Did you miss Comic Con, with the creepy cosplay booths, escapist fantasies, giant robots, Nazi fetishism and embrace of cartoon emotions? Let the new trailer for “Sucker Punch,” which collects all these guideposts and more, ease your worry. Zack Snyder’s “Sucker Punch” presentation at Hall H drew breathless praise, but after catching the new trailer via Apple, we’re calling folly (fancy talk for “bullshit!”) on those calling this genre mish-mash “ambitious.”
“Sucker Punch” follows the adventures of a young girl named Baby Doll (of course!) who, upon arriving at a mental institution, creates an alternate world where she slaves away at a nightclub, until she and her fellow dancers break out and battle a wave of robots, zombies, Nazis and dragonsssszzzzzzzzzzzzz. If this were any other director, we’d think there was some sort of joke about the fact that even the pre-institution scenes look like extensive, fake blue screen, but it’s Snyder’s first ever original (hrm) script, and, to put it lightly, it looks like a step backwards. When Quentin Tarantino entered the world of outlandish, outsized fantasy violence, his craft evolved, but Zack Snyder seems to be stuck in the same infantile slow-motion violence-fetishism style he should have abandoned by now. At least it won’t be in 3D.
Maybe we’re being stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddies (fancy talk for “assholes!”) for rolling our eyes at a fully-realized fantasy world that can accommodate so many outlandish visuals. But the last decade of CGI seems to have welcomed a horrific breed of nerd-service filmmaking, intent merely on replicating the sights and sounds of comic books and animation (especially anime — we’re waiting for the lawsuit from some obscure anime property with a name like “Angel Pantomime Noir Ver. 2”). There’s nothing wrong with using these concepts and visuals as springboards, but here it feels more like Xeroxing ideas we’ve seen already in other media, and Snyder, whose previous films are a remake and two comic book adaptations, doesn’t seem to be in the business of fueling his inspirations with added meaning.