Guardians-owl-suit-fight

That Zack Snyder’s upcoming film Sucker Punch includes zombies, samurai, robots, giant monsters, and dinosaurs fighting airplanes is so bat-loco that it can sometimes distract from the fact he also made an animated movie about Australian warrior owls.  Make no mistake, Zack Snyder is completely insane.   Witness, this exchange from his recent interview with The Onion A/V Club:

AVC: You actually choreographed the fights with actors wearing owl suits, fighting each other. How’d that work?

ZS: Yeah. When we got to the fight scenes, one of the things was like—these owls are supposedly an ancient culture, and they have a martial tradition that we can’t just make up. It’s gonna look goofy if they’re just clawing at each other.

This is the point in the interview where I realize the question was serious and my mind is completely blown.

So I got with my stunt choreographer and fight coordinator, Damon Caro, who’s done all my movies. We got my all stunt team from 300 and made them put these cardboard wings on and basically fight each other.

The cool thing was, like, if one was going to attack and the other was going to defend, there’s a rule for how that should happen. Because if they’re going to block a strike, the parry is based on a martial art. The animators then don’t have to pretend. It’s a real thing they have to work with. I think that comes through in the film.

I would pay a good $50 to see two hours of stunt men fighting each other in cardboard owl suits.  Oh, were you not aware owls had a martial tradition?  They do. It’s called whoooo-jitsu.  …ow, shut up, I was already leaving.