After delivering audiences the comic book adaptations 300 in 2007 and Watchmen in 2009, director Zack Snyder then delivered audiences the original and pulp-inspired Sucker Punch in 2011, a project which he recently teased he’d like to revisit in order to deliver a director’s cut. With that film’s theatrical release being underwhelming both critically and financially, many viewers would assume it was an experience merely lost to time, but with Snyder pulling off the unthinkable in recent years and delivering fans Zack Snyder’s Justice League back in 2021, we wouldn’t be at all surprised if his Sucker Punch gets a similar treatment.
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While discussing his original ending for the film with Letterboxd, Snyder teased, “You’ll get to see it at some point, I’m sure. I hope,” while also breaking down the differences between the theatrical ending and his original conclusion.
The film follows a group of young women who have all been committed to a mental institution who then fantasize about finding the necessary items they would need to escape this prison, all while battling thugs and robots. With the film sitting at 22% positive reviews on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, the film earned praise for Snyder’s visuals, though was criticized for being “exploitative.”
“That was the whole thing to me; I always thought it was interesting when people would review the movie and say it’s exploitative. It’s like an anti-war movie that gets the war too good,” Snyder shared of those criticisms. “I feel like the main criticism of the film was that it was too exploitative. People took the movie as if the girls fighting and all that stuff was the movie. I found that slightly disheartening.”
The main character in the film, Emily Browning’s Babydoll, ends up getting a lobotomy in the mental institution, with Snyder hinting at what he intended to deliver with the finale.
“I’ve never gotten around to doing the director’s cut. I still plan to at some point. But in the original ending when Babydoll is in the chair in the basement with Blue [Oscar Isaac] — she’s already been lobotomized — when the cop shines the light on her, the set breaks apart and she stands up and she sings a song on stage,” the director detailed. “She sings, ‘Ooh, Child, things are gonna get easier.’ Blondie [Vanessa Hudgens], and all the people that have been killed, join in and it’s the idea that in a weird way, even though she’s lobotomized, she’s kind of stuck in this infinite loop of euphoric victory. It’s weirdly not optimistic and optimistic at the same time. That’s kind of what the tone was at the end. We tested it and the studio thought it was too weird, so we changed it.”
Snyder’s time with Justice League was a bit more of a contentious experience, as he left production while shooting, only for Joss Whedon to finish the film and deliver what landed in theaters in 2017. After nearly four years of audiences campaigning for Snyder’s version to be released, along with Snyder teasing his vision, Zack Snyder’s Justice League debuted on HBO Max.
Sucker Punch surely has its fans and supporters, but without quite as vocal of a fan base as Justice League, it’s unclear if it could get the same support for a director’s cut.
Would you like to see the film get a director’s cut? Let us know in the comments!
