Sucker Punch: The Music Video

May 18, 2015 12:18 PM

Just how many Sci-Fi / Action movie references are in Taylor Swift's new video "Bad Blood"? IO9 attempts to make a tally of them all.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI (79 comments total)

WOOOOOOOOOO!
posted by Maaik at 12:33 PM on May 18, 2015

I think I get Joseph Kahn's deal now. He's really confident with making stuff look "cool" and he's pretty sure that's enough. And if you don't think that's enough, then you just don't get it.
posted by sleeping bear at 12:40 PM on May 18, 2015

I would say the line of heavily armed women at the end was more Expendables than Mad Max.

The bloke is supposed to be Minority Report I would think, though so many films have the table monitor type things now.

A Kingsman ref with the woman with the blade coming out of her boot at around 3.38?

I am also calling Krull on the woman in the dressing room at 1.30.
posted by biffa at 12:44 PM on May 18, 2015

That was quite a fun video! Thanks!
posted by rtha at 12:44 PM on May 18, 2015

I was a little disappointed that with all the build up to this there wasn't more. What we got was fun, but all the faux movie posters released before hand definitely made it seem like there'd be more story. On the other hand it's a music video for the ninth or tenth best song on that album, which seems to have making Taylor's friends look cool as its raison d'etre* so maybe asking for a whole lot isn't reasonable.

*In fairness, mission accomplished.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 12:53 PM on May 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

I don't know why but I was REALLY EXCITED to see Mariska Hargitay in there.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 12:53 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

My wife shouted "IT'S HER CAT'S NAMESAKE!" when she showed up.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 12:55 PM on May 18, 2015 [11 favorites]

I think of Ichi the Killer when I think of hidden blade in shoe... but there's probably earlier referents too.
posted by kmz at 12:58 PM on May 18, 2015

A Kingsman ref with the woman with the blade coming out of her boot at around 3.38?

I haven't watched the clip (or Kingsman), but Rosa Klebb's shoe knife.
posted by sukeban at 1:00 PM on May 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

No Starship Troopers, doesn't matter.
posted by GuyZero at 1:02 PM on May 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Rosa's was a bit shorter, this is more like a sword blade and used as a weapon in itself not for poison delivery.
posted by biffa at 1:03 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

~3:34: The glass boxes with snow that Zhora runs through in Blade Runner.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:11 PM on May 18, 2015

I feel like these are common sci-fi/action tropes and you can't really point to them specifically referencing something.

Except for the Battlestar Galactica boxing episode, of course.
posted by ckape at 1:13 PM on May 18, 2015

Well, that's certainly the most unambiguous break-up song/video I ever saw.

~A Kingsman ref with the woman with the blade coming out of her boot at around 3.38?
~I haven't watched the clip (or Kingsman), but Rosa Klebb's shoe knife.

I was thinking the same thing, though I haven't seen Kingsman, either.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:18 PM on May 18, 2015

Kingsman's Gazelle didn't have a blade come out of her shoe, her foot WAS the blade (and her stiletto heel was literally a stiletto).
posted by linux at 1:18 PM on May 18, 2015

Also, the titling is very Fringe.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:19 PM on May 18, 2015

Well, that's certainly the most unambiguous break-up song/video I ever saw.

Not sure if you know the story or not, but the song is a purely platonic "break up" song. It's about Katy Petty hiring some dancers away from her midtour. It's basically a song about stealing the help. In the context, it's a touch overwrought.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:21 PM on May 18, 2015 [7 favorites]

Distilling the TV Tropes website into a 4-minute video to accompany the least listenable single Swift has ever released. Well, it does take attention away from the over-repetitive and stereotypical 'hip-hop' soundtrack, so I guess it succeeds. Still, Mad Max: Fury Road did it better.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:21 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think of Ichi the Killer when I think of hidden blade in shoe... but there's probably earlier referents too.

When I see a shoe blade I think of the The Pink Panther Strikes Again.
posted by dortmunder at 1:22 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've got a blank space bay-beh but it's not for this video
posted by infinitewindow at 1:25 PM on May 18, 2015

I don't know why but I was REALLY EXCITED to see Mariska Hargitay in there.


I know why. Because you're a living breathing human being with a soul. One should always be excited to see Mariska Hargitay.

Taylor Swift realizes that with great power comes great responsibility, and if your album is popular enough going to make a video for the fourth single, and especially one, as Bulgaroktonos at noted for a sorta meh track, you might as well just go full out and include your famous-but-not-AS-famous friends and women you think are cool (that Hargitay and Ellen Pompeo, both powerful women leads to shows that have been on for, almost literally, most of Swift's life, were walking down the hall at the same time should not be ignored as coincidence), even, maybe especially, if it looks like you're only doing this big huge ridiculous video because you think it's neat. If you're releasing a 'promotional' video for a song off your top-selling album that was released almost 7 months ago, go so big that one can almost miss a Cindy Crawford cameo or go home.

I think my favorite thing about Taylor Swift is that, despite my boundless enthusiasm, she's just so obviously not making stuff for people like me, but I can still appreciate what she's doing as much as the target. She's making stuff for her fans and part of that is what's going on with this video: showing 'hey, you know what's cool? MY AWESOME LIFE!' And somehow it becomes not like a young-woman's-version-of-Entourage nightmare but something fairly charming.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:28 PM on May 18, 2015 [25 favorites]

this video: showing 'hey, you know what's cool? MY AWESOME LIFE!'

When I watched this last night my first thought was that it was basically someone's million-dollar (million dollar? No idea how much that video cost. We'll pick a nice million) Tumblr. Which is nice work if you can get it.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:44 PM on May 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Kingsman's Gazelle didn't have a blade come out of her shoe, her foot WAS the blade (and her stiletto heel was literally a stiletto).

While true, I think you're forgetting that she was killed by the poisoned blade in Eggsy's shoe.
posted by axiom at 1:48 PM on May 18, 2015

i get the sense that the dancers situation is just one thing that has happened between taylor swift and katy perry. there is obviously no love lost there. i imagine the tell alls that will happen in 30 years will be super juicy. i also imagine john mayer won't be written fondly about by either of them, or at least i can hope.
posted by nadawi at 1:56 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm a little disappointed that something sold as "referencing a bunch of action and sci-fi movies" has a whole lot of posing and not a lot of action. And what little action there is is surprisingly undynamic and sloppily edited, too. But if the idea is to look cool, I guess it looks kind of cool. It's just that when people in action movies walk away from explosions in slow motion, they usually show some kind of cool action set piece that led up to the explosion first. Without that, it's not really that cool anymore.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:56 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's just that when people in action movies walk away from explosions in slow motion, they usually show some kind of cool action set piece that led up to the explosion first. Without that, it's not really that cool anymore.

I disagree with this. I think that walking away from explosions in slow motion always looks cool.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 2:00 PM on May 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

Why the hell wouldn't you want to LOOK at the awesome explosion you just caused
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:04 PM on May 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

I disagree with this. I think that walking away from explosions in slow motion always looks cool.

Obligatory
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 2:06 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

You're super used to explosions because you cause them all the time so you are just sort of blase about them now. I dream of this day in my own life.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 2:06 PM on May 18, 2015 [21 favorites]

(That was in response to prize bull octorok.)
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 2:09 PM on May 18, 2015

At this point, Devonian realised that he was utterly detached from modern entertainment tropes.

Although it's nice to see the London skyline appealing to the young people.

Which one's Pink?
posted by Devonian at 2:11 PM on May 18, 2015

the least listenable single Swift has ever released.

This isn't a fantastic song, but I'll take it over "You Belong With Me" any day.

Katy Petty

I'm not sure if this was a typo or a deliberate dig, but I'm stealing it like a troupe of backup dancers.
posted by Metroid Baby at 2:13 PM on May 18, 2015 [7 favorites]

Why the hell wouldn't you want to LOOK at the awesome explosion you just caused

Because you're just too fricking awesome.
posted by fullerine at 2:16 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

For you it's an awesome explosion, but for Taylor Swift it's Tuesday.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:19 PM on May 18, 2015 [8 favorites]

The bit at the beginning reminds me of Evelyn McHale, aka the most beautiful suicide
posted by chavenet at 2:20 PM on May 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

For you it's an awesome explosion, but for Taylor Swift it's Tuesday.

Goddamn Taylor Swift, she's already a day ahead.
posted by chavenet at 2:21 PM on May 18, 2015 [9 favorites]

Ellen Pompeo and Mariska Hargitay are probably walking together because Taylor Swift loves their tv characters so much that she named her cats Olivia and Meredith.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 2:23 PM on May 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm kind of "eh" on Taylor Swift and the kind of mean-girl subtext of this ("Look how much cooler I am, Katy! I have all these awesome friends and you don't!") bit feels kind of ... I don't know. I don't really like it.

But I really wanted to like this video. I tend to like Joseph Kahn. His videos tend to be fun. But I didn't like this beyond being annoyed at it being a collection of references.

And I realized what it was -- all the references in it were, basically, already references. Sin City? Kill Bill? The Fifth Element? Even Tron. All of those things were already referencing pre-existing material and motifs. This just feels so watered down.

I guess I wish it did something more with the references than "hey, look at this cool stuff that looks like cool stuff you've already seen a few times before in several different forms." And I'd almost be OK with that if it seemed a bit more self-aware about it. But instead, it kind of came across like "the kids will find this awesome because they've never seen it before."

I don't know. Maybe I'm just old and cranky.
posted by darksong at 2:24 PM on May 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

Katy Perry is at least in possession of a sense of humour.
posted by colie at 2:27 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

My main reaction was "Wow. This looks expensive."
posted by schmod at 2:27 PM on May 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Yeah Taylor call us when one of your costumed background characters is a NATIONAL TREASURE AND CULTURAL ICON
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:35 PM on May 18, 2015

I haven't had the opportunity to walk away from an explosion without looking, but one time while bowling I threw a strike and walked away before it hit. It was awesome, I highly recommend it.

of course I also walked away from a whole lot of non-strikes before I got to that point
posted by ckape at 2:38 PM on May 18, 2015 [7 favorites]

Pretty sure that getting kicked out the window is a Watchmen reference (unless that was, itself, referential).

I was struck by "It's so sad to think about the good times..." hitting the exact ear-worm tingle that Charli XCX's "We're so fancy" does on that Iggy Azalea song.

The armed-to-the-teeth women's costuming seems a little more Barb Wire than Expendables or Mad Max, no?

Is that Lena Dunham smoking a cigar in the first Kendrick Lamar bit?

I thought several of the war women looked like vaguely familiar actresses, but couldn't immediately place any except Mariska Hargitay.
posted by cult_url_bias at 2:56 PM on May 18, 2015

I'm already an unapologetic fan of Ellie Goulding, but yeah, her videos could def use more rocket launchers.
posted by psoas at 2:57 PM on May 18, 2015

I guess I am firmly in old geezer territory as most of the young girls I did not recognize except for Lena Dunham and Hailee "True Grit" Steinfeld.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 3:00 PM on May 18, 2015

Wake me when Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell. In The Americans. What do you mean you haven't watched The Americans?) shows up.
posted by Kinbote at 3:07 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Which one's Pink?

I think the last video she did was that live performance of the "rose eve" album she did as part of You+Me. And that was back in October of last year.


......what?
posted by happyroach at 3:11 PM on May 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

the more i think about it, the more i think the nod to being called a mean girl by katy perry in the "black space" video was a better swipe than this whole video - even if i still like how ridiculous and full of women loving women it is.
posted by nadawi at 3:24 PM on May 18, 2015

Cindy Crawford as the Headmistress and Lena Dunham's Weimar Androgyny add a glint of sapphic explotation here, which might be smarter than the song.
posted by PinkMoose at 3:35 PM on May 18, 2015

I do love that she makes fun of her lack of coordination skills (the entire Shake it Off video) and behind the seen instagram vidoes like this

(Apparently you have to keep running after breaking through walls in order to look cool)
posted by zara at 3:37 PM on May 18, 2015

schmod: "My main reaction was "Wow. This looks expensive."

That's funny, I thought it looked really cheap.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:46 PM on May 18, 2015

Is anybody else unreasonably irritated by this video? I was wildly impressed by the one where she goes crazy in her manor or whatever is going on there, but here I am not seeing a plot and it's all these references to things I haven't seen like Tron, I mean, is that what it takes now to understand a Taylor Swift video?

I mean I don't have time to go back and do that shit like see Tron. I'm here writing this important metafilter comment.
posted by angrycat at 3:49 PM on May 18, 2015

Some of the outfits, like Zendaya as "Cut-throat", were by Chromat, a NYC fashion design group that does "structural experiments for the human body". I'm a big fan of their cut-out and 3D printed designs that look like something out of, well, a quasi-futuristic sci-fi or action film.
posted by autopilot at 4:01 PM on May 18, 2015

Song is super-nothingy, as observed above. One moment reminded me of something, which on reflection turned out to be We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together* Also, despite only having seen Lena Dunham's image about three times ever she was the sole cameo I recognised. Cheers for the FPP regardless.

*OK, it was Girl/Boygether
posted by comealongpole at 5:06 PM on May 18, 2015

a list of the women in the video w/ screen time.
posted by nadawi at 5:26 PM on May 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

I've grown to like her and the arc she's taken (or at least presented), seemingly from a cultural punching bag to someone who has come out stronger.

Also, as I am wont to point out, she was at least partly responsible for this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyMJAL4KPII
posted by Gorgik at 8:13 PM on May 18, 2015

This video would be the best trailer ever for the best action movie ever. It does all the great stuff from action movies by having a lot of people looking fucking badass and changing badass costumes and awesome makeup jobs and having like tiny amounts of fight and action with none of the boring shit you get in action movies, and everyone has a GREAT NAME, and the only man in the entire world is Kendrick Lamar.

I would learn to saunter in stiletto heels over the wrecked remains of every movie to come out this year to see a full-length feature set in this picturesque badass world of women who look fucking awesome constantly and beat people up in that homoerotic almost kiss way and Tron cycles and OUTFITS and TOTAL LACK OF THE MOST BORING THING ABOUT ACTION MOVIES: men.
posted by NoraReed at 8:44 PM on May 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Like most latter-day Taylor Swift songs, the first time I heard this I thought it was the stupidest and boringest song ever made, but now that I have heard it a third time all I want is to listen to it over and over until my ear becomes a little Taylor Swift face
posted by threeants at 9:06 PM on May 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

In the context, it's a touch overwrought.

also I do not give a shit what you think is overwrought because if you would not make an "I feel powerful" sci-fi music video with stilettos and explosions over at least one instance of making a frenemy if you had the resources to do so I don't even know what to say to you except that you sound BORING
posted by NoraReed at 9:32 PM on May 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

sorry for the repeated posts but this music video just made me so pumped I went and wrote a thing on it in which I kinda said what I said in the previous comments but BETTERER
posted by NoraReed at 9:58 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

This isn't as good as her Wrecking Ball video.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:59 PM on May 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Sucker Punch. Jesus, that's harsh.
posted by benzenedream at 10:08 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

So the "Bad Blood" offices are "open plan"?
posted by telstar at 10:48 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

The list is missing the anime bits. The two that jump out at me are the articulated scanner from Akira (https://youtu.be/QcIy9NiNbmo?t=51) and the weird toeless boots from Bubblegum Crisis (https://youtu.be/QcIy9NiNbmo?t=82). I know Joseph was into Akira and stuff by Masamune Shirow in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so I highly doubt those bits were coincidental.

(Joseph and went to the same high school, and had overlapping friends. He was a video geek, so while we all had shitty VHS recordings of anime, he managed to wrangle a Super-VHS copy of the laserdisc of Akira, which was Technically Impressive back in the days before bittorrent. I think he's the only person I ever met who used Super-VHS)

(Also, he tricked me into being a gaffer on one of his student videos. I was hanging out while they were filming, and he was holding a light up. He said, "Mike, you know what, you kinda look like a gaffer". I said "What's a gaffer?" and he said "Hold this light for a second, and I'll show you." So I take the light so that he can explain, and he says, "There, you're a gaffer", and walks off to work on some other part of the set, leaving me holding the light. So for the rest of the day, I was the gaffer. Yes, I realize that's not exactly what a gaffer does, but given that the whole crew consisted of like 4 people, role descriptions were broad)
posted by Bugbread at 10:53 PM on May 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

This 40-year-old '80s/early-'90s rocker right here absolutely adores the hell out of both Taylor and Katy. And I'm even starting to take a shine to Miley, if not all of her music. I've already told all my friends that I would abandon them in a heartbeat for Gaga; I know it wouldn't work, and that I would eventually bore her or otherwise not be able to keep up, but I would owe it to her and to myself to try, dammit.

It makes me terribly sad that they can't all be friends. Doubly so that our bullshit celebrity culture wants to pit them all against one another, but even laying that aside, the notion that they have actual bad blood is a real bummer.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:23 PM on May 18, 2015

Doubly so that our bullshit celebrity culture wants to pit them all against one another, but even laying that aside, the notion that they have actual bad blood is a real bummer.

But processing emotions and archetypes is what artists do, no? Co-opting violent and masculine sci-fi tropes to demonstrate the emotional strife women can engage turns a lot inside out. What would its reverse look like?
posted by lazycomputerkids at 1:54 AM on May 19, 2015

I don't think there's any bad blood anywhere. Swift is an artist who's learned very well recently that having these little stories around your songs helps journalists (who know nothing about music but have lots of space to fill) can get hold of something they can write about easily in the kind of magazines that nobody on MeFi reads. She/her media construction of herself does it with lots of her songs - there was one that was supposed to be about John Mayer, but nobody in the UK has heard of him, so accordingly I found my young daughter was gossiping with her friends that the song was about Harry Styles!

Does anyone seriously think that trying to sign up the best dancers for your tour and keep them off your main rival's tour is not the kind of thing that happens all day every day in the music industry? What are we, 10 years old? And if that's what Swift regards as super-bad behaviour in the industry then someone very secretly must be doing all the dirty work that has got her to where she is.
posted by colie at 2:28 AM on May 19, 2015

The Weird Al parody of this video, with five second cameos of every goofball character actress you can think of acting like a superhero, is going to be epic. (If I had to guess at the title: "Dig Dug" - a song about losing at every '80s arcade game.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:22 AM on May 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

i don't think the katy/taylor thing is made up for views or our culture pitting women against each other, i think they honestly don't get along. i do think it's great that they both go with the line that is about professional stuff and not about a dude or whatever.
posted by nadawi at 6:18 AM on May 19, 2015

also, taylor swift has spoken at length about the sexist ways her break up songs are treated vs how guys who write break up songs are treated. and just because i'm a crazy person who retains this stuff, her song about mayer is called "dear john" which would be difficult to make about harry styles. her songs about styles are "out of the woods" and "style."
posted by nadawi at 6:36 AM on May 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

'I knew you were trouble' was the song I was thinking of, and the media had plenty of 'is it Mayer or who?' stuff at the time.
posted by colie at 6:45 AM on May 19, 2015

ah i forgot about that one - yeah, that one is about styles too, not mayer.
posted by nadawi at 7:03 AM on May 19, 2015

The Weird Al parody of this video, with five second cameos of every goofball character actress you can think of acting like a superhero, is going to be epic. (If I had to guess at the title: "Dig Dug" - a song about losing at every '80s arcade game.)

This can't happen fast enough.
posted by curious nu at 7:12 AM on May 19, 2015

I think that the fan community consensus is that most of Red is about Jake Gyllenhaal, but "I Knew You Were Trouble" was eventually decided to be about Styles. I know there was some speculation about it being about John Mayer, but that turned out to be wrong. I don't really think the media speculating in one direction and then another means much of anything, beyond that some of her songs are about things without being 100% clearly about them.

I'm a huge Taylor Swift fan, and I do enjoy following the "who is this song about?" stuff, but mostly because it's silly in a fun way.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:25 AM on May 19, 2015

I don't really think the media speculating in one direction and then another means much of anything

I see what you did there.
posted by taz at 7:36 AM on May 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Between that and the Katy Petty typo, I'm on an entirely unintentional roll in this thread.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:43 AM on May 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's just that when people in action movies walk away from explosions in slow motion, they usually show some kind of cool action set piece that led up to the explosion first. Without that, it's not really that cool anymore.

Paul Krugman is tired of trying to reason with you people.
posted by scalefree at 3:43 PM on May 19, 2015

Welp, I'm old. It was a good run.
posted by Yowser at 9:55 PM on May 20, 2015

i don't think the katy/taylor thing is made up for views or our culture pitting women against each other, i think they honestly don't get along.

I think the rivalry is going to get worse and worse until one of them drunkenly crashes the other's wedding, and in the process accidentally reveals that the groom is a total tool. Then they'll be back to being frenemies again.

At least that's how the plot of the summer comedy movie I'm writing goes.
posted by happyroach at 11:47 PM on May 20, 2015