Sucker Punched

Sucker Punch lives up to its title. Any individual expecting to enter to see a bad-ass action-filled chick-fest will be sorely disappointed. I should insert here now, that SPOILERS LIE AHEAD. I only mention this because I do believe there is some worthiness to see this film without knowing its real premise, but it’s not a perspective that is required. Now back to my initial statement. At it’s very core, Sucker Punch is a lesson of how wrong it is to present women as sexual objects. A movie who’s trailer promised two hours of over-the-top hot chicks kicking ass has demonstrated how uncomfortable that premise truly is. We are in a culture who is obsessed with the “empowered” female, from Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider to Kate Beckinsale  in Underworld, putting a woman in revealing clothing and giving her guns seems to be our solution to making helpless women strong again. But that was never a solution, it simply accentuates the problem. We still perceive these women as objects, forcing them to hover a mystical line between innocence and deviance to satisfy our culture’s obsession.

Last year’s film Kick Ass dealt with these themes as well. It took the tropes of a gun-wielding badass woman, and gave those qualities to a young 10-year-old girl. And that’s exactly what our culture asks for, we lust for that look of innocence, combined with a perversion for slaughter. Portions of Kick Ass were entirely uncomfortable to watch, as we witnessed a young child decapitate and lobotomize her opponents, because our minds finally realized how horrifying that combination is. Sucker Punch takes that uncomfortable feeling and runs with it into a whole new direction. I’ve read several reviews of the film instantly criticizing it  as a man’s masturbatory fantasy, but after witnessing the film myself, I can’t imagine there is a sane man on Earth who indulges in this film’s fantasy.

The film begins with our hero, who is only given the moniker Baby Doll, attempting to murder her stepfather as he attempts to rape her younger sister (Keep in mind, this is a PG-13 film, folks). When she fails, the stepfather is able to convince the police that Baby Doll is insane due to her mother’s death, and has murdered her sister. She is drugged and taken to a mental institution, where the stepfather has bribed the chief doctor to perform a lobotomy on Baby Doll, in order to hide the fact that her mother’s inheritance was meant to go to her and her sister. We are presented with some quick shots of life in the facility, up until the day of her lobotomy where right before the procedure is performed, we flash into a burlesque hall.

The burlesque club is Baby Doll’s nightmare, a hallucinogenic-induced world that exists for the most brief of moments before her lobotomy. She recollects her actions in the facility for the past few days as a world where she is forced to use her sexuality as a weapon, and defeat representations of male dominance, characters generated by individuals she encountered while in the real world facility. Each of these horrific, disgusting males possess something that the Baby Doll requires to escape the club, therefore she recruits 4 other girls to assist her on her journey. These girls are again based off individuals she sees in the actual mental institution.

The girls of Sucker Punch are never given names for a good purpose, we aren’t supposed to see them as characters. As the entire movie is a dark satire on the sexy action genre, these characters are only known by either sexualized terms for women, such as “Baby Doll” and “Sweet Pea,” or objectified names which only refer to woman by their hair, such as “Blondie” or “Amber.” Baby Doll is a victim of sexual assault, and her drug-induced hallucination reflects that, portraying men as evil, disgusting beings, and her only asset being her body. It’s clearly shown that besides her feminine assets, Baby Doll feels completely useless It isn’t until she dances that her body truly becomes a weapon, as her mind takes her into her own fantasy, a world where she can truly use her “weapons” and portrays those assets as swords and guns, and can use that strength to obliterate her foes. It is through this that she finds confidence to escape her own nightmare.

It is here where the audience is asked to question what these heavy-stylized sequences reflect, as  it is hard for me as a viewer to forget that all of these visually-stunning sequences are only there to show a girl’s troubled mind attempting to cope with sexual abuse. In Baby Doll’s fantasies, the erotic clothing the girls are forced to wear in her nightmare becomes their armor, and each girl takes on a personality, and becomes a character. We are meant to think that this is some sort of female empowerment, while simultaneously recognizing how wrong it is to portray sexuality, and more specifically sexual objectification, through violent action sequences.  The issue is that these action-packed sequences overpower the message of the film, and unless the viewer continues to take notice of the fact that these sequences are meant to reflect a fantastical protection from a nightmare, they become meaningless, and the message is lost.

And what of Baby Doll’s failure? The action sequences are meant to reflect a fantasy escape from the troubled mind of a medically-dosed nightmare, yet the story ends as Baby Doll’s lobotomy ends. We learn that the actions that she took in her hallucination actually occurred, and the character receives redemption in the corrupt doctor’s arrest, but it’s too late for Baby Doll to realize it. She’s experienced such a pain, such a nightmare over the past few weeks, that the true redemption is the lobotomy, an actual escape from the pains of her drug-induced reality. The audience’s happy ending comes from character who apparently Baby Doll helped escape, but except for the fake personality concocted for her in Baby Doll’s nightmare, we have no idea who this character is.

This is the downfall of Sucker Punch. People who come expecting action are left disappointed, and those who enter expecting a message leave confused and upset. Zack Snyder has something to say in the film, but I’m not even entirely sure he knows what it is. Part of his story is about female empowerment, as his action sequences and fantasy scenarios are specifically designed to make the viewer feel uncomfortable at ogling the scantily clad women on the screen, but the message is undermined by Snyder’s own reliance on action, CG, and stylization. Another message wishes to show us the horrors of sexual abuse and the disgusting results of greed and lust, and how the human mind will go through great lengths to protect us from trauma. Perhaps by layering these two different messages on top of each other, it’s possible that he was trying to say something greater, but that is entirely beyond me.

Other films convey Sucker Punch‘s messages much better. The aforementioned Kick Ass gives a much clearer statement on the issues of hyper-sexualization in action films, and Shutter Island provides a much more interesting story surrounding trauma and the human mind. But if anything, Sucker Punch is an interesting mess. There is something to be gleaned from here, and it’s not the total loss that some critics would have you believe, but it is by no means a success either.

It’s clear the Zack Snyder has a mind beyond hyper-stylized violence and unique cinematography, but it’s evident that whatever stories and messages he wants to address in his films still need a deal of work. I stand by Snyder as I did before. His successful adaptations of properties such as Watchmen and Dawn of the Dead have shown me that he knows what he’s doing as a director. But Sucker Punch has shown me exactly what I wanted it to, that Snyder knows more than adaptations, but he has a far way to go as a storyteller. I will probably never see Sucker Punch again, but I certainly don’t regret doing so.