Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events' Emily Browning in: A Fetish Fantasy Series of Unrelated Action Set Pieces

Rating: 8/10 (25 October 2011)

Although our fantasies (=electronic impulse action) are an effect of our real life situation it doesn't actually matter what our real life situation is, whether we are inmates in an insane asylum or go-go dancing whores in a bordello, the resulting electronic impulse action may as well be the same and ultimately it's those fantasies that matter because they are over-the-top cool in slow motion with Rolling Stone magazine's Top 500 songs as a soundtrack except it's better because they can sound however we want them to sound - - - Like, you love the song Sweet Dreams but aren't a fan of Annie Lennox' voice? No problem, just imagine your own voice singing it but at the same time imagine you being at a place called "Lennox" house just to give that woman some credit for the fun that you are having.
So while the nature of the electronic impulse action indeed is an effect of our real life situation it really is a symbiosis as it is the electronic impulse action that is the motor (=motivation) to our behavior while reality is the fuel. What's nice is that fantasy can make us believe that electronic impulse action isn't just an effect but that it actually does effect, in other words, through some paradox cause-and-effect logic it can create a muddled plot construction that turns reality around to become the fantasy and vice versa. But this is just stating the obvious.
There isn't much to human existence, all the Schopenhauer, Freud and Goethe can be found in what is generally perceived as shallow pop culture. This digested matter that has been summed up to its essential elements and has been beautified to be easily consumable holds the history of centuries and the wisdom of generations and it's in fact all around us as if it was the very element that the invisible but omnipresent æther was made of. And that's why Snyder can make a film that is an accumulation of platitudes and ideas that all already are a part of pop culture and still end up with a film that is kind of thoughtful and has a point because the ideas are just canalized enough towards one general goal...even though the script often seems like it was made up as they went along.
'Sucker Punch' comes with all the typical Snyder short-comings some of which are even amplified here although they don't really matter all that much in the grand scheme of things and can basically be shrugged off with "yeah, but the movie isn't ABOUT that" but it's somewhat understandable that so many people are bothered by them in his multi-million dollar movies when most of the same people probably wouldn't even batter an eye lid if the same shortcomings came up in a low budget film...but this is just something I wanted to have mentioned on the side, it's not like I condemn having different standards for different types of movies.
So for example proper empathizing of scenes and moments is in the crapper, every scene is a comic panel of the same size, they are all equally important which in this Snyder film is especially destructive since the plot (the little there is of it) deals with different realities but in the end they are basically all thrown into the same pot, on the other hand it's actually a plus since I think thematically the film makes an argument for the different realities all BEING equally important. Personally I wasn't too hot about the editing and I could have done with a lot less of the poorly motivated video game action nonsense (I dug the Matrix-esque one with the robots on the train, though, this scene was cranked up to eleven stylistically) but that's just me getting old, the kids love it.
'Sucker Punch' is not about the fight for physical freedom as some may believe (Baby Doll WANTED to be lobotomized and the last scenes of the "escaped" girl are also part of a fantasy) but about freedom within ones mind, a freedom that also ends there and doesn't extend to a desire for freedom in physical reality as, for example, in 'The Matrix'. In the end 'Sucker Punch' is a glorification of escapism and in the form of escapism it makes a solid argument FOR this comfortable "lifestyle choice".
8/10