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AND_JUDY


                                             April 25, 2011

"Sucker Punch" (2011)

I was sold on "Sucker Punch" by a single
bus-shelter poster, a goth-babe with guns
in front of a beat-up mecha with a pink
bunny rabit logo on the cockpit.  My
thought: "Ha, someone has been watching
way too much anime."  I began scheming to                Yes, she was
take Dangerbaby out on a Mystery Date                    surprised.
where I would suddenly lead her into the
Metreon to see "Sucker Punch" *in IMAX*.                      DROPOUT

Now, I expected this to be a somewhat silly movie... but still:

  o   Fantasy-sequences inside of fantasy sequences are a great
      way to make sure you won't really care much about what's
      going on in the story.

  o   The flashy effects continually break engagement.  (What's
      that thing in the foreground, spinning around like a lost
      hubcap?  Oh, it's a button torn off of the girl's clothing.)

  o   The stunningly expensive song-catalog was for me, another
      distancing element: Familiar songs all have their own
      associations already, and you have to fight to add new ones.

          (A Beatles song!  They *paid* for a Beatles song...
          They could've easily hired *anyone* to do original music.
          Yoko Kanno might have saved this movie)

  o   The "sucker punch" of the title is apparently supposed to be
      what happens to the viewer when the movie changes modes and
      they go for a tragic self-sacrifice ending.  It's tricky
      getting that work, and too ambitious for a relative novice
      at writing.

  o   The more interesting-looking women (including, of
      course, the non-white women) are all left by the
      way side, and the story ultimately focuses on the
      standard-pretty blondes.

  o   This line was good enough the first time through:
      "You have all the weapons you need.  Now fight."
      Repeating it in voice over at the close of the
      movie was incredibly heavy-handed, and completely
      killed it dead.


The mainstream reviewers seem
hopelessly behind-the-times, and
they're still interested in
debating whether it's                               And do they ever see
insufficiently feminist to have                     anything but Hollywood
the tough girls in sexy outfits.                    product?
(Did they hate "The Avengers"?)
                                                    Did they hate "The
      Dangerbaby comments:                          Heroic Trio"? "Ghost
      "yeah, they're stuck on                       in the Shell"?
      the madonna/whore thing".
                                                    How about "Naked Killer"?
   That said, the movie's efforts at female
   empowerment are weak.  Why is the main
   character's deepest fantasy a Charlie's
   Angels scenario where all the women take
   orders from an old white guy?

To the extent that this movie is about anything,
it appears to be about the relationship between
escape fantasies and actual escape.  "Freedom.
Now that wasn't so difficult, was it?"

Looking at the movie from that angle reveals nothing
much: Better to be a super-powered combat heroine than
a sex slave locked in a brothel, better to be a sex
slave than trapped in an asylum awaiting lobotomy...

    Better to receive the lobotomy than
    to submit knowingly to rape-- a "fate      There's an argument that
    worse than death"?  Actual rape            constantly harping on the
    surviors might disagree about that.        danger of rape is a warped
                                               "anti-sex" point of view
                                               (Sex is dangerous! Everyone
                                               who wants to fuck you is a
                                               murderous rapist!)



  The notion seems to be that
  fantasies of violence can
  empower you, and give you
  the energy to take on real        HULK_JONES
  challenges.


     Okay, that's a reasonable place to start.

     This is not the place to finish.



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