It’s funny because someone asked me about why I dressed the girls like that, and I said, ‘Do you not get the metaphor there?’

… You can say what you want about the movie, but I did not shoot the girls in an exploitative way. […] As long as you’re self-aware about it, then that’s okay.

– Zack Snyder

In this article, I discuss the abuse portrayed in Sucker Punch. I don’t discuss it in detail, but what I do discuss could be triggering for some.

Gather ’round, internet. Sit about me in a circle while I tell you a tale. Open your belief-flaps.

You know that the gorgeously wonderful Sarah C has already reviewed Sucker Punch. I know that, too. We both know that together. But what I also know is that I went to see it, too, and my face exploded with woe. Intergalactic space woe from the woe tubes. You know the stuff.

Like Sarah, I felt I was the target audience. I’m a pubescent boy who likes ladies, dragons, guns and stuff going on fire. There was no ingredient that went into this that, in theory, I wouldn’t like. But I hated it. I was blisteringly disappointed. Let me assail your faces with why.

I am not the person this film was made for. Neither was Sarah. The person this film was made for is a person that fetishises abuse, and likes their women best when they’re woefully underclothed and sobbing in fright.

This is not Sparta.

That’s a harsh paragraph. I realise that. But it really is the only way I can describe this film. It’s chock-full of abuse (implied rape and explicit beating) and the way it’s handled is emphatically not empowering in any way. The film is ostensibly about women battling their inner demons (quite literally, in this case – I see what you did there, Mr Snyder) and surviving, but it fails at every possible hurdle. The only way the characters can be powerful and dangerous is if they’re laminated in glitter, leather and fishnet. And the only way they can survive their abuse is if they cry and scream on screen and track mascara down their faces. Fear is sexy, you see.

I can’t put it better than if I just quote what one of the characters says (not verbatim, but it ran along these lines): “They act it all out up there [on a stage]. It’s quite a show, you know, when they’re acting out who touched them or hurt them or whatever.”

It is quite a show, yes. It smacks of Snyder trying to make the film self-aware and clever – he does it quite a lot, like the bit where we traipse right into Baby Doll’s inner world and there’s this line (again, paraphrasing, but Zack himself paraphrases similarly in the interview linked at the start of this post):

Wait, wait, wait, back up. This is meant to be sexy? Sexy school girl, I get. Frightened mental patient, yeah, okay, it’s a bit weird, but I kinda get that, too. But lobotomised vegetable?!

Hi, Zack, I see what you did there, too. You’re trying to make us think that this over-sexualised portrayal of abuse survivors is ironic. You’re trying to tell us that all this dribbly mascara and all these panty shots are ironic. That this wall-to-wall objectification and infantilisation (hell, the lead character’s name is Baby Doll and she constantly dresses like she’s 13) is all in the name of ironic, clever, snappy feminism. It’s a lancing, sassy criticism of objectification, you say.

Well, let me tell you something, Zack. There is nothing sexy, sassy or ironic about rape. There is nothing clever, witty, edgy or cool about showing us terrified, crying girls dressed like they’re 13 years old, getting abused in a way that is clearly meant to be titillating. It was about half-way in, and there was another scene of a weeping, shaking girl being hit in the face by a man who – it was strongly implied – at least attempted to rape her, when I realised that I just didn’t care what clever, witty, ironic message Zack Snyder was trying to send. The fact of the matter was that I was being fed images that anyone with even a hint of abuse in their past would find nauseatingly upsetting to watch and I was meant to be sitting there, revelling in how darkly sexy it all was, and going, “Hmm, yes, well done Mr Snyder, this is certainly a very clever comment on the sexualisation of women!”

Fuck that. I’m furious.

I could now continue to comment further on the film and how the characters were distinguishable only by outfit and hair, and how stating facts about characters doesn’t make us care for them automatically. I could say that the only bits that I loved in the film were the bits with the airships and the dragons. I could say that the only character that I empathised with was the Mother Dragon. But Sarah’s covered that and I agree with her, so what I’m going to say instead is this:

This, on the other hand, is Sparta. Look at the lack of sexual harassment amongst the chaps.

Zack Snyder was the man that brought us 300 – a smorgasbord of semi-naked, oiled, unrealistically ripped manflesh and violence – and I loved that film. I ain’t gonna lie: I’m predominantly androphilic, and that film catered to my tastes. I love 300 very much, and not because it’s a man-thigh sandwich. I love it because the characters in it work as a tightly-wound, perfect humanoid machine. Also because asksdjfh the Persian army are amazing.

But it wasn’t based on something that Snyder originally wrote. And, most crucially importantly, the objectified, sexualised Spartan warriors and their acres of bronzed musculature are not abused. They struggle, fight, love and die for each other in a war, but they’re not smacked in the face and threatened with rape every fifteen minutes. When they fight as an army, the camera caresses their strength, their competence and their teamwork alongside their biceps. The muscle is part of their mechanised, physical unity and strength.

In Sucker Punch, on the other hand, when Baby Doll slices up giant samurai robots, we’re treated to her pants every four seconds, her thighs every minute and her unchanging expression of “Oh no! A penis!” pretty much constantly. It’s exasperating. It’s writhe-in-the-seat horrible. It’s as if the panty shots are put there purely to lubricate the idea that she might be physically powerful, too. In fact, one of the major themes in the film is that the only power these women have is their sexual desirability. I’m insulted on behalf of everyone I know.

And this is from someone that really enjoys thighs.

I am disappointed and sad about it. Also angry and frustrated that this film, which is a landmark work in terms of how many women it had centre-stage, had so much potential to do good, but fucked it all up by trying to play “WOOO IRONICALLY SEXY” with something as serious and horrible and real as abuse. I actually want to bill Zack Snyder for my ticket price.

But I really loved the bit where the zeppelin exploded. At least there’s that.

Here are my pros and cons to go alongside Sarah’s.

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• A zeppelin explodes! :D
• DRAGONS! :D

YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• No power in creation can justify this level of sexualisation in the handling of abuse.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

There was literally nothing from the trailer for Sucker Punch that I didn’t squee with joy over and clap my hands like a small child about. I was so excited. It was as if someone had written down a big list of “things Sarah likes” and then made a film of it. It even had reams of clockwork, zombie nazis mowed down by women with Really Big Guns. Get in.

I bought a vast tub of popcorn and settled down gleefully to absorb the aural extravaganza of a super-cooltasm created Just For Me.

Except…

…I hated it.

…Really hated it.

Sucker Punch is like a blind date who is perfect on paper but in the flesh there’s just no spark. Worse, they are annoying, their opinions and anecdotes are unfunny, meandering nonsense and they lied about how tall they were (I’m 5’9″, this matters). You spend the whole, pitiful date alternately bored and clockwatching or actively fighting down the urge to laugh out loud in mild hysterics at the awfulness of the situation.

The plot is a pile of garbage, which given Zack Snyder directed (300, anyone?) I was sort of expecting. But I at least wanted to be entertained. This was never going to be high art, but it was beyond mindless. I’m summarising for the sake of summarising because the plot is basically irrelevant, consisting of pointless scenes in which the unfortunate actors mug badly scripted dialogue whilst sobbing through mascara until the next fight happens.

So, “plot”.

There’s this girl called Baby Doll (don’t ask) who is put into an asylum due to Evil Male Relative Action (don’t ask). She uses her Sexy Magic Hypno Dance (don’t ask) to summon up a Mystical Goffick World in which other scantily clad women – who may or may not be aspects of either her OR of another girl called Sweet Pea (don’t ask) – Fight Their Demons (like, totally deep, meaningful metaphor, whoa) and Collect Quest Items under the tutelage of Replacement Male Figure (don’t ask). Eventually after many tears, violence, death and bullets, one of them escapes. I think.

TL;DR: Some Kinda OK Fight Scenes Happen. Women Cry Lots. The End.

Like the crap date, the film reeked of desperately wanting to be clever, ironic, sexy and cool. It was none of those things. It wasn’t even a good, silly action film. And I like good, silly action films. The fight scenes were very fast and quite short so you didn’t get any sense of excitement or drama from the battles: they focused on the look of the costumes and scenery rather than the actual fighting.

The whole thing was tedious in a watching-someone-else-play-a-computer-game way. You watched, but didn’t really engage. There was no tension of any sort, at any point. I had no feelings nor empathy for any of the supposed “characters”. Even in the brief moments when I was vaguely aware of what was going on, or why, I just didn’t care. The exception was one tiny scene between the Doctor/Madam and the Pimp/Asylum Owner. Needless to say, this minor moment only served to remind me of what I wanted the film to be like.

I exited the cinema feeling horribly disappointed (to the point of anger), let down, and deeply confused. You see, not only did the film contain all of the things that I liked and I still hated it – but half of the people I was with really enjoyed it. The other half, like me, hated it. There were arguments on the tube ride home. Maybe it’s a Marmite thing.

I hate Marmite.

It's a close run thing, but I would probably rather eat all this than watch that film again

Like a trauma victim (and speaking of which, this film contains pretty much every abuse trigger in existence handled with the tact and sensitivity of a brick in a sock), I am now trying to post-rationalise the film into being less awful.

The effort of trying to think of any way in which the film is “acceptable” or “average” or even merely “an alright way to pass the time if you are really bored” is beyond me. I’m too angry.

My poor, betrayed brain mourns the loss of the film it wanted to see. The film that was screaming quietly inside, trying to get out.

Like me in the cinema.

Writing this post has actually been somewhat cathartic and therapeutic, so thank you for being there for me during this terrible moment in my life. And for understanding. It’s appreciated. I’m actually starting to feel a little better for having relieved myself of this weight and have begun, a little, to think of the positive sides. Like that I don’t need to see it again. And that really it was just a big, long, not-very-good trailer for the computer game. Which I am looking forward to. The acting will probably be better.

Oh yeah, and like a really unironic sucker punch (geddit?) I’ve just realised that this film totally passes Bechdel. Yeah. Woo. Way to perfectly prove that just because there’s more than one female character and that they manage to talk to each other doesn’t mean it’s any bloody good. Or even particularly feminist. Which this film isn’t, by the way.

Fortunately, it is such utter drivel that it won’t register as meaningfully anti-feminist because nothing it contains is meaningful or worth registering.

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• You like Marmite.
• Um… Dragons? For a few minutes, anyway.
• … by reading this review you accept that I have warned you to the best of my ability, and do not blame me for wasting your time and money.

YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• You will be sad over all the things it could have been.
• You are tired of explaining to fellow cinema-goers that women dressed in their sexy pants fighting evil doers is not “empowering”.
• You will then have to watch Warlock: The Armageddon, which I am reliably informed is actually the worst fantasy film ever made, in order to be able to rank Sucker Punch against this grim standard.
• If we give that man any more money, he might make another just like it.