It’s interesting the way perception of movies will change over time, and Sucker Punch is the one Snyder film that seems to be getting rehabilitated a little bit by critics revising the accepted opinion that the movie is a total disaster. And it’s about damn time. Perhaps it was because I arrived at seeing the movie after the hysteria had died down, perhaps because I put enormous trust in anything Jena Malone attaches her talents to, but I found it to be horribly misrepresented and misunderstood and treated with an utter lack of fairness or curiosity by the initial reviews.
Adam Quigley over at Slant has written on it and produced a really cool video essay delving into the layers of meaning that previous critics really had no interest in actually exploring. While folks like Harmony Korine and Terence Malick have somewhat earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to questionable depictions of women, Zack Snyder’s female empowerment story (to be reductive) was seen as shallow. Apparently if you follow a predominantly scantily-clad male movie like 300 with its sexual inverse in Sucker Punch, many will be suspicious of your motives. But Sucker Punch, when considered as a revenge fantasy in the face of powerlessness, not unlike Inglourious Basterds (I see lots of similarities between Tarantino and Snyder, actually), works rather impressively. At the very least it’s worth a second look and possible reevaluation.
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