BONUS DAY: Best Video Game Movie
I know I've missed a day or two now, but I was watching other people finish up their lists and wanted to do a bonus day too. Also, I just got Beyond Good and Evil HD. So, you know. Also, I just saw Sucker Punch, and it's the best Video Game Movie ever made.
Watching the first ten minutes of Sucker Punch reminded me, much like the first ten minutes of any Zach Snyder film, how much the man understands about camera work and film direction. Say what you will about his scripts, his casts or some of the decisions made in the films themselves, but the man speaks film better than most of his peers.
Think about the opening scene of Dawn of the Dead, his first film. Sarah Polley comes home, everything is normal, then, nothing is normal ever again. The overhead shot of the zombies chewing apart the neighborhood as she drives away is remarkable in how much it says without dialog.
The opening scene of Sucker Punch is the same. The only words spoken are a faint "NO! NOOOOO!" as a girl mourns her dead mother. That's it. No one tells us who the two girls in the scene are, no one tells us who the threatening fat man is. We understand just by looking at the scene that a mother died and left her two daughters. Her will says that she left her daughters all her possessions, and from the man's reactions, we understand his character motivation.
The entire opening scene is done sans dialog, and a small part of me wanted the entire movie to carry that on. How daring would that be? Release what is basically a feature length music video montage/interpretive dance film in the theater, in April, worldwide. That would be awesome, at least in theory.
Once the characters started speaking, however, I lost a little bit. The actors aren't terrible, but they aren't great, and the dialog isn't the worst I've heard, but it sure isn't good either. The acting and dialog serve one purpose, however, the same purpose they serve in any other story told in this medium: They move the plot forward so you can control your avatar through a series of endlessly creative, anachronistic areas in order to find the key, or the map, or the wing boots, or the boomerang, or the Darkness Guns or the etc. etc. etc.
Sucker Punch has taken the title of Best Video Game movie from Crank and its sequel by not only being the best film adaptation of a video game, but by being the best video game set to film. What Snyder has done here is remarkable. He has taken the plots and scripts that millions of us eat up and rave about and adore, and he made one and then played it for us.
It's always kind of jarring to take a step back from a video game, to watch scenes from it without having the experience of actually playing it. Watching video clips of game moments I love, I sometimes get... embarrassed by them. Without actually being involved in the moment, the writing frequently feels stilted, lazy, unimaginative. Because the games that stand out have a lot of artistry in every other aspect. The music might be great, or the environments are beautiful and well designed. Maybe the game itself is so satisfying to experience that the poor writing or convoluted story gets kind of ignored, or maybe just forgiven subconsciously.
And that might just be the one place Sucker Punch fails. Because you're not experiencing this video game first hand (Snyder is playing it for you), Scott Glenn's mission assignments sound really dumb. "The commander has the map. He's over in that bunker. But first you have to do Sub Mission A and then, if you want, Optional Mission B, but make sure you get to him before he gets away and you fail your mission." But even here, the action is so well choreographed that I couldn't help but be drawn in.
And that's another thing that Snyder has over many of his contemporaries. He understand spatial relations and, more importantly, he understands how to make US understand what he's showing us. In the action scenes, rarely is there a moment when we are not fully aware of the surroundings. Some if it is simple. For example, in the temple, someone is shooting a chain gun at our heroine. We know she has to get to the door, which is where the thing is standing, shooting at her. From the direction of the bullets, we always know where she is in relation to the door.
Other times, it's more complicated, but just as nice to see. In the dragon flight chase, there's always enough background, due in part to the flyover at the beginning of the shot, to know where the things are in relation to each other.
There's no shaky-cam here, there's no disorientation. He seems to understand that the audience wants to know what is going on all the time.
The final thing that struck me, the thing that I perhaps enjoyed most in this film, is the close attention to detail. There are great shots in the opening scene that speak directly to you, the viewer. A guards knocks on a glass window with his lighter, striking a sign that says "In case of fire, all doors open". The character is knocking on the glass without thinking, but you see the obvious connection and you see what the main character is after. The four "items" (yes, Scott Glenn even calls them "items") are shown to you before you know what you're looking at. You just know they're important.
Along the same lines, the movie works under the GI Joe Principle: make the bad guys anything but human and you can kill as many as you want. So, in every fantasy sequence, the villains are robots, steam powered Nazis or monsters. The only human character (the courier) is spared by the hero. It's a nice touch, and also shows the director's desire to keep the film PG-13.
There's a strange innocence to the entire film as well. As there should be. It all takes place in the girl's mind. She never kills anyone, even in her fantasies. There are allusions to what the girls all do at the burlesque show, but no one comes right out and says they're whores. There's no talk of police or, even as she's setting the last girl free, no talk about escaping and sending for help. There's just this immature, sheltered fantasy, and I appreciated that a lot.
Sucker Punch isn't a great movie. It's not even really a good one. What is is the best video game I've ever watched someone else play and it's the best video game movie we've ever had. It stays true to what makes the hit games hit games, but it doesn't have to shoehorn in Abobo or get a famous person to be M. Bison.
And, perhaps even more remarkable, it's an original IP. It's Snyder's original idea, not based on a book or a movie or a game or a comic. It's an original work, which, in the action/fun times world, is getting harder and harder to find these days.
Watching the first ten minutes of Sucker Punch reminded me, much like the first ten minutes of any Zach Snyder film, how much the man understands about camera work and film direction. Say what you will about his scripts, his casts or some of the decisions made in the films themselves, but the man speaks film better than most of his peers.
Think about the opening scene of Dawn of the Dead, his first film. Sarah Polley comes home, everything is normal, then, nothing is normal ever again. The overhead shot of the zombies chewing apart the neighborhood as she drives away is remarkable in how much it says without dialog.
The opening scene of Sucker Punch is the same. The only words spoken are a faint "NO! NOOOOO!" as a girl mourns her dead mother. That's it. No one tells us who the two girls in the scene are, no one tells us who the threatening fat man is. We understand just by looking at the scene that a mother died and left her two daughters. Her will says that she left her daughters all her possessions, and from the man's reactions, we understand his character motivation.
The entire opening scene is done sans dialog, and a small part of me wanted the entire movie to carry that on. How daring would that be? Release what is basically a feature length music video montage/interpretive dance film in the theater, in April, worldwide. That would be awesome, at least in theory.
Once the characters started speaking, however, I lost a little bit. The actors aren't terrible, but they aren't great, and the dialog isn't the worst I've heard, but it sure isn't good either. The acting and dialog serve one purpose, however, the same purpose they serve in any other story told in this medium: They move the plot forward so you can control your avatar through a series of endlessly creative, anachronistic areas in order to find the key, or the map, or the wing boots, or the boomerang, or the Darkness Guns or the etc. etc. etc.
Sucker Punch has taken the title of Best Video Game movie from Crank and its sequel by not only being the best film adaptation of a video game, but by being the best video game set to film. What Snyder has done here is remarkable. He has taken the plots and scripts that millions of us eat up and rave about and adore, and he made one and then played it for us.
It's always kind of jarring to take a step back from a video game, to watch scenes from it without having the experience of actually playing it. Watching video clips of game moments I love, I sometimes get... embarrassed by them. Without actually being involved in the moment, the writing frequently feels stilted, lazy, unimaginative. Because the games that stand out have a lot of artistry in every other aspect. The music might be great, or the environments are beautiful and well designed. Maybe the game itself is so satisfying to experience that the poor writing or convoluted story gets kind of ignored, or maybe just forgiven subconsciously.
And that might just be the one place Sucker Punch fails. Because you're not experiencing this video game first hand (Snyder is playing it for you), Scott Glenn's mission assignments sound really dumb. "The commander has the map. He's over in that bunker. But first you have to do Sub Mission A and then, if you want, Optional Mission B, but make sure you get to him before he gets away and you fail your mission." But even here, the action is so well choreographed that I couldn't help but be drawn in.
And that's another thing that Snyder has over many of his contemporaries. He understand spatial relations and, more importantly, he understands how to make US understand what he's showing us. In the action scenes, rarely is there a moment when we are not fully aware of the surroundings. Some if it is simple. For example, in the temple, someone is shooting a chain gun at our heroine. We know she has to get to the door, which is where the thing is standing, shooting at her. From the direction of the bullets, we always know where she is in relation to the door.
Other times, it's more complicated, but just as nice to see. In the dragon flight chase, there's always enough background, due in part to the flyover at the beginning of the shot, to know where the things are in relation to each other.
There's no shaky-cam here, there's no disorientation. He seems to understand that the audience wants to know what is going on all the time.
The final thing that struck me, the thing that I perhaps enjoyed most in this film, is the close attention to detail. There are great shots in the opening scene that speak directly to you, the viewer. A guards knocks on a glass window with his lighter, striking a sign that says "In case of fire, all doors open". The character is knocking on the glass without thinking, but you see the obvious connection and you see what the main character is after. The four "items" (yes, Scott Glenn even calls them "items") are shown to you before you know what you're looking at. You just know they're important.
Along the same lines, the movie works under the GI Joe Principle: make the bad guys anything but human and you can kill as many as you want. So, in every fantasy sequence, the villains are robots, steam powered Nazis or monsters. The only human character (the courier) is spared by the hero. It's a nice touch, and also shows the director's desire to keep the film PG-13.
There's a strange innocence to the entire film as well. As there should be. It all takes place in the girl's mind. She never kills anyone, even in her fantasies. There are allusions to what the girls all do at the burlesque show, but no one comes right out and says they're whores. There's no talk of police or, even as she's setting the last girl free, no talk about escaping and sending for help. There's just this immature, sheltered fantasy, and I appreciated that a lot.
Sucker Punch isn't a great movie. It's not even really a good one. What is is the best video game I've ever watched someone else play and it's the best video game movie we've ever had. It stays true to what makes the hit games hit games, but it doesn't have to shoehorn in Abobo or get a famous person to be M. Bison.
And, perhaps even more remarkable, it's an original IP. It's Snyder's original idea, not based on a book or a movie or a game or a comic. It's an original work, which, in the action/fun times world, is getting harder and harder to find these days.