Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch opened in United States theaters on March 25, 2011, sold as an action fantasy with a tagline that promised audiences would be unprepared. They were. Just not in the way the poster meant. Fifteen years on, the film has a cult following and a reputation that still does not match the one its makers wanted.
Trailer, via Legendary.
Babydoll Wakes Up in the Asylum
Emily Browning plays Babydoll, a young woman committed to a mental institution after her stepfather frames her for her sister’s murder. He is angry about being left out of the will. Once she is inside, he bribes an orderly named Blue Jones to forge psychiatrist Vera Gorski’s signature and schedule a lobotomy.
Browning’s character does not fight the building. She leaves it, mentally, retreating into a fantasy where the asylum becomes a brothel run by mobster Blue and the patients become sex slaves. Carla Gugino’s Dr. Gorski turns into a dance instructor. Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung play Sweet Pea, Rocket, Blondie and Amber.
The structure is a dream inside a dream inside a dance. Sucker Punch never picks a level and stays there.
The Wise Man Sets Four Rules
In the first fantasy, Babydoll lands in feudal Japan and meets Scott Glenn’s Wise Man. He gives her the rules of the game: she needs four items to escape. A map, fire, a knife and a key. A fifth item goes unnamed. Only she can find it. It requires, in the film’s own terms, a deep sacrifice and will bring a perfect victory.
From there the film becomes a heist picture built from familiar pieces. Babydoll dances as a distraction while the other women steal what the plan requires. Each dance opens onto another fantasy that mirrors the theft.
Sweet Pea copies a map from Blue’s office while Babydoll imagines a bunker full of World War I German soldiers. Amber lifts a lighter from the mayor while Babydoll storms an Orc-infested castle for fire crystals. Sweet Pea takes a kitchen knife from the Cook while Babydoll fights robots on a train to disarm a bomb.
Amanda Seyfried Was Asked First
Snyder has said he wanted an all-female cast here, telling interviewers he had already done the all-male version with 300 and was doing the opposite end of the spectrum. The casting history is more interesting than the film. Amanda Seyfried was tapped first for Babydoll and turned it down over a scheduling conflict with Big Love. Browning replaced her.
Evan Rachel Wood was offered a role, dropped out over conflicts with True Blood and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and Malone took Rocket. Emma Stone was offered Amber and declined over a conflict with Easy A. Freida Pinto was considered before Chung was signed. Brie Larson said in a 2020 YouTube video that she auditioned.
Oscar Isaac plays Blue Jones. Jon Hamm plays the High Roller. Gugino had worked with Snyder before, on Watchmen.
$89.8 Million Against a $75–$82 Million Budget
Sucker Punch opened in conventional theaters and in large-format IMAX venues across the United States. It grossed $89.8 million against a production budget of $75 million to $82 million. Reviews were generally negative. The film has since picked up a cult following.
That following is real, and it is not hard to see what draws people. Snyder builds images with genuine conviction. The samurai giants, the castle, the train — these are not lazy set pieces. The problem is that none of them mean anything, because the film keeps telling us the real story is happening somewhere else.
The Fifth Item Is the Whole Problem
Here is the thing about the unrevealed item. The Wise Man says only Babydoll can find it, that it demands a deep sacrifice and delivers a perfect victory. The film sets that up as its emotional engine. Then it spends most of its runtime on the four items we already know about, which are a map, fire, a knife and a key, and which are collected by other people while Babydoll dances offscreen.
That is the central failure of Sucker Punch. The most important task belongs to the least active character. Babydoll is the protagonist and the passive one at once. She performs, she fantasizes, and the plot advances around her. When the sacrifice finally lands, it belongs to someone else.
The film also wants to have it both ways on what it is showing. The brothel is a fantasy, but the exploitation inside it is played for spectacle. The asylum is the reality, but the film treats the lobotomy as a deadline rather than a horror. Sucker Punch borrows the language of abuse and then uses it as set dressing for fight scenes. That is not a daring choice. It is an evasion.
Snyder and Steve Shibuya wrote the script. It is Snyder’s first film based on an original concept, and it shows in the worst way. Original concepts need a point of view, and this one has a visual vocabulary and nothing underneath it. The layers do not complicate the story. They let the film avoid committing to any of them.
The cast is not the problem. Browning holds the center as well as the material allows. Cornish and Malone give the sister bond between Sweet Pea and Rocket more weight than the script earns. Gugino and Isaac are working hard in roles that are mostly exposition and menace.
What is worth watching is the craft. The production design and the action choreography are the reason this film has a cult following, and that following is not wrong to exist. A movie can be a failure and still be someone’s favorite. Sucker Punch is loud, committed and beautiful in stretches.
It is also hollow, and the hollowness is not ambiguity. It is the absence of a decision. The fifth item was supposed to be the answer, and the film’s handling of it is muddled rather than satisfying.
Numbers to Know
- Release date: March 25, 2011 (United States, conventional and IMAX theaters)
- Director: Zack Snyder
- Writers: Zack Snyder and Steve Shibuya
- Runtime: 110 minutes
- Gross: $89.8 million
- Production budget: $75 million to $82 million
- Metacritic: 33/100
- Score: 3.3 of 10
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