"You have been given all the weapons you need."

[angela_n_hunt]

In which Anji takes apart Zack Snyder's cute little idea of a movie and beats him about the face and neck with it for being criminally stupid.

So. Watched Sucker Punch yesterday.

Visually? OMG, fucking epic. Content wise? Content? What content? What is this content thing you speak of?

*sigh*

Zack, Zack, Zack. You can't do that with an action movie. Or, more accurately, decide what kind of fucking film you are trying to make and *make that.*



Oh. It could have been so good. No really. It could have been fucking *epic*. But when the first act of your Hera is to have her kill her baby sister, you are made of total fail. Ten minutes not even in and you have already lost your audience, shithead. *You cannot do that and retain audience sympathy. You fucking can't.*

Have her and Evil (Cardboard Cut-out) Step-Father fight for the gun. Have it discharge. Have it truly be an accident. Have her at least *wound* the ECCSF, so that we're not left at the end going, "Wait, what about the ECCSF? He gets off scott-free???" but I run ahead of myself.

But having her gun her baby sister down by accident? You fucking fridged the Non-Existent Character of Baby Sister in less then five minutes?

Fail.

So out the gate, we're screwed.

And then, then you can't decide what movie you're making. Is this a horror film? If it is, *go there*. Don't keep cutting away from the gorey bits. Or tell the MPAA to fuck themselves and make the R-Rated film you so clearly meant to make. But don't pussy out. Horror I can relate to.

This? This just pissed me off, because there are moments, oh shiny shiny moments where I saw where it could have been so fucking wonderful. Never mind that you watched one too many anime films and clearly have a hard-on for girls in skimpy school girl uniforms and weapons. I do too. Her shoes alone were fucking fantastic! The costuming was off the fucking hook!

But. Dude.

Awesome visuals and awesome costumes and awesome fucking music (no really, the soundtrack kicks major ass), and Scott Glenn as the Ghost of Babydoll's Real Father (no really, he is, trust me) being awesome, do not a movie make. Seriously. They don't.

I love eye candy as much as the other person. But film actually is about story, no matter what the French may say.

So here you have this truly gorgeous visual thing and it has no spine to hang on. No characters. No reason for it to breathe. It just lays there.

We alternate between Babydoll having massive agency and then being stupider then a sack of hammers. Again. DUDE. You cannot fucking do that.

Here's the thing. Like horror, action films are fundamentally morality plays. Go back and watch the section in Scream where the Film Geek explains to our characters what Horror must and must not do. Action Film has a similar credo. Your Hero/Hera must have agency. They must be competent. MUST BE. No one gives a shit about an idiot of a Hero/Hera. In fact, *you will lose your audience* putting forth an idiot in an action film.

Oh. Wait. You did that.

*sigh*

Fail.

Also, the Wicked must be punished. End of statement. You can have your Hero/Hera lose everything and everyone. You can have everyone die around them. But each and every death must Buy You Something. A tool, a weapon, a chance, even if that cost is too fucking high. In fact, the whole motivation for the Hero/Hera becomes the whole "this has cost too much and now I'm going to make you fucking pay and suffer for what you have taken from me." Don't believe me? I submit First Blood. Go. Watch. I'll wait here.

Back?

Okay.

This doesn't mean you can't have your Hero/Hera fail. Not win. But then you're not making an Action Film, you're making a Tragedy and you need to sell it as such. Now, was Sucker Punch a Marketing Fail, because it was set up as an Action Film and not a Tragedy?

Eh.

Maybe. It's hard here to say. But if you sell me an Action Film and then give me a Tragedy, I'm going to be pissed as an audience.

Oh. Wait. We were pissed.

So we get to the end of the film. ECCSF? Gets away with it. Gets away with having Babydoll lobotomized. Gets away with the baby sister's death. Gets away with all the fucking money. Oh, but wait, the useless shrink feels bad. What. Ever.

Dude. This isn't Brazil. You didn't show us Babydoll living in a paradise now that she's been lobotomized. You show us *nothing.* You try to throw this bait and switch that it was always about Sweetpea.

Nuh-uh, jackass. I hated that shit in Saving Private Ryan and I hate it here even more. If you set up a Main Character and then figured out you didn't know how to write a way to save her, you need to go back to Page Fucking One and set it up through Sweetpea's eyes. You have Sweetpea seeing Babydoll coming in. You have her finding out Babydoll's story. You have her figuring out as it goes along that Babydoll is her Angel.

But you didn't do that, did you?

You got lost. And so did we.

But if you had done that? If you had started with the commitment scene. Showed everything else as flashback, without character, when you bust out that it was about Sweetpea? That the Wise Man and Babydoll are her Angels, sent to bust her out?

I woulda bought it.

Maybe.

But that's the thing. We don't get character. There's no time to explain why Rocket ran away. No time to explain why Babydoll's Mother married the ECCSF. No backstory for *anyone*. You don't even set them up as decent ciphers. They're all just Costume and no Soul. Dude, those images only work for a Japanese audience. We don't have an entire anime lexicon that understands Badass School Girl, Naughty Badass Nurse and Conflicted Badass Loner with Hood. That's not our visual language. I get that you think it's soooo cool, because you watched a lot of that stuff. But if you don't back end it in for US audiences, you've got nothing. And even the Japanese know how to sell backstory!

But the worst part? You hinge all of the failure of the girls grand plan on them being criminally stupid after showing them being badasses for over an hour. You actually have them leave their master plan on a blackboard. As if none of them will remember the plan. As if it can't be erased. As if what kind of fucking bonehead leaves their escape plan where someone can fucking find it???

And then you have two of the characters just gunned down? Their deaths buy nothing? We get no chance, no tool, no weapon. Just murdered. It's not even motivation for Babydoll, whose the only one there to witness. And oh, again, story can't be about Sweetpea, because *she doesn't fucking see the other girls get killed, jackass.*

We just watch the girls get fridged and oh wee, Babydoll knifes Blue, *but fails to kill him.* AGAIN. She fails to kill the ECCSF and now Blue. She's fucking incompetent. See again how you cannot have a fucking incompetent Action Hera! In fact, the *men* get away with killing the girls, but none of the girls succeed in evening the score.

*headdesk*

You have some issues you want to talk about, Zack?

But there were bits in the script.

Oh.

I wanted so much more.

"You have been given all the weapons you need. Now fight!"

This could have been such a fucking clarion call. You needed it three times. But we only get it twice. It should have been at the end, *Babydoll* telling Sweetpea this. Not Sweetpea. Not if she's the one who escapes. That's Storytelling 101 if Babydoll's the Angel, you idiot.

"Everyone has an Angel. A Guardian who watches over us. We can't know what form they'll take. One day, old man. Next day, little girl. But don't let appearances fool you. They can be as fierce as any dragon. Yet they're not here to fight our battles. But to whisper from our hearts. Reminding that it's us. It's everyone of us who holds power over the world we create."

This last bit? This was your story. This right here could have kicked ten sorts of ass.

But you didn't tell this story.

And that's what pissed me off. Because that story? Oh. That story I would have loved to have seen.

And we didn't get it. Because Girls can't be Badasses. Bad Girls must be punished and if they do get away, it's because of someone else's sacrifice.

*sigh*

I've seen this story before. I didn't like it the ten previous times before either.

But y'know what? Some day, someone beside Josh Whedon is going to pick up that poor little blond girl. Is going to give her agency and all the weapons she needs. Is going to give her strong warrior compatriots and is going to set her loose on the world. And when that day comes, I will buy all the movie tickets and all the popcorn that can be bought.

And if no one else does? Well, y'know what?

I will.

Oh wait. I already have.

Say hello, Alice.

Comments

O_O

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Wait, what? NO! There's no such thing as "enough" weapons.

*laugh* And that was the universal response among my most warlike characters, plus myself. Any time somebody says you've got all you need, the enemy is about to make a rush and bury you under twitching horrors when you run out of arrows, tanks, or asteroids.

Re: O_O

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Exactly. Say, "Here's a start. Make it count." Something. But no.

It had such potential. But y'know, you have to actually believe that women can be effective action heras, and really at the root of it all, the team here didn't believe that.

So disappointed.

Re: O_O

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, some people don't understand how to portray certain characters. The results are often painful to watch/read.

On the bright side, today is the Poetry Fishbowl and I'm doing low fantasy. Bring on the fightey agentey heras!

Re: O_O

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

Like I said, it was criminal.

Heh, I will mosey on to the fishbowl. I am full of ideas.

Re: O_O

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Also, I couldn't resist turning this into a poem about two heras and an orcen army.

22 lines, Buy It Now = $10

Re: O_O

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

*upends piggy bank*

It's mine!

:D

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Found this message, so now I know what the unlabeled donation is for. "All You Need" is posted here:
http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/1783493.html

Oh, and "In the Bag" is another two-hera poem, so you can watch for it in case someone else sponsors that epic. They attack with cursed artifacts and higher math.

Re: Thank you!

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

Yay! Can't wait!

Re: O_O

[zeeth_kyrah]

As Howard Tayler reminds us in "Schlock Mercenary", there is no such thing as overkill. There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

Re: O_O

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

*LAAAAAAUUUUUGH*

"Praise God and pass the ammunition!"

A couple nights ago, we went out to shoot photos of fireworks. I kept repeating, "Spray and pray!" as I pushed the button 330+ times.

[mlerules.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll likely give the film a miss, but I quite enjoyed reading your scathing review of it.

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

*bow* I was hoping my review would be entertaining. Because the movie itself certainly was not.

For me, I'm glad I saw it, because as a filmmaker, sometimes we learn more from someone else's failures then we do from their successes. And this was an excellent exercise in what not to do in an action film.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

The trailer sort of gave me a headache, and I've disliked every previous Zack Snyder movie I've encountered, so I think maybe I'll pass on this.

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

It's worth watching from the standpoint of what not to do.

See, I loved 300. But I also love Frank Miller, and he slavishly followed the comic there. On his own... Yeah, you won't miss anything other then the shiny visuals and you can probably watch the shiny bits on YouTube and skip the irratation.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

300 gave me a headache, and I loathed Sin City. The visual style of the former was mildly interesting, but I don't watch movies just because they look shiny, the shouting and bombast and stabbing became tiresome pretty quickly, and if I were willing to take it even vaguely seriously, I'd probably be offended by its politics. The last thing Frank Miller did that I thought was genuinely good was Elektra Lives Again, and that was in 1990.

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

My issue with Frank Miller is that there is dialogue that works perfectly well when you read it, but gods forbid, it sounds like crap when you *say* it.

Elecktra Lives Again was epic.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

The dialogue is the least of my problems with Miller's post-1990 work. There's some compelling graphic design (which doesn't prevent the mostly distasteful Dark Knight Strikes Again from feeling like one of Howard Chaykin's lesser works), but it just comes across as indulgent. At best, it feels like a highlight reel from some other, more interesting story I would rather have seen; at worst, it's storytelling reduced to a series of cliches and rote gestures. Don't even get me started on its treatment of women...

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

LMAO Howard Chaykin's lesser work...

That is fucking perfect. Yes. *That*.

I mostly write from a dialogue standpoint, so for me, it's the most grating thing.

Really, it's the treatment of women, period, that is made of fail in Snyder's work. Seriously. Dude's got some major issues.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

(The fact that B:TDKSA's plot bears more than a passing resemblance to a Chaykin/David Tischman Elseworlds of a year or so earlier doesn't help its case, it must be said.)

I can accept work that has mediocre dialogue if it's got something going for it. Certainly, no one is about to give David Lynch any prizes for snappy, naturalistic dialogue, but given the weird dream logic of his oeuvre, that's not really the point.

To a point, I can accept that there are certain generic tropes that aren't exactly positive in their treatment of women -- femmes fatales are seldom feminist archetypes -- but there's a limit, and that limit falls well short of literally and explicitly categorizing all the female characters as virgins or whores.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

As for Sucker Punch, I also draw the line at Brazil endings. I don't like Terry Gilliam movies, I abhor endings like that (which Gilliam loves), and Brazil is one of my least favorite films of all time for precisely that reason. Just thinking about that movie makes me grimace.

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

I also hated Brazil for the ending. Up until that moment, I loved it. And then Gilliam did *that*.

I was so angry.

So not their target market.

[fighter-chick.livejournal.com]

Loved the review! Will give the movie a miss. I hate, despise, and abhor filmmakers who set up female Hera and then make them dirt stupid (and ultimately failures).

Also...a note to all filmmakers (excepting you, 'cause you know this already). Writing. You can't make a film without it, no matter how many pretty special effects you've got budget for. If the writing sucks balls or is nonexistant, your film is going to bomb. Period. Full stop. So take some of that big budget, bite down on your distaste, and hire yourself a good writer.

My submission for Great Action Movie: Die Hard (the first). Brilliant in all its parts, including its telling of a simple yet sparkling morality tale, just as you describe. High personal cost and severe personal risk to the Hero. The Hero's wife emerges as a Hera, and the Hero's partner in terms of courage, brains, and wit. Each death buys something new, be it good or bad. In the end, the Thief is punished and the Hero and Hera win.

For me, the very best movies often have very simple plots. Simple doesn't mean simplistic, or unwritten. It means clear and comprehensible, and tellable in a two-hour window.

Okay, done now. :)

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

Writers are the Help in Hollywood. No one likes to admit that they need them. Most producers think that it's no work and they can do it in a pinch.

They can't.

Die Hard is a perfect example of a perfect Action Film. So is Aliens. Ellen Ripley really hasn't been topped for an Action Hera. She's flawed and broken and will fuck you up. But above all, she is *competent.* Someone needs to tattoo that to the inside of these guys eyelids.

Simple is actually the hardest thing to do in storytelling. It's like comedy. Dying is easy.

[fighter-chick.livejournal.com]

Aliens = YES.

In addition to being, still, perhaps the best example of an action moving with an Action Hera, Aliens displays the right way to add elements of classic Horror to an Action moving without fucking the whole thing up. Heck, Aliens also included brilliant Sci-Fi. But the creators knew that at heart they were making an action movie, and they didn't forget that even as they added gore and Geiger.

And yes--every single producer and executive in Hollywood needs to have it written in lipstick on their bathroom mirror: A female Hera may be flawed, but Flawed does NOT NOT NOT equal stupid or incompetent!!!

[mister-borogove.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was just bad.

I found Andrew O'Hehir's take (that the letdown of the ending was intentional) interesting, but even through that lens it doesn't work for me. But let's say the intent was tragedy.

So it's a nested series of three levels - the asylum, the bordello, and the battles. The outer layer - "reality", as far as we know - gets only a perfunctory treatment, and we see the start of Babydoll's lobotomy before we even get to level two. So everything that happens there already tastes like ashes - barring a ridiculous deus ex machina, she's already gone, so it's hard to give a shit about anything that happens in the inner layers*. The Brazil-style yank-back is a cliché, but at least it works. This is a broken Brazil.

I wonder if Snyder considered combining the asylum and brothel layers of the movie at any point. Doing so could have solved half of the problems...

* Did you read Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity? It comes in two versions, one of which has some extra material from a second narrator inserted after the climax of the story, claiming that the first narrator is unreliable and some of the most interesting stuff in the story didn't happen. This was so effective a literary method that I stopped reading at that point. I'm sure Eggers is saying something terribly profound about fiction and metafiction, but I just don't give a shit. He broke the writer-reader contract. (Yann Martel's Life of Pi has a somewhat similar twist, but somehow didn't offend me like YSKOV did.)

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And it didn't have to be.

Huh. Reading O'Hehir, he has a point, but I still don't care. But yes, I accept your posit. Let's try it for tragedy.

The short shrift for reality thing was one of the many things that grated. And YES. Ashes. This. We know she's fucked. So why do we care again?

Broken Brazil - oh yes.

It's too bad they didn't combine the asylum/brothel. That would have made a bit more sense. Maybe.

Did not read the Eggers but sounds like I'll give it a miss. I sometimes wish that authors wouldn't get so damn clever clever. And that's rather how I felt about Sucker Punch. "Oh look. You think you're so clever. *sigh* Bored now."

And YES, in this case it was the filmmaker-film viewer contract that got broken. It's not that you can't do it. But you better be able to pull that shit off, say the way Christopher Nolan does in Memento.

Life of Pi made me cranky.

[mister-borogove.livejournal.com]

Life of Pi made you cranky with the yank-back ending? As someone who's generally pro-truth, I found it interesting as a thought experiment in "what does it take to make Russell prefer the happy little lie".

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Yank back endings make me want to throw media across the room. Color me not Continental/whatever enough to appreciate the cleverness.

For the most part, I frown at the happy little lie. Give me the ugly truth.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

I refer you to this review: http://bart-calendar.livejournal.com/2162208.html

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

The Mad Model loved it too.

Different strokes for different folks.

It doesn't change that it is still a fundamentally flawed film from a structural standpoint and was marketed as an action film about female empowerment, not the post modern answer to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I've seen this story before. I didn't like it the ten previous times before either.

[attitude-boy.livejournal.com]

Well said.