On the surface, this is your typical exploitation flick. Scantily-clad ladies kicking monsters and bad guys all over the place.The framework of the movie, however, takes everything to a different level. The opening and closing voices aren't Babydoll, which tells us that she is not the main character. Since it's Sweet Pea who speaks to us at the beginning, and it's Sweet Pea who escapes at the end, She is the main character, and the film is her story.With that in mind, all of the sequences we see throughout the film are Sweet Pea's interpretations of the mental landscape Babydoll experiences while hatching the plans, and how Sweet Pea interprets Babydoll's view of the fights while executing them.Taken in that light, the writing on this film explodes into the realm of arthouse films.

This movie deserves its bad reviews and ratings for a few reasons. The main one being the uncut version is almost essential to make the movie plainly clear. I mean you could figure it out from the standard cut but the uncut is crystal. It still would not make everyone happy because people hate it when a movie give them the finger (unless it is Deadpool and does it for comedy).This movie is action porn in its most pure sense. The action is beautiful, well choreographed. The set pieces cover it all. You have your Japanese Samurai monsters with a big mini-gun, you have faceless steampunk Nazi's with a big mech robot boom boom boom. You then have knights and orcs and a dragon with a steampunk plane, finally futuristic train with evil i-robots and the old move along the train combat. A noble death, a bittersweet getaway. The bad guy loses, the good girl (baby) dies (kind of, see another nod to every Japanese Samurai movie ever when the main guy has to die). Mix in some music, tiny girls in skimpy gear and you have a soup of "everything a teen boy wants to watch". And that is the point. This is what annoys people. This movie really has no point, but unlike others movies, this one shows you that. The rest still pretend they have substance. Total Recall (the real one) ends essentially with a 'then he woke up' flash in the sky (well a then he gets lobotomised) that we all buy. This is the same thing but we get offended.I love it, and this is why I give it 9 stars. Not because I am smart. This all came from reading other reviews and then finally watching the uncut version. I hated the 5th Element the first time I saw it, but now its in my top then. This one also grows on you the more you watch it.

Despite having a bad critical and commercial success, this is still one of my favorite Zach Snyner film. The others are Dawn of the Dead, The 300 and The Watchmen. I if the Japanese made yhis film, this will be a classic. But since Hollywood critics are harsher to Hollywood made films, they negatively review this.

They had a good idea, but failed to execute it well. The cut scenes in the fantasy world or whatever you call it, are so out of place and way too long. They should have done those differently. If they would have stuck to their first story and fantasy it would have been fine. The movie is OK to watch once, but I wouldn't have any desire to see it a second time.