Sucker Punch and the hate bandwagon

***Warning: Strong language and spoilers ahead!***



Yesterday some friends and I went to see the film Sucker Punch. I really enjoyed it and I recommend others go and see it while it's in theaters.

However, this film has apparently received a lot of bad press. For example this, this, and this. Just do a google search for "Sucker Punch film review" and you'll be inundated with a seemingly endless parade of negative reviews that seem more like an effort to wring new synonyms for the word "horrible" out of the english language than serious critiques of the film itself. I don't know what Zack Snyder did to piss off every film critic in the business, but it is definitely working.

I find this whole phenomenon very interesting and it's certainly not a new development. This type of thing has been going on for a very long time, though it sometimes wears a different mask.

It starts with someone saying something is objectively terrible. For one reason or another this idea catches on and soon everyone is singing the same song, shouting it from the rooftops that [X] is an awful, irredeemable, dream-raping shit sandwich. This judgment gains momentum and soon takes on a life of its own and before long even people who have no first hand knowledge of the quality or nature of [X] are speaking about it as if it personally broke into their home and raped their entire family.

Sucker Punch is the latest victim of this trend. The three main complaints about this movie seem to be 1) It has a nonsensical and ridiculous plot, 2) This shaky plot is used as a flimsy pretext to engage in on-screen CGI masturbation and over-the-top action sequences, and 3) Since all of these action sequences occur in a "dream state" or are otherwise "not real" there is no sense of actual danger and thus no emotional investment in them.

After watching the film I can see what these reviews are getting at, but it seems to me that they are entirely missing the point. For starters, the plot actually made a lot of sense, it was just told in such a way that it could be confusing for people who weren't paying close attention or those who aren't comfortable with blending fantasy and reality. Some people expect a film to take them by the hand and carefully lead them through the story, explaining every single detail fully so there is absolutely no question as to what is happening. Other people perhaps think that films should have certain ground rules and adhere to them strictly. Personally, I enjoy movies (or songs, books, comics, paintings, etc.) that take the conventional rules and warp them in an effort to show you something about yourself or the world.

Secondly, the plot didn't seem to me to be simply an excuse for all of the CGI-heavy action sequences. The story and the fight scenes are integral pieces of a whole. One of the themes that I see in this film is fantasy-as-reality. The premise of the movie allows for these flights of fancy and they didn't seem out of place within the context of the story. I think it's kind of funny that some people sit in front of the silver screen to see a two hour work of fantastical fiction and then criticize it for being simply an exploration of the fantastical fiction occurring in someone's mind.

Lastly, I felt that the dreamy representation of the main characters' conflicts in the film was a neat narrative device. Those who say that there was no "real" threat to any of the characters in the action sequences obviously weren't paying attention. In fact, at one point in the film the dream breaks for a moment because of something that occurs in the "waking" world and it shows both the dream world and real world impact of that event. The dream/action sequences are just an internal representation of what is going on in the external world. In fact, the entire movie is really about our perception of our world and how we deal internally with the things that happen to us.

Now, let's view a different film through the same critical lens which so many people have viewed Sucker Punch. To review: 1) Nonsensical and ridiculous plot, 2) Flimsy pretext for CGI and excessive action sequences, and 3) No sense of danger because all threats to characters are not "real". I think this describes another big-budget film that came out somewhat recently. I'm referring, of course, to Avatar. In James Cameron's ham-fisted attempt at a moral message ("Don't kill Native Americans!" or perhaps "Fern Gully fucking rocks!") he is blatantly guilty of all 3 of the above-listed trespasses.

The plot seemed to lose track of itself almost immediately. In the exposition it is explained that the avatars have been created in order to facilitate communication with the natives. In this way they hope to establish a rapport with them and thus learn about their culture and perhaps convince them to give up their land. This makes, if I may say so, no goddamn fucking sense. At no point in the film do the N'avi give any indication that they think these avatars are actually members of the same species as them. The avatars look more human, have 5 fingers instead of 4, and have trouble speaking the native language. The N'avi even refer to the avatars as "sky people" and chastise one of their own for bringing an avatar to their home tree (yes, they call it a "home tree"). Furthermore, it's pretty counter-productive and even insulting to use this method. Imagine if an alien race came to our planet and instead of engaging us in their normal bodies they instead spent a vast amount of time and resources to create alien-human hybrids with giant eyes and 4 fingers, then used those disgusting abominations to start an interaction with our race and learn about our culture. That would be horrifying and also kind of idiotic.

This nonsensical premise was then used as a flimsy pretext for James Cameron to shoot his CGI spooge all over the screen. He started writing this movie over 15 years ago and didn't start filming it then because the technology to bring his vision to life didn't exist yet. After waiting for digital effects to catch up with his idea, he then spent over $300 million to turn people into CGI cat monsters so they could fight CGI robots and helicopters in a CGI forest. Yeah, totally worth it.

Added to this is the fact that when Jake Sully is doing all of this badass stuff in his avatar body (such as wrangling dragons and banging cat ladies) he's never in any real danger! If his avatar gets sliced in half by a space puma or whatever the fuck was in that jungle, he'll just wake back up in his normal human body. The only real threat is that the military - who've already been established at this point to be soulless demons that eat kittens for breakfast - will lose a lot of money. How's that for emotional investment?

However, Metacritic (a site that compiles all major ratings of movies, games, and music into one overall score) shows Avatar as having a rating of 84 out of 100. Critics seemed to eat this shit up and this movie was hailed as an epic that set the bar for future film makers. Meanwhile Sucker Punch has a rating of 36 out of 100. Yet all of the main criticisms of Sucker Punch can be directly applied to Avatar. Even the inane dialogue that shows up in Sucker Punch is vastly overpowered by James Cameron's complete parody of conversation that occurs in Avatar. For fuck's sake, the main resource they were trying to obtain was called Unobtanium. Unobtanium?! Are you fucking serious?! Fifteen years and that's what he came up with?

So, what's the point that I'm trying to make? It's simply this: make up your own fucking mind. Critics are paid to be critical, it's what they do. They are also human and are just as susceptible to having their opinions influenced as anyone else. Just because a bunch of people tell you that [X] movie is a steaming pile of shit and the director should be euthanized, or just because everyone you know thinks that [Y] album is the utmost pinnacle of human achievement, doesn't make it true. Art is in the eye of the beholder. So go out there and fucking behold it, then make up your own damn mind about it.

For example, I don't like The Goonies. There, I said it.