Some viewers didn’t like one of Zack Snyder’s films, but according to him, it was for the wrong reasons. Explanations.
With a score of 3.2 out of 5 according to the spectators and 3.0 out of 5 according to the press, Sucker Punch by Zack Snyder ends up with a correct score but close to the average. The director has always found the film’s mixed reception unfair, and spoke about it on the site Letterbox :
Seems like the main criticism of the film was that it was too “abusive”. Audiences took it like it was just girls fighting. I found that a bit discouraging.
As a reminder, Sucker Punch is the story of Babydoll, a young girl who takes refuge in her dreams and fantasies to escape her tragic daily life. She imagines herself in a cabaret where she meets four other girls. With them, Babydoll will go into fantastic worlds in search of objects that will help them escape from the cabaret where they are held against their will.
Warner Bros. Jena Malone and Emily Browning
“It’s a film that has divided a lot”continues Snyder. “To be honest, the people who came to me to tell me that Sucker Punch was their favorite movie were mostly angsty teenage girls.”
But Snyder is not done with Sucker Punch, from which he absolutely wants to release his re-editing of the film one day:
Warner Bros.
“I’ve never leaned on a Director’s cut, but it’s planned one day. In the original ending, when Babydoll is in the chair in the basement with Blue – she’s already been lobotomized – and the cops raise their light towards her, the stage changes and she sings a song.”
“She intones ‘Ooh, Child, things are gonna get easier.’ optimistic and pessimistic. (…) We tested it and the studio found it too weird, so we changed it.”
This version could end up on a definitive version of the film supervised by its director. It remains to be seen whether the desire will materialize, because Snyder is already busy with the post-production of Rebel Moon, a Star Wars-style space opera which will be released on Netflix.
Alternate edits, Zack Snyder knows that by heart. At the insistence of the fans, the director had already yielded to the appeal of the Director’s cut for his feature film Justice League. This “Snyder Cut” still required an extension of 70 million dollars for reshoots, special effects and reassembly. The finished version was released on the HBO Max platform, and a black and white version was also released a few months later.