There is a new double standard in Hollywood, and it has nothing to do with gender or race. Instead it has to do with anything being remotely geeky instantly cast aside as fanboy wank instead of giving it a fair breakdown like any other film out there. It happened to Scott Pilgrim, and it is happening in spades to Sucker Punch.

Now this isn’t a crusade for Sucker Punch itself, as if it is some crown jewel that is being regarded as a mere stone tossed aside in a quarry. It’s a good film, but not great. The problem is how some small details are being blown out of proportion and being used to dismiss the whole product.

Yes, Sucker Punch has girls dressed up in a sexy manner. Yet this isn’t treated in an exploitative fashion. The film never really zooms in on the women’s curves and “assets” while they dress up in their burlesque outfits. Babydoll, the heroine, may dress up in a Japanese school girl uniform with a short skirt, and yes, it behaves as physics dictates during a fight. As a complete nerd that has seen enough anime loaded with panty-shots, however, I can tell you that Zack Snyder does nothing to call attention to it.

It’s a bit embarrassing to do this, but I’m going to break it down for you so it makes logical sense. First, when Babydoll leaps and spins over a rocket, you’re not paying attention to her underwear or legs or what have you. You’re watching the rocket fly by while the screen fills with fire, smoke and debris. Babydoll’s panties are exposed, but they are black and blend in with her outfit and thus no attention is really called to it. Unless you are intentionally looking to pay attention, you won’t see it. In this day and age where a simple Google search can reveal pictures of anything, I can’t see anyone being so desperate.

Compare this with anime, where the panties are always right in the middle of a screen and of a color that clashes with the rest of the girl’s ensemble and you get genuine exploitation. Sucker Punch doesn’t treat it as a focal point. In fact, Zack Snyder uses the same mentality he used for Dr. Manhattan’s wang in Watchmen. Sex-related stuff is everywhere, you can’t avoid it, but you don’t have to pay attention to it either.

Which is the sense I get from Sucker Punch. Girls are dressed in burlesque outfits that show off their body in nearly every scene, but it isn’t ever brought into the foreground. It’s just there. The girls wear clothes, and it just so happens to be sexy.

Zack Snyder’s focus is more in line with that of Orson Welles and his direction of Citizen Kane. Every shot is planned ahead of time, either to portray meaning or to just have enough to look at that each image is almost a perfect desktop wallpaper for the computer. This isn’t like Michael Bay or George Lucas trying to stuff so much bad assery or high-tech gadgetry into a single shot. Each image has a clear focal point and everything surrounding it helps bring that out. Zack Snyder understands directing as an art form.

What brings the film down is that Zack Snyder is a much better director than he is a writer. The story isn’t bad and there’s definitely a message tied in. The problem is that Snyder isn’t quite effective in tying that message with the events portrayed, even though he pretty much spells it out for the viewer at the very end.

Sucker Punch is about how our dreams give us strength. When everything in life seems to be at its worst we are tempted to give up those dreams, even though that is when we need them the most. The dream world manifestations that the characters face take the struggles and provide a more clear representation of their obstacles.

In some ways, this is just an excuse to have some absolutely ridiculous action. Fighting monstrous samurai warriors, dragons, steam-powered zombies, all of it is meant to portray the current struggles of the girls trying to escape a mental institution they’ve unfairly been locked up in.

Funny thing is, if the plot didn’t have these dreams included, if it was merely a group of women trying to flee a mental institution where they are mistreated and abused by the big bad men, then it would be Oscar Bait. Critics would praise it for being a pro-feminist film about the strengths of women and the sorority while others would hate it as Femi-Nazi propoganda.

It’s so interesting that the film is thus hated because it happens to include geeky imagery and action sequences.

Sucker Punch is not an empty film, and there is enough to analyze out of it. Unfortunately, it’s not like analyzing Inception. The latter film is left ambiguous so that viewers can gather and discuss possibilities and potential meanings. Sucker Punch is about as subtle as, well, a literal sucker punch. They tell you from the get go that it’s about dreams and guardian angels, and as such it is pretty clear what everything means.

This hurts the film in terms of multiple viewings. It will take some time for those interested in cinematography and composition to glean all the information they can from it, but for anyone else it’s just not going to be as interesting. It will be fun to see a second time with friends, but due to how much it relies on action it will inevitably grow stale.

Nonetheless, it is still a good movie. It has meaning and purpose and decides to take a plain vanilla story about escape and dress it up with style. It’s not a Charlies Angels meets Spice Girls cry of “girl power”. It’s more subtle than that, despite many of the men in the film being portrayed as the worst kind of sleaze. It is, for all intents and purposes, the best kind of feminist film you could possibly have.

The film’s greatest flaw is that the elements of it that are fantastic are the elements the average movie goer isn’t going to care about, and thus it’s going to take a lot of heat from people that, quite frankly, just don’t get it.

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