Sucker Punch (film) - Release - Critical Reception - Depiction of Women

Depiction of Women

Sucker Punch also drew criticism for its depiction of women. Several critics described the movie as misogynistic and others expressed concern over its treatment of sexual violence. Monika Bartyzel of Moviefone writes, "The women of Zack Snyder's 'Sucker Punch' are not empowered. Though they are given vicious snarls, swords and guns, the leading ladies of Snyder's latest are nothing more than cinematic figures of enslavement given only the most minimal fight. Their rebellion is one of imaginative whimsy in a heavily misogynistic world that is barely questioned or truly challenged." Michael Phillips of The Chicago Tribune stated that "Zack Snyder must have known in preproduction that his greasy collection of near-rape fantasies and violent revenge scenarios disguised as a female-empowerment fairy tale wasn't going to satisfy anyone but himself." St. Petersburg Times critic Steve Persall found that the most offensive fact about the film was that it "suggests that all this objectification of women makes them stronger. It's supposed to be reassuring that men who beat, berate, molest and kill these women will get what's coming to them. Just wait, Snyder says, but in the meantime here's another femininity insult to keep you occupied." A. O. Scott of The New York Times described the film as a "fantasia of misogyny" that pretends to be a "feminist fable of empowerment" and found that the film's treatment of sexual violence was problematic and believes the target audience as a whole is in favour of it. Peter Debruge of Variety argued that the film is "misleadingly positioned as female empowerment despite clearly having been hatched as fantasy fodder for 13-year-old guys" and that the fact that the young women in the movie are "under constant threat of being raped or murdered" makes the film "highly inappropriate for young viewers."

However, Betsy Sharkey of The Los Angeles Times suggested that the film neither objectifies nor empowers women and that instead it is a "wonderfully wild provocation – an imperfect, overlong, intemperate and utterly absorbing romp through the id that I wouldn't have missed for the world." In a retrospective article about the critical reception of Sucker Punch, James MacDowell questioned the alleged misogyny of the film, arguing that it does not in fact aim to offer female empowerment, but is instead "a deeply pessimistic analysis of female oppression", because it makes clear that, "just as men organize the dances, so do they control the terms of the fight scenes; in neither do the women have true agency, only an illusion of it." Writing in a separate piece for The A.V. Club months after giving the film a "C-" grade, Nathan Rabin concluded, "Depending on whom you ask, Snyder set out to make either the ultimate sexist masturbatory fanboy fantasy or the ultimate critique of sexist masturbatory fanboy fantasies. He failed spectacularly on both counts, but in true Fiasco form, there's something fascinating and even strangely majestic about that failure." Scott Mendelsohn of The Huffington Post called the film a "bitterly sad and angrily feminist mini-epic", and said that while it presents scenes of "matter-of-fact lechery from men towards women that is an accepted norm in our society, both then and now", it "earns kudos for daring to actually be about something relevant and interesting. It is actually very much about the sexualization of women in popular culture, rather than just using those tools to make pointless exploitation fare." Patrick Bromley of DVD Verdict posited that Sucker Punch uses the "prism of popular culture to say something about the roles that women find themselves forced into—and not just in the fantasies of geeks and fanboys". Bromley further judged that the film is "about fighting a losing battle. About using every tool at your disposal, be it sexuality or physical strength or wit or the ability to band together to fight a common enemy—the tool of Sisterhood—and about how that still isn't enough."