The complex philosophy of 2011 Sucker Punch
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
Zack Snyder is the main force behind little 2011'th feminist, action, adventure, war / mental-institute, melodrama, about dancing prostitutes, Sucker Punch. He is the one credited with the story. He is the producer, the director and the co-writer. So it is through and through a Zack Snyder film. ↩ Reply
If you seen any of his other solo projects, such as the quite recent Rebel Moon movies, you know that Zack likes to ask himself what time period or setting or action scene or style the movie should have, and he likes to simply answer: "YES". ↩ Reply
So in this film we have a rich girl sent to a mental institute for being abused by her rich step-father. Then we have her perform in a dance troop, in a brothel. Then we have the same girl fight 3 giant samurai guys with a sword in Japan. Then we have a scene of the prostitute dancers fighting steam-powered zombie Nazis. And then they also fight a medieval dragon creature. And finally they fight a futuristic army of robots on a hover-train. And all of that, they do, to try to escape the brothel that is revealed to be a mental institute. ↩ Reply
I mean it is kind of genius. ↩ Reply
There is this slightly annoying thing that movies do sometimes that I suppose Zack wanted to see if he can get away with. Sometimes movies need something extraordinary to happen. For example a character should convince another character perfectly of something that would advance the plot. Or impress another character with some skill. But the challenge is, with these sorts of scenes, is that those impressions or convictions should work on the audience too. If the character is convinced, the audience should feel like the argument was convincing. Or if the character is impressed, whatever that characters saw should be impressive to the audience. And yet sometimes, the film-maker doesn't believe they can write a convincing argument, or show an impressive enough thing, and they end up cheating, somehow, to avoid showing it. ↩ Reply
Sucker Punch does that with the dancing of the main character Babydoll, played by Emily Browning. Her dancing is so motherfucking good, that all men's brains just stop working all of a sudden. And so Zack decides to cheat, because apparently there is no dance good enough to make it work. When she starts dancing the movie transitions into some fantastical setting, where we see her fight instead. There is an action scene ( something Zack Snyder knows how to do well ) instead of the impossible dance number. ↩ Reply
The entirety of action in this movie ( the reason why most people would go see it ) lives in this sort of metaphorical symbolism land. You can almost think that it is all a dream of sorts. Making the entire thing strangely strange for people not familiar with artsy movies. ↩ Reply
Browning who was in a movie called Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events where evil Jim Carrey character is trying to marry her underage ass to inherit her fortunes, in Sucker Punch looks surprisingly underage too. Her name is Babydoll and there is but one mention of her being 20 in the entire movie, in what looks like a throw-away shot that might as well been shot later, in an attempt to make the movie less disturbing for the MPAA rating judges. ↩ Reply
In a way, the entire film is written and directed almost like an R rated, ultra-violent ultra-sexy art picture, but certain decisions ( like Nazis being steam powered instead of blood powered ) were made to try to hit this sweet PG-13 rating. I almost believe that Babydoll was suppose to be underage in the early stages of the project, but the decision was made to add this one shot where we see her age is 20, to hit the rating. ↩ Reply
In a way, if Babydoll was underage, it would be similar to a movie by Nicolas Winding Refn called The Neon Demon, where a similar reaction to a girl is seen from various men in that movie too. But instead of the girl dancing, in Refn's film, she's just there. And her being underage is her "superpower" for attracting every dick in the room, like a magnet. She can even actively lie about her age. Saying she's 19 or something. And it still works. It is not the idea that matters, Refn's film argues, but the fact. The fact that she is underage is what turns people on. Perhaps Sucker Punch was going for a similar argument. But that argument was too strong for the MPAA rating board. So Zack was tasked to make Babydoll a bit older. ↩ Reply
Speaking of The Neon Demon, both films have Jena Malone, further cementing my ( ass born ) theory about the original vision for Sucker Punch. If you have seen the filmography of Jena Malone, you know the thematic relevance of choosing specifically her as an actor to play a big role in this film. ↩ Reply
And it looks like Refn was paying attention. And maybe even hired Malone for The Neon Demon in a sort of soft response to Sucker Punch. In 2011 Oscar Isaac ( the boss guy in Sucker Punch ) also played a criminal husband guy in a Refn picture called Drive. So Refn and Snyder might have crossed paths in that time period. What if, The Neon Demon was born from Sucker Punch? What if The Neon Demon is a remake of Sucker Punch? ↩ Reply
Apart from Refn, another film-maker that comes to mind when watching Sucker Punch is Robert Rodriguez. First the boss lady played by Carla Gugino was the mother in Rodriguez's first 3 Spy Kids films. Now you can also notice that she was in Bryan De Palma's Snake Eyes. And that Snyder uses a fair share of De Palma's signature slit diopter shots, but we are talking about Rodriguez here, so... Secondly, the film style feels like it is a comic-book adaptation film. Famously Zack did a lot of comic-book adaptation films. One of which 300 was originally drawn by Frank Miller who is also the author of Sin City that was made into a movie by Rodriguez in 2005 and that also stars Carla Gugino. ↩ Reply
"Blondie" played by Vanessa Hudgens later appeared in Rodriguez's Machete Kills and started her carrier with films that would put her into the same thematic cohort as Jena Malone. ( Not to mention that Sin City is from a similar cohort of films ). And Jamie Chung ( "Amber" ) appears in Rodriguez's second Sin City film. ↩ Reply
Now here is an interesting observation. Again put a huge fucking grain of salt on it, since I birthed it through my ass. It seems there could be a sort perceived rivalry between Zack Snyder and another film-maker that does action films Michael Bay. There was a quote from Quentin Tarantino ( a friend of Robert Rodriguez ) that equates the style of Michael Bay to the style of Tony Scott. Troler even wrote an essay about this very thing. ↩ Reply
Quentin, in the late 90s did some work for hire script doctoring for Jerry Bruckheimer on films like Tony Scott's Crimson Tide and Michael Bay's The Rock. Then in 2003 Quentin ( as I theorized in my review of H. B. Halicki's Gone in 60 Seconds ) made a "fuck you" shot addressed at Jerry Bruckheimer, by directly referencing the Halicki version of the Gone in 60 Seconds film, disregarding, so to speak, the remake Bruckheimer produced in 2000. ↩ Reply
Perhaps to distance himself from the likes of Michael Bay and Tony Scott, Zack Snyder did a similar thing. There is this military general type of character in Sucker Punch played by Scott Glenn. Obviously it could be noted that Glenn was in films with similar subject matter, like the 1991 Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs or the Sofia Coppola's 1999 film The Virgin Suicides. But he also appeared as the main character in a film ( with a similar subject matter ) called Man on Fire. I am not talking about the Tony Scott 2004 film. I'm taking about the 1987 film that was adopted from the same book. In a way this is the same exact "fuck you" thing, that Tarantino did to Bruckheimer. But this time addressed at Scott / Bay duo. Apart from maybe the small little detail, of the actor Scott Glenn having "Scott" as a part of his name. ↩ Reply
And that is, ladies and gentleman, how we arrive to the theme of this article, or the corruption this movie does to the audience. Or the way this film makes me think of Edgar Wright. I'm talking about the seduction scene... ↩ Reply
Obviously the whole "Scott" thing reminds me of Wrights 2010 masterpiece Scott Pilgrim vs The World with some of the same subject matter. "Glenn" reminds me of his 2025 film The Running Man with Glen Powell. And the overall musicality of Sucker Punch reminds me of Wrights Baby Driver which coincidentally stars Jon Hamm, the guy who plays the seductor in the seduction scene in Sucker Punch. ↩ Reply
The seduction scene is very philosophically interesting, given that the film is extremely feminist. And given the theory that Babydoll might have been underage in the early stages of the project. Jon Hamm appears out of nowhere in the end of the movie as a client for Babydoll. But he doesn't just want to have sex with a prostitute. He wants to actually make her want it. He wants her to consent. Fully. For real. And so he seduces her until she does, only to reveal that he was the Lobotomy doctor all this time. And Babydoll imagined this to be a prostitution house in her drug induced psychosis or something. ↩ Reply
Instead of inserting his cock into this underage girl. He inserts a hard metal Lobotomy stick in around her eye. ↩ Reply
The movie frames this encounter with the Jon Hamm's character as the ultimate self-sacrifice, which leads to the other girl gaining freedom. Babydoll sacrificed herself for that other girl. Willingly taking the abuse. Consenting, so to speak, to be fucked! The character of Jon Hamm and the seduction scene is therefor a metaphor for this self-sacrifice. And the Lobotomy is the ultimate philosophical payoff. She consented to be lobotomized. ↩ Reply
If the philosophical core of the film is the fact that power of a girl is her sex-appeal and consent, and consent can be given to even the worst of things, this movie must be anti-paternalistic in nature. And therefor Babydoll being underage makes a hell of a lot of sense. There should be a Snyder cut of it or something where she is 17. Just to make the point more clear. Like dude, you need to change one shot and the message becomes so much more potent. While the corruption becomes so much more amazing. ↩ Reply
Too bad, the movie cost a fucking fortune with all those fight scenes. So they had to make it PG-13 in hopes to get back even some of it. So... yeah... I suppose we can put this one on the same list as Transformers 3 and just imagine what could have been. ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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