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Mar. 27th, 2011 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geebsSo, now for a more in-depth commentary/review of Sucker Punch. As I said, I loved this movie because it was full of everything I find awesome, and unlike other people, the plot/story wasn't a deal-breaker for me. I mean, I don't feel it was that bad, I think Snyder was going for something, and it was an interesting idea, I just don't think it worked for some people.
Anyways, the start of the movie, Snyder takes a page from Watchmen, and sets up the backstory through a music montage. You have Baby Doll (I don't believe we ever know her real name) and her younger sister, and their rich mom just died and left her fortune to them, rather than her scum back husband (and the girls step father). He gets drunk and pissed, tries to rape Baby Doll, but she fights him off, so he goes after her little sister. She manages to escape her room and get a gun and shoots at him.
Now here's the first thing that doesn't seem to work for people- the way the thing is filmed, its kinda unclear what happens- from what I gather, half the people think Baby Doll was too late to save her sister and the stepfather killed her, and other say when she shot at her stepdad, the bullet ricocheted and killed her sister instead. I think its the latter though, because if her stepdad killed her sister, I think she would have just gotten enraged and finished the guy off or die trying. But instead, she runs away, which gels with her feeling guilty for killing her sister.
The cops eventually find her, and her stepdad manages to convince them she went insane after her mom's death and gets her institutionalized. And to permanently shut her up, he bribes the head orderly, Blue, to get her lobotomized. They don't have anyone on staff who could do that, but their is a doctor coming in 5 days who does that sort of thing, and he'll be able to forge the head psychiatrist's signature and get her lobotomized.
Now, for some reason, they have no problem talking about this in front of her, so she knows what's going on, and only has 5 days to do something about this or she's frakked. Now we come to the second thing that other folks seemed to dislike. To cope with the situation, she imagines herself in a different reality, where Blue is the owner of this burlesque club/whorehouse and Dr Gorski is the aged madame teaching and taking care of the girls. I'm willing to run with it, even though when you think about it, why the hell would she fantasize about being pimped out in order to cope with being institutionalized, her mind about to be destroyed.
This "second reality" is where we're introduced to the other girls- well, we see them in the institution, but we don't see Baby Doll interact with them in the real world. Now, this causes problems for some people, because how can they empathize these characters when we don't even really know them? I mean, we don't end up knowing what the "real" them are like, but also, we don't actually learn all that much about the girls, other than Amber is the nice one, and Rocket and Sweet Pea are sisters, and they're both in that situation because Rocket ran away from home, and even though Sweet Pea was the perfect girl that their parents loved, she gave it all up to protect her younger sister.
Anyways, in this second reality, Baby Doll learns she has this power to dance so seductively, she entrances men so deeply they don't know what the hell is going on. But we don't actually see her do the dances, because to deal with that bit of trauma, second-reality her retreats to yet a third reality. Its her first venture into this third level where she's inspired to come up with the "plan" to escape.
Now, here's another problem people have- in the third reality, Scott Glenn, playing a wise man, tells Baby Doll to escape, she'll need a map, a knife, a key, fire, and a fifth unknown thing. And she tells that word for word to the rest of the girls. Now, people complain because that's not actually a plan, but I think its a case of poor explanation story-wise. I mean, we get little snippets beforehand where we can figure out what her plan is- the main doors all unlock in case of fire. So in reality, her plan is to set a fire to get the main doors to unlock, and they need the map to get around, the master key to get past the other doors, and a knife in case they run into trouble.
So to get those things, the plan is to have Baby Doll do her "sexy dance" on the guys they know have the items, and the girls will get the stuff while they're distracted. And here is where the main stuff we see in the trailers comes in. Rather than showing her dancing and the girls just grabbing the stuff, she imagines them in all these crazy realities fighting dragons and robots and orcs and zombies and wot-not, on missions to retrieve representations of these items.
It works for the first three items, but Blue gets suspicious and a scared Blondie reveals the plan to Madame Gorski but Blue shows up while she does and she's forced to tell him. In the fourth attempt the girls sans Blondie are trying to get the knife. Unfortunately during their adventure, the music playing as Baby Doll does her dance stops, breaking them out of the third reality. In the chaos, Rocket ends up getting stabbed to death protecting Sweet Pea, and when the music comes back on and Baby Doll is sent to the third reality, Rocket dies there also.
Blue comes in, imprisons Sweet Pea, but fails to notice Amber grab the knife. However, despite thinking he stopped their escape attempt, he kills Amber to make an example of her, and then Blondie for being a snitch. He then tries to rape Baby Doll, but she gets the knife and stabs him and gets away. She frees Sweet Pea, and they use the stuff to enact the plan and escape the building. However, the main gate is guarded by several men. That's when Baby Doll realizes she's the fifth thing and sacrifices herself so Sweet Pea can escape.
Now, I think the reason its Sweet Pea who escapes is because the limited stuff we know about the girls, Sweet Pea and Baby Doll are both protective of their younger sisters, and failed to stop them from getting killed. Also, they were both innocents dragged into the institution because of those sisters, Sweet Pea because she followed Rocket to protect her, Baby Doll because she accidentally killed her, allowing her stepfather to cook up a plan to screw her over. I guess in saving Sweet Pea, in a way she saves herself.
So, Sweet Pea escapes, and then we cut to the Doctor/High Roller (played by Jon Hamm) lobotomizing Baby Doll. Now, I left out a part in the beginning because it would be too much of a mess to try and explain things. Before we cut to the second reality, there's actually a moment where we see her about to get lobotomized, and that's when the second reality of the movie starts up.
So Baby Doll is lobotomized, and here we run into yet another plot hole. Dr Gorski is the head psychiatrist, and even though her signature is forged on the paperwork, she's aware the lobotomy is going to be performed. I mean, if she's the only psychiatrist, then who does she think would've ordered the lobotomy if not her?
This does make her suspicious enough that she finds and stops Blue before he rapes the helpless, mindless Baby Doll, and gets him arrested. We see evidence of a room being burned up, and learn that Baby Doll did help an inmate escape, so Sweet Pea really did escape in real life.
In the end, we're treated to a scene where Sweet Pea is about to board a bus to try and escape, but the cops stop her, but the bus driver played by Scott Glenn, saves her, lying that she's been on the bus the whole time so the cops will leave her alone.
Now, we don't know if that's for real or not. Maybe it is, or there's also the implication that now that Baby Doll is lobotomized, she now "lives" permanently in the second reality, and that last scene possibly just took place in her imagination. Also, since we don't know anything about the girls in "real" life, we can't trust that Rocket and Sweet Pea are actually sisters, and that Sweet Pea actually isn't a dangerous and homicidal mental patient now released on society.
I don't actually have a problem with the ambiguity and the loose characterization- as I said, the visuals and action and soundtrack made up for it. Plus, there were holes and supposedly "bad" storytelling technique, but it actually wasn't that bad for me, I could deal with it.
Anyways, the start of the movie, Snyder takes a page from Watchmen, and sets up the backstory through a music montage. You have Baby Doll (I don't believe we ever know her real name) and her younger sister, and their rich mom just died and left her fortune to them, rather than her scum back husband (and the girls step father). He gets drunk and pissed, tries to rape Baby Doll, but she fights him off, so he goes after her little sister. She manages to escape her room and get a gun and shoots at him.
Now here's the first thing that doesn't seem to work for people- the way the thing is filmed, its kinda unclear what happens- from what I gather, half the people think Baby Doll was too late to save her sister and the stepfather killed her, and other say when she shot at her stepdad, the bullet ricocheted and killed her sister instead. I think its the latter though, because if her stepdad killed her sister, I think she would have just gotten enraged and finished the guy off or die trying. But instead, she runs away, which gels with her feeling guilty for killing her sister.
The cops eventually find her, and her stepdad manages to convince them she went insane after her mom's death and gets her institutionalized. And to permanently shut her up, he bribes the head orderly, Blue, to get her lobotomized. They don't have anyone on staff who could do that, but their is a doctor coming in 5 days who does that sort of thing, and he'll be able to forge the head psychiatrist's signature and get her lobotomized.
Now, for some reason, they have no problem talking about this in front of her, so she knows what's going on, and only has 5 days to do something about this or she's frakked. Now we come to the second thing that other folks seemed to dislike. To cope with the situation, she imagines herself in a different reality, where Blue is the owner of this burlesque club/whorehouse and Dr Gorski is the aged madame teaching and taking care of the girls. I'm willing to run with it, even though when you think about it, why the hell would she fantasize about being pimped out in order to cope with being institutionalized, her mind about to be destroyed.
This "second reality" is where we're introduced to the other girls- well, we see them in the institution, but we don't see Baby Doll interact with them in the real world. Now, this causes problems for some people, because how can they empathize these characters when we don't even really know them? I mean, we don't end up knowing what the "real" them are like, but also, we don't actually learn all that much about the girls, other than Amber is the nice one, and Rocket and Sweet Pea are sisters, and they're both in that situation because Rocket ran away from home, and even though Sweet Pea was the perfect girl that their parents loved, she gave it all up to protect her younger sister.
Anyways, in this second reality, Baby Doll learns she has this power to dance so seductively, she entrances men so deeply they don't know what the hell is going on. But we don't actually see her do the dances, because to deal with that bit of trauma, second-reality her retreats to yet a third reality. Its her first venture into this third level where she's inspired to come up with the "plan" to escape.
Now, here's another problem people have- in the third reality, Scott Glenn, playing a wise man, tells Baby Doll to escape, she'll need a map, a knife, a key, fire, and a fifth unknown thing. And she tells that word for word to the rest of the girls. Now, people complain because that's not actually a plan, but I think its a case of poor explanation story-wise. I mean, we get little snippets beforehand where we can figure out what her plan is- the main doors all unlock in case of fire. So in reality, her plan is to set a fire to get the main doors to unlock, and they need the map to get around, the master key to get past the other doors, and a knife in case they run into trouble.
So to get those things, the plan is to have Baby Doll do her "sexy dance" on the guys they know have the items, and the girls will get the stuff while they're distracted. And here is where the main stuff we see in the trailers comes in. Rather than showing her dancing and the girls just grabbing the stuff, she imagines them in all these crazy realities fighting dragons and robots and orcs and zombies and wot-not, on missions to retrieve representations of these items.
It works for the first three items, but Blue gets suspicious and a scared Blondie reveals the plan to Madame Gorski but Blue shows up while she does and she's forced to tell him. In the fourth attempt the girls sans Blondie are trying to get the knife. Unfortunately during their adventure, the music playing as Baby Doll does her dance stops, breaking them out of the third reality. In the chaos, Rocket ends up getting stabbed to death protecting Sweet Pea, and when the music comes back on and Baby Doll is sent to the third reality, Rocket dies there also.
Blue comes in, imprisons Sweet Pea, but fails to notice Amber grab the knife. However, despite thinking he stopped their escape attempt, he kills Amber to make an example of her, and then Blondie for being a snitch. He then tries to rape Baby Doll, but she gets the knife and stabs him and gets away. She frees Sweet Pea, and they use the stuff to enact the plan and escape the building. However, the main gate is guarded by several men. That's when Baby Doll realizes she's the fifth thing and sacrifices herself so Sweet Pea can escape.
Now, I think the reason its Sweet Pea who escapes is because the limited stuff we know about the girls, Sweet Pea and Baby Doll are both protective of their younger sisters, and failed to stop them from getting killed. Also, they were both innocents dragged into the institution because of those sisters, Sweet Pea because she followed Rocket to protect her, Baby Doll because she accidentally killed her, allowing her stepfather to cook up a plan to screw her over. I guess in saving Sweet Pea, in a way she saves herself.
So, Sweet Pea escapes, and then we cut to the Doctor/High Roller (played by Jon Hamm) lobotomizing Baby Doll. Now, I left out a part in the beginning because it would be too much of a mess to try and explain things. Before we cut to the second reality, there's actually a moment where we see her about to get lobotomized, and that's when the second reality of the movie starts up.
So Baby Doll is lobotomized, and here we run into yet another plot hole. Dr Gorski is the head psychiatrist, and even though her signature is forged on the paperwork, she's aware the lobotomy is going to be performed. I mean, if she's the only psychiatrist, then who does she think would've ordered the lobotomy if not her?
This does make her suspicious enough that she finds and stops Blue before he rapes the helpless, mindless Baby Doll, and gets him arrested. We see evidence of a room being burned up, and learn that Baby Doll did help an inmate escape, so Sweet Pea really did escape in real life.
In the end, we're treated to a scene where Sweet Pea is about to board a bus to try and escape, but the cops stop her, but the bus driver played by Scott Glenn, saves her, lying that she's been on the bus the whole time so the cops will leave her alone.
Now, we don't know if that's for real or not. Maybe it is, or there's also the implication that now that Baby Doll is lobotomized, she now "lives" permanently in the second reality, and that last scene possibly just took place in her imagination. Also, since we don't know anything about the girls in "real" life, we can't trust that Rocket and Sweet Pea are actually sisters, and that Sweet Pea actually isn't a dangerous and homicidal mental patient now released on society.
I don't actually have a problem with the ambiguity and the loose characterization- as I said, the visuals and action and soundtrack made up for it. Plus, there were holes and supposedly "bad" storytelling technique, but it actually wasn't that bad for me, I could deal with it.
