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It was only a few years ago that Warner Bros. released director Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, a fantasy-action movie that Snyder often described as Alice in Wonderland with machine guns." Snyder was coming off of the much-ballyhooed comic book adaptation of Watchmen and was finally in a position to helm Sucker Punch, which Snyder co-wrote after conceiving the original story.
"A while ago I had written a script for myself and there was a sequence in it that made me think, 'How can I make a film that can have action sequences in it that aren't limited by the physical realities that normal people are limited by, but still have the story make sense so it's not, and I don't mean to be mean, like a bulls**t thing like Ultraviolet or something like that?" said Snyder of Sucker Punch way back in 2007. Unfortunately, audiences didn't agree.
Sucker Punch was set in the 1960s and followed a young girl named Babydoll (Emily Browning), who was institutionalized by her stepfather and consequently escapes into a fantasy world in order to plan her escape. Critics weren't impressed, and audiences didn't show up, with Sucker Punch just barely making back its budget. However, according to SlashFilm contributor Adam Quigley, who created a video defending the movie, claiming: "contrary to popular opinion, Sucker Punch is not a stupid movie."
watch the video >> Posted 02.02.13 by Ryan -
Even the most brilliant actors will occasionally make bad movies. Scripts change, budgets shrink, directors quit or get canned. For the most part, audiences realize that movies are a collaborative medium and that a bad movie isn't necessarily the fault of the lead actor. Audiences are far less understanding when a bad movie has an ensemble cast, however: How could so many talented people be so wrong? We recently asked you to rate the Top 10 Great Ensembles in Good Movies; now, we want you to be brutally honest and help us rate the Top 10 Great Ensembles in Bad Movies.
Rate the Top 10 Great Ensembles in Bad Movies >>
Posted 10.02.12 by BrentJS -
Despite being both a critical and box office disappointment, Sucker Punch is without doubt a visually stunning movie that perfectly showcases director Zack Snyder's vivid imagination and understanding of the dynamics of fight choreography. To promote the release of Sucker Punch on DVD and Blu-ray yesterday, Warner Bros. released, via MTV, a clip from one of the Blu-ray edition's many special features.
In the clip, Snyder reveals some of the finer details hidden in the epic "Samurai Showdown" fight scene between Babydoll (Emily Browning) and the 10-foot-tall cyborg Samurai warrior she encounters when she first arrives in the fantasy world she's created to escape her real-world hell. Snyder also explains how the live-action Babydoll and CG-Babydoll were melded together to create a fluid fight sequence free of needless cuts.
watch the featurette >> Posted 06.29.11 by BrentJS -
Considering writer-director Zack Snyder's new genre-bending action movie, Sucker Punch, opened in second place and then dropped to 7th place in its second weekend in theaters, with a decrease in ticket sales of 68%, it's no surprise that Warner Bros. (WB) is pulling out all of the stops to get moviegoers to plop down their cold hard cash to see the movie...or, at least, to buy the soundtrack.
The latest—and possibly last—promotional clip for the movie was released on WB's YouTube page and it is a dramatic, nearly six-minute sequence that opens the movie and shows how Babydoll (Emily Browning) ends up in the sadistic Lennox House psychiatric facility that she later plots to escape from. The clip is set to a moody cover of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" and is performed by Browning herself.
watch the new clip >> Posted 04.05.11 by BrentJS -
| Title | Weekend | Total | Analysis |
| Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules | $24.4M | $24.4M | Sequel to last year's surprise hit already profitable ($21M budget). |
| Sucker Punch | $19.0M | $19.0M | 2nd place finish to a kids' movie sequel has to be a disappointment. |
| Limitless | $15.2M | $41.3M | Small Week 2 drop-off. Perhaps a result of Cooper-Zellweger split? |
| The Lincoln Lawyer | $11.0M | $29.0M | 4th place for 2nd week in a row! |
| Rango | $9.8M | $106.4M | At $106M, now 2011's top-grossing movie. |
Posted 03.28.11 by reelz -
Writer-director Zack Snyder's (300, Watchmen) new genre-bending action movie, Sucker Punch, opened nationwide last night. While it contained plenty of action-packed footage of Babydoll (Emily Browning) and her four fellow patients—Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Amber (Jamie Chung) and Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish)—of the sadistic Lennox House mental hospital fighting dragons, orcs, zombie cyborgs and robots in breath-taking fantasy worlds, there was at least one scene that did not make it into the final cut. In a recent interview with Nylon (via CinemaBlend), Browning unleashed her anger at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for forcing Snyder to edit a love scene between Babydoll and High Roller (Jon Hamm) or risk losing the movie's PG-13 rating.
read what browning had to say about the cut scene >> Posted 03.26.11 by BrentJS -
Before you head to the theaters to see writer-director Zack Snyder's (300, Watchmen) new action movie, Sucker Punch, which opens nationwide today, check out this fourth animated short set in one of the fantastical landscapes that Babydoll (Emily Browning) and her femme force—Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Amber (Jamie Chung) and Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish)—hack, slash, and rat-a-tat their way through in order to find the five keys that will lead to their salvation. The first animated short took us to a WWI-esque battlefield populated by cyborg zombie soldiers; the second animated short sent us back to a medieval world filled with knights, orcs and dragons; and the third animated short flung us across the universe to a "Distant Planet" where robots ferment rebellion. In the new animated short, we head off to a feudal world where towering demonic samurai reign.
watch the new animated short >> Posted 03.25.11 by BrentJS -
Reviews for director Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch generally break down along generational and fanboy/non-fanboy lines. Consider them accordingly.
"In the end, it may be a case of style over substance, but what a brilliant bit of technique it truly is."
— Bill Gibron, filmcritic.com"It's as if the filmmakers took a poll at Comic-Con of all the elements attendees seek in a movie — starlets in skimpy outfits adept at hand-to-hand combat; Nazi robot monsters; elaborate fantasy worlds; a wise mentor figure who adopts many forms; cabaret-style covers of New Wave hits; and why not throw in Don Draper while you're at it? — then combined them all in the ultimate fanboy mash-up."
— Nathan Rabin, Onion AV Club"Misleadingly positioned as female empowerment despite clearly having been hatched as fantasy fodder for 13-year-old guys, this sensory-overload exercise tarts up six actresses in service of various Heavy Metal-style scenarios — a setup likely to sucker fanboys while leaving those who crave humanity and good old-fashioned storytelling feeling like cavemen who've stumbled into Times Square."
— Peter Debruge, Variety"The explosions, spearings, decapitations and all-out mayhem, much of it executed with the sort of elegant moves and delayed aerial suspension pioneered in The Matrix, will delight fans who crave this sort of thing from movies above all else."
— Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter"...a random mishmash of juvenile ideas without a single lucid thread to hold them together..."
— Nick Schager, Slant Magazine -
Director Zack Snyder's (300, Watchmen) highly-anticipated new movie, Sucker Punch, opens tomorrow and Warner Bros. has released a third animated short to help flesh out the exotic, genre-mashed fantasy world(s) that Babydoll (Emily Browning) and her four friends—Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Amber (Jamie Chung) and Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish)—must navigate in order to find the five keys that will help them escape from their real-world hell in the Lennox House insane asylum. The first animated short, "The Trenches," revealed a WWI-esque battlefield filled with cyborg zombies, while the second animated short, "Dragon," contained a landscape populated by knights, orcs and dragons. The new short, "Distant Planet," propels the action to a faraway world in which impoverished robots fight against the robot rich.
watch the new animated short >> Posted 03.24.11 by BrentJS -
With the debut of writer-director Zack Snyder's new genre-bending action movie, Sucker Punch, less than a week away, Warner Bros. continues its aggressive promotional campaign for the movie by releasing a collection of set photos, via EW, that shows more of the green screen action glimpsed in EW's recent set video, as well as several shots of Snyder doing his directing thing. Additionally, five new preview clips from the movie have been released online.
watch the new preview clips >> Posted 03.20.11 by BrentJS