doll, trapped behind bars on her bed. The image of Vanessa Hudgens below in a bustier and fishnet stockings with her big doe eyes and pouty appearance.” Flipping through the gallery, I have to agree – there is certainly a lot of exposed flesh, doe eyes, and pigtails. Snyder seems to be working with two very distinct pallets and tones: soft pinks, browns, and ivory for the “real” world, and black, metal, gunsmoke and fire for the girls’ collective “other world.” The two scenes do contrast pretty sharply, and highlight the youth of the girls; their corsetry and leather is shocking after the lingerie-type looks they sport.

Is it objectifying to have these incredibly attractive, nubile young women in outfits that vary from fishnets as pants to belted corsets and altered school girl uniforms? Probably. But I don’t have a problem with it, for three reasons. And I don’t think, as Brevet does, that the juxtaposition of the super-adult and the childish looks will appeal first and foremost to dirty old men. In more blunt language: I do not think that Snyder has struck a pedophiliac chord.

First, the trailer does not make it a secret that these girls are hard core. Babydoll (Emily Browning) wields not only a handgun in her starring poster, but a katana; Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) is shown punching the living daylights out of a hideous ogre, while and Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) poses, fists raised, in front of a roaring explosion. These are not passive girls; they are hard, bitter, badass women fighting a horrible situation with a hail of gunfire and hand-to-hand combat. Hot ladies doing badass things in minimal clothing have been a central image in media since Wonder Woman (and probably before) – strong women wear strong looks. That’s ok with me.

Second, this movie is about a fantasy, but it’s not a fantasy that belongs to the audience. It’s about the dream that comes from complete despair, and it belongs completely to the girls. As Rocket (Jena Malone) says in a broken, defeated voice (that still has a vein of steel), “We’re already dead.” These girls have literally no hope except for what they can dredge up for themselves, and they live in a world of horrible prison uniforms and bars on the window. Whether or not that parallel universe is real or not, it is their escape from everything else. Let me tell you, if I had to wear those awful pinky orange uniforms like Babydoll does, I’d picture myself in badass flight goggles and tight black pants, too.

Snyder is also clearly playing with two ideas of what femininity looks like. As I said above, these girls are tough; they play rough, fire guns, punch and kick bad guys, and wear leather than allows for ease of movement when kicking said bad guys in the face. They also wear satin and (it looks like) hang out in dance studios. They are both super tough and badass, and hyper-feminine (occasionally at the same time, as illustrated by Babydoll's school girl uniform and pigtails). Without having seen the film, I'm obviously making assumptions, but it seems to me that Snyder has assembled a cast of iron-willed women intent on carving a better world for themselves with their bare hands.

And if they happen to look awesome while doing so, that's just another plus.

(All stills taken from Rope of Silicone.)

A Brief Meditation on Iron Man, also: Sucker Punch

As I'm sitting in a Holiday Inn somewhere in Wisconsin, stranded by the blizzard and unable to go anywhere until the snow lets up, I'm watching Iron Man and it occurs to me that a.) I'm due for a post here and b.) the sequel has a neat symmetry to it that hadn't been clear to me until just this moment.

When Obadiah has Tony paralyzed on his sofa, and detaches the arc reactor from his chest and delivers his mandatory "bad guy" speech about his plans to steal the arc reactor technology to take over the world for profit, he looks rapturously at the gently glowing reactor and says "A new generation of weapons...with this at its heart." This line gets a bit lost in the rest of the speech, which is really quite good, but take note of it: it's the entire center plot for the second film.

I have no idea if this was intentional on the part of Jon Favreau, but watching Mickey Rourke create weapons using the arc reactor technology after such an obvious lead-in makes me want to smack my forehead. OF COURSE that's what the sequel was about. With a line like that, how could it have been anything else?

In other news, I saw another trailer spot for Sucker Punch, which reminded me both that I haven't done a Trailer Talk on it yet and that I'm deeply excited about the movie. You may remember when I wrote about this film single-handedly saving Vanessa Hudgens' career, and you know, I still stand by that. But now I just want to watch cute girls in school uniforms downing zeppelins and battling dragons with samurai swords and tommy guns.

SUCKER PUNCH
Dark, gloomy beginning. I like that the eerie, trans-reality moments get introduced early; the eye in the key hole, Emily Browning raking her fingers over the face of her assailant. They're not WEIRD, but the composition is almost ethereal and fairy tale-like.

MAN, the cinematography has Zack Snyder all over it. Not that I mind, it's a good look - but the scene with Babydoll being driven to the sanitarium looks SO MUCH like the funeral scene in Watchmen.

Nice "Alice In Wonderland" look on Babydoll while she scrubs the hallway. Also, I love how waifish this actress is; it makes her stand out so starkly against the institution background and the harshness of her conditions there.

OK, here's where I get lost: Carla Gugino says "What you're imagining right now, you control this world" and then BAM, we're into school uniforms, samurai swords, and a dystopian backdrop. Does everything here on out happen only in the minds of Babydoll and Co.? Is the whole movie actually a LARP that's narrated by these girls?

It doesn't REALLY matter at this point, and frankly I don't want to know. The biggest problem I can foresee with this dilemma, though, is that it paves the way for Ultimate Tragedy in the end: if this all does, actually, only happen in their minds, then at the end they will all still be trapped in this horrible prison with no hope and no future. And that's the kind of ending that would ruin the film for me (I am an endless optimist and I like happy endings).

But! Spacescapes, dramatic jumping, grand temples in the snow. Steampunky military action, combined (awesomely) with medieval trebuchets and flaming catapult ammunition. The girls look like badasses, there are zeppelins, and a wise Zen old guy (everyone needs a wise Zen old guy in their lives).

Ooh, I had not noticed this before, but there's a quick snatch of a scene of the girls pouring over the map they find in the hallways of the institution. So there's at least SOME mix up of reality and sur-reality going on.

The visuals are amazing and will look fantastic on a big screen. I also heard that all the girls do as many of their own stunts as possible, which I think is AWESOME. (Jenna Malone can bench press 300lbs now! Hot damn.) Vanessa Hudgens executes a pretty great vertical downward kick, and I am 100% ready to be blown away by Snyder's first totally original project.