If there’s one thing you can be sure you’ll see more of at Comic-Con than anywhere else, it’s girls in rubber underwear, toting guns. If that sounded bitter I didn’t mean it to. I love a good action heroine. I like a frilly corset.
But after speaking to Vanessa Hudgens and Jena Malone about “Sucker Punch,” I doubt I will find any true action heroines in the movie. (With the exception of Carla Gugino if I can get past her bad Polish accent.)
The story revolves around a young woman trapped in an insane asylum, who escapes the everyday degradation of her fate by traveling to a fantasy world with the other extremely hot ladies of the asylum.
Asylum melts into brothel and into male fantasy. Except for the musical theater parts, I guess they kept those for the ladies. I’m not saying it has to be all hearts and vaginas but, once again, I feel a bit insulted that sexy brothel song and dance numbers are being served up to me as “grrrll power.” (And, yes, I hate that term too.) If I wanted to watch that I would just rent “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”
But it’s Malone who really put me over the edge about this movie. I was impressed by the fact that she, Hudgens, and their costars were trained by the Navy Seals and learned to shoot guns. But when I asked her about how her character Rocket is unique and how she personally views the long line of female action heroines who have come before her, this is what I got:
“I never grew up with comics; I grew up with Disney characters. So it was like the ‘Little Mermaid’ was a heroine to me when I was younger. I didn’t have any reference to be able to understand what sort of face you use when you shoot a gun. I just didn’t know who that was. How does a woman kick? Who knows? We had an amazing stunt team of women. We called them our stunt shadows. They transformed themselves into us and, in a weird way, my stunt double became my heroine,” Malone said.
OK … To be fair, she did give props to her amazing stunt team.
When I asked her about what she wanted girls to take from her character (trite, I’ll admit) she had a similar response.
“Take away is like for McDonald’s, you know? Like, I walk away with a Styrofoam cup of one sentiment. For women in general — because also film is so iconic and it has an eternal shelf life – because, like I said, I had no visual references for women to kick and shoot and fight and also still be a woman and cry and be funny and rowdy and strange. If I had this reference point it would be amazing to me. It’s just like the fact that now women will have this reference point, it’s just gorgeous you know.”
I swear to you that’s the quote. Forget the fact that it doesn’t make much sense grammatically, has she been locked in a basement for years?
No visual references for how a woman kicks, fights, or shoots? How about Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor or The Bride or, hell, even your costar Carla Gugino?
My mind is still spinning over this. What was she talking about? I felt like she was trying to confuse and seduce me with her lilting voice and some kind of strange Hollywood double-speak.
“Look deep into my eyes, Scara. I don’t have to make sense as long as I say something. Authenticity is dead. All you need are the signifiers. I have a gun, I’m wearing eyeliner, I got jacked with some Seals, so, who cares if I am just another stereotype? Now write down what you think I might mean.”
From what I’ve seen of clips and images exposed to Zack Snyder’s handiwork, “Sucker Punch” will look like a candy-coated “300.” The gals’ skirts are equally as short as the gladiators’, and the fight scenes as stylized.
While I should reserve judgment on the entire movie until I’ve seen more than a one minute clip, I can tell you one thing, “’Alice in Wonderland’ with machine guns” this is not.
