Joe Wright’s new film Hanna revolves around a 16-year-old girl, raised in the woods and trained to be an assassin. Much like Hit Girl in Kick Ass and Babydoll in Sucker Punch, Hanna is a fearless killing machine in the form of a young woman with a gun. However: Not all female action heroes are created equally. There’s a reason why I loathed Babydoll and loved Hanna, and it all comes down to the writing. The characterization. A hero isn’t just a person with a gun; a hero is someone fighting for a cause, for a purpose, and not just because it looks cool. The story makes the hero, and the story relies on structure, and structure is in the writing (and directing).
After watching Hanna, I tried to figure out what made it so vastly different — and superior — to Sucker Punch. Both stories involved young women being incredibly, graphically violent. Both stories have an older man guiding the young woman. Both movies were directed by men and written by men; both films have stylistic flourishes and thumping soundtracks. But unlike Babydoll, Hanna, is a well-drawn, fully realized character, not just an avatar for an idea. Saoirse Ronan — who was spectacular in Atonement, which Joe Wright also directed — brings Hanna to life, and makes her believable, because the writing, the story structure and the characterization are solid. Each choice Hanna makes leads to the next decision and the following action, so that as we get to know her choices and thought process, we know her. This is how a character is built. Babydoll, as a character, is flat and underdeveloped, because her actions seem to come out of nowhere. When an audience meets a girl, and she never mentions dragons or World War I, it’s strange, random and off-putting when she suddenly has detailed dreams of dragons and World War I. Sucker Punch is like a long, meandering commercial; Hanna is taut and rhythmic, like a poem.-
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