Taglines: You Will Be Unprepared.
“Sucker Punch” is an epic action fantasy that takes us into the vivid imagination of a young girl whose dream world provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality. Unrestrained by the boundaries of time and place, she is free to go where her mind takes her, and her incredible adventures blur the lines between what’s real and what is imaginary.
She has been locked away against her will, but Babydoll (Emily Browning) has not lost her will to survive. Determined to fight for her freedom, she urges four other young girls—the outspoken Rocket (Jena Malone), the street-smart Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), the fiercely loyal Amber (Jamie Chung) and the reluctant Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish)—to band together and try to escape their terrible fate at the hands of their captors, Blue (Oscar Isaac), Madam Gorski (Carla Gugino) and the High Roller (Jon Hamm).
Led by Babydoll, the girls engage in fantastical warfare against everything from samurais to serpents, with a virtual arsenal at their disposal. Together, they must decide what they are willing to sacrifice in order to stay alive. But with the help of a Wise Man (Scott Glenn), their unbelievable journey—if they succeed—will set them free.
Sucker Punch is an American fantasy action film directed by Zack Snyder and co-written by him and Steve Shibuya. It is Snyder’s first film based on an original concept. The film stars Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung and Carla Gugino. The storyline follows the fantasies of a young woman who is committed to a mental institution, as she makes a plan to escape the hospital before suffering a lobotomy.
About the Production
Close your eyes. Open your mind. You will be unprepared.
Zack Snyder directed “Sucker Punch from a screenplay he wrote with Steve Shibuya, based on Snyder’s story. Snyder and Deborah Snyder produced, with Thomas Tull, Wesley Coller, Jon Jashni, Chris deFaria, Jim Rowe and William Fay serving as executive producers.
The behind-the-scenes creative team includes Academy Award(R)-winning production designer Rick Carter (“Avatar) and “Watchmen and “300 veterans director of photography Larry Fong, editor William Hoy and costume designer Michael Wilkinson. The music is by Tyler Bates and Marius DeVries.
Filmmaker Zack Snyder wanted to push the envelope of what is fantasy versus reality in his first film to be based on his own wholly original concept, “Sucker Punch.
Snyder, who conceived of the story and co-wrote, produced and directed the film, states, “Sucker Punch is a movie about escape, both literal and figurative. It shows how the mind can create an almost impenetrable barricade against the real world, and to what lengths we’re willing to go, what sacrifices we’re willing to make, to get out of a difficult situation.
On the heels of “300 and “Watchmen, the visually complex film is the result of an idea Snyder says “was an evolution for me. I’m inspired by fantasy art and magazines like Heavy Metal. It’s sort of a mash-up between those influences, as well as ‘Twilight Zone’ and the writings of Richard Bach.
The full story was years in the making. “I’d written a short story a while ago, which included a character named Babydoll, Snyder says. “As I worked on it further, the idea evolved and expanded, and took on a life of its own.
Producer Deborah Snyder adds, “It was so liberating for Zack to create something for which there were no preconceived expectations. This movie could be whatever he wanted it to be, and even though the story changed over time, at its center it has always been about this young woman, Babydoll, who is faced with so much adversity that she retreats into these fantastical worlds in her mind in order to cope with what’s going on around her. In so doing, she finds great strength within. She’s a survivor.
With a fair amount of the story and characters fleshed out, Zack Snyder turned to longtime friend Steve Shibuya to co-write the script. “Together, Steve and I worked through how it was all going to fit together.
“When Zack first approached me, I thought his ideas for the film were so daring, Shibuya offers. “He wanted to make a movie without any limitations on the action, to have an almost endless amount of space within these vastly different worlds to push the on-screen battles as far as we could-or even farther-all within this story of a young woman literally fighting her own demons on a journey to redemption.
Ironically, though the story has virtually no boundaries of time and space, it is set in one of the most confining places imaginable-a forbidding Vermont mental institution in the 1960s. Nonetheless, the film transports the viewer along with Babydoll as her fantasies take her to otherworldly places at once ancient and futuristic and everywhere in between. She and her fellow warriors, Sweet Pea, Rocket, Blondie and Amber, battle everything from gargantuan samurai beasts to reanimated zombie soldiers to fire-breathing dragons. At the girls’ disposal: their wits, an arsenal of deadly hardware, and their willingness to work together to survive.
Casting
In “Sucker Punch,” Babydoll pulls each of the key characters into her multiple fantasy worlds, which meant that each of the actors would have to play multiple roles, first as their characters in the asylum and then as heightened versions of themselves in her mind, some good, some evil.
Emily Browning took on the role of the young woman determined to be free at all costs. “The words ‘baby doll’ make you immediately think of something really fragile,” Browning says, “but she’s not at all. That’s what was so cool to me about this character—she’s actually pretty tough, with an unexpected stoicism.”
Delving inside Babydoll’s psyche led Browning to discover what might have influenced her and made her so resilient. “I think the people in her fantasies represent her experiences, the oppression she has had to put up with throughout her life. She has this almost simplistic view of the good guys and the bad guys, the bad guys being men like her stepfather and, later, some of the monsters in her fantasies. And the Wise Man in her dreams represents the ideal father figure, strong but really caring and able to guide her and help her make the right choices.”
“Babydoll symbolizes that transition between thinking like a child and thinking like an adult, when your perception of the world changes,” Zack Snyder says. “She is a warrior, both delicate and strong at the same moment, and Emily really personified everything I had envisioned about Babydoll. She has this mystic, timeless, almost unquantifiable look and completely brought the character to life for me.”
Browning felt the full support of Snyder as she worked to embody a character so dear to him. “Zack obviously had a clear vision and knew exactly what he wanted, but at the same time he was really collaborative and was totally open to other ideas,” she notes. “He always wanted to make sure that I was happy with my performance.” The first friend that Babydoll makes in her new surroundings is Rocket, a strong willed if somewhat naïve girl who, together with her older sister, Sweet Pea, have been at the asylum long enough to have learned the ropes.
Jena Malone plays the impetuous Rocket, whom she says “is sort of the archetype of the younger sibling—someone who is cared for and looked after, but doesn’t always appreciate it. I felt Rocket was very free in the way that she could see the world and not always be as affected by it, but feeling free in her world isn’t necessarily a positive thing. There’s a risk to having too much confidence, or a false sense of confidence, in her case.”
Rocket’s false sense of security comes in part from having a big sister who has always watched over her. As Babydoll gets to know the girls, it becomes clear to her that not only does Sweet Pea serve as a protector for her little sister, but as a leader of the group. Sweet Pea views Babydoll’s arrival as a threat to her authority and her position as the favorite of those in control.
Abbie Cornish, who plays Sweet Pea, instantly connected with the character. “When I initially read the script, Sweet Pea spoke to me the most. She’s a mother figure who looks out for Rocket, her wilder and unpredictable baby sister. Sweet Pea has good instincts and she heeds them. She understands how discipline works in their world and what she has to do to get through her everyday life. I think she really believes that if they just put their heads down and work hard and do what they’re told to do, that one day they’ll walk out of there. The idea of trying to escape—the consequences of it—scares her more than it scares Rocket.”
One girl who definitely follows Sweet Pea’s lead is Blondie, whose nickname belies her appearance. The part is played by the raven-haired Vanessa Hudgens, who offers, “Blondie is very sweet, if a little bit scared, and that fear can get the best of her. She has her ‘blonde’ moments every now and then, but when she jumps into the action scenes, she’s a total badass.”
The experience was one she’ll not soon forget. “This project was unlike anything I’ve ever done, and working on it felt so empowering. It’s still rare for women in film to really kick butt, especially in a way that no one’s ever seen before, and the fact that Zack did this and I got to be a part of it makes him my hero,” she smiles.
Another character to find her courage on the battlefield is Amber, who earns her wings piloting the other girls to safety on more than one occasion.
Jamie Chung, who plays the role, states, “Amber is the kind of girl who wants to fit in, to be accepted, so she’s a people-pleaser and a little submissive. The idea of freedom, of actually escaping, riles her up and helps her find her courage. That newfound courage translates into Babydoll’s fantasy worlds where she’s the captain of her vessel. Whether it’s a helicopter, a Meka or a B-25, her job is to make sure the others can accomplish their goals on the ground and in the air, and be lifted to safety when they’re ready to get out of there. She has to do her job right, or everything will go wrong, and she cares too much about the others to fail them.”
The sense of devotion that develops between the characters was a direct reflection of the connections created between the actresses off screen. “The chemistry that each of these five women had with each other was really obvious, both on and off the set,” Deborah Snyder observes. “That’s something you can’t make up; it’s just something magical that happens. And in a film like this, where the characters have to create an unbreakable bond with each other, that magic really has to be there. We were so lucky that they each had such devotion to the project and to each other, and I think it really shows in the film.”
“I can’t imagine a different actress playing any one of these parts,” Zack Snyder adds. “They all perfectly embodied what I had envisioned when conceiving of these girls, and they all delivered in a way even I hadn’t imagined.”
Even more so than the five young rebels, the authority figures in the asylum appear distinctly different in Babydoll’s imagination. Carla Gugino plays Dr. Vera Gorski, who goes from psychiatrist to Madam as fantasy takes over. Attempting to help the young women survive, if not escape, their surroundings, the character is also under the thumb of those in control and is deluded into thinking she has any authority of her own.
“This is a woman who feels a lot, but doesn’t express herself in that regard,” Gugino says of her character, whose accent reveals her Eastern European origins. “She’s very tough and, I felt, given when and where she probably grew up, has gone through a lot in her lifetime, much worse than these girls will ever know. She’s a part of the establishment, but she cares about them, too, so her tact is, ‘Let me figure out how to get them through this and empower them within this precarious world.”
The man attempting to usurp any of their newfound power is Blue, who we first see as an orderly but who ultimately runs the show with an iron fist. Oscar Isaac plays the role. “I think Blue is probably someone who has felt powerless in his life, and now he’s able to stake some claim to these girls,” Isaac comments. “He wants their respect and he wants to control them. Of course, he’s out for himself and whatever he can get. And if they don’t go along with him, the consequences are severe.”
Preparing For Battle
Prior to filming, the five young women of “Sucker Punch” had to prepare for the physical challenges presented by the demanding action sequences in the script. They found themselves pushed to their limits in the capable hands of stunt coordinator and action designer Damon Caro and training coordinator Logan Hood, both of whom had previously worked with Zack Snyder on “300.” Caro supervised the girls’ martial arts, fight and weapons training, while Hood oversaw their general body conditioning.
Though training would last throughout production, it began in Los Angeles about five weeks before the cast moved up to Vancouver to start principal photography. According to Caro and Hood, the first stage provided a foundation and included basic techniques in order to assess strength and build the girls’ stamina. Caro started with them each morning, running them through martial arts and empty-hand weapons choreography, tailoring each actress’s regimen to her character’s needs. Hood and his team, including fellow former Navy Seal David Young, took over in the afternoon with functional training, including calisthenics, weights, body-weight pull ups and push ups, jumping on and off boxes, pulling tires, dragging ropes and kettlebells and more, modulating the workouts on a daily basis. The overall focus was on strength and agility so that the girls would look more athletic in their scenes, again supporting the needs of their individual characters.
According to Abbie Cornish, “We all found this thing within us that we called ‘the beast.’ When you think you’ve reached your maximum effort, if you can just find that beast within yourself to push through, you go to a whole other level. It’s such an amazing feeling, that elation that comes over you.”
“I’m a very active person; I run, I play sports, but I’ve never pushed myself to the point where I couldn’t feel my arms,” Jamie Chung laughs. “We had fun together and we felt the pain together. It really brought us closer and gave us a sense of camaraderie, which we carried throughout filming.”
Jena Malone found a unique way to relate the training regimen to what her character would be going through. “Waking up early in the morning, doing four-to-five hours of martial arts, another two hours of strength training and then an hour or more of guns, plus fittings for corsets—another strange form of torture—that was our insane asylum,” she jokes. In reality, though, she acknowledges that it helped. “That process really contributed to how we thought about our characters, living together and sweating together, seeing what our bodies could do when we really pushed ourselves as far as we could go. It really helped us hone in on who we had to be on camera.”
“The great thing about all the training was that it gave us a new self-confidence, taking us to places we’d never been to before, both physically and mentally,” says Vanessa Hudgens. “You have a fire in your eyes. You tell yourself you can do anything.”
Because Emily Browning had to expertly handle multiple weapons simultaneously, the right-handed actress had to learn to shoot with her left hand so she could brandish a sword in her dominant hand. She relates that she felt especially empowered by the weapons training. “Learning to fight with Damon and the boys was the most fun I’ve had preparing for a film. The fact that I can wield a sword and fire a gun like it’s second-nature is a little scary but also pretty cool in a really unexpected way.”
Sucker Punch
Directed by: Zack Snyder
Starring: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Carla Gugino, Richard Cetrone, Jon Hamm, Revard Dufresne, Oscar Isaac
Screenplay by: Zack Snyder, Steve Shibuya
Production Design by: Rick Carter
Cinematography by: Larry Fong
Film Editing by: William Hoy
Costume Design by: Michael Wilkinson
Art Direction by: Patrick Banister, Todd Cherniawsky, Stefan Dechant, Grant Van Der Slagt
Music by: Tyler Bates, Marius De Vries
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, language and some sexual content.
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: March 25, 2011
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