Best Snyder movie so far. Sadly it is deeply misunderstood. Movie is way more deeper and complex than it looks like on first glance.
People don't realize Sweet Pea is the protagonist, Babydoll is a figment of Sweet Pea’s imagination. Babydoll does not exist. Babydoll's story is Sweet Pea’s story. Sweet Pea was sexually abused, killed her sister and is in psychiatric hospital in therapy. Babydoll is Sweet Pea's avatar. Way of dealing with grief, with guilt, and way to manage her current situation and overcome it. Babydoll is also Sweet Pea's guardian angel.
Sweet Pea is the only fully rounded character, other girls represent aspects of her psyche. Babydoll represents strength and courage, Amber loyalty, Blondie fear, and Rocket represents guilt. In the third level reality her psyche fights for the things to get her free from her current state. Second guardian angel (the Wise Man) guides her through. To fully recover she needs to get over her guilt (Rocket dies as a symbol), also other girls represent things which she needs to leave behind to fully recover .
Babydoll is one of those things. She is the fifth thing (“The fifth is a mystery. It is the reason. It is the goal. It will be a deep sacrifice and a perfect victory.”). Lobotomy of Babydoll represents Sweet Pea’s mind of taking control. Sweet Pea needs to sacrifice Babydoll to be “cured”. Escape at the end is a symbol of that process of being cured. That’s why the driver is the Wise Man, he guides her further.
Sucker Punch is Sweet Pea’s journey from “madness” to “sanity”. Movie is philosophical / psychological investigation wrapped in a special effects action-fantasy. As the movie changes realities (mostly in the third reality), Snyder uses more fetishized image of the girls. He uses clichés and cluttered iconography (nazi zombies, sexy schoolgirls). It is a way to detached and disconnected characters from second reality. Second reality, the brothel, is the “main” reality. In which everything happens.
Imogen Poots is the most beautiful girl i've seen in my whole life. Seriously
What a tragic story Davey Sacatino's is. And in a way, Tony's story is tragic here too. Hell, so is Meadow's and Davey's son Eric's. Davey's a guy who clearly has a problem, and while Tony's right -- he makes his own choices and they're dumb ones and he has no one to blame but himself, but Tony lets him pursue those urges. Even though Tony wants to keep Davey's iron out of the fire, even though he tries to dissuade him, once the die is cast, he reluctantly does his job. And he realizes how it affects his daughter just a little, even if it angers him.
And he's right when he yells at her. Not to yell, but the point that he makes. Everything Meadow has comes from her father's business. It may not be as unmediated or clear as her friend's car, but everything she has is tainted in the same way. It's no fault of hers, but she seems hurt by the realization in the same way that Eric is frustrated by it. Tony seems frustrated by it too. A lot of the first season seemed to deal with Tony having to harmonize his family life and his work life, and against his almost best efforts, here they are colliding again.
When Tony is reflecting with his crew that he remembers his dad and Uncle Junior running the game when they were kids, there's a sense that it was supposed to be something more than this. This is supposed to be an achievement for Tony, and instead it just causes another headache and makes him have to do something he didn't want to do. Like the Happy Wanderer, Tony should be carefree now that he's at the top of the game. But the Executive Game is a microcasm - it's the trophy he wanted, but it doesn't make him happy.
Oh my! It's Lagertha :D
The last 10 minutes of this episode is probably one of the most powerful endings I've ever seen! Gave me goosebumps!
Watching this episode, I couldn't help but be totally distracted by the fact that they recast Daario Naharis.
Money money money. The title says it all, this is an episode about repaying debts, whether it's Junior's debts to his lawyers, the capos' debts to their boss, Tony's debt to his family, or even Chris's different kind of debt to his mother and father.
It's also about the downturn. Carmella says this all has to come to an end, and there's the pall from that sentiment hanging over the episode. Things aren't looking so good for once, and there's a sense that the grasshoppers and ladybugs should start storing food for winter.
I'll admit I didn't love the episode. There was a lot of set up for things that I expect will come later. But it was an interesting salvo for the fourth season.
This one was pretty interesting. Paulie is back around and making a stink again. Adrianna's well-meaning but half-baked plan to escape from the FBI's grasp by marrying Chris was a tidy, heartbreaking little storyline, especially Chris's shitbag response to finding out that she might be unable to have children.
The business with the HUD scam felt like something out of The Wire more than The Sopranos, but just because it was still pretty great and unnerving to see the buck passed and passed until terror rained down on the downtrodden folks in the crackhouse. It was in many ways the strongest part of the episode. (I especially liked Maurice, who was equally great in his role as Ben Urich on Netflix's Daredevil) That said, the related stuff with Tony and Zellman felt weaker. It's hard to say why, and maybe it's just a sign of Tony not being able to restrain himself with what he thinks it his, but it was still a little eh.
This was just brilliant. Too brilliant, in fact.
Trust me, if you've seen it, it's worth the extra 25 minutes to watch this video that explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9AWkqRwd1I
So did Tony die or didn't he? I think he did. I think the suddenness of the cut to black and the previous flashback to his conversation with Bobby that you don't see or hear death nods in that direction. But I also think it doesn't really matter. The point, if I may be so bold, is that the end doesn't necessarily come on schedule. It can come at any time, when you least expect it, when you're not thinking about it, in the heightened moments when you fear for your life at a safe house with an assault rifle draped across your stomach, or when you're feeling safe and enjoying a family meal at a diner.
We try to ignore that fact, to try to live as though it weren't true. You pretty much have to in order to keep living any semblance of a real life. But Tony, more than most people, lives, as Carmella notes, with a sword of damocles hanging over his head at all times. And that means that we should, as Tony once said and as AJ reminds him, remember the good times, to try to enjoy those sweet moments when we have them because we don't know how long they might last or how many opportunities we may have to find them again. It's existentialist, but a surprisingly optimistic take on it for this show.
Drawing back to the title, there's always been something the show posits as quintessentially American about Tony. In the final scene, they surround him with Americana at the diner: the friendly young couple, the cub scout troupe, the sports hero murals on the walls. Even Tony is assembling his nuclear family. He's from an immigrant family, considers himself self-made and both proud of his heritage and a part of the melting pot. Is Tony himself an aging superpower, or am I reading too much into it here?
The finale spends more time with AJ than I might prefer. But it also shows that as much as Tony wanted it, his kids cannot really escape his orbit. AJ is naive and misguided for the most part, and certainly insanely self-pitying, but he also shows a (again naive) sense of understanding about the greater tragedies in the world. His method of trying to help is an interesting one, but also a hard one, which is not typically the Sopranos way. Instead, his parents ply him with a cushy job (as the equivalent of a D-Girl, as Chris might say). And suddenly his concerns about the material world seem to drift away. He may not be a mobster, but he can be corrupted.
And Meadow has given up Tony's dream for her - becoming a pediatrician, and helping little babies. (The episode does lean hard into the "sociopaths like babies and pets" idea between this and the cat.). Instead, she's going to become a civil rights lawyers, and Tony can see her representing folks like him, marrying another mobster, and being pulled into a life he did not want for her. If there's a persistent theme to these series, it's not simply about the difficulty of changing on a personal level, it's about it on a generational level, how we carry the baggage of our parents and grandparents and other generations past, that makes it difficult to escape from their orbit. The show is a little blunt about it when Meadow says that if she hadn't seen her father dragged away so many times civil rights wouldn't be such a salient concern for her, but it's an interesting idea.
Indeed, another theme the show has kept close and blossoms in this episode is the idea that Tony taints whatever he touches. AJ is back to being a spoiled brat. Meadow is too much in the world of the mob to truly escape it. Carmela long ago figured out that she was in too deep to pull out of the life she had made with Tony. Agent Harris has gone native, cheering on the NJ crime family when he hears that Phil has been executed. Paulie talks about taking time off, but instead agrees to skipper the construction crew. And as he hits out in front of Satriale's, there are a lot of empty tables there with him.
So when the episode cuts to black, do we see a man about to get his just deserts, a tumor in the lives of friends and family being removed, or have we simply ended our time with a man who will go on to face a weapons charge? I have my thoughts on it, but more importantly than the outcome is the idea behind it. We don't know whether Tony lived or died, just like we don't know when the end is coming. There are perilous forces in the world like Tony Soprano who result in people like the motorcyclist from the last episode dying, or the comare and her father, who have no reason to suspect they'd be impacted by these events in this way. You can live the high-powered life of Junior Soprano and still have who you are taken away by forces beyond your control. Value the good times, David Chase & Co. seem to say, because we live in a state of sudden uncertainty, where the cut to black could come without warning or fanfare, and those moments become all we have, or had.
Seriously? This junk really won awards? It's not even a movie. More like a crappy CGI test demo where nothing exciting happens the whole way through. The only thing I remember is Clooney trying to hit on Bullock. Fail.
Didn't laugh a single time. What has this show become? :/
Hurr Hurr girls talking about geeky things. How weird. Oh they talked about rom coms, it's back to 'normal' now.
Really not sure why I'm still watching this show. It's just insulting, the jokes stopped being funny long ago and the only likable characters are usually the butt of the jokes. I'll be surprised if I finish the season coz I'm done with this show.
i'm not up to date on Game of thrones (yea I said it lol) and there was a few spoilers that ruined the fun for me.
The structure was a mess. Any enjoyment I would have had in the movie is ruined by how poorly scripted it was.
From the first scene, which steals the beginning from Apollo 13, I couldn't stop comparing both films. Both based on true stories so unbelievable that you wouldn't be wrong in thinking they were from a movie script and both with Tom Hanks playing the commander of a ship.
But while Apollo 13 is a masterfully piece in how to maintain tension and drama when there's no Bad Guy and we all know the happy ending, Sully relies on the crutches of every other Hollywood trope and makes up villains out of ordinary people who did their job well and tries to insinuate a reveal that never really pans out.
There are some effective moments in seeing capable people passionate of their jobs helping others working like clockwork to save lives. But those few moments aren't enough to save this train wreck of a movie.
this episode was the most annoying piece of sh*t i ever had to endure.
I see you shiver with antici......................pation
That last scene. That's the show i fell in love with.
WOW!! This episode was so intense!! I wanna see John meeting his daughter again now that she know who he is. And Morgan being supportive and saying those nice things to her about John was also really sweet.
And now to think that the A team is taken and they need help.
I so need to see Morgan, Devon and Ellie saving Team Bartowski!! It's going to be awesome!
Felt really sorry about Chuck's dad! :( And poor Ellie and Chuck had to watch it
"My death comes without apology." But who is the one-eyed man who told them that Ragnar really is dead? Anyone?
Claire finally broke the 4th wall .Probably the best season so far.
we don't submit to the terror. we make the terror.
I don't know why it took so long for me to watch this, but I'm glad I did. It's a pretty enjoyable thriller. Looking forward to seeing the rest of the movies, by now it's like 4 or 5 of them, ha ha
No idea if anybody realised this, but at the end of the episode, while in the brothel, there's a song playing in the background. A song that, if anybody has seen Outlander (series) would recognise. The intro, that starts with "Sing me a song, of a lass that is gone..."
Knowing that Bear McCreary composes the soundtrack for both shows explains it. But still, it was cool to recognise it.
Quite a weak story here I thought. Even in the 24th century women seem to be all too easily swept off their feet by a guy with a nice smile
I'm sure many would disagree, but this is the first episode of TNG which I would describe as good, or indeed watchable at all. Up to this point it's a confused mess of cheesy storytelling and awkward dialogue. The Klingon stories are always fun, and while this isn't the first Klingon focused episode of the series, it's certainly setting the template for what was to come. It looks great and benefits from the excellent Klingon ship set built for the feature films.
I actually remember the first time I saw this episode, late night on Sky One. I was a kid and should have been in bed but I was captivated by it, and recognised it as being of higher quality.
Riker is totally on form, showing his ability to adapt and even have fun with whatever situation is thrown at him. Great to see Brian Thompson in his first of several Trek roles, too.
That was really cool! I loved seeing more of the Klingon culture.
