The “Tundra” will be EF’s creative nesting ground (i.e., the “process”) for Sucker Punch AΩ Episode 2. Existing ideas will be shared and new ideas will be unearthed until we build this mojo dojo dance palace and wire it up hot!
Tundra 2: Romanian Orphanage
Newsbreak: Kids who aren’t hugged enough have issues when they grow up. Who would’ve thunk it? At least that’s the pocket psychology version of the Romanian Orphanage story.* See the addendum for more info. I’m just in it for the colors here.
Primary Colors. I would have hammered them into Episode One had I more time before the premiere last October. Still, Superman colors are the prevailing scheme for Episode 1. And here’s why I think that’s neat.
Alpha is Red; Omega is Blue. We’ve established. Yellow is the orphaned pokemon between them, represented by Uma Thurman’s biker suit in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003).
Alpha and Omega are two halves of a split mind, each laying claim to the same bewildered vessel – the brain damaged, Mamba / Bride… Maybe. (I indulge in movie conspiracies just to give the real conspiracies a rest😆)
This duality is compatible with a prevailing fan-theory of Sucker Punch (2011) that Baby Doll & Sweet Pea are actually one and the same person. However, taken at face value they remain two distinct characters who feud but encourage one another. I want both interpretations to work. And I want these girls to become friends.
-EF
Addendum
* The Romanian government in the 1980s-1990s was pro-life and poor, leading to an excess of births and a shortage of child care. Consequently many children ended up in orphanages which were understaffed. Psychologists studies this shortage of hugs a decade later and found that adopted children had smaller brains and difficulty bonding with their foster parents. This finding compliments Harry Harlow’s 1953 wire vs. cloth monkey hugger experiment. The infant monkeys, deprived of a real mother, preferred a soft mom puppet vs. a wire mom puppet, even if the wire mom puppet had food.
Experience Film 
In the far future, I would like to see baby girls fed along a mechanized assembly line while machines telepathically issue brain waves that would make them hungry for the taste of cock when they grow bigger and inclined to serve men on their knees. That’s my monkey experiment.
LikeLike
Keep channeling that rape-science energy and you’ll make a great bitch for the jews one day. There’s your million bucks.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s okay Greg. There are plenty of Incels out there with the same fantasy.
As it turns out, women are people too 🤯
When you treat them as such. it’s possible one might actually like you.
Just sayin’…
LikeLike
I remember learning about that monkey puppet experiment in school. I felt terrible for the baby monkeys. That was probably an early clue that I wouldn’t be making any such use of my psych degree …
LikeLiked by 1 person
When I learned we were mapping the neurons of the fruit fly brain, I felt bad for the fly. That was my clue I wouldn’t be using my psych degree either.
LikeLike
I actually really enjoyed Sucker Punch once I caught the Lenox House easter egg.
I originally dismissed it’s video game imagery and obvious appeal to the teenage boy wet dream.
But, upon a 3rd viewing I started thinking of it more as a flashy, CGI driven version of Girl Interrupted.
If you have never seen Girl Interrupted starring Angelina Jolie and Wynonna Ryder, it is worth watching as a double feature with Sucker Punch.
Sure, people will, no doubt, favor Girl Interrupted as being the better film. I believe it even won some awards.
But Sucker Punch’s genius is also its downfall.
It’s true meaning is hidden under layers of gloss, technology and action sequences.
I like your notion of the 2 characters actually being 2 sides of the same person.
That reminds me of Fight Club. I like movies that challenge our perception of reality.
I recently rewatched American Psycho with Christian Bale. And suddenly had this epiphany.
His character wasn’t a psychopath at all. He was a stressed Wall Street asshole, whose contempt for his hollow existence had him fantasizing about being a serial killer.
I don’t think he ever killed anybody. Even the first colleague he purportedly offed, by the end of the film, you realize that other person WAS him!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Girl Interrupted is a GREAT reference. I Actually watched that as homework for this Sucker Punch reboot (Offboot) whatever you wanna call it… Fight Club— Just Rewatched that. God the scene where Ed Norton kicks his own ass in his Boss’s office GOES so hard!… Both great INSTITUTIONALIZED motif examples! … Sucker Punch is just like this perfect Grand Central Station between all these movies around that time period… Honestly, I don’t think the story’s that intentionally deep. It’s a shallow hodge podge of— scraps of better movies. And so its fun going back and finding all the probably HUNDREDS of direct influences. Both you mentioned for sure, influenced Zack Snyder. Kill Bill. LOTR. Anime. The Matrix. I-Robot…. Personally I relish the emphahsis on shallow aesthetics and cool CGI cinemotography. Because my style of montaging makes use of that visual, kinesthetic intensive language. And dancing. Combined with an actual plot, not just random music videos. That’s my thing, and I guess Snyder’s too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Movie conspiracy theories: much healthier to delve into! I love the one about Baby Doll and Sweet Pea.
Having been someone who was put up for adoption, which didn’t happen for over a year, I do think the attention I lacked as an infant effed me up royally in ways I didn’t realize until my 30s. The fact that abortion has been banned and more kids will be tossed onto the conveyor belt while the minions of Mr. Evil cut and slash every social safety net they possibly can for the rest–school lunches, after school programs–there are no words, really. It’s beyond comprehension.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Orphans make Strong protagonists. Screen, literature and science all show it. Harry Potter is my freakin’ password some places. To name but one of our beloved characters… As for the cuts, i’ve found comedic solace (for the complete humanitarian INSULT / Ego glitch) in a recurring gag from the movie, “Don’t Look Up.” (2021) Where a 4 star Pentagon General charges grad student (Jennifer Lawrence) for free snacks at the white house. And when she learns they were free all along, it’s all she can think about the rest of the movie. “…WHY would he charge us for free snacks???” 🤷🏽🤦🏽🤔🙃😞🪦
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love that image of the Romanian flag, and look forward to the colourful feast you’ll put together. 🤓🥂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Must’ve tossed 50 images of the flag before I found the paint spatter one. At last😌🇷🇴🥂
LikeLiked by 1 person
At last, indeed. Perseverance paying off, as it should. 🤓🥂
LikeLike
You can read about the University of Wisconsin research psychologist, Harry Harlow’s, “Pit of Despair”. It’s the whole point of “love”, without which, social animals including humans will self destruct. It’s why the Romanian people summarily executed both Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife.
It’s the second great motivator of human avoidance behaviors, after fear, and before boredom. We long for friendships, understanding and companionship, love and family. They give the human spirit a sense of meaning, a purpose and a place in which to belong. It’s a grounding force in a hardwired range of emotions that creates a sense of “home”. Nested between those fundamental human drives that ensured our very survival as a social species, there is loneliness.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Solitary confinement is the highest punishment INSIDE maximum security prisons. We are social creatures, it’s true. Even this introvert admits.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I remember the force of that quote you give me from ‘Sucker Punch’ about that special angel; I didn’t know about the Romanian govt child policy; sad —
LikeLiked by 1 person
For a mediocre movie it’s a pretty darn good quote isn’t it! The first half opens the movie and the second half bookends it. Here’s just the first paragraph:
“Everyone has an angel, a guardian who watches over us. We can’t know what form they’ll take. One day, old man. Next day, little girl. But don’t let appearances fool you. They can be as fierce as any dragon. Yet they’re not here to fight our battles but to whisper from our heart reminding that it’s us. It’s every one of us who holds the power over the worlds we create…”
LikeLiked by 1 person
excellent ! so good; talk about timing: I just found it in my journal where I copied it all down under the heading: Xperience Film’s Response to ‘Angel at my Side’
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m flattered you documented that. And that you spelled it, “Xperience” – You know, I thought about spelling my site name that way and thought well, if Hendrix can’t pull it off, this film nerd sure can’t!😄
LikeLiked by 1 person
hahaha/ yes
LikeLike
Hey, I get it.
I thought Sucker Punch was just a video game trying to be a movie the first time I watched it.
But I was wrong.
After a 2nd watch, I noticed that the psych ward is called Lenox House.
Annie Lenox is the singer for Eurythmics. Sweet Dreams is playing when Emily Browning is taken away.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Lenox” House is a good easter egg! Took me a 2nd watch to notice that too👍 My followers agree Sucker Punch is a flawed movie, but I’m adapting it into a Series like nothing you’ve ever seen. Using hundreds of other movies to fill in the gaps, montage it, improve it. I’ll be at it for the next decade at least. Thanks for stopping by and please come back any time🤘🎵
LikeLiked by 1 person