The Trailer for Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch Should Come With a Cheat Code
Between the cheeky "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns" description, the ominous first image and those genre-hopping character posters, Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch is clearly striving for something. When Movieline saw footage from the 2011 film at Comic-Con it was hailed as "INSANE, in the best possible way." So, is that what the new trailer looks like?
Well, it's certainly insane. Like 300 and Watchmen, Snyder paints Sucker Punch with the same grandiose visual effects palette. That being: Everything is an effect, except maybe the actresses -- though considering their outfits and makeup, they might count, too.
The story seems simple enough in this post-Inception world: Emily Browning stars as a girl committed to a mental hospital, who retreats into an unreality with the like-minded inmates she encounters. There's talk of escape -- and of the cabal of girls being dead already (plot point?) -- and then the set pieces begin: Samurai killings like in Kill Bill; giant robots borrowed from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow; dragons breathing fire all over London Bridge like some B-roll from Reign of Fire; a burlesque hall dance that would fit in Dick Tracy; and planes straight out of the Blitzkrieg. As your senses are overloaded, the following tagline appears: "You will be unprepared."
I don't think I am. Sure, it looks fairly amazing -- as Watchmen showed, Snyder knows his way around an effects shot -- but the idea of watching a bunch of 20-something actresses playact through some badass genre tropes while killing hordes of faceless bad guys just seems exhausting. Does anyone believe in stakes anymore?
VERDICT: Wait for the video game.
If the YouTube embed gets yanked, check out the trailer over at Apple.
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Comments
I think it looks like Zack Snyder made a list of everything he wanted to see in a movie, then slapped it in.
1. Hot chicks in fetish outfits doing burlesque bits - CHECK
2. Guns, guns, guns - CHECK
3. Samurai fights - CHECK
4. Dragons - CHECK
5. Zeppelins & Other Steampunk stuff - CHECK
6. Big Robots- CHECK
The story may not make an ounce of sense, and the 'twist' ending will most likely have the main character lobotomized and drooling into a cup taped to their chin, but it will look pretty eye-popping.
Whoa. Lords of Acid on the soundtrack? Are we sure this isn't a _Mortal Kombat_ revamp?
"but the idea of watching a bunch of 20-something actresses playact through some badass genre tropes while killing hordes of faceless bad guys just seems..."
I think your iPhone auto-corrected "awesome" into "exhausting." Surely, you meant awesome.
Mor eproof that the people here at movieline have questionable movie taste at times. This movie looks incerdibly awesome, I like that it gives no real hint of the real story (via inception, so we do not know what to expect) and the actresses involved have proven that they are capable of acting well
You're not terribly convincing, and of the few spoken lines that are in the trailer, it seems to be giving off a 'Showgirls' vibe ("We're already dead." groan.)
I'll come for the effects to be sure, but I'm not convince there's going to be any real gravitas.
Also, spoiler, here's a synopsis:
"Set in the 1950s, Sucker Punch follows Babydoll (Emily Browning) who is confined to a mental institution by her stepfather, who intends to have her lobotomized in five days. While there, she imagines an alternative reality to hide her from the pain, and in that world, she begins planning her escape, needing to steal five objects to help get her out before she is deflowered by a vile man. "