Here's a crazy post about a crazy film.

This film, to be precise:

I can't think of a more appropriate topic for an April Fool's Day post...

So, first off, Holy Cinematographer's Wet Dream, Batman.  Zack Snyder makes Sam Mendes look like John Glen. (Explanation of that metaphor: Mendes gave us the stunningly beautiful Skyfall; Glen might be the flattest, most uninteresting director the Bond franchise ever had... but three of Glen's five Bond films were better than Skyfall, so stunning cinematography isn't everything.)

And I would also like to point out that the Classic Rock Snob in me actually enjoyed the covers of "White Rabbit," "Sweet Dreams," "Search and Destroy," and especially "Tomorrow Never Knows." (That said, what was done to Queen was unforgivable.)

I also agree with Snyder's decision to take his sweet time showing us a particular face at the end of the film...

Okay, on to the whole what? And huh?

Not with respect to what happened. I got that. Snyder tried to fake me out by making it look like he was pulling an Owl Creek Bridge, but it's pretty clear by the end of the film what really did and did not happen, at least with respect to the most important characters. Rather, by what and huh, I mean that what I think the message Sucker Punch was trying to tell got a little bit distorted in the telling.

(This is, by the way, just me spewing thoughts out on the page here.  I don't have a specific conclusion in mind. Or in other words, you'll have to forgive it because it's quite raw.)

 The film is evidently (theoretically) to sexual objectification what Starship Troopers was (theoretically) to militarism. I have an easier time believing Starship Troopers was a parody.  Sucker Punch's most visually arresting (read: watchable; the asylum/bordello stuff is yawn-inducing the second time 'round) bits take place entirely in the minds of mentally unstable young women whose fantasies evidently involve them kicking butt in skimpy clothing.  (I could be interpreting the fantasy "layers" wrong, but it was my understanding that the bordello was more or less Blue's interpretation and the WWI/Castle/Hovertrain bits were Babydoll's; the inverse actually makes more sense if Snyder's point is "you're a bastard for objectifying these girls the way Blue does.")

I'm also not entirely of the opinion that the final scene with the High Roller (only available on the Blu-Ray or YouTube) was as necessary as people seem to think.  And the fact that Snyder has had to explain so much of the film in interviews and so on rather than in the film itself speaks at least to some degree of the film's failure incoherence opacity.

I should get this out of the way now: I liked this film. The rest of this post is me trying to work through things I didn't get.

Okay, SPLOILERS from here on out...

The action sequences are Babydoll's fantasies, so...
I don't think there's another possible interpretation (unless they're Sweet Pea's, which still doesn't explain the first one). The most obvious example comes when Rocket gets stabbed. We get a bona fide reaction shot from Babydoll (Emily Browning does her best Keanu Reeves for the vast majority of the film) and then she "snaps back" into the Hovertrain fantasy because she clearly can't deal with what just happened in the bordello one.

Except... all the girls are wearing extremely fetish-y outfits in both the bordello and action fantasies.  If the action sequences are Babydoll's fantasies, rather than Blue's/the viewer's, then why are she and her team all, pardon the pun, dolled up?  I confess, I do not get it.  Is the point that even in Babydoll's "happy place," she's still being abused and violated? That she can't escape even in her fantasies, no matter how many awesome effects and rockin' covers she throws in there? (Do Not Do This Cool Thing/And That's Terrible)  I could get that, except that in neither fantasy do any of the girls express any sort of discomfort with the outfits they're in. They express discomfort with the roles they're playing in the bordello fantasy, but they don't tug at the outfits or attempt to cover up.

I would feel more guilty ogling if they looked more embarrassed.  And now the only feminist who bothers reading this blog has branded me part of "rape culture," I'm sure, but there it is.

To approach this from another way: Snyder's saying, "hey, you're baaaaaaad for fantasizing about chicks kicking butt in skimpy clothing," when they protagonists themselves are doing the exact same thing.

Also... whose fantasy is the bordello, exactly? Blue's dance number (either over the end credits or in the middle of the film, depending on which version you have) strongly suggests that it's his, but right before the transition from asylum to bordello, Dr. Gorski looks at Sweet Pea and tells her that she has the power to (fantasize/control her perception of reality/project/what have you).  

I'm not convinced the High Roller scene is necessary
I'm going to devote a rather large portion of the post to this, but I don't really consider it part of the review proper (to the extent that this post even is a review). Basically, looking at the film's TvTropes page, you get the sense that somebody over there really resents the scene being cut from the theatrical release. I disagree.

Now I should say that I didn't dislike the scene; I don't believe John Hamm is capable of making anything bad (hell, I stopped watching Mad Men because they kept trying to make me care about people who weren't John Hamm), and if I had qualms about gigantic age differences between lovers I wouldn't be a Bond fan. (Friendly reminder that there's a thirty-year age gap between Roger Moore and his leading lady in my seventh-favorite Bond film, For Your Eyes Only.)


First of all, I think the film works perfectly well without it; the transition from the guard punching Baby Doll to the lobotomy spike is absolutely brutal.  With this scene thrown in there, the  spike interrupts - violently, jarringly, penatratingly* - a rather tender love scene. That seems to be Snyder saying "all sex is bad," and yet the purpose of the scene, or so I thought, was that Babydoll realizes the High Roller/lobotomist isn't a bad guy and offers herself to him willingly. (And, furthermore, it's hinted that the lobotomy is her entry to "paradise.") That's what we call a contradiction.

*Oh, come on.  Girl power fantasies are laid to rest by a long hard shaft forcibly inserted into a girl's body? If Snyder's half as smart as I'm willing to give him credit for being, he knew full well what he was doing here.

Defenders/fans say it's there to "drive the point home," which is an exceedingly unfortunate turn of phrase considering that the scene's a fantasy counterpoint to a transorbital lobotomy. The High Roller/lobotomist isn't a bad guy. Babydoll's in "paradise" now, whatever that means. We get that; the final three or so minutes of the film wouldn't have happened if the man didn't have a soul.  (Hell, even in the theatrical cut, this reveal seems repetitive, as the lobotomist basically has the same conversation with Gorski twice while she discovers that her signature's been forged.)

Now, having said all that, it seems to my that Snyder felt the scene wasn't necessary either. After all, he cut it rather than suffer an R rating.  Now, I'm not the MPAA, but I cannot for the life of me understand why, say, The Matrix got an R rating but the theatrical cut of this one slipped away with a PG-13. If anything, Sucker Punch is the film with the more mature themes (and is probably the more violent one, visual effects being more impressive ten years on). It starts with a man attempting to rape both his stepchildren, for God's sake. (Note to self, do a whole post on R-rated openings.)  I'm not sure why the director of 300 and Watchmen felt the need to scoop up a teenage audience, but he did, and he jettisoned a supposedly "important" scene to do so. (Counterargument: Snyder knew perfectly well that he was going to add an R-rated Extended Cut to the home video release, and theaters ostensibly care more about censorship than Best Buy/Amazon/Netflix does.)

Theory: it is actually about escapism
It doesn't matter how awesome your dream sequences are; life sucks. Everyone with any power is either evil or incompetent. Hey, I like this interpretation! And, also, if you get stuck in your daydreams all day you can't actually find the time to save yourself ("Hey, Doctor Gorski, that creepy-ass orderly said he was going to forge your signature on a lobotomy order. Help.")

Theory: it's not supposed to make sense
Snyder put "Tomorrow Never Knows" on the soundtrack because "I Am The Walrus" would have been a giveaway. 

Death of the Author/Word of God
Don't misinterpret that title; I'm not suggesting in any way that Snyder should be put to death for this - hell, even if the film is nothing more than the crappy masturbatory fantasy its biggest detractors insist it is, it's inspired me to spill more ink than that fetid groan-mongering FX-porn-fest Pacific Rim did.  If his point was to make people think, I'd say he won. (For example, isn't there just a wee bit of a plot hole with regards to Gorski knowing Babydoll's getting a lobotomy even though she didn't sign off on it? I kid, kind of.)

Where was I?

What I mean by "death of the author" is the theory of interpretation that runs directly counter to "Word of God." Word of God means that the author can continue revising a work post release - not via "special editions" where Han didn't shoot first, George Lucas, but rather by revealing or explaining things that the text itself didn't make clear (i.e., Dumbledore was gay). Death of the Author, on the other hand, says that once the text is done and released, the author's interpretation is no more or less valid than any other consumer's, and it's for each of us to make up our minds as to what the text is about.

The fact that Snyder has had to go and explain so much about the film, from the fact that nobody actually dies to his interpretation of the fantasy scenes, suggest that the film fails as an interpretable text.  I honestly wish he'd pulled a McGoohan and stayed mum about the whole thing, or perhaps only defended himself when he absolutely had to.

The Bottom Line
  I liked it more than I liked Snyder's other cinematic efforts. It might be because the men kept their clothes on this time, or because the soundtrack was pretty awesome, or because it made me think. I'm not convinced that it's as empowering as its feminist fans seem to think, but it's still pretty good. (Edit: actually the "empowering" bit is right, the "male gaze" deconstruction is what didn't work.) B+

(Please note that I do not use the same curve for all non-series films as I do for films that are part of a series. This is because I actually have gone and listed all the Bond/Star Wars/Star Trek films in order from best to worst and assigned grades on a curve accordingly, whereas with all other films I'm just slapping a letter on it.)