Snyder seems to be infected by Frank Miller’s self-hating disease: all men are rapists & evil & regardless of how powerful the chicks are, essentially they are victims. For all the awesome fight scenes, 3 levels of reality & women kicking butt, I was disappointed….Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow anyone? Zack Snyder….You know what Zack, Ultraviolet was fun, had a sense of humor, didn’t take itself too seriously & some of those fight scenes are still awesome & memorable to date. You’re not Martin Scorsese & even with people retreating from reality through fantasy, Sucker Punch was BS, so sorry you failed, but you’ve done good work, so I won’t stay angry at you. Just tell one good story & if you can do that, go to the next one & if things really work out & your parents say its OK, you get another level, but no… People, stop making Inception! I think that I was also disappointed that there wasn’t one real dance sequence! More the first, but not that it was bad…it was pretentious & for me, didn’t deliver like Shutter Island. There was a character in Inception named Ariadne, played by Ellen Page. I don’t believe that anyone left the movie saying, “Man, I wish that there were more scenes with Ariadne.” No, she was a narration spouter, not a character, which is fine, but on top of that, the director used her name to elevate a story that couldn’t do it on its own without the references. If a story isn’t good when you tell it straight, then intellectual trappings or narrative devices tricks won’t make it better. The opposite of pretentious but using cool references & narrative devices was the first Matrix. The next 2 were failures because they fell into the reference trap. The Fountain works for me because the characters are real & not interchangeable or two dimensional. I haven’t seen Green Lantern (yet), but I heard that it showed a lack of imagination that he could use his ring for anything & all he could imagine was weapons so that’s my problem with Inception & Sucker Punch: you can imagine anything & in Inception, basically becomes a James Bond sequence with all the skiing. Only 1 real character in that movie: Leo, the rest are cookie cutter IMHO. Sucker Punch was just an elaborate ruse to have girls fight WWI zombies, dragons & gross rapists. If your alternate reality has you sitting quietly in a sowing room, then you have to know how to act & there has to be a good story because there is no flash to distract the audience. I agree with most of your statement, but I don’t mean “real” like a documentary. I mean that the character is 3D. Ex. Lion King or that movie where Louis Gossett Jr. is playing an alien. The lions & the alien had real characteristics, motivations, likes & dislikes & throwing in another lion or alien would be a noticeable change because the character would change, For me, this movie could have been played by any hot petite young chick & it would not have affected the story. I hate “The Event” phenomenon where a plot substitutes for character: ex. you are my sister therefore I would do anything for you. Um, not necessarily & when you’re not doing anything for your sister, what are you like–do you like to walk or would you rather be on the couch? Would you eat Cheetos or are you organic? Most actors know more than is portrayed on screen & it adds to the richness of the character. Jena Malone is a great actor & she was in this movie. I felt nothing so I think that the problem wasn’t on the actor end, but on the overly produced, less of a story side. I don’t know much about Harry Potter, but Star Wars & LORs is very 3D with respect to character. Even James Bond movies, at least with Daniel Craig, have that nuance that enriches the story. In Casino Royale, you get a sense in even tiny moments that he is initially careless with things (revealed in certain chase scenes & even the way that he uses keys) & people because he isn’t letting himself connect with people (sneers at a passing throw away compliment delivered by two women) out of necessity–if he feels, he can’t kill, but as movie goes on, we see him become vulnerable & more tender then try to shut down again. I think that is where we disagree. I think that a great genre film with 3D characters wins, but a genre film with 2d characters is limited. For me, Carpenter’s Halloween is both & that’s why we still love it, but Rob Zombie’s Halloween is meh because it substitutes cliche (stripper mom & promiscuous sister creates psycho kid). Without Jamie Lee Curtis + Carpenter, it is just another slasher film easily forgotten. Curtis starred in tons of forgettable slasher films, but Carpenter made icons out of her and Michael.