The Shit Box volume 5: Words, Words, Words

Hello and welcome to me watching garbge, everybody. This week I'm taking a look at Sucker Punch, and this is probably my wordiest entry sitting at over 1400 fucking words. I got a lot of mixed comments about Sucker Punch, some saying it's dumb but fun, others saying it's not bad, and then some saying it's bad. I think it's bad. Sucker Punch offered the worst offense; it was boring. Not only was it boring, but it was also confusing. Moving along.

I'm going to start things off by saying I hated almost everything about Sucker Punch. It stats off without any context, and completely in slow motion. Anything that's supposed to be happening there is absolutely without any meaning. We find out eventually that Babydoll, our protagonist this round, killed her sister trying to fend off their rapist step father. The police release her back into his custody without any inquiry, and he sets her up in an asylum dirtier than Outlast's, where she is scheduled for a lobotomy that nobody questions.

In order to escape the harsh reality that incompetent and naive morons are about to get her turned into a vegetable, Babydoll escapes into a fantasy world, where the asylum is a brothel, and her step father is a crooked priest. In this filthy brothel, Babydoll meets four other girls who are looking to escape, and none of them really matter. There's no reason to care about any character presented thus far. Babydoll rescues some short haired chick who becomes her best friend, and is given a tour of the brothel, which ends at a dance studio where we're given the framing device behind the action scenes in this movie: dancing.

So Babydoll starts her dance, which takes us to a Japanese palace where she receives a gun and katana, because why the fuck not. She's told to defend herself from some random samurai statues, and the first of four cheesy anime action sequences sets into motion for some reason or another. There's not a lot to really mention here, it's just a dumb action sequence, and this is one of the big problems the movie faces. The action sequences just sort of happen, and it's hard to really enjoy them when there's no rhyme, reason, or context for why these things are happening. If you're going to make a dumb but fun action movie where the fighting is the draw, and the writing is awful, you have to make the fighting enjoyable.

Anyway, after Babydoll fights off the statues, we return to brothel space where everyone but some lady whose name I can't remember is all happy and impressed with the newcomer. The crooked orderly in charge of the asylum in reality looks a lot like Lou Bega in brothel space, but I digress. Back in the dressing room, Babydoll pitches her escape plan, and assembles a team of hookers to break out of an asylum. Okay. They need four items, and a sacrifice, but I swear they aren't Satanists, I can only be wrong about that so many times in a row.

The first item is a map of the building, which they can get from Lou Bega's office, so Babydoll stages a dance, and one of the pointless individuals helping her informs him so he'll leave his office unattended. This second action scene is full of steampunk Nazi zombies, and has a kinda big mech in it that flies around popping airship balloons. And it is again an unenjoyable sequence with nothing much I can say about it because there's no context or reason. Spoiler alert, they get the map, but draw Lou Bega's attention. Moving along.

The second item the girls need is fire, so they have Asian lady pickpocket the city's mayor of his lighter while Babydoll distracts with a dance. The mayor is flamboyant and awesome, but the shitty music they introduced him with completely killed the scene for me. It was an unholy sampling of Queen with some piece of shit rap music, I almost couldn't take it, I really wanted to close the video because of that music. Another thing, the music, second in importance to this film only to its action sequences, really sucks. Anyway, the girls are fighting an army of orcs and some dragons this time around. Being the fantasy guy I am, you'd think this would be my favorite scene, but they made the baby dragon they get the lighter from too cute, and it genuinely made me sad and hate the main characters when it died. They fight the baby's mama and win, and the mama is just as sympathetic and sad to watch die as its kid. With lighter in hand, the girls only have two items left, but now Lou Bega's fully onto them, and he is pissed. Moving along.

One of the characters who's had no lines up to now is having doubts about what's happening, and confesses the plan to Lou Bega and some lady I think I forgot to mention until now. While that's going on, the not stupid members of the team are trying to get the third item, a knife, from the kitchen. The usual dance distraction is put on, and we're taken to the last action sequence, fighting robots on a train. I was so completely confused by this scene, that I actually had to look up what was happening, and apparently our heroes are just straight up murdering freedom fighters trying to combat an oppressive regime. Ouch. The dance is cut short by literally everyone being blind and letting water short out the radio playing the music, which leaves the girls vulnerable while the chef isn't distracted. This oversight leads to the short haired best friend getting stabbed and killed, which I can't say bothers me, because none of these characters have given any reason for why they matter. So the knife is not gotten. Moving along.

So Lou Bega sets up the girls to do a big dance show for a character called the high roller, a high paying customer looking to buy himself a sex slave. Supposedly there's an extended version where this character is met, but in the standard, all we get is a scene in the dressing room. Lou Bega shoots and kills two of the characters, who I guess we're supposed to care about, then gets stabed in the neck with a knife I guess they had all along, making Short Hair's sacrifice even more meaningless. Babydoll takes the last item, the key, from Lou, rescues the only other survivor, and they set fire to the brothsylum so they can make their escape and end this shitty movie.

And here is where my hatred of the movie comes from. They kill off three major characters for no reason, people we get no chance to meet, and demand us to care about these people. The only person we really know any amount of is Babydoll, and in the end, Babydoll becomes the sacrifice so that what's her face can flee to freedom, and ends up getting that lobotomy. The only person we have any reason to care for ends up a vegetable, the villainous stepdad gets his victory, and it turns out Lou Bega's still alive. Plus, the only reason any of this horrible ending is happening is because the police were incompetent, and the doctors who were responsible for the lobotomy are only responsible for it because neither bothered checking the paperwork. But Lou gets arrested, so hey, small victories.

This movie is bad. Its plot hinges on every level of authority being completely and utterly incompetent or corrupt, a character I personally hated is the only one who gets a happy ending, and the protagonist ends up worse than dead. The writing makes all the events outside the action sequences a boring slog to sit through, and even the action sequences are boring because they're out of place with the rest of the film, and have no connection to each other. Individually, I can stand bad writing, out of place action, and a bad ending, but all together at once, it's just really irritating. Occams, wherever you are, feel lucky I can't give you a sucker punch for making me watch this. But yeah, I don't recommend this.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this week's main entry, everybody. Join me Thursday where I'll be watcing a mystery movie you'll have to wait or go to Twitter to find out about with Mike, and next Monday as I wish I was a mindless undead construct to escape the pain in Zombie Nation, commissioned by local fuckboy OpiumHerz. Or don't.

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