Sucker Punch

Where do I begin where Sucker Punch is concerned? I remember hearing the first rumblings of Sucker Punch sometime before or during the road to Watchmen. At the time the premise sounded like a descent into madness, reality bending fantasy extravaganza. By the time the first trailer hit, I became suspicious. Believe me, the parts of the whole of what this teaser promised me were the things of nerdy wet dreams. However, as we've all learned at one time or another (most likely after an early life binge on Halloween chocolate) too much of a good thing can indeed become a bad thing.

I'll admit right out the gate that I haven't been the best supporter of Zack Snyder's feature film career. I absolutely loved his remake of Dawn of the Dead. 300 was a fun theater experience with diminishing effect on home video and Watchmen was a valiant effort to finally do Alan Moore some cinematic justice, but ultimately focused too much on stylistics and glitzy showmanship than the overall tone and thematic bigger picture. Visionary director he may be, his insistance on staccato slo-mo action sequences and the polished, misty lens filters have become a signature of his, albeit in some cases a movie-goers deterrent.

The plot is relatively simple. Emily Browning (Lemony Snicket and the recent horror dud, The Uninvited) plays the aptly named Babydoll, as she looks more plastic than human, accidentally murders her sister while trying to defend her from their molesty step-father. He sends her to an institution and organizes a wholly unnecessary lobotomy, due in the next five days as the lobotomist (an unfortunate turn for Mad Men's Jon Hamm, who knocked it out of the park in The Town last year...) isn't immediately on hand. So Babydoll meets the other crazy girls with equally inexplicable monikers (Abby Cornish as Sweet Pea, Jena Malone as her sister Rocket and an thankfully underused Vanessa Hudgens as Blondie... yep, she's not blond either...) and suddenly *FLASH* the mental institution is now a strip club/brothel. Why is Babydoll's initial escape fantasy a brothel? Your guess is as good as mine, but I'd bet it's just a cheap excuse to dress them all as school girls for 90 minutes.

Male Nerds - 1

Female Empowerment - 0

So the institution is now a whorehouse where the orderlies and employees are represented by other whorehouse workers and patrons. Carla Gugino puts on a clearly super-real Polish accent as Madam Gorski the matron of the whorehouse/dance instructor/head therapist in the "real" world institution. Now comes the fun part. Babydoll finds that when she dances, everyone (and I mean everyone) who witnesses it is so entirely captivated that no one can do anything else BUT watch her dance. Funny, because as an audience we NEVER see it. You see, every time she dances, she goes into a trance like state and enters yet another perception ofreality making up the marketing campaign that has deceived us all. You've got everything nerds wet their pants for from Steampunk Nazi Germany to a Total Recall Robot Train, all of which makes no symbolic or allegorical sense in regard to what might be happening in the second level of fantasy, and even less sense in the ultimate real world which we still haven't seen since the first time Babydoll set foot in the asylum. But hey, all of the (still scantily clad) patients are wielding guns, swords, knives and are kicking major ass. Nothing spells empowerment like wanton violence in pig-tails, amIright?

To its credit (of the few there are) Sucker Punch finally utilizes the slo-mo technique much more organically and in a way that's not poking you in the forehead every time it's going on. The CG environments, makeup and costuming are all top notch. No two ways about it, Snyder knows how to utilize a budget to make a movie look pretty. Though, as so many Disney movies have taught us, it's what's on the inside that counts and Sucker Punch is like that head cheerleader in high school, expecting to coast along on her good looks for the rest of her life.

As it stands, pretty much everything that's wrong with Sucker Punch is script and story centric. This stands as Snyder's first movie where the story was 100% his own (with script co-written by Steve Shibuya.) Dawn being a remake of the 70's classic mall zombie flick, as adapted by cult hero James Gunn and 300 and Watchmen being the page-turning brainchildren of Frank Miller and Alan Moore, respectively. Snyder understands the structure and the pacing, but any form of subtext seems to be beyond his capacity as a storyteller. The distinct disconnect and subsequent disregard to other levels of reality is where Sucker Punch really gets hurt. It feels as if there could be more potential for thematic discovery without resorting to literal Dragon-slaying and in the end just feels like empty fan service.

The soundtrack is another conundrum. It's a known fact that there actually were dance numbers committed to film, but were cut due to time constraints for release. So when Emily Browning was tapped to provide her own vocals for covers of songs like "Sweet Dreams" and "Where is My Mind?" (I know, right?) all signs pointed to a Moulin Rouge meets Fantasy CosPlay session style musical. Which would've made more of the movie work as a whole. Instead what we get are pop-song overtures played overtop dialog free vignettes which melt into score-pieces styled after said pop-songs and then a prolonged music video-esque action sequence. I feel like if Snyder had just gone all out and made it an operatic full-on musical it would have been much more engaging as an experimental nerdish amalgam. However, there are already rumblings of a director's cut which will re-insert the previously cut dance sequences.

So what now? We could consider this a win for the creative community since Snyder was able to take a wholly original idea and have it financed and released by a major studio. Though it's box office draw (a mere $19 million and losing to Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2) and critical reception (currently 20% on Rottentomatoes.com) could make Warners and other major studios wary of original concepts in the future. Which leaves the future of the Superman franchise in question as well. Did Christopher Nolan make the right decision choosing Snyder to direct the much needed reboot of the Man of Steel? As casting is still underway and the script has yet to be finished (with Snyder nowhere near it, thankfully) more remains to be seen. Unfortunately Sucker Punch is not so much an utter failure, but a great disappointment for the nerd community.

Terminator: Salvation

My love affair with Terminator began with the second installment. It hit theaters when I was about 10 or 11 and had not been permitted to see the first one (for obvious reasons, I was 4 when it hit theaters.) Taunted by the coming attractions, magazine covers boasting top of the line special effects and a theater run that outdid everything else that summer, I absolutely had to see it. Luckily, conceding to my pleas, my father took me to see T2 on my birthday that year. And so, Terminator became the summer fling that I always fondly remembered, by constantly forgot about.

Terminator: Salvation comes to us from questionable Hollywood director, Joseph McGinty Nichol (AKA McG.) I have trouble taking anyone seriously whose preferred nomenclature is not only a single name (i.e. Madonna, Cher, Seal,) but an abbreviation at that (see also: DMX.) This is also the person who gave us not one, but two Charlies Angels movies.

That being said, the movie looks good. The effects are top notch. The setting is dim, gritty and dark. Everything needed to create the Terminator experience that follows where the last Terminator experience left off is in the right place. However, the plot doesn't really make much sense.

We've jumped ahead 15 years since we last saw John Connor in Rise of the Machines (then played by the underappreciated Nick Stahl,) who has hence become a Batman-voiced soldier in the human resistance as well as a shadow-messiah to a select few that still believe he will redeem mankind from the clutches of the oppressive cybernetic organisms that bombed us halfway to hell and back in 2003. Problem is, the machines have an ace up their circuits. They're gunning for Connor's future/past father Kyle Reese (now only a teenager, played by Star Trek's Anton Yelchin in what might be the movie's best performance.)

Now, time travel is a tricky plot device and this is where the narrative gets sloppy. Given what we know from the past films, Future John Connor sends back an adult Kyle Reese (from the age difference, I'll say about 15 years after T:Salvation) to protect his mother Sarah in 1984. Reese and Sarah get cozy while hiding out and produce a baby John embryo. Reese dies at the hands of the first Arnold Terminator and Sarah destroys it. Lead in to T2. The only people with the knowledge of John Connor's paradoxical father is John himself (who I believe doesn't know him by name yet,) Sarah and the Good Arnold Terminator(GAT for short.) GAT is melted in the molten steel (as is the T-1000, who probably didn't have this information anyways, but for the sake of loose ends...) Assuming that the original Terminator somehow knew that Kyle and Sarah had shacked up and produced John, the chip that stored said information was also dissolved by Edward Furlong John Connor. Sarah Connor dies of leukemia somewhere between T2 and T3 leaving the John as the sole guardian of his familial secret.

History lesson over. Now, somehow all the machines in this post-apocalyptic world know who birthed John Connor and are gunning to have him erased from history (instead of just killing him like normal human-killing robots.) Added to the mix is unknown fugitive Marcus Wright (played by Sam Worthington who I've seen in absolutely nothing, but will be in James Cameron's crazy-future-scifi-epic Avatar) who, if you've seen any previews for this movie, is all or mostly robot. All this makes for about 2 full hours of chase scenes, shoot-outs, screaming matches and explosions. Everything you need for a summer blockbuster, though, as absurd as the plot to Terminator:Salvation is I can guarantee that it's going to be better than Transformers 2:Revenge of the Fallen.

The thing that worked for me about T4 was that it had echoes of previous installments scattered throughout. Every scene seemed like an updated or more futuristic version of an iconic moment in any one of it's three predecessors (and that's not including the recycled lines like "Come with me if you want to live.") Christian Bale functions as John Connor, but never really sells it. Honestly if he'd pulled more from his character in Reign of Fire it would've been better, though he is rather upstaged by Sam Worthington. As stated before, Anton Yelchin is probably the best actor in the film, easily. If the franchise takes off (despite mostly negative reviews) he'll be the one to make it worth the time. Bryce Dallas Howard is plainly underused, as is Moon Bloodgood, whose scenes border on significance but never really reach it. Common had absolutely no place in this film whatsoever. His lines (mostly delivered in ADR {Additional Dialogue Recording} while he's out of frame) are laughable and cheap.

While Terminator:Salvation didn't turn out to be the reinvigorating installment to the franchise they'd hoped for (in comparison to the staggering success of the Star Trek reboot,) we can only hope that McG and company (with new writers next go-round, let's hope) take a note from the page of George Lucas and make an attempt to fix the mistakes presented in this chapter. If not, we could see another proposed trilogy fall flat on it's face with Matrix-like proportions.