Weekend of Geekin': Part 1 - Friday (Sucker Punch)

This past weekend I experienced a geek trifecta - something good and geeky on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  It was great!

Part 1 of the weekend started on Friday night when my best friend Brian picked me up and we headed over to the local watering hole for some beverages and bar food before catching an opening night showing of "Sucker Punch" at the Pasadena Arclight Cinemas.  I was already a little skeptical about seeing the movie, but it was taking the place of our regular Friday night beer-and-pizza game night.  We figured that we couldn't really go wrong by seeing a movie featuring scantily clad women armed with machine guns and samurai swords fighting robots, zombies, and dragons.  It seemed right up our alley.

However, the evening did not get off to a good start for me when the bar we went to was out of Campari and also did not serve Hendrick's Gin (they only had Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire), which is kind of a tell-tale sign for me to get the Hell out of Dodge.  However, we toughed it out and I instead had a Deschutes' Porter, which was okay. 

We then headed over to the theater, somewhat excited that since we had bought our tickets to the Arclight online, we didn't have to wait in line and we already had assigned seats in the middle of the middle row, which is always my preferred place to sit.  After meeting another member of our group, we walked in about two minutes before the movie was supposed to start and immediately had a bad feeling.  The theater was nearly empty, on opening night.  There might have been a dozen other people in there besides us.  I know the economy is bad, but come on!  This is scantily clad chicks with guns! 

There are plenty of real reviews of the film online you can read for a more critical review.  I will say that unfortunately all three of us were disappointed, and that was after going in with low expectations.  As I mentioned to my friends during the obligatory post-movie cocktail, the well-choreographed battle scenes were too few and too short in my opinion, and sadly there was no sense of real danger during the battle scenes. Once the first opening fight happens and you see how the main character, Baby Doll, handles it, from that point on as a viewer you never think that anything bad can happen to any of the girls (Baby Doll, Amber, Rocket, Blondie, and Sweet Pea) while they are in "video game fighter mode." 

There was a somewhat intriguing raw kernel of an idea for this movie that unfortunately wasn't executed well, which is a real shame because I've liked some of Zack Snyder's other work.  I'm beginning to suspect that he might be better at adapting other peoples' material than he is at writing his own. 

Ultimately, though, how much complaining can you really do when you get to hang out with your friends, drink beer, and watch some eye-candy blow stuff up?