I feel like I've been proven right with Sucker Punch. Whilst I enjoyed Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead, the films he's made since have shown that, when given creative control on a project, he lets his boyish immaturity take over. 300 was nothing more than a computer game and Watchmen did nothing more than copy and paste from the graphic novel to celluloid with added and unnecessary slo-mo. He is a man that has always focused on the surface detail whilst completely forgetting about depth entirely. His films are exercises in style, not content, which is why he was so unsuited for Watchmen.
Sucker Punch takes all his faults and ramps them up to levels of spastic. Whilst it wasn't the total train wreak I was expecting, the film takes all of Snyder's geeky, immature wet dreams and uses the flimsy excuse of a fractured human psyche to incorporate them into a narrative. There's a moment about half an hour in, where Baby Doll is told she must have purpose in order to survive. Ironic really, as much of the action has no purpose. There is literally no reason for any of the action beats other than that it tries to look cool (which, admittedly, it does at times). So we get mini-gun toting Samurai, steam-punk Nazi zombies, dragons and robots and none of it is necessary or relevant in aiding the plot or moving the narrative forward. Take away these jarring and ludicrous pop-promo set pieces and you're left with a hollow shell of a film that rides along on the faith that its audience will buy what it's selling. I wasn't sold. The film's flaws are just way too obvious.
I don't hate it though. It's a movie that panders to all of Snyder's fan boy cravings and is perfectly suited to his filmmaking sensibilities. It also proves that my shoutings of Snyder as an immature hack have been totally justified. It's not hateable, it's not offensive, it's just stupid. Really, really stupid.
2/5
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