THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939) and SUCKER PUNCH (2011) both operate on the principle that beautiful young women are a threat to male sanity and are witches and insane and have cast hexes on us, especially if we're uglier, older, shorter, balder, sourer, poorer, weaker, lamer, squarer, or viler overall than the young, dumb, rich, handsome, eloquent sots these ladies tumble for. The beauty of these young women is a twisted dagger slowly turning in the base of our necks, making our face blush in shame. Such a blusher is the sourpuss Frollo (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) and his adopted charge, Quasimodo (Charles Laughton), who both pine for oblivious dancing queen Esmeralda (Maureen O'Hara) in HUNCHBACK, while SUCKER PUNCH intends to make us--its ideal fanboy demographic--equally ablush and enthralled, pining for these baby doll babes, picking a favorite over the course of our obsessive multiple viewings, longing to free them all but her especially from the sleazy mob stereotypes that have them roped into a combination mental ward and strip club.
Since one of these movies is an esteemed, timeless classic and one is of late reviled, why not compare them?
Esmeralda (a never-hotter Maureen O'Hara), the dancing gypsy, is actually the object of desire for nearly everyone in HUNCHBACK, and those who can't play either cheer in the massive, impressively clued-in throng (news travels around so fast they must have a Twitter) or sulk... and skulk... like Frollo, a dark soul trying to be darker, who eventually frames her for his rival's murder, since she, a nothing gypsy girl, dared spurn him. We know he's not too bad because he saved Quasimodo as an orphan and gave him sanctuary, but he's not cool about it, and he gets steady uncooler.
Meanwhile the idea of sanctuary in the church seems a strange one (has no sinner in Paris ever thought to hide there? If that law existed in New York City you wouldn't be able squeeze a toe into Saint Patrick's Cathedral, or any church, ever), Esmeralda is the only one in the whole film who ever runs in there for safety. We know she's good because over a montage of sinners praying "give me this," and "I want that," she's saying "let me help" and "save my people." She's not selfish, and man that's understandable considering she's so hot she's probably never had to pay for anything in her life. It must be alarming to have such a profound effect on people, where the benevolent glance or kind word can turn any passing wastrel into an obsessive stalker. But you can't exactly pray to be less gorgeous...
The film takes full advantage of the barbarism of the era to milk suspense, and that means confession under torture (Esmeralda gets the rack), public humiliation, whipping, and hanging. The big gallows' rescue is crowd pleasing as they come, but for me the best moment is before that, when on returning home from his grueling ordeal outside church where he endured flogging and hooting punishment, but got a drink from Esmerelda, Quasimodo takes a look at Frollo, who is equal parts anxious and indignant over his charge's punishment, and shouts "She gave me water!" It's the equivalent of a guy boasting to his buddy on coming home Sunday morning after hooking up with the girl both of them were hitting on the night before, proferring his fingers as proof of victory, and from then on Quasimodo won't lay off the bells.
That just a gulp of water can override his pain and humiliation to the point of ecstasy creeps Esmerelda out big time, of course. God forbid she give him a kiss, he'd jump off the tower to his death in a paroxysm. Frollo meanwhile has his power and status which makes being gradually reduced to abject humiliation and pain all the more unendurable.
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That a young girl (though at 20, her step father has no power of attorney over her, so the whole committed thing is dubious logic) can be so trapped by the male gaze that even her fantasies are not her own (do baby dolls really imagine such vivid CGI steam-punk detail? Where's the rainbows and ponies?) is hard to take in an alleged action sci fi fantasy film. She's not only stuck in this loony bin dance club, she's stuck having to fight giants and stuff, which might be fun for five minutes but basically its like watching her douchebag boyfriend play Doom rather than go down on her while she listens to various remixed and re-recorded 'sexy' rock and pop anthems like "Sweet Dreams (are made of this)" and "Army of Me" on her iPod .
I knew going in how badly SUCKER PUNCH was received, but whatever. You just have to see the grave where your dreams died. Every man who's read comic books instead of playing baseball in his youth has an inner movie he's been slowly writing as he goes along, an unfinished screenplay with lesbians and martial arts, and he sets scenes to music he likes, listening to anguished rock in his headphones or on the way to work, planning and editing to the beat, each gunshot suffused with meaning that will never translate beyond his own tortured adolescent pine box. But how can he know that, enraptured with his own sad longing, and why would he want to? How could Snyder know his private dance floor would kill the desire in us all for everything, from fashion to battlefields, he depicts?
But yeah, he killed it all: gone, the agog rapture for the baby doll pout and the Catholic school girl uniforms; gone, the yen for bustiers; gone, stockings and stylish black heels; gone, the thrill of watching a sword cut through adamantium like butter; gone, the kinky allure of a black lace choker or blonde Heidi braids; gone, the concerned interest in bi-polar body mutilation... it's all now as stale as 1980s puffy hair and pleated chinos (or as they have come to be called, long after I stopped wearing them, 'khakis'). These details used to mean something. They brought back into a port a whirlwind hurricane of long straight shiny jet black hair, perfect skin, and rain-stained eye liner. The chick who soaked you past flooding and bailed fast as a mail sack picked up by a speeding train.
Now there is nothing, just a blue light was / my mind, but the red light ain't my baby, no more. She never even noticed-- through her Vogue cover never-pay-for-her-own-food (not that she ate anything) and champagne bubble--the vile water line of male desire, the same limit that sinks SUCKER PUNCH. So if you want your son to give up living in a fantasy world show it to him. At least the TV he sees it on is real, allegedly.
It's a good lesson too for pretty girls everywhere: all Esmeralda would have had to do to get rid of Frollo and avoid all the agonies of his vengeance would be to hold him tight and talk about marriage and and how much she loves him and will never let him go, and how they'll be together forever, and have eighteen children, all boys, and then just keep going, clinging to him constantly and talking and shouting loud enough to burst his ear though she's not even straining her voice, for her mama! Mama! Que largo dentes vos sos! from across the courtyard. Frollo would be instantly claustrophobic and run as fast as she first did when Quasimodo's hideous shape and crooked smile came lunging out at her. Such is the abject terror when one finds their obscure object of desire has stopped running and has turned back with needy arms outspread. All that bedroom longing and tortured romantic obsession is revealed suddenly as the delusions of a hungry ghost desperate to avoid the empty stare of its own waterlogged, puffy-lipped corpse. The rest is silence, or Stooges covers... echoing through an empty multiplex.
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