First of all, I didn’t watch this movie yet in it’s entirety. I’m not sure if I ever will, because it looks mind numbingly boring in all the non-fight scenes and I’m sure I’m not missing any Oscar-worthy acting. Anyway…

I saw a preview for Suckerpunch a while back and thought to myself, “I definitely fall into the target audience of this movie.” A movie about a hot chick in a school uniform and thigh highs killing monsters? Talk about a subject packed with great things. There is no way you could make a movie more like an Anime, short of having a Gundam flying around in the background.

I watched the first fight scene where the girl fights three giant samurai monsters. It was here I noticed something terribly wrong. Human beings cannot move in a way that makes fighting giant samurai look cool. The samurai monster is blitzing about the room at breakneck speeds. Meanwhile the girl is somehow able to keep up with his impossible speed by jogging around and daintily swinging her sword.

It just doesn’t work. When you watch fight scenes in Anime, everything flows smoothly and people move FAST. Maybe not DBZ fast where they stop showing the actual moves and just animate flashing lights to save on production costs, but fast enough that a human body could not endure the acceleration without bones splintering. There is literally a part of that fight where the girl dodges a strike with an elaborate flip and then jogs up to make a slash. You can’t have gravity defying acrobatics but still move like a slug.

Honestly, I think the problem is just that they make her walk around on her own. When you watch people fighting in Anime, do they run around on their legs? No, they fucking leap. If you want to get from point A to point B in the fastest possible time, you jump and fly through the air. So sure, you can have dramatic scenes of her walking slowly away from a collapsing building. But the moment the bullets fly, the only reason for your feet to touch the ground at any point is to push off for another jump.

And there are just so many other parts in this fight that just make me cringe. How can you get hit so hard to make a crater in the ground but look like you just landed on a pillow? Watch her walk out of the dojo in a dramatic fashion after killing the 2nd samurai, only to have the scene ruined as she fails to holster her gun smoothly. Was there really a DBZ power up moment followed by the goofiest looking single sword slash I’ve ever seen? This is about as good as watching the live action DBZ movie.

I’ve always wanted to see live action versions of Anime. You see such amazing fight scenes and think that it’s perfect for a big budget movie. Then you see Suckerpunch and realize that the American movie industry is never going to get it. Seriously, some random music video cosplayed the Tifa fight from Advent Children and made it look cooler than your entire movie. How does that make any sense?