While people right now are either singing his praises or damning his audacity following the recent release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League (aka The Snyder Cut) on HBO Max, that film is far from the director’s magnum opus. While Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a huge film that most people are going to either love or hate, the true high point of Zack Snyder’s career is now, and will likely forever be, his 2011 masterpiece of cinema, Sucker Punch.
Yes, we know. Sucker Punch (2011) is a massively divisive film, but as we revisit the movie on its 10th anniversary today, we want to address just how flawlessly this film translated Zack Snyder’s vision to the screen. Don’t get me wrong, it is far from perfect, but it is a damn fun ride. Sucker Punch (2011) simply LOOKS cool, and it is the perfect kind of project for director Zack Snyder, whose strong visuals are one of his most prominent talents. Sucker Punch was also Snyder’s first original work that wasn’t a remake or adaptation of some other form of media. This movie was his baby, and it shows the amount of love and effort he put into making this movie shine.
Sucker Punch opens with a haunting cover of “Sweet Dreams” playing over the death of an ill woman who we quickly learn is the mother of our lead heroine whose real name we never really learn; we only get her nickname, which is Baby Doll (Emily Browning). This is coupled with even more backstory explaining how Baby Doll’s abusive stepfather was looked over in her mom’s last will and testament in favor of his newly deceased wife’s daughters. He is about to molest Baby Doll when she attacks him, so he locks her up in her room and moves on to molest her little sister instead. Baby Doll breaks out and attacks her stepfather with a pistol, but misses and the ricochet bullet kills her little sister. Her stepfather uses this as an excuse to have her sent away to a mental institution.
The plot setup is that he is going to have her lobotomized and then take all the inheritance for himself. He pays off an orderly to see it is taken care of. Still with us? Because it only gets weirder from here.
The movie has a unique set-up that frequently jumps between realities and without any explanation other than the idea of escapism. The “real world” takes place in a mental institution, which is coupled with an alternate reality set in a “club” full of dancing girls who are essentially prisoners of the club owner Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac). Then, there is the “dance reality,” which is another reality set one level deeper when Babydoll begins to dance. The “dance reality” is fantastical and changes completely with each new dance. It is often action-oriented and features larger-than-life situations.
The majority of the movie takes place in the “club” reality, where the girls are forced to dance to survive. While there are many girls we are never properly introduced to, the lead group focuses on Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jenna Malone), Amber (Jamie Chung), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and of course, Baby Doll. When Baby Doll dances, she finds herself (and her friends) sinking mentally into another reality where she fights to survive in a number of ridiculous action set pieces. The entire movie is really just built around fitting in these insane set pieces that are a 13-year-old boy’s wet dream. Girls in short skirts or tight leather fighting off giant robotic samurai, mechanical soldiers on a speeding train, hoards of goblins, and even a dragon!
Each of these dream sequences is meant to symbolize the actual goal of that particular dance. For example, to get a map, the girls fight in a war setting against steampunk Nazi zombies (while using a giant bunny mech battlesuit no less). To obtain fire, they have to slay a dragon. Each sequence is paired with a song from this film’s cover-packed soundtrack.
In this “dance reality,” we are introduced to the Wise Man (Scott Glenn), whose real place in the story is never truly explained. He just sort of shows up as a sage guardian to help direct Babydoll in the right direction. He is essentially playing an exaggerated version of David Carradine. He is the one that tells Baby Doll that she will need five things to get out. These five things will be her “weapons“; a map, fire, a knife, and a key. The fifth thing is a mystery, and it is a goal that will lead to “a deep sacrifice and a perfect victory” according to the Wise Man.
Getting back to our actual story, Baby Doll has just three days to collect all of these items to escape before her scheduled lobotomy. She organizes a plan for the others to obtain these items while she causes a distraction with her dancing. Her dancing is supposed to be stunning and draws the attention of everyone who sees it, but Zack Snyder made a brilliant creative decision to keep it off-camera. We never see it on film, and it is left entirely to the viewers’ imagination, which is realistically the only way that this dance could ever believably be handled. Nothing could live up to the hype that is built around this dancing, and keeping it all in the viewers’ minds is a smart choice. It also helps that it doesn’t gratuitously oversexualize Baby Doll in a film that is already overtly hypersexualized.
Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned. One member of the team is killed when a “mission” goes awry. Several others aren’t far behind her and bite the dust as the stakes are higher than ever. Baby Doll’s time is about to be up, and she needs to make her move. She uses the knife to stab Jones, frees the captured Sweet Pea, and uses the first to create a distraction so they can make a break for it.
In the end, Baby Doll realizes the last of the five things needed is her own sacrifice. She allows herself to be captured as a distraction so that Sweet Pea can escape and “live for all of us” as she is the only one who can actually make it out. Baby Doll is lobotomized, bringing a heartbreaking end to her story, but not without her own victory.
As her procedure is completed, the doctor who does the lobotomy (played wonderfully by Jon Hamm) says he sees something different in her eyes and questions why she received the lobotomy to begin with. It is discovered that Jones, the orderly who doubled as the club owner in the “club” reality, had been forging signatures to authorize lobotomies and other procedures. The police are called and Jones’ reign of terror comes to an end.
Baby Doll is lobotomized, but justice is served as Jones is taken away by the police. Meanwhile, Sweet Pea makes it to a bus station and escapes. The bus driver is the Wise Man who more or less winks to the audience as the credits begin to roll.
The visuals in Sucker Punch are stunning, but that is really where most of the meat is on this film. As simple and juvenile as some of these action sequences are, you really can’t help but kick back and just enjoy the ride that Sucker Punch is. The film is just a loose story that exists solely to bridge these action scenes together, and in that regard, it completely succeeds. It’s a crime this movie didn’t spawn more female-centric action movies of a similar nature.
The cast here is mostly phenomenal all around. It is hard to complain about the massive range of talent here. Jenna Malone, Abbie Cornish, and Vanessa Hudgens all absolutely own their scenes and leave you wanting so much more. Jamie Chung is unfortunately underutilized and they don’t do enough with her character Amber. It feels like she’s just there to be pretty half the time, which is a shame because it diminishes Chung’s talent.
That is largely the biggest criticism of this film really; all of the skimpy outfits led to a lot of people writing this movie off as a sexploitation film about girls in skimpy outfits. In reality, while it does pack in plenty of eye candy, Sucker Punch is a commentary on sexual trauma and systemic misogyny disguised as an action movie.
A young Oscar Isaac plays Blue Jones, an orderly in the institution and also the club owner in the alternate “club” reality. This film features one of his first prominent roles, and he truly shines alongside co-star and Snyder veteran Carla Gugino. Gugino is Dr. Gorski, a therapist at the institution and a dance instructor in the “club” reality. She seems to be on the girls’ side and wants to help them, but she is positioned under Jones’ thumb herself.
Then we have Emily Browning. While she isn’t necessarily boring, she is one of the least developed characters in the film. She acts more like a conduit for the story’s advancement than anything else. Essentially, she’s a walking “Macguffin.” Her performance is fine, but there isn’t anything memorable to it. Generally speaking, I think Browning is a spectacular talent, but she is absolutely wasted on this film besides being a blonde in a miniskirt. Emily Browning deserves better than this movie gave her, although her action scenes are all an utter joy to see. She fully committed to giving this movie all she’s got even if it didn’t give her much back.
I also really cannot say enough about this film’s soundtrack. The musical selections all stand out and most are hauntingly beautiful cover renditions of hit songs. Snyder has an excellent flair for the dramatic when it comes to musical cues in this film, which is ironic considering how often people make jokes about some of his music choices in some of his other film projects. We are treated to covers of songs like Sweet Dreams (The Eurythmics), White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane), Search And Destroy (Iggy Pop), Tomorrow New Knows (The Beatles), and Where Is My Mind (The Pixies). The film doesn’t have much of an original score, but these new takes on classic songs that it leans so heavily on are unique and really help to build this world up.
Regardless of how you feel about Sucker Punch, it is hard to deny that Zack Snyder hits exactly the mark he meant to with this movie. It is never anything more or less than his true vision, and that is just fine. Sometimes movies don’t need to be more than a fun popcorn flick where you just turn your brain off and soak in the action, but Sucker Punch makes an effort to be so much more than it ever needed to be. It gives a surprisingly subtle (with subtlety also being something Snyder isn’t exactly known for) commentary on sexism in geek culture by giving us a live-action anime adaptation without any source material.
This is exactly why Snyder pulled off the hat trick and made what I would say is now and will likely always be his greatest cinematic achievement with Sucker Punch; the movie is an absolute blast that feels like it should be a mindless action flick while simultaneously actually having something to say for once.
As the Wise Man in the film so plainly says, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” Sucker Punch stands for something, even if it’s hidden behind a bunch of tight outfits on some of Hollywood’s hottest talent. This is exactly why a decade later the film may be more relevant than ever.
If you liked this Rewind Review, be sure to check out the whole series as we take a look back at some of our favorite corners of popular culture from years past!
