Zack Snyder: Sucker Punch (2011)

2011’s Sucker Punch was the first and, until this May’s Army of the Dead, the only film Zack Snyder has written and directed that is not based on previously existing material. It remains his lowest grossing film at the domestic box office, as well as his worst reviewed. However, to discuss Sucker Punch as a wholly original film is a bit misleading, as it is so thoroughly indebted to what has become known as, for lack of a better term, “geek culture:” this includes video games, fantasy and science fiction stories, anime, steampunk, and more. Sucker Punch borrows liberally from across the spectrum of genre entertainment, at times delving into film noir tropes of femme fatales and vicious and amoral gangsters, and, yes, the stuff of comic books. Simultaneously, it further establishes Snyder’s abiding interests in the role of fantasy and storytelling, the nature of heroism, and individual sacrifice in the name of something larger than oneself. It’s thoroughly “a Zack Snyder film” and incorporates most of Snyder’s signature formal elements as well, including slow motion and speed-ramping, elaborate digital backgrounds, and tableau framing.

So, for anyone, like ourselves, who finds Snyder’s films worth considering seriously, Sucker Punch clearly offers a number of points of interest and requires some unpacking. But is it an unqualified success? While it has a clear visual template and offers interesting counterpoints to other Snyder films, actually shedding light on many of Snyder’s strengths, it’s hard for me not to declare it Snyder’s weakest film for a number of reasons, as it illuminates some of Snyder’s crutches and weak spots as a storyteller and filmmaker. But my complaints aren’t the usual surface level accusations of weak characterizations and sexism that leads some people to dismiss Sucker Punch out of hand. Rather, in the end, Sucker Punch runs up against the limits of genre deconstruction, highlighting the contradictions at the heart of so much of popular entertainment, much as Watchmen does, but also showing how challenging and difficult it is to create genuinely iconic characters. It ends up highlighting the value of superhero characters and collective legends at the same time as it attempts to draw on the deep well of twentieth century genre entertainment.

Additionally, Sucker Punch extends its exploitation genre appeal by featuring sexualized, pinup, or cheesecake, images of young women in lingerie and sexy outfits, doing battle in high heels. This has led to accusations of the film being sexist and misogynist. Sexual violence is strongly hinted at in moments, other times directly referenced, and always looms over the female characters. Snyder, for his part, claims the film is meant as a critique of those very things: he says, “I always said that it was a commentary on sexism and geek culture. Someone would ask me, ‘Why did you film the girls this way?’ And I’d say, ‘Well you did!’ Sucker Punch is a fuck you to a lot of people who will watch it.” Of course, the director isn’t the final word on how effectively a piece of art accomplishes its goal, but it’s worth looking at how the film functions in its representation of women and if it says anything significant about the role of sexism in geek culture.

To begin with, Sucker Punch wears its artifice openly on its sleeve. The opening images of the film are of an old theatre stage, with red curtains opening, as the camera moves slowly in on the image of a young girl sitting on her bed in a room. The opening narration says that “everyone has an angel,”  but we cannot know what form that angel will take: “One day, old man. Next day, little girl.” We are introduced to the main character, Baby Doll (Emily Browning), the girl sitting on her bed, back to the camera, but, the narration continues warning us, we shouldn’t let appearances fool us. What is the nature of appearance? Sucker Punch will play with appearance constantly, as the layers of dreamlike fantasy sequences Baby Doll constructs conceal and reveal the true nature of story.

And it is understandable why Baby Doll wants to create a fantasy to cope with the horrific nature of her reality. Condemned unjustly to an insane asylum by her abusive stepfather, Baby Doll is scheduled for a lobotomy after her stepfather bribes an abusive orderly, Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac), to forge documents and frame her for murdering her sister. Meeting a group of fellow inmates, four young women—Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish); Sweet Pea’s sister, Rocket (Jena Malone); Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens); and Amber (Jamie Chung)—and the asylum’s psychiatrist, Vera Gorksi (Carla Gugino), Baby Doll enters a fantasy which envisions the asylum as an mid-century brothel (think more Twin Peaks’ One-Eyed Jacks), where the young women are captive sex slaves, Gorski is their dance instructor, and Jones is the gangster who runs the place. Baby Doll is being prepared, groomed in the current parlance, for the mysterious “High Roller” (Jon Hamm), who is in actuality the doctor who will perform the lobotomy on her. Befriending her fellow prisoners, Baby Doll identifies a number of objects she will need in order to escape and organizes the girls to help her obtain them.

The film’s most unique and signature narrative device is the method that Baby Doll uses to obtain the objects needed for the girls’ escape. Baby Doll discovers that when she dances for a man, she paralyzes him and appears to enter into another sub-level of shared fantasy reality with her friends, visualized in the form of genre-set pieces that mirror elements of their surroundings (the various dangers and obstacles). Inside these fantasy sequences—which appear as battles with giant samurai, the infiltration of a steampunk-style World War I bunker, storming of an orc infested castle complete with dragons, and a battle on a train full of robot warriors—Baby Doll and her friends must obtain their quest items, instructed by the Wise Man (Scott Glenn), a kind of dream companion and sage who offers cryptic advice and sets the parameters of the various quests.

It’s hard not to see how the film has a kind of video game inspiration and logic for much of the task-based action scenes, and varying “levels'' in Sucker Punch. Objectives are clearly delineated and the action scenes play out not unlike watching someone accomplish a task in an elaborate video game. In fact, at times it’s hard not to feel like the whole film is merely a series of video game cutscenes, both in terms of its narrative structure and the digitally processed visuals. For a film as ambitious as Sucker Punch is—and it really is ambitious in both purpose and design—it’s also a surprisingly flat film at times, in execution and visuals. Snyder pushes the digital backgrounds to the point that they often seem slightly lacking in detail, like a video game. The colour-grading recalls the heavy greens and blues of digitally-inspired films such as The Matrix or video games like BioShock (which, with its steampunk elements and references to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, seems like a key intertext, though I’ve only briefly played it).

Sucker Punch, coming in 2011, would also seem to owe some inspiration to Christopher Nolan’s Inception, both for its layered fantasy worlds within fantasy worlds and its invocation of its main character’s traumas as the inspiration for story elements within these worlds. But Snyder’s development of the film dates back to 2007, so any relation to the 2010 film is likely coincidental. Furthermore, Inception’s heist film structure references James Bond and other action films, while the fantasy dreams of Sucker Punch are both more stylized and at the same time more fantastical in their conflation of various genres and fantasy tropes.

Descriptions of the plot and content in Sucker Punch are slightly deceiving though, much as Baby Doll tells us in the film’s opening narration. Should we trust appearances? For all the seemingly lurid and exploitative material in the film—complete with the sexy dance costumes that Baby Doll and the other girls wear while completing their missions—it might seem like a strange or misguided complaint to say that Sucker Punch simply isn’t lurid or trashy enough to justify the gestures toward bad taste! Perhaps this is in part a function of the film being pitched to the imagined adolescent imagination that drives much of geek culture. So, we have the “dolled up” pinup imagery, the lad-magazine model (think Maxim) as opposed to the more explicit sex and nudity of 300 or Watchmen. The film’s presentation always remains slightly at a distance from embracing the very things it is ostensibly offering up, for consumption or critique. It wants to say something about the way that entertainment often features the sexual and violent abuse of young women, but it always pulls back at the last moment from confronting the viewer with a truly grimy reality. Like Baby Doll herself, Sucker Punch substitutes a more palatable version of cinematic exploitation for the brutal reality it is ostensibly exploring.

This is most clear in the film’s fantasy dance sequences. What Baby Doll actually discovers is the latent power that her sexuality has over men, as she transfixes them with her dancing and is able to get what she wants by exploiting her very status as an object of misogynistic oppression. But, and this is key, the viewer never sees Baby Doll’s dances, other than the very beginnings of her swaying to the music. Whenever the dance begins, the film cuts to the fantasy action sequences, which are the actual raison d’etre of the film. As Snyder has said, he was looking for a way he could “make a film that can have action sequences in it that aren't limited by the physical realities that normal people are limited by, but still have the story make sense so it's not, and I don't mean to be mean, like a bullshit thing.” The very fact that these action sequences are what the film is built around, and that the threatening story of Baby Doll being condemned to an insane asylum is the framing, shows the fascinating double-mindedness of the film.

The presentation of these action sequences and their set-up emphasizes their performance and spectacle. For instance, the second quest involves Amber stealing a lighter from “The Mayor” (A.C. Peterson) (another orderly on the “real” layer of the film). The sequence begins with the curtains once again, as the Mayor will view a dance performance by Baby Doll while Amber cozies up to him and attempts to steal his lighter. Snyder emphasizes the elements of the cigar, as well as the Mayor’s leering view of the girls. Both the audience and the “mark” of the girl’s quest are visually cued into what will happen. Baby Doll begins to sway, and we get a close-up of her eyes and then the Mayor’s and then hers again. Baby Doll’s eyes are followed by a match cut to her own eyes inside the fantasy sequence. At this point the Wise Man provides a mission overview of what they need to do, instructing them to get a set of crystals from a baby dragon. Amber is the pilot, reflecting her lead role in the mediating fantasy world mission. Rock music (in this case a cover, as most of the film’s music is, of The Stooges’ “Search and Destroy”) cues the audience to the propulsive exciting aspect of the mission. We’re plunged into the fantasy of the castle attack.

These fantasy sequences are almost entirely done in the CGI backdrop style that Snyder pioneered with 300, but despite being on one level less-overtly stylized, they feel even less real and, like in a video game, one doesn’t really feel any sense of danger. At every moment  Snyder uses his signature slow-motion, speed ramping at key points, such as the climax of the sequence when Baby Doll plunges her sword into the mother dragon’s head. From this point, we get a match and dissolve to Baby Doll on stage. The Mayor claps in admiration for the unseen dance performance.

In some ways, it’s a very pure foregrounding of fantastical action as the reason that people seek out cinematic attractions. As film scholar Tom Gunning theorized in his “cinema of attractions,” plot and narrative emerge as justifications for cinematic set pieces and the visceral experience of viewing. And, as I’ve shown, Sucker Punch to some degree accomplishes this foregrounding of attraction. On the level of spectacle, I’m certain some viewers will be satisfied simply by these cinematic fantasy sequences alone, watching pretty girls in skimpy costumes do “badass” things. But I’m still too much of a psychoanalytic critic to accept these sequences as presented as the reason for the film. 

And Snyder would seem to agree. He sucks the viewer in with the action scenes and spectacle, and then he wants to hit you with the realization of the viewer’s complicity with the framing of women in danger and the true nature of “exploitation” cinema—that is, the exploiting of people’s interest in lurid and erotic material to get eyeballs into seats. But I’m not sure that the film is as successful as it needs to be in its action fantasy spectacle to truly accomplish its goal. Baby Doll always remains something of a cipher and a psychological mystery. She’s the surface level version of the corrupted innocent, but we never really get to know her enough for her suffering on the “top” level of the narrative to transcend and justify the brutality of that narrative.

I’m not trying to overly fixate on this weakness in Sucker Punch, since I think that it does to some extent reveal the very double standards of contemporary film culture when it comes to sexuality and violence (which, as I pointed out, Snyder does similarly, but to stronger effect, in Watchmen). Violence is something that is just par for the course for geek culture, which is pushed to young people, but sexuality remains hinted at, off screen, or disavowed. I noted this in my Watchmen review, when I commented on the hinted-at sexual menacing of Black Widow in The Avengers. In a desexualized pop culture landscape, which the Marvel/Disney empire epitomizes, at least Sucker Punch keeps some level of sex appeal, even in an adolescent fashion. And that is something

We might even go so far as to say that Sucker Punch dramatizes the way that contemporary geek culture seeks transcendence through violence as a substitute for artistry! Baby Doll’s dancing is described breathlessly by the other characters as being this amazing thing; I don’t think it’s outside the norm in today’s society to admit that erotic dancers can show real art and athleticism, even if people are divided on the subject of whether it constitutes authentic female empowerment. But because Sucker Punch is ultimately both an act of fan service, and meant to be an indictment of fan culture—the titular “sucker punch”—it reveals the constraints of the genre, for good and ill.

Sucker Punch, in its interesting blend of film noir, prison exploitation, and rape revenge material, might draw some comparisons to the films of Quentin Tarantino, particularly something like the Kill Bill films. Tarantino is working in the pastiche and has a team of kickass women at the centre of his narrative too, but ultimately the Bride (Uma Thurman) transcends her status as genre cipher. Her trauma is given real weight in the midst of her genre-soaked world, in a way that Baby Doll’s never is. It may be that Snyder’s film is more critical, or at least less trusting in the ability of genre alone to speak to real traumas and fears. Sucker Punch draws on contemporary video game and geek culture formulations of genre, which are already distanced and more commercial than the films and genres Tarantino is obsessed with, such as kung fu films and Spaghetti westerns. This is reflected in Tarantino’s emphasis on rooting Kill Bill in “authenticity” and drawing directly on the original films he’s “quoting” (down to the casting of actors like Sonny Chiba or David Carradine). It may also have to do with Sucker Punch’s PG-13 rating versus Tarantino’s work being R-rated. One wonders if Snyder might have been able to get further to the heart if he had made this one R-rated like his first three films? Would he have been able to further provoke? In some ways, Sucker Punch goes down too easy. Some of it, like Jones’ attempted (and unsuccessful) rape of Baby Doll, are certainly very disturbing, but the film, despite its name, seems to pull its punches in some ways—certainly even compared to his films like 300 or Watchmen.

Still, Sucker Punch demonstrates Snyder’s deep belief in this material, and that the comic books and video games of today have the potential to serve the function that legendary myths did in the past. He’s not wrong that fantasy serves an important function, and that it can tackle serious subjects. Sucker Punch is very serious in this aspect, to the point that it feels near the end a bit of tonal whiplash—again, the title feels apropos. The film concludes with Baby Doll sacrificing herself to help Sweet Pea escape, and Baby Doll ends up receiving her lobotomy. All she is left with are the fantasies that she constructed. It’s a strangely double-edged portrayal of the power of storytelling and the role of fantasy: Baby Doll is successful in achieving a real goal—freeing Sweet Pea—but only at the expense of her own reality. What are we to make of this? In this sense Sucker Punch seems to play into the idea that female empowerment and defeat of patriarchy can only happen at the expense of the very feminine identity itself, something we arguably find in other pop feminist texts.

Snyder clearly believes that constructing heroes and having a healthy fantasy life are important. At the same time, he’s somewhat critical of the kinds of fantasies, especially the sexualized ones, that we have. Again, it’s a double-minded film. The film, in the very structure I outlined earlier, foregrounds the fantasy action sequences. They are the very heart of the film. And so Snyder needs for them to have an actual impact. They aren’t just escapist. They have a real narrative function, even if we also get to watch cute girls killing goblins and robots in slow-motion.

In the end though, I feel that Snyder’s use of pastiche, rather than drawing on pre-existing heroes and legends here, fails to create sufficient resonance for the story to have the impact that Watchmen or later, Batman v Superman, does, or that he probably wanted it to have. Part of it is this: Baby Doll and her friends are never established enough to have the same kind of emotional resonance that the superheroes in Snyder’s other films do. Maybe I’m being unfair, but I think it just shows the limits of what is possible in this kind of deconstruction. I’ve often criticized fan culture for relying too strongly on the fans' existing affections for characters, as a substitute for really establishing relationships on screen. But at the same time, the emotional power of Batman v Superman comes in part from the long history that those characters have in popular culture. In Sucker Punch, Snyder attempts to draw on the forms, but not the deep emotional attachments, of geek culture, and so it’s difficult to take it very seriously, even if, in typical Snyder fashion, it is very serious indeed.

This is also seen in the use of music in this film. As I noted above, the songs are mostly recognizable, including a cover of the Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams” sung by star Emily Browning herself over the film’s wordless opening sequences. It’s appropriate that they are covered, in the sense that they try to draw on the emotional resonance of the originals, but come across as missing some of their essence. In many ways, that’s what all of Sucker Punch does.

Films like Sucker Punch are, I think, instructive. They show that archetypes are more than just the collections of tropes that we share in our culture. They have resonance because we can see them as authentically illustrating collective values and, yes, fantasies. But too often we mistake the surface pastiche for the deep archetype. Sucker Punch critiques the form, but it wants us to believe in the underlying value of the whole affair.

When you pare away those associations, we are left with both the bare bones of what Snyder is good at: creating cinematic spectacle and utilizing forms of fantasy to argue for the value of imagination and the vital power it has to free us from suffering. But at the same time it wants us to be critical of the whole enterprise, and so it tends to undermine its own power. It wants to be a biting satire, but Snyder isn’t well-suited to satire on the whole.

As I stated in my Watchmen review, Snyder is an earnest filmmaker. He loves his material so much and imbues it with such seriousness, despite its pulp origins, that it tends toward camp. Watchmen works because its camp reveals something inherently contradictory in the superhero without having to be self-aware. But Sucker Punch fails at camp because it can never overcome its own self-awareness as it's trying to incorporate the critique into its own structure. Camp can’t be a deconstruction and an earnest plea for the power of exploitation film. Perhaps Sucker Punch is a case of a filmmaker paying too much attention to and appeasing his critics; he’s trying to have his cake and eat it too. The film shows Zack Snyder is still a talented and provocative director, but Sucker Punch is ultimately a flawed, if noble, attempt at genre deconstruction.

5 out of 10

Sucker Punch (2011, USA)

Directed by Zack Snyder; screenplay by Zack Snyder & Steve Shibuya, from a story by Zack Snyder; starring Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Carla Gugino, Oscar Isaac, Jon Hamm, Scott Glenn.

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