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.
Surprised this movie isn't as remembered or revered from the 1980's pop culture as others. It was a very big deal back when it was released. Still the only time Bugs Bunny & Mickey Mouse have appeared on screen together--even though both studios (Warner Bros & Disney) were so insistent that one character not get more time than the other that had to appear in the scenes together, just to make sure (same thing with Donald & Daffy Duck--that's how we got "dueling pianos".)
I liked this movie when it came out. Still has tons of good quotable lines, memorable original characters (Roger, Jessica, the weasels, Bennie the cab, Baby Herman). The only reason I can think of that this movie isn't more ingrained in pop culture is that it was just a little too adult for the youngest viewers at the time it came out, which wouldn't make much of a difference in today's society, but it did then.
Still, it has Mel Blanc (it may have been one of his final movies), Frank Sinatra, the original voice of Betty Boop...the original voice of Megatron from "Transformers" (Frank Welker) as Dumbo, some hilarious easter eggs, and is a great sendup of the films & cartoons of days gone by. (Bonus: Bart Simpson's voice was the voice of the squeaky toon shoe that gets "dipped")
In some ways, this movie was ahead of its time. I kind of see some parallels between "Roger Rabbit" & "Ready Player One" in its homage to past pop culture but also sending it up a little bit at the same time.
I jumped the gun a bit last week, before I realized there was one more episode to go, however, I will reiterate what I opined, and second what @Edward stated, that is, that, barring some colossal act of contrition and repentance, Ash has pretty much been lost to the Dark Side, and is indeed irredeemable. What's worse is that she is so blinded by her misplaced hatred and irrational vendetta against (specifically) Gary and (by proxy) the Team Squad, that she has joined forces with the genocidal Mass Murderer that actually DID kill her ADOPTED brother Fox. On TOP of that, she turned on Mooncake, which as @Edward also opined, is akin to killing(?) a PUPPY, and wearing its flayed carcass for a hat! If it is indeed true, then, there is NO coming back from that! Hopefully though, Mooncake, being comprised mainly of energy, which was needed to release Invictus, can somehow separate himself and re-corporeate somewhere down the road.
(Chookitty Paak! So say we all....)
Interestingly, Lil Cato found room in his heart to forgive his adopted father, Avocato for offing his birth parents, because, seeing baby Cato, and deciding to spare him and raise him as his own was what had given him the strength of will to become a better man then the pure mercenary killer he was before. In fact, ALL of the Team Squad have previously shown self-centered tendencies at one point or the other, but, they have grown and developed to learn, that, as another Alien amongst humans once explained, "the good of the many, outweigh the good of the few, or the one". Ash, on the other hand, has retrogressed inversely, becoming more and more self-centered, following the trope that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Once she has destroyed all her "enemies" and broken all her toys, she will have no purpose, unless she plans on trying to take on Invictus for the title of biggest Azzhat in the Universe.
Kudos to Biscuit for being the cutest stand in for Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in Final, or any other realm of space. We, just need Sheryl or Gary to demand, "Biscuit, we need MORE POWER!!!!" To which his reply would of course be, "I'm givin er all she's got!"
Thanks Quinn, for putting another loop in the bendiness of the timey whimey wibbly wobbly and becoming NightQuinn, or QuinnFall, or...., nevermind. There is no fate but what we make...
...And last but never least, KVN for willingly being the annoying comic relief for 3 seasons, but finally getting his moment to show them what he's made of, and, apparently it's pretty STURDY stuff.
See you all next season!!!!
[9.1/10] A hell of a finish to this two-parter. I like the way this turns into a Frankenstein story. The idea that Rossum turned to A.I. due to the death of his daughter in a car accident, an effort to fix humans’ errors in judgment, and things go to far is a great theme and reveal to support this one. And you can feel the Asimov influence on it, with Hardac taking that basic premise of reducing human errors in judgment and taking it too far, until it’s outright replacing humans with his “perfect” robotic duplicates.
Only those robots are creepy as all hell! I love the direction and animation on this. I gasped when HARDAC’s beam struck Rossum. My eyes went wide when Batman tossed robo-Bullock into the bat-signal and electrocution followed. And my skin crawled when one of HARDAC’s goons rotated his head around and started skittering like an insect. Throw in multiple tension-filled elevator sequences, some really cool effects with the beam, electricity, and explosions, and the overall spooky atmosphere that lends an ominous tone to everything, and you have a visual delight of an episode.
This one also works better as a coming out party for Barbara Gordon as a crime fighter. Her taking matters into her own hands when she knows deep down that the man in Jim Gordon’s chair is not her father is a great motivation. And while some of her moves are a little gendered, like using make-up powder to figure out the keypad or a pocket mirror to deflect a laser beam, it still shows her as brave and resourceful.
Again, tone plays such an important role in this one. Kevin Altieri’s direction does a lot of the work, but even when parts of the plot feel a tad convenient (like things blowing up right when they need to), the general vibe of a rogue A.I. that no one can control, the half-blown off faces haunting us in the foreground, and the sense of a remorseless machine exerting its will give this one a charge, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Overall, this is another sterling, mood-ridden outing for the show, that takes an outsized premise and finds the gripping horror of it.
[7.4/10] There’s a really interesting recurring motif in B:TAS, where very of the bad guys are just inherently bad or choose to do evil for evil’s sake. Instead, most of them have been screwed over by some mob and/or corporate type who pushes them over the edge and leaves them out for revenge. That’s definitely the case for Edward Nygma, who makes a best-selling computer game and is screwed out of royalties by a generic, Gordon Gecko-aping eighties guy. That, and Nygma’s preexisting fascination with puzzles, is what turns him to a life of crime, not any bargain basement megalomania or mustache-twirling villainy.
That adds an extra wrinkle to all of the proceedings here. Riddler is a dangerous individual (who, I think, rounds out appearances from all the major members of Batman’s traditional rogues gallery), but he’s also someone whose anger is a little righteous, whose cast as someone doing the wrong thing but for understandable reasons, which makes him and his cohort more interesting than the standard issue bad guy.
The big problem here, though, is that his riddle and plots are a bit unimpressive. The cool thing about The Riddler is that he nominally challenges Batman on brains, not braun. That means the Caped Crusader has to use his wits to defeat his foe, not just his ninja or even his detective skills But the riddles here feel like odd leaps of logic or stuff you just have to know, which makes Batman’s eventual triumphs seem pre-ordained rather than clever. Really, only Robin figuring that the “C” key is the right one because it has no sharps feels like a smart question and answer. Bits about “maize” equaling “maze” and other similar bits just feel arbitrary.
At the same time, while I can appreciate the cosmic irony of Riddler trying to wreak his vengeance on his former, corporate shark boss by forcing him into a real life version of the digital maze that made him famous, the whole thing strains believability, even for an outsized show like this one. Plus, more often than not, Batman’s solutions come from using his vambrace computer rather than any deductive reasoning, and beating braininess with more advanced tech doesn't have the same ring to it.
Still, John Glover does a good job at selling Riddler’s superciliousness and thirst for revenge against the suit who screwed him over. And the final note, of his former boss surviving but living in constant fear, while Riddler escapes, is a nice way to show Riddler “winning” even when he more or less loses.
On the whole, I walked away from this one wishing we’d gotten a better chess match between Batman and The Riddler, but there’s more than enough meat here to be entertaining.
