Sucker Punch

So its been a while now but I really think I need to write this little rant.

A while ago I watched Sucker Punch. Its a great movie, everyone should see it. At least, anyone who understands or wants to understand Geek Culture needs to see this movie. The thing is, its been a commercial and critical failure. Now, when I saw it, I went for the special effects, and I got those. Sucker Punch is the most brilliantly imagined visual experience ever. Or at least, its the best I've seen, I haven't seen Avatar, so that movie might be really good. I dunno.

Critics don't like because it doesn't seem to be a very good movie, by their standards. First of all, most people don't like the plot. Second of all, they don't like the depiction of women in the film (they're all wearing revealing outfits the entire time; despite their being rather obvious plot/genre reasons for this) and in general most people have written it off as a horrible film designed to enthrall 13 year-old loser geeks.

First of all, I have to say the general view that a lot of people have about the geek audience is highly offensive. I'm a geek, I love being a geek and I love geek culture. We're not a bunch of fat, neck-bearded 30 year old virgins. Nor are we all a bunch of 13 year-old kids who have no life and play too many video games. These groups exist, I am not denying that. I'm part of neither demographic and even amongst the college kids I hang out with, the “geeks” are a bunch of really cool dudes. We're not hopeless dorks who will never be good at anything but either math or RPGs, or whatever. Sucker Punch IS a move that, on the surface appeals to this audience and its a good example of what that audience wants on the surface: lots of awesome visual effects and scantily clad women (say what you will about this, but I'm really offended that people bring that up in this film, yet the dozens of raunchy sex films that come out seem to never get this kind of critism. Furthermore, I didn't see nearly as much sex as one could easily expect from this kind of film. Serious dramas often have more explicit sexual overtones than Sucker Punch, which had very, very, mild ones, in my opinion).

Second of all, I find that most people, critics and the general audience alike, missed out on what exactly was going on here. Synder is a smart director and he is actually pretty aware. He uses the movie's characters to speak directly to the audience about this film (meta talks, breaking the 4th wall, whatever) in a very subtle fashion. Its really an interesting thing, looking back at it. I admit I missed most of this, and I really should watch this movie again 2-3 times, but I don't have the time and money right now.

Its just that I feel this is a really smart, really well-crafted movie, and yet no one liked it except a few geeks. I watched for the visuals alone because I'm a geek and I would watch it for the visuals alone again. I would watch 12 variations on this movie just for those visuals. But the actual movie itself is actually pretty good, not just some sort of geek's wet dream, which is what people have made it out to be.