Note to Hollywood, Emily Browning is NOT sexy looking, she looks like she belongs in junior high school; stop casting her in sex bomb roles! Give these roles to ... Emmy Rossum instead. She can act and judging by her TV series, "Shameless", she doesn't mind having to take her clothes off.

Okay, what kind of female empowerment message are you sending when the lead female is a 12 year old looking girl in a schoolgirl outfit and hypnoizes people with what is described as a semi-stripper dance? Further more, at one point, Sweet Pea points out how the "play" they were "acting" in can be looked at as being "sexy". I wouldn't call that a huge red flag, but it's almost like Snyder is phoning in his true intentions. Bottom line: if it looks, acts, and sounds like a duck, chances are, it's a duck.

But it's still appropriate for the style of the film.

Pedophile undertones are appropriate for a female empowerment movie? As I said, the leather and chainmail I can understand (and some would even consider that to be sexy), but a schoolgirl outfit, not really. The girls could have been all wearing IronMan like armor, and that could have been appropriate, too, but Snyder went the way of slutty cosplay-chic. Highly questionable choice.

I think the pedophilic undertone was purposefully left there, especially in the opening when the stepfather was going to get the little sister. Along with that, the whole dancing routine is just a way for her to fantasize about her getting to kick some ass. Sure, it may seem counter productive, but she's in a brothel. What do you expect her to do in order to fantasize about fighting?

The stuff with the little sister, I understand, but it shouldn't be carried over to the "older" sister (who still looks like she's barely 13), where the pedophile undertones were hinted at again near the end of the movie. I already laid out a perfectly natural way for the girls to enter the fantasy world without the use of a stripper dance, and it also removes the brothel setting all together, which again, is never explained why she's fantasizes about such a setting.

But the thing is that Snyder didn't make that story. Sure, the version you came up with is much simpler and easier to understand, but Snyder didn't think of that. I'm not saying that Sucker Punch has the best plot structure ever, but it's one of those films that you just have to go along with and not ask, "Why doesn't he do this instead?"

But that's not how a story works. If it's just one scene you're questioning, that's okay, but when it's the whole movie, the writer did something very wrong. A good story needs plot structure, otherwise, you failed at telling the story properly. You don't just throw events onto the screen and say "just go with it". And my version isn't so simple, if it was in the right hands, where everything is explained and the characters are fleshed out. Snyder didn't do any of this, his version of even simpler: just show a bunch of images and introduce characters and events without explaining what's going on, why or how it's happening, or who any of these peopler are. He seemed more concerned about getting the girls in tight little outfits and getting as much CGI on the screen as possible. That's bad storytelling, not art.

Well, before all of that happens, it was already implied that the mental asylum is a corrupt place. Furthermore, we find out that the sisters were brought to the asylum in a shady manner. She steals chocolate because it's obvious that they get sh*t food to eat. It's like saying, "Why should I feel pity for a Jew in a camp when he's stealing bread?" The state the girls are in is bad enough and one doesn't have to go into deep reasoning to see why they do what they do.

Okay, ONE scene that shows the girls might be under strict rules, but that's all. The Jews were tortured every waking moment of the day until they died. BIG difference, in fact, you can't seriously compare the two. That's like saying a paper cut is the same as losing a limb; it's not. Again, forget about the glorifed brothel, and stick with the horrors of the asylum, give us the idea the girls are in hell on earth. Getting slapped around alittle for stealing is not a hell on earth. Getting tortured morning, noon, and night, that's hell. And again, you can't use the excuse "oh just go along with it", because that's the laziest type of writing. There's no defending this movie as a properly told story.

 

And I just realized this: MWG mentioned the girls dressing up like that because that's how girls in anime dress. The big problem with that is it's called "fan service", which is just a nice way of saying "T&A". The anime girls are dressed that way to lure in horny teenage boys (or men). Yes, there are people in this world who get sexually aroused by cartoon women! So if MWG is trying to defend the movie not being sexist, that excuse is not helping his case, it only confirms that the movie makes the girls look like eye candy for perverts to enjoy.

 

Also Emily Browning was woefully miscasted in this movie. She looks like she's 12 years old, yet we're suppose to believe she's 22? It gave the movie a slight pedophile undertone to it. And how else is it not female empowerment? Well, in order to reach her goals, Baby Doll has to do a dance that is always being described as "raw" and "lots of grinding". So doing a broaderline strip tease is female empowerment? Granted, the dance is never shown on-screen, but then we're left wondering what the big deal about this dance is.

 

And lastly, yeah, it should have been only two levels, the asylum and the fantasy world. Why? Because that would make sense. The asylum is the ideal place to show the girls being treated like crap and wanting to escape, and the fantasy world would be their mental escape. The brothel makes no sense whatever, why would Baby Doll be dreaming about a brothel of all places? That's where the movie as female empowerment falls flat, the brothel seems like just an excuse to have the girls dress like common streetwalkers, and it's all out of place with the rest of the story.

 

Here's how the story would have worked, both as a story and as female empowerment: The movie starts as it did with Baby Doll going to the asylum, keep all that. Then show how the inmates are treated like subhumans (as most inmates in aslyums are in real life) and Baby Doll wants out. She befriends the other girls, perhaps by stealing the chocolate and sharing with them, so we can keep that scene. Meanwhile, the girls are having group therapy with Carla Gugino's character, and she teaches them this self-hypnosis trick that sends them into a fantasy world that they can control, and through this method, she teaches them that female empowerment must be a way of thinking, and then a course of action. And then the story plays out with them stealing the four items, using the self-hypnosis trick to give themselves confindence, and Sweet Pea escapes, etc. That would have worked. But instead, Snyder gave us his poorly done version of "Inception", proving that while he knows how to put together pretty images, he can't write his way out a wet paper bag.

 

And again, thanks to Snyder's bad storytelling, how are we suppose to relate to how bad the girls are being treated? One girl steals from the kitchen and the cook attacks her over it. Wow, what a hell hole they are in, we should feel pity for them based on this alone! The story is just such a mess and it makes the movie very hard to like or defend outside of being decent eye candy.

Well, the reason why they aren't all well developed is because the story isn't about all of them. Take Inception, for example. Leo's character is the only character that is well developed. Everyone else is oh-so forgettable. Seriously, what do we know about these people? Absolutely nothing. In Sucker Punch, the story was about the sisters and they are pretty well developed. They aren't just "sisters who look out for each other." If you simplify characters that way, you make them sound simplistic. As for the other girls, they are sympathetic enough for the audience to want them to survive because these girls don't deserve the treatment they're getting.

As I said, good looks and "girl next door" appeal aside, Vanessa's acting is ho-hum at best. She has yet to do anything impressive unless Disney hypes the hell out of her first. She can sing in musicals, sure, but that's about it. Looking good and being a good actress are two different things, some actresses have both qualities, Vanessa doesn't.

 

The characters were not developed AT ALL. In fact, all five main characters are forgetable and might as well be interchangable. Seriously, let's run them down, shall we: Baby Doll: the leader ... that's about it. Rocket and Sweet Pea: sisters who look out for each other ... again, that's it. Amber: handles all the machines, steals the cigar lighter ... that's it. Blondie: just there for the sake of it, rats out the other girls ... that's it. Those are not examples of developed characters. Again, bad writing on Snyder's part. I'll give the movie its due for being visually stunning, but there's nothing else to it.

 

Worst Screenplay: The script is just flaws upon flaws; no wonder Zack Snyder never directed an original movie before! Nothing is explained, there's no depth to any of characters, and the story makes no sense. Snyder is a director (of CGI and music videos at least), not a writer.

Well, the fact that most of the film is rather ambiguous in nature (like what really happened in the real world), there's not much you can work with. I thought the characters were well developed as well and if you're pointing to the protagonist, well, that's explained by the ending. It was not her story.

 

Vanessa Hudgens for Worst Actress for this, as well as "Beastly". Vanessa is a beautiful young woman, but she cannot act her way out of a wet paper bag, and she appears in some of the dumbest movies possible. She could have been removed from this movie all together and the movie wouldn't be any different.

 

Worst Screenplay: The script is just flaws upon flaws; no wonder Zack Snyder never directed an original movie before! Nothing is explained, there's no depth to any of characters, and the story makes no sense. Snyder is a director (of CGI and music videos at least), not a writer.