Sucker Punch Analysis: All the World’s a Stage

Ever since I saw Sucker Punch, I thought about it for 72 hours straight. Not because it’s anything particularly insightful, I just can’t see how a movie that looks this good can be so bad.

Like they say in Inception, “We need to go deeper.”
(Warning: Major spoilers ahead)

Even though it’s technically three films in one, there are two main ways to watch it: either the straightforward girl goes crazy and goes on an adventure, or as Zach Snyder describes in an interview for Film School Rejects, a critique on geek culture’s sexism.

I guess, being an otaku and seeing women fight in revealing outfits all the time, I never gave it much thought, but most people wondered for what purpose the girls were dressed that way in the fantasy world. “The girls are in a brothel performing for men in the dark. In the fantasy sequences, the men in the dark are us.” In other words, we become the audience, and the girls “perform” for us. The outfits that they wore were never intended to be sexual (Zach says there are never any zoom-ins on cleavage). The fantasy worlds (dragons, World War I, sci-fi) are all a reflection of our geeky souls.

After my 72 hours of critical thinking, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole movie is a play. Right from the very beginning, the curtains open and “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” starts playing; Zach says, “I want to let you know the music is not going to be of the time. It’s going to be transcendent and cross the bounds of space and time.” This is also to foreshadow the fantasy worlds (which break space and time) that come up later in the movie. The music plays a very big role in the movie. As I stated in my review, though songs like “I Want It All/We Will Rock You” were inappropriate for the time period, they gave the theatre this nice club ambiance; it made it feel as if we were the spectators and the silver screen was the stage. Could their sub-world possibly be our real world? It’s hard to say, since the movie takes place in the 1950s, but since the director does say the film transcends time and space, it’s possibly that it could travel to different realities too –– the asylum being their reality and the brothel being ours (metaphorically speaking, of course. Remember, that coincidentally in the sub-world the girls are performers).

As far as I can remember, the camera never goes into a first-person perspective, making sure that all the events take place from “our” point of view. When Baby Doll drifts into her fantasy, the camera doesn’t cut –– it swirls around her and the stage changes, imagine this being akin to a set change during a play. The original ending had Baby doll singing “O-o-h Child” on stage with the other dead girls joining her. The curtains close, and the movie ends, but this scene was cut out because it was too “culty, bizarro”. MANY scenes had to be cut, in order to keep the PG-13 rating, which is why the theatrical version didn’t come out/work out as his original vision.

Continuing with the World’s a Stage theme, when Sweet Pea pulls off her wig, and starts complaining during that scene right after Baby Doll is about to get lobotomized, it’s either another commentary on our geek culture (“I get the sexy school girl and nurse thing, but what’s this? A lobotomized vegetable? How about something more commercial?”) or a tongue-in-cheek self-aware reference (“This is a joke, right?” could possibly be her referring to the sudden scene shift and/or the sub-world brothel being “not real”).

I haven’t delved so far as to analyze each character’s archetype –– why the father slips into the role of the Father and why Blue, the asylum’s orderly, plays a mob boss (maybe because he is in charge of everything and he owns the girls?) –– but I’m sure they are in there somewhere. Also, why are there five girls? It must have some kind of important meaning since there is a “5” on the side of the helicopter, unless it’s something insipidly obvious like the connection to the five items

The most recognizable archetype is the Wise Man, which can also be an allusion to “follow the white rabbit (he will set you free).” This idea is not so far-fetched, because everywhere in the fantasy world there are rabbit logos (including the sword and mech he gives the girls). Even in the World War I era, the song that plays when all the girls meet the old (white-haired) man for the very first time is called “White Rabbit”. The six worlds (the real world, sub-world and four fantasy worlds) could represent the six brooks from Through the Looking-Glass, but maybe I’m just over-analyzing things. Now here’s something real trippy: there are four evil men (I don’t count the doctor since he was just doing his job); three of the girls get killed; there are two sisters, or rather two pairs of sisters; and one shared goal –– to escape.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I wish Zach Snyder would’ve stuck with the R-rating so the movie could’ve been closer to his original intention (I will be waiting for the Director’s Cut). Maybe then, critics would’ve taken him more seriously and not see Sucker Punch as some sort of cash cow aimed at anime and video game-obsessed teenage boys. He definitely has balls for going along with a movie that’s so different and not making something so commercial, so I will give him props for that. I love indie movies, and I view Sucker Punch as an indie movie with a huge budget. Like any indie movie, it’s multi-layered (both in story and in meaning); I believe every person will have their own interpretation, whether it’s escapism, empowerment, or just Alice and Wonderland on drugs.

I’m not defending the movie –– the sub-par acting and choppy pacing still makes this movie shit, and shit is still shit no matter how many cool slow-motion scenes you embellish it with –– I’m just giving it a different perspective.

So there you have it. Either Zach Snyder is the William Shakespeare of our time, or he is too philosophical for his and our own (according to the abysmal box office numbers) good.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”