Sucker Punch: A Gamer’s Perspective

If you haven’t seen the trailers already, Sucker Punch was released in theatres today.  It’s directed by Zack Synder who also did 300 and Watchmen.  But unlike those moives which appealed more directly to comic book fans but gained a resulting wider audience, Sucker Punch is a movie made specifically to appeal to a gaming / sci-fi fantasy audience.  The plot revolves around a girl named Baby Doll who is forced into an insane asylum where she imagines that she and the other patients are actually slaved into working for a brothel.  While captive she is forced to dance, and through her imagination while dancing she creates some of the most epic action scenes I have ever seen; where anything can happen, or rather anything awesome can happen.

The plot of this movie is so ridiculous that it both helps and hurts the movie as a whole.  Sucker Punch tries too hard to be Inception.  And some scenes in the movie seem strangely familiar to last year’s asylum movie, Shutter Island.  The movie presents possible metaphors and ideas in its first hour that would have given it greater depth, but fails to carry over whatever message it was trying to make through the duration of the film.  By no means will Sucker Punch challenge you mentally, and bluntly it doesn’t need to.  Sucker Punch succeeds when it isn’t trying to be smart.

Although the plot was a determent at times, when it wasn’t…oh my gosh, it is awesome.  Imagine if you took the premise of every video game, sci-fi and fantasy book you’ve ever read and just threw it all into a blender.  You would think that would just turn out to be a huge mess, but Sucker Punch makes it work.  And the reason why this ridiculous mash up works, is because Sucker Punch knows it’s ridiculous.  There is no back-story to explain why things in Baby Doll’s imagination happen in the way they do.  Sure there’s a WWII bomber shooting a dragon, but who cares, that’s awesome right?  As a gamer these scenes that take place inside Baby Doll’s head are the most delicious eye candy EVER.  It’s hard to describe something that can only be appreciated visually so I will just list off all the awesome things I can remember.

Robot Samurai

Guns

Katanas

Hot women

Robot Samurai with chain guns

Dragons

Robot steam powered undead Germans

Trench warfare

Helicopters

More Guns

Speeding trains

Deactivating bombs

Tomahawks

Orcs

Knights

Mecs

Did I say guns?

The concept that all these could exist in the same movie is crazy, but it works.  I felt that the epic war scenes that all these existed in were the closest that a movie has over gotten to portraying a video game. The lead characters are never injured, leaving the battles with almost no damage done to them.  Like enemies in video games, the ones in Sucker Punch are incredibly stupid and easy to mow down in a very monotonous and nonchalant attitude.  Visually, the scenes are amazing with instances where my friends and I would all turn to each other wide eyed and ask, “Did you just see that?”  I even heard some guy behind me, not even in our group of friends, exclaim, “Holy **** that was awesome,” to himself.  None of these imagination scenes are based in reality, and Sucker Punch thankfully establishes that right off the bat with a humongous robot kick to the head.  The only problem is that there are only three of these imagination/war scenes in the movie.  They’re so good you don’t want them to end, and when they do you’re really just anticipating the next one.

And this is the main problem with Sucker Punch, it leaves both sides of the audience wanting more.  People that came for in depth mental imagery and a greater underlying message conveyed through patients in a metaphorical asylum, will be disappointed as their interests are left behind and forgotten, to be interrupted with seemingly pointless war scenes with guns and scantily clad women.  While people that came to see robots shoot stuff and hot girls jump around and be hot, will be disappointed that their scenes of awesome destruction and just general “epicness” are quick to finish and are interrupted by long bits of some story about girls in a metaphorical asylum.

In closing, I would suggest this movie to any gamer or sci-fi fan that wants to be thoroughly entertained for 2 hours, you just have to make sure you go into it with the right mindset, and be aware of the problems with the unfinished ideas it tries to convey.  But hey, when’s the next time you’re going to see a hot girl in a school girl outfit run through German trenches with a katana?

 

Sucker Punch gets 3 Jaw Drops and 1 Scratch of the Head

 

May your games never be over,

Glasenator

 

 

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2 Responses to “Sucker Punch: A Gamer’s Perspective”

  1. PatMan says:

    I will have to check this out in theaters. Guns, crazy action, babes…. sounds like good popcorn munching fun, nice review Glasenator ! =)

  2. G says:

    I want to watch this now. Orcs? Really? My inner halfling thief is interested. My original campaign character was named Meriadoc Brandybuck for good reason. It might be eye candy, but sometimes that's the draw. I kind of wrote it off based on the trailers