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.