"Sucker Punch" premiered on March 27th on some three thousand screens. By April 27th, it had dwindled down to a mere five hundred theaters nationwide. Why the cold reception for a movie about girls in short skirts trying to escape from a mental institution? Because it's not really about that. It's about individuals, whether they be male or female, breaking out of the boxes which other people place them in.
The film's message is simple: No one controls your life but you. One line from the film drives this point home long after the movie is over. "You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!" It encourages the viewer to break free from the way other people perceive them.
"Sucker Punch" employs a motif similar to that of "Inception", but I believe they accomplish what "Inception" could not. They don't prepare you to drop into the next dream level, they just toss you in and you have to figure out what's going on, and where it's happening. They make you put together the pieces, instead of putting it together in front of you, and saying "This is how we wanted to make you see this." like "Inception" did.
Many critics said that they didn't like "Sucker Punch" at all. They didn't care for the "collection of near-rape fantasies and violent revenge scenarios disguised as a female-empowerment fairy tale" says Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune. That is because it's not a female empowerment tale. Females are the vehicle, because Zack Snyder is a guy. It is an empowerment tale for guys and girls alike. As for the "collection of near-rape fantasies", I haven't the slightest clue what he's referring to. On both fantasy levels (the epic guy fantasies, like killing dragons; the brothel/dance club role play scenario), there is not a rape in sight. Not even close. On the level of reality, in the mental institution, there is an orderly who might have been sexually assaulting the inmates. It is alluded to, but certainly never shown.
"Rolling Stone", of all publications, should have liked "Sucker Punch", if not loved it. It has girls in short skirts, an epic rock soundtrack, and epic fantasies. They instead accused it of coming off the original R rating into an undercutting PG-13 rating and that as a result, the film "comes off as a tease." Since when does "Rolling Stone" not appreciate girls in short skirts? Perhaps since the skirts remained intact throughout the movie? I didn't feel teased by the PG-13 rating. I actually felt a little assaulted when the lobotomist is about to hammer an ice pick through Baby Doll's eye.
Baby Doll is institutionalized by her jealous stepfather. He kills her sister, and blames her for it. She believes him, and is overwrought with grief and guilt. She is to have an unauthorized lobotomy in just five days. It gives her a short timetable in which she must accomplish something. She chooses that it is to get someone, perhaps not even herself, out of the mental institution.
Peter Travers, of "Rolling Stone", says that the other girls in the institution may even be figments of Baby Doll's imagination. However, they are four distinctly individual personalities, and the viewer witnesses part of Baby Doll's life before the institution, and parts of lives after the fantasy is over. The girls are actual girls, with flesh and blood, and through their fantasies, they are really causing havoc in the real world.
Don't just write "Sucker Punch" off because a bunch of critics did, or because some fanboys were offended that the girls' clothes stayed put. See it, because it has the power to convince you that life is precious, that guardian angels exist, and that no one controls your life but you. You do have all the weapons you need to fight the battle that your life sometimes is. Please fight it, and don't let "Sucker Punch" slip by.
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