Zack Snyder has come in for a lot of abuse over the last few days, with Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice being met with a tidal wave of negative reviews since it was released. But Zack Snyder is used to that by now. In fact, most of his films have been met with an indifferent critical response, none more so than 2011’s Sucker Punch. And the good folks over at Cinema Sins have now gleefully created a video that picks apart every single problem with the bizarre fantasy action film.
Sucker Punch could be the quintessential Zack Snyder film. While it’s packed with impressive visuals that you repeatedly are taken aback by, it’s just a shame that there is literally zero characterisation or a comprehensible plot to accompany this stylized approach.
And boy do Cinema Sins have fun mercilessly ripping apart Sucker Punch, labelling it as incoherent, stupid, and even boring. All of which is kind of hard to argue with. In fact, they calculate that it commits around 139 sins in total.
Cinema Sins also point out that Sucker Punch is pretty much like all of Zack Snyder’s films in that it not only mutes colors, but also mutes character and story too. OK, not every Zack Snyder film is like that, but Sucker Punch is where this approach goes into hyper-drive to such an extent that it becomes white noise.
For those of you that were lucky enough to miss Sucker Punch, it revolves around Emily Browning’s Babydoll, who is committed to a mental institution and envisions the asylum as a brothel that she then tries to escape from with the help of her fellow inmates. In pursuit of the items she needs for her escape, Babydoll enters another level of fantasy where she and her pals instantly become strong, experienced warriors.
It’s all very, very confusing, as Zack Snyder does very little to differentiate between dream and reality and the action is just too idiotic to be enthralling. Worse than that it also features Jon Hamm and Oscar Isaac, immediately blotting the careers of the Mad Men and the Inside Llewyn Davis actors.
Audiences were never charmed by Sucker Punch, too, because it only went on to gross $89.8 million for its $82 million budget, and currently has a 23% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That didn’t stop Warner Bros. from entrusting their DC universe to Zack Snyder though, as he has since followed it up with Man Of Steel, Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, and he’s currently working on Justice League Part One too. I'll leave you to decide whether that's good or bad.
