LA, CA I'm warning you, there will be spoilers. So, you can't say I've SUCKER PUNCHed you

Has anyone else seen this movie?
I really liked it, but found serious flaws. The costumes were colorful, but sometimes downright silly, especially the make-up, obviously geared toward the fantasies of teenaged male anime fans.

The special effects were spectacular and worth the time alone.

But, the ending was totally unsatisfactory. The ending should have been either a real shocker, like finding out the fantasy world was the real one, or a happy ending, like most, if not all the girls escaping to happier sensational lives. What a let down for that kind of movie! If it was a more 'realistic' movie, that ending may have been perfect. But the ending and the rest of the movie just didn't match.

Anyhoo, that's my humble opinion in 100 words or less.

 

Yup saw it last night. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I hated it, because I agree the fantasy sequences were well choreographed, well shot, and looked gorgeous, cinematically it was impressive to watch them. But I really didn't care at all, and by the time the first one comes on, it's so confusing you really don't understand what's going on so you just sort of watch without really caring, then you begin to get the idea and it's still ludicrous. It's even more ludicrous because girls don't have fantasies about kicking ogre butt or slaying dragons or killing Nazi zombies or fighting 15-foot-tall Japanese samurai warriors who are also monsters... or something. GUYS have those fantasies, teenage guys, and girls don't have fantasies about dressing up in sexy school girl outfits with pigtails sucking lollipops. GUYS have those fantasies, haha. It was just absolutely silly in every respect and a mess of a movie.

I want to call it kind of a spectacular failure in the sense that there is some merit to some parts of the film, and it's like "nice try, I guess." The story was horrible, but as a guy of course I enjoyed the action scenes to some extent, at least technically, and Baby Doll (Emily Browning) was ridiculously hot. I don't know how they did it, I think they should get an Oscar, because every picture I've seen of this girl she is at best a 6 or 7 out of 10, semi-cute sometimes, even a 5 sometimes. She simply isn't that good looking. Yet in the movie she is a 14 out of 10, they made her look like the hottest girl I've ever seen, so I absolutely bow in awe of the makeup and wardrobe and hair job they did and I want to know what the secret is so I can duplicate this on my next film! Haha. Vanessa Hudgens is of course gorgeous, even if she can't really act, I barely noticed because she's also hot. Basically, lots of hot girls, some great visual style that you'd expect, but a deeply flawed movie that left me just shaking my head wondering how this thing got greenlit. It was a disappointing experience after what was a very good trailer.

Now tonight, I saw Limitless, and that rinsed the bad taste of getting sucker punched out of my mouth, because Limitless was amazing, an early candidate for me as best film of the year. I will probably only see 3-4 movies this year that I like as much as it. It had just the ending I wanted, and was seriously doubting would happen, the journey was great fun and left me smiling the whole time, and it was also funny in all of the right moments. I laughed a ton.

That was a huge, huge weakness in Sucker Punch. It simply wasn't much fun, I don't remember laughing once, and every movie can have comedy. This one didn't.

 

Even though I'm not expert enough to do it, I can tell you, basically, how they got the girls to look that way. Four words: A ton of makeup. They must have been wearing at least two full sets of false eyelashes each. Babydoll was wearing at least 3.

Nonmundane women often imagine themselves as action heroes, by the way, including slaying dragons. We just don't imagine ourselves doing it in teeny tiny sailor suits and thigh highs and garters. That part, like I said was for male teen-aged anime fans, not the female fans.

 

I could tell just by the first trailer I saw it wasn't going to be a hit. But like my media arts teacher says, "there's always and audience out there for those certain types of movies" and this happens to be the school girls locked up in a jail fantasy crowd. But hey, what is escapism if we can't escape reality?

 

Haha maybe very nerdy girls, but the average hot girl certainly doesn't watch a lot of sci-fi (most girls I know hate sci-fi and fantasy) and doesn't dream of fighting ogres and Nazi zombies that's for sure. In fact no girl would have those dreams, basically, except a very weird one, even I don't have dreams like that and I'm a big Star Wars geek! It was just highly unbelievable that we're supposed to imagine this hot girl has these geeky dreams that are a teenage boy's fantasies, lol.

Yes, I think tons and tons of makeup is definitely right, but boy they had her looking good, her eyes, her lips (always a bit pouty), her body, etc. They had her looking the best she can look that's for sure. In my film, our lead actress looks glamorous and we always did our best to make her look great for the camera, but the fact is she is gorgeous just normally speaking in every-day life so it wasn't some trickery. I bow to their level of makeup and hair skills!

 

OK, well maybe not fighting Nazi Zombies, but I have loads of friends who love the idea of being Jedi, Sith, Elves, Fantasy heroes. Look around at some of these conventions. Yes, the girls there are just as geeky as you guys. But, there's a lot of cuties there. Frankly, I think the proportion of dorky looking guys to cute guys is greater than dorky looking women to cute women at the few conferences I've attended. (And many of the cute guys are married or gay.) I'm no cougar, but I'm not blind either. I still notice these things. The only way you're going to meet a girl who looks like babydoll and her crew in real life would be at one of these conventions.

I've said this to you guys before; I'll say it again. If a lack of model good looks and corporate ambition are deal breakers, sorry, if you're going to pick girls or boys on such mundane criterea, you're going to say, "no cool girls I know are into non-mundane stuff." And by the way, I see too many men, unique and banal, expecting to hook 8,9 or 10 women when they are only 5 or 6's themselves. This only happens if you are very rich, powerful, famous or in Seth Rogan movies.

 

I saw "Your Highness" and it was half bad. Natalie Portman is awesome.

 

Yes, if you are just a 5 out of 10, you're going to have trouble landing someone who is an 8 to 10 unless you have something to make up for the girl being out of your league, i.e. money, fame, power. But I don't think it's by any means mundane if you are good looking especially to want a very attractive girl. Unfortunately, most girls I date aren't interested in sci-fi, Star Wars, fantasy, whatever else, haha. I don't mind, though, I mean it's not a big deal. I don't expect girls to be like my guy friends.

 

SJ that is what I figured if they kept it a serious Period piece, it could have been much better instead of once again going the goofy comic relief route, I'm mean Natalie with a bow.

 

If you want to see an excellent period piece and have Showtime, I'd recommend The Borgias. The costumes are both breathtakingly beautiful and impressively accurate. The history is pretty accurate as well. When the series first started, they did a little short show about how Mario Puzo based the Corleone family on the Borgias.

I'm also looking forward to Game of Thrones which is starting on HBO this month.

 

Ok Finally saw it tonight on BD thx to Netflix, I must say it was like 13 Monkeys all over again, I figured out the Brazilesque ending in the first 15mins and was bored the rest of the 95mins, it is a Hodge Podge of at least 5 other Sci-Fi films that were way better, just glad this was only a Rental for about a Buck which is all a Sucker Punch is Worth!!!1

 

Actually, GF, I think you would have liked it better if you saw it on the big screen, although you do have that nice big HD, so maybe not. Anyhow, the special effects were the real star of the movie; the bigger the screen, the better.

But, as SJ said, it wasn't really a hit. You are definitely in the majority here.

Has anyone seen Conan, yet? No spoilers, please. I haven't seen it yet.

 

I'd actually consider buying Sucker Punch on Blu-ray just for how hot the chicks look and the great use of music in the action scenes, which is really all that is worthwhile about it. The film itself is a complete mess, but it has little segments that are by themselves really fun to watch. If it's ever like $10 on Blu-ray I'll buy it.

I did see Conan, I've been keeping up pretty well with movies this summer. I thought Conan was pretty much garbage. I mean, I don't want to say it was terrible, but it would be fair to say it was flat-out bad. My biggest complaint is a complete lack of a sense of humor. There was no comic relief at all. If you can make a film like Life is Beautiful where it's about the holocaust but there is still great humor, I'm sorry, you can make a campy movie like Conan be funny! But they didn't even try and there weren't any funny lines at all. I don't mean that I personally didn't find them funny, I mean that there was no attempt even to have funny lines. He was just completely serious. The chick was hot, that is about all I can say, and honestly it's Hollywood there are hot actresses everywhere, so it's not going to win a movie points just for a hot girl. I wouldn't even rent it frankly. If you have Netflix already and it costs you nothing, sure, if you feel you have to, check it out. But it's pretty bad I'm warning you. It does look somewhat good, it is visually not bad by any means, I was just bored by the action and felt the film was corny.

 

Unfortunately even in BD 1080p and DTS Surround this movie just didn't make it, unfortunately I have out grown the Just for the Special Effect's Syndrome once they became so common and everybody could do them on virtually every PC, just need a wee bit of Plot please and some good acting!!!