Secondly we were presented with the excellent 300, an adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name by comic book legend Frank Miller, the man responsible for the Sin City series, and Batman: Year One which formed a large part of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, and who also sat in the director's chair for The Spirit.
300 follows the fictionalized retelling of the battle of Thermopylae, where in reality an alliance of Greek city states lead by the Spartans took on the might of the Persian Empire during their second invasion of Greece, a battle which lasted three bloody days, but in comic/movieland pitches 300 Spartans against the Persian Hordes.
Then Snyder brought us the film of the unfilmable, an adaptation of the Citizen Kane of comic books Watchmen, written by Alan Moore, creator of V for Vendetta, From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Watchmen takes place in an alternative history version of 1985, a history in which Nixon never resigned, where his successors Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter & Ronald Reagan never become Presidents, and where Nixon is still Commander in Chief. A history where a group of mostly retired masked vigilantes investigate a conspiracy against them, after one of their number is murdered and end up uncovering something far bigger and more sinister than they could have possible imagined.
This was followed with his first move into the realm of family, the CGI owl orgy that is Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (..and the worst title award goes to..), which apparently comprises the first three novels of a series by Kathryn Laskey, but frankly it looked so rubbish, that even with my love of animation, I couldn’t bring myself to watch it, and have tried to block its existence from my psyche, so as not to ruin what was an impressive run.
Speaking of my love for animation I recently watched The Illusionist, a beautiful piece, which like the first half of Wall-E features almost no dialogue at all, an not one CGI penguin, or wide eyed Japanese fighting squirrel. A possible future blog...maybe...if your lucky.
Anyway back to Snyder and his first piece of original cinema, Sucker Punch. A film, which in the two brief reviews I’ve seen have completely panned it. Which for the man who’s about to reboot the Superman franchise doesn’t bode well, but that will also be someone else’s reinvented imaginings, so who knows?
Okay I’ve seen Sucker Punch, and frankly it was disappointing , the main problem seems to be that Snyder during the early stages of planning started to brainstorm, he drew a little spider diagram, with cool in the centre. From that centre he drew the various legs, naming each one, zombies, robots, samurai, guns and so on. Then he made a second spider, this one called cool genres and other stuff wot I like, and this time the legs were called war, anime, fantasy, adventure, sci-fi. When these two word arachnids were fully formed, Snyder held them out one in each hand, looking at them both with wonderment, then in one swift movement slammed his hands together, rubbing them with glee, mincing innocent diagrams together until they were nothing more than black jam and twisted legs. And that’s how Zack Snyder came up with Sucker punch.
Don’t get me wrong Sucker Punch has all the visual brilliance of his previous work, if you took a screen shot of pretty much any point of the film I can guarantee it would look amazing, as evident with the screenshot below, unfortunately there’s an awful lot of style over substance.
The film begins with Emily Browning being sent to an asylum, where in 5 days time she’s going to be lobotomised, she befriends several other patients and convinces them to make a break for it. Which might have been a good movie, like a cross between One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Girl, Interrupted.
Upon her arrival Browning is shown around by Jena Malone (Donnie Darko, Saved) and this is where the first of Browning’s fantasises begin, the dark and subdued world of the asylum, turns into somewhere between a burlesque joint and a bordello, an odd and somewhat pointless fantasy given that every time Browning’s character has to dance she steps into a further fantasy, and this is were Snyder’s spider mush is smeared over the screen. The first of four fantasy within fantasy moments see’s Browning visiting a temple and sage who informs Browning of the items she will need to escape the bordello/asylum/anime Japan, he also gives her weapons to aid her in this quest/task/homework assignment. Following her armourment , she steps outside to be confronted by three giant demon samurai, fantasy smack down ensues, Browning flung to the ground , ripping through it like a grounded meteor or a combatant from Dragonball Z.
The quest fantasy sequences are by far the best parts of the movie, but by the time you get to the fourth scenario your bored of that too, because there doesn't seem to be any real danger. As I mentioned earlier the asylum escape story could have been great, the story of a group of girls forced to dance and fuck by an oppressive showmen pimp could have been good, and an all out fantasy quest, possibly animated, could have been brilliant, instead you kinda wished you’d been lobotomised.
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