Generation Film!

There aren’t enough negative adjectives in the English language to describe just how awful and self-indulgent Zack Snyder’s new film Sucker Punch truly aspires to be. Too many fans have gathered around Snyder’s masturbatory work that focuses on presentation and always leaves behind a riveting narrative. Anyone who can mess up the eloquence and detail of Watchmen probably shouldn’t get a free for all budget to make whatever derivative plot line he can conjure up by stealing from other films, most notably Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Snyder’s career has been, to put it lightly, a cataclysmic failure. 300 was an awful adaptation as was the Legend of the Guardians while his remake of Dawn of the Dead could be considered mediocre at best. But nothing can touch the epic monstrosity and incoherency of Sucker Punch, which tries to be a female empowerment film while at the same time is filled to the brim with rape fantasies and scantily clad outfits. Most people defend Snyder as a unique visionary of style but his inappropriate, even overused, choices of slow motion are practically the visual equivalent of a self pat on the back. There is no visual choice in this film to aid the progression of the story but something Snyder can reference to how awesome he uses the camera and green screen. Sucker Punch is everything that’s wrong with modern day blockbusters and how they are dependent on special effects and over the top action sequences so that your senses are viciously and constantly attacked forcing you to just let everything occur instead of actively participating in the experience. Special effects are now the leading component in making films these days, which has hijacked studios film decision making by directing all their production efforts into these shameless bloated budget exercises. Special effects are no longer special so to quote Pixar’s The Incredibles, “When everyone’s special, no one is.” Somebody said Sucker Punch was the death of the movies but that occurred long ago and Snyder was one of its assassins. Instead Sucker Punch is among the walking dead of cinema that feasts upon audiences brain and leaving nothing to be thought provoking and making the experience truly empty and pointless.

Grade: D