Thor and Fucking Suckerpunch

Fucking Suckerpunch. Recently I sat down to watch the new movies Thor and Fucking Suckerpunch. There is no particular connection between the two films other than the fact that I watched them at the same time. They also seem to share a theme of being non love stories. There is no love story in Suckerpunch, and the romance of Thor played out more like what you imagine a god's might be. Instant absolute adoration of a mere mortal. I have heard some saying that Natalie Portman might as well have been masturbating on screen, but I ask you? How would you feel meeting one of the gods? Zues, A Yama King, ..Thor. Even were you unsure of who he was you would still feel the power of the individual. Like I have said before; Everyone must have loved and respected Clark Kent. No matter how meek he may have been there is no way to hide that sense of confidence being invincible would bring. Being a god would change the way you looked at the world and change the way you carry yourself for the better.

One of the things I can say about Fucking Suckerpunch in light of Thor is that Fucking Suckerpunch does overtly what superhero movies should do in subtext. What I mean is that a super hero movie should be a metaphorical extrusion of the psychological realm into a dramatic play. I do not think that Thor pulled that element off very well. I felt like 'this is a god that came down to earth' which I think is very appropriate for this character. There is very little of the Hulk's inner rage being drawn large over Bruce Banner's frame. The Donald Blake transformation was thrown away for a nod, and what we had was not a complex modification of a social event ( I could stretch and say that Donald got a headwound or whatever and had amnesia and that caused them all to get arrested and then the final battle was a statement of facing the insanity of Donald's god complex, perhaps not amnesiac but definitely some sort of significant behavioral shift ) but an actual play of a 'deity' stepping out of the sky and walking the earth. How do you react to meeting one of the gods? Do you kneel? Do you pray? Do you start lauding the guy? I mean he is … an ancient … god … after all.

Fucking Suckerpunch and Thor are both rad fight battle movies. Without a doubt the combat was the best part of both of the two movies. Suckerpunch being the superior fighting movie without a doubt at all. Thor was allot of talk, sort of messianic by way of the the elder eddas, and there was some small statement on a society full of secrets and government control. 'They took my iPod' I think was a snort line from the lab assistant in Thor. Suckerpunch also wins the appropriate humor award. Thor managed to be decently heavy ( what with the war and the betrayals ) while at the same time cracking allot of corny lines. Cheesy. Good fun cheese hero movie. At no point did Thor even slightly deviate from the comedic hero. He was unstoppable. Never gave up. He found his lesson in the mud and the rain, and after kneeling he acknowledged that he was being immature ..at three thousand years old. Admittedly the majority of those centuries of god hood were spent in daily combat. That could also have been brought to play into Thor more better. Thor did a good job being a tactician, but if he had led an army in that final battle scene I would have absolutely loved it.

Except for the fail ending that reminded me of Wanted, Fucking Suckerpunch was marvelous in both the acting and the execution of intricately timed sequences. The battles were hyper metaphoric. Literally overt mental analogies as directly as the majority of the movie. The true tale is told in the first ten minutes of the story and the rest is clearly and plainly being told within the primary character's mind. Fucking Suckerpunch is like Finigan's Wake in that way. Babydoll is dreaming her life away, and even has a dream where dreaming is more than dreaming, because if she could dream her way out of her problems she would be set. She couldn't, but it was a marvelous ride of harlotry and hyper sensualized combat. I particularly liked the world war trench combat in which the four girls were fighting and posing together. For a moment I was reminded of the Battle Angel sequence from Sin City.

What I want to see from another Thor -or Avengers- is a more militantly minded Thor. This theme was not commonly used in comics because reading a list of tactical directives takes very little time on a comic page ( though I do not recall any real 'tactical' issues of the old Thor comics, that doesn't mean its not there as I have not read them all ) and for most people is relatively dry. Even giving speeches is something of a throwaway panel in a comic book. In a movie however.. In the Ultimates line of Thor the character was a literal deity walking the earth 'midguard' and he had a cult of followers. I want to see the cult and I want to see the three thousand year old guy telling the forty year olds how to win a war. I think that a Skrull invasion would be just plain great for the Avengers movie. We got an army of mutants to be working in the backdrop ( maybe do a news reel of Spiderman fighting in New York side by side with the Fantastic Four's Human torch ) Hulk, Iron Man, Cap, Thor … I say Dr Light, Spider Woman ( in this case I would go with a completely unrelated woman of a different name than either of the girls in the comic who is simply inspired by the idea of superman and happens to be a speedster as opposed to actual spider powers ), maybe Wonderman/Scarlet Witch/Vision, but it seems like five Avengers is right.

In fucking Suckerpunch, I would like an alternate ending, and back to Thor. Man it would be cool to be a fucking god. I mean you wouldn't be afraid of anything. You could have serious thoughts about ..like.. smiting cities. Walking into the lands of the dead. Calling thunder and lightning to do your bidding. I particularly like the digs. Thor was an amazing job of transforming the art nouveau line work of Kirby's costuming onto a three dimensional medium. I was half expecting a more primevil look, but no. We had hard core Eternals and Inhumans looking Viking Gods. Very nice. My initial bet would have been that it won't look good to try and capture that Kirby Eternals look, and I would have lost that bet. I would have liked to see a pair of super hot Valkeryies. Natalie and the girl who played Sif are nothing to sneeze at, but there was allot of manflesh action and not allot of Valkeryies. Basically what I am saying is take the babes out of fucking Suckerpunch and put them in Thor and we would have a mega uber movie.

Funnily enough Suckerpunch is a tragedy and Thor is a comedy. By that I mean Thor wins and Babydoll looses. Both are hard core action movies, and both have super aggrandized combat sequences. The ladies of Suckerpunch perform super human ninja moves, and Thor was pretty much Thor. The mega hammer action was very well done. Neither of them were a romance unless you consider a complete one sided form of hero worship to be romantic, and I believe both of them accomplished their goals very adequately. In Thor we have the comedic uber mensch standing tall as a bastion of self understanding and ever upward improvement as a great guy becomes even yet a better person, while in Suckerpunch we have a cautionary tale wrapped around a woman who you are able to almost forget is absolutely and unequivocally doomed. Suckerpunch's lilting ennui hides behind the clever action, while Thor's invincible optimism is blaring in four colors throughout the entire production. I do not foresee any sort of continuance of the Suckerpunch franchise, and of course I look foreword expectantly toward the making and release of The Avengers.