When Zack Snyder first broke through as a leading director, he was quickly hailed as a huge talent behind the lens. Making his directorial debut with 2004’s Dawn of the Dead, Snyder was praised, and the movie was hailed a worthy remake of the original 1978 movie of the same name. He quickly followed this up with the film 300, which was a smash hit and cemented him as a visionary director.
He’d later go on to become one of Hollywood’s leading directors, most notably with his turns in the DCEU (now DCU). However, as a director, not everything Snyder touched turned to gold. His 2011 fantasy-drama flick Sucker Punch was widely panned by critics and barely broke even at the box office. Despite this, the film did gain a cult following with many among them believing the movie was wrongly criticized and Snyder’s most misunderstood and underrated film.
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The Shortcomings of Sucker Punch
Warner Bros.
Some of the main criticisms of the movie revolved around it being too much like a game, and not a good one at that. The film featured an all female ensemble cast, including the likes of Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, and Carla Gugino. Though it was billed as a film about female empowerment, this theme didn’t exactly play out as planned.
Many critics were scathing of the fact that the film was actually subversive when it came to female empowerment. In fact, in many circles, it was heavily criticized as being downright misogynistic. One example was Monika Bartyzel of Moviefone, something echoed at The Opinioness, which calls the film, “misogynistic bulls**t” in their piece:
Sucker Punch was Misunderstood and Underrated
Despite all the negativity surrounding the film, there were many positive elements that point toward it being possibly misunderstood and certainly underrated. For one thing, most people did agree that it featured some gorgeous special effects and cinematography. However, this wasn’t enough to save its reputation.
The fact that Snyder relied on a myriad of fantasy worlds to move the story along speaks to the fact that he thought highly of his audience and chose not to spoonfeed them every scene in a boring and literal manner. Unfortunately, those sequences became one of its biggest criticisms since it was compared to video game environments and deemed terrible because of this. However, perhaps it takes a more nuanced appreciation of those worlds to see them differently.
An interesting observation that backs up this fact comes from Adam Rosenberg of Mashable:
In terms of depth, there certainly are elements of the plot that show it might have had a far more detailed narrative than one may notice in a single viewing. The cinematography itself shows this, as the movie favors visual stimuli over other literal forms of story building. That part alone tells us Snyder wanted audiences to mesh together some details that remain below the surface themselves.
That setting soon gives way to yet another layer of fantasy: every time Babydoll dances, she closes her eyes and is whisked off to a new fantastical landscape. We in the audience never actually see her dance; those musical moments are realized instead as CG-heavy action sequences that unfold in these dreams-within-a-dream. And so we come to the heart of what “works” so well for me in Sucker Punch: Whether he meant to or not, Snyder created what amounts to a cinematic cover of a video game.
Babydoll’s dance sequences take their form and structure from games to an extent that I’ve never seen in any other movie. Consider the environments, for one. There’s the Dark Souls-esque showdown with a trio of towering monster samurai. The World War I trench battle against an army of German zombie soldiers. The assault on an orc-filled castle and its fire-breathing dragon overlord. And the high-speed heist aboard a train defended by faceless automatons."
There’s no suggestion here that the movie was some kind of deep allegory that should be praised beyond any doubt. Some of the issues that were common in most bad reviews seem inherent to the film. Sucker Punch definitely does come off as a little immature at times and has an almost frat boy or bachelor party appeal to it through scenes that objectify women which, let’s face it, in today’s world is never going to find acceptance. That being said, some of its deeper themes do tend to age well when they’re viewed retrospectively.
A Fair Take on Sexism
Warner Bros.
Given that Sucker Punch takes a hard look at sexism in a way that’s perhaps more nuanced than meets the eye, it should be credited a little. Since it was released back in 2011, many notions of the subtle forms that sexism can actually take have now been expanded and elucidated. It could be said that Sucker Punch knowingly interrogates the male gaze, even if it must succumb to the same exploitive objectification to do so. If this was truly the case and not a fluke, then it was actually ahead of its time.
Ultimately, the movie is layered, and some of those layers may simply not be apparent at first. The fact that its surface elements may seem unfavorable doesn’t mean that the rest of the film matters less; this is a movie about artifice and fantasy, but those are merely surface-level by definition. The movie asks us to question why the fantasies exist and what they mean, and as such, it will likely remain a polarizing one. However, its cult following continue to love the film, so who knows whether a sequel or some sort of spinoff may yet see the light of day.
