so i saw red sparrow yesterday, and it was … well, i didn’t love it. as someone who’s not normally too bothered by that type of thing, there was too much sexualized violence and gore for me to actually enjoy it, so
here’s how i would have done it:
we’ll keep the beginning. dominika is the prima ballerina, taking care of her ailing mother. she suffers a career ending injury, threatening her ability to care for her mother and herself.
her rich, connected uncle vanya makes her an offer. he’s been kind, but distant. he proves to her that the injury was no accident, and just like in the movie she goes to the ballet, and finds her coworkers who did this, and she beats them with her walking stick. she doesn’t kill them, but it’s close, oh so close, it’s more luck that they don’t die than anything else.
the movie had vanya want her, had him attracted to his niece, and her mother makes a comment about not liking the way he looked at her as a child. we’re going to take that out, because it’s unnecessary. it doesn’t add anything, doesn’t come up plot-wise, it’s only purpose was to make it extra clear that we Don’t Like Him and he’s a Creep. which we figure out, like, pretty damn quickly, we don’t need it. complicated people are more realistic, are more interesting than one dimensional villains. if there’s one thing this movie desperately needed, it was to stop beating a dead horse, and then trying to have sex with it.
so her vanya sees her for what she is: his niece. his dead brother’s daughter. he tried to be helpful after his brother’s death – he took her out to eat at nice restaurants, loving the way she pretended to be a little lady, and her serious eyes and serious mouth. but he’s busy, and he’s not good with kids. but she wants to be dancer, and she’d good, so he gets her the audition that gets her into the company, uses her too, brings his slimy political “friends” to watch his beautiful niece dance. she’s a perfect specimen of russian beauty, control, and skill, and he shows her off thusly.
he’s not a good person, doesn’t do good things. but he tries to be helpful. so he comes to her with the offer – sleep with this man and while he’s distracted switch his phone with one they’ve bugged, and he’ll see that she and her mother are taken care of. of course, he’s rich and connected enough to do that anyway, but he won’t do it for free – because he’s not a good person, and he doesn’t do good things.
she wants to refuse, but he pressures her, saying her mother will suffer if she doesn’t do it. so she agrees, and it sickens her, but she does it. then we get to the scene where the man starts to rape her (so unnecessary, so unneeded, she’d already “consented” to this, she would have slept with him, but the movie couldn’t let dominika go through anything un-traumatized). the movie had Boy Assassin come in and kill him while he was still on top of her, still inside her. he could have come in earlier, but waited until he was already fucking her.
for all the sex and gore and death, dominika doesn’t kill anyone with her own two hands in this movie. which – give me a fucking break. we can rape this woman multiple times on screen, but having her kill someone? too much. are you trying to show she’s better than that, because guess what, she’s not. you have her beat two people bloody for ending her career, but killing the people who torture her and assault her is too far? fuck that.
he gets rough, too rough, and dominka decides fuck this. he’s an old man, she’s a freaking prima ballerina. do you have any idea how strong she has to be? she’s violent, we know that, and so she grabs the phone off the bedside table and beats him to death with it.
you want sexualized gore, fine, here’s how you can have it: by the time assassin boy comes through the window, dominka is sitting there in her slinky black lace underwear, chest heaving, covered in the blood of her would-be rapist while his corpse lays beside her.
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