Suckerpunch venting
So, I was looking at someone's icon journal and stumbled upon a post of Suckerpunch icons and it reminded me of the GIANT HATE I have for that film. The icons were all nice, but the IRE they induced was a shock.
I watched Suckerpunch at a second-run theater for ONE DOLLAR and it was still too much. I wanted that bit of my life back. A group of people walked out, and they'd only paid a buck.
There are so many bad things about that movie: its terrible sexual politics, fake girl power, and the glimmers of what could have been.
This movie's reality is stratified like the Inception dreams: a skuzzy layer of reality with the protagonist locked away in an insane asylum by her abusive step-father, a skeezy layer of brothel delusion where the women are trapped in a life of prostitution, and a fantasy-land of girl-power where the main characters have amazing action sequences (there is also possibly an upper meta reality--maybe, if you squint--with everyone being a dream except the one girl who makes it out alive). Only in the depths of insanity and unreality do the women have any power or agency. In the real world, if they fight back, they get killed, raped, abused, and LOBOTOMIZED.
The thing that always makes some films stand out in awfulness is when they are almost good. There is little glimmers of brilliance. It makes the bad that much worse. The opening sequence if brilliantly done and the fantasy action sequences (with samurai robots, Nazi zombie cyborgs, dragons, and women kicking ass) being most notable. I want to see the movie that could have been. Throw out the trash that was what happened in the insane asylum and brothel and give me the action movie lurking underneath.
I watched Suckerpunch at a second-run theater for ONE DOLLAR and it was still too much. I wanted that bit of my life back. A group of people walked out, and they'd only paid a buck.
There are so many bad things about that movie: its terrible sexual politics, fake girl power, and the glimmers of what could have been.
This movie's reality is stratified like the Inception dreams: a skuzzy layer of reality with the protagonist locked away in an insane asylum by her abusive step-father, a skeezy layer of brothel delusion where the women are trapped in a life of prostitution, and a fantasy-land of girl-power where the main characters have amazing action sequences (there is also possibly an upper meta reality--maybe, if you squint--with everyone being a dream except the one girl who makes it out alive). Only in the depths of insanity and unreality do the women have any power or agency. In the real world, if they fight back, they get killed, raped, abused, and LOBOTOMIZED.
The thing that always makes some films stand out in awfulness is when they are almost good. There is little glimmers of brilliance. It makes the bad that much worse. The opening sequence if brilliantly done and the fantasy action sequences (with samurai robots, Nazi zombie cyborgs, dragons, and women kicking ass) being most notable. I want to see the movie that could have been. Throw out the trash that was what happened in the insane asylum and brothel and give me the action movie lurking underneath.