Sucker Punch quotes

View Quote 2011 films

View Quote Interviewer: Did you think a lot in the writing process, “Would a woman say this?” Zack Snyder: You think that, of course you do. It’s hard to write. Know at the beginning of the movie where Sweet Pea is acting tough? That’s tough to write, because I know where she’s going. It’s like when she says “watch yourself!” in the dance hall and they have that whole banter. That’s difficult because it’s on a graphic, in a lot of ways, but you gotta find a way to make it a lot of fun.

View Quote Interviewer: I thought it was basically you commenting on those attendants at Comic-Con who shout, “You’re hot!” at beautiful cast members. Zack Snyder: Yeah! 100%. They don’t know how to be around it. It’s funny because someone asked me about why I dressed the girls like that and I said, “Do you not get the metaphor there? The girls are in a brothel performing for men in the dark. In the fantasy sequences, the men in the dark are us. The men in the dark are basically me: dorky sci-fi kids.”

View Quote Interviewer: I’m curious, if you don’t mind talking about it, what was the originally shot and intended ending? Zack Snyder: The very first ending I wrote the order was: Babydoll was being lobotomized, she got chained in the basement, Sweet Pea escapes – well, let me back up. There’s a scene you’ll see on the Director’s Cut with Jon Hamm. When Jon Hamm arrives as the High Roller – and we took this scene out because of the MPAA – when that guy punches Babydoll in the face, she wakes up in the High Roller’s suite. He basically makes a deal with her that if she gives herself to him, and willingly and not against her will, then he’ll give her freedom and get [her] out of that place. He’ll make it so that Blue will never touch her and she’ll be free. She’s seduced by that concept, and right when they go to kiss each other, that’s her being lobotomized. When they kiss, it’s her being lobotomized.
The very end of the movie was: you see Sweet Pea steal a dress from a clothesline, then after she’s lobotomized and Blue says, “Do you remember me? Take her downstairs,” and then you see Sweet Pea getting on the bus, then after her getting on the bus, it cuts back to Babydoll in the basement and that whole scene happens of the cops taking him away. When he shines the flashlight on her, she gets up, and the camera dollies in on her and then goes around her head, and you see that she’s on a stage in the theater and she signs “O-o-h Child” at the very end. After that, all the dead girls come out and they sing together, then the curtain closes. That’s the end.
Interviewer: Why was that cut?
Zack Snyder: We tested it, and people just did not know how to… I don’t know. I thought it was awesome, personally. Maybe there’s a cult version of it that’ll exist that I can put together sometime [Laughs], but for a mass audience, it just played as this super culty, bizarro ending. I love it, personally. I could tell that people just didn’t know how to take it, though.
Interviewer: Was it difficult conducting test-screenings because of how much of a love it or hate it type of film it is?
Zack Snyder: What I learned on this was that you can’t test a movie like Sucker Punch. It really defies the whole concept of being tested. In a lot of ways, I think the movie would have been a million times better off if we just made the hardest, craziest version of the movie we could and not trying to please every audience. I do think that the movie is crazy, in a great way, but it’s just funny that I think it’s 30% as crazy as it could have been. I think that’s the world it lives in. It lives in a crazy world.

View Quote Interviewer: Is it wrong to enjoy seeing Babydoll in that school girl outfit, though? Snyder: You can say what you want about the movie, but I did not shoot the girls in an exploitative way. They might be dressed sexually, but I didn’t shoot the movie to exploit their sexuality. There’s no close-ups of cleavage, or stuff like that. I really wanted it to be up to the viewer to feel those feelings or not. Does that make sense?
Interviewer: Yeah, it’s like a guilty-pleasure.
Zack Snyder: 100%. As long as you’re self-aware about it, then you’re okay.

View Quote Interviewer: Most female action heroines are generally interchangeable with men. Can you talk about the process of finding that specific female voice? Zack Snyder: As a man, you can only do what you can do as far as understanding the female psyche. I just tried to write as honestly as I could, so then the female actors would fill in the emotional blanks I left for them. I feel like the girls were really up to that and into that. I thought it was an interesting approach. A good example is when we did the scene where the girls were going to break out and they’re all saying “they’re in!” and they’re crying at the end of the scene. That’s not in the script, and that was just them. If I had written that, I probably would have thought it was cheesy and no one would cry at the end of the sequence.

View Quote Interviewer: Would you say the film is a critique on sexist geek culture? Zack Snyder: It is, absolutely. I find it interesting, in a lot of ways, that this movie – of all the movies I’ve made – has been universally hated by fanboys, which I find really interesting. It’s like a fanboy indictment, in some ways. They can’t have fun with the geek culture sexual hang ups.

View Quote Q: As actors, I would assume that you have some freedom to sort of explore and dig into your real world characters. But when you cross over into this other world, do you have to be careful to sort of do your preparation through the prism of how Baby Doll would see or imagine you? Does it force you to understand her character more, as well as your own? Isaac: I didn’t approach it that way. Because even in a fantasy, it’s very specific. A lot of the time, when you fantasize someone, that should be a fully formed human being. So I didn’t kind of limit myself to well, what would Baby Doll see or what did she not see. You know, I just tried to make it as specific as possible. Who is this guy? He’s running a business. He’s a small business man. What does he have to do to remain in control with these girls and what tactics can he use? I just kind of went from that standpoint.
Gugino: Yeah, you know, I actually had for myself, initially, a similar question that you’re asking for myself, which is, in which way do I enter into that world? And I also realized for me, it had to be…I have to think of myself as real. Do you know what I mean? Because, again, otherwise you’re…but it was, for me…and again, that’s what’s always so cool about working with other actors, is that you, you know, I sort of did end up having her…she really is two different people, really. Sort of like the flip of a coin. But we have a lot more in the brothel than we do in the real world in a way. At least what we’ve been devoting ourselves to of late. So actually, it’s more interesting that we’ve had more time to explore that world then there has been to explore the other. Like, we’re about to shoot in the next couple of weeks, a couple of really important scenes in the real world, and it’s going to be interesting to go back to those with the information that we have from the alternate thing. But I have learned more about her character in doing it anyway, because you end up sort of going, ‘Oh, right, this is why…’ You know, it does end up being insightful into her psyche in a lot of those things. Even some things that the wise man said, and that we were acting out. They do start to really tie in.

View Quote Q: Can you talk about your reactions when you first the saw costumes you’d be wearing? Jamie Chung: Blown away. It feels like we’re shooting four different movies. Each costume theme is so detailed and so contrasting to the other costumes that we were wearing the day before. So it’s insane. Michael Wilkinson is a genius.
Vanessa Hudgens: It’s fascinating, the attention to detail that he’s created. Just every single thing is so defined. Everyone’s costumes are so personal. It’s fascinating and it blew me away. The first day that we walked in to our hangout lounge area, they had just plastered the walls with photos of art work and we just stood there and stared at it forever. It was amazing.
Q: Do you make your characters in the fantasy world as their own characters or as an extension of what Baby Doll sees? Are they separate or thinking about what she imagines your real world characters are?
Hudgens: I feel like in a sense it is Baby Doll’s fantasy world, but I feel like I took the initiative to play on what my character is like in the Salem world. In the brothel world, it is just an extension. It is something more powerful, more confident. I feel like through this whole process is Baby Doll’s fantasy and I feel like as soon as she changes it into the brothel we’re all an extension of her, of what she is, and what she stands for. I mean, I personally played it though as a real character with each thing. It is a different world but it is the same person. So it’s just different approaches I feel.

View Quote Q: Could you talk a little bit about your dance scene today, Jena? Jena Malone: The dance today is crazy. Each of us girls, except for Emily – because her dance becomes the tipping off of the fantasy worlds – we each have our own burlesque dance. It’s our persona coming out.; it’s all of the different icons that we represent. Mine’s sort of the nurse because the first time that Baby Doll sees me, I’m done up as a nurse. It’s a crazy-dead-zombie-robot-nurse dance. It’s going be so crazy; it’s going be awesome.
Q: What was your training like for the film?
Abbie Cornish: We started off in Los Angeles and spent a month there. We’d go out to 87-11 and train in the morning, martial arts – warm up, warm down. Then we’d have a half-hour break, our protein shakes, our amino acids.
Malone: And then Logan and Dave would take over, our physical trainers, our weight and strength advisers.
Cornish: They’d train us like maniacs for an hour and a half. We’d also do gun work, as well, which was so much fun. Then when we came to Vancouver, it was pretty much the same schedule, but we were learning more about the moves that we’d use in the film, the choreography for the film. Everything ramped up.
Malone: On top of the marital arts and weapons, we were doing costumes and walking through the sets and meeting with Zack. It was really a full-on rehearsal schedule. The first three months that the three of us girls were training together – Jaime and Vanessa didn’t come until August – that was the rehearsal. All three of us girls sweating, crying, figuring out what our pain threshold was. In a weird way, it was like an asylum. We had to eat at a specific time. We had to push ourselves to the limits. We were wearing these sweat uniforms and being instructed. Everything was a regiment. It was a far more interesting style of rehearing. Getting to know the physical body of the character, the character’s pain threshold, and how you can work together as a team. Horrible moments, like when I’m doing my 20th farmer’s carry and I’m frickin’ sobbing and you want to do it for the other girls. You all become strong together. I think that any form of round-the-table, reading-the-scenes, we never would have gotten to that point of closeness and how connected we were in those first three months.
Cornish: And it was such an unspoken thing. We did talk about it, but there were so many moments when we were all just going hard and doing this thing. For me, in particular, during those three months, there was this feeling inside me that was almost zen-like. It was so peaceful because coming in, and doing martial arts, and working out, and learning how to use a gun. You have to be so careful with a gun; it’s a deadly weapon. There was something very focused about that process, very disciplined. Just to be able to exert that much energy and let it out every single day. It was really fun.

View Quote Q: Could you talk about the costumes that you wear in the film? Malone: I thought mine wasn’t revealing enough. All the other girls had their thighs out, their legs out, and I’m covered in fish-nets! Give me more skin! It’s the first time in my whole life that I felt covered up in my underwear. We’re in nothing but various forms of underwear, but it all goes back to trust. Obviously, the early fittings were intimidating. And that was before we started training. So let’s just see what my thighs look like in seven months and hope for the best.
Cornish: You get kind of used to it. This outfit for me is now like a second skin. We’ve been wearing that stuff for so long.
Malone: And everybody is so respectful, which is important. All the guys are so considerate and gentlemanlike.

View Quote Q: Each of the characters have a sort of iconography that goes along with them. Did you have any input on that and how do you feel about the schoolgirl aspect that you have going on? Browning: I love it. I mean, I love that in terms of aesthetics I am the most innocent looking, but Baby is really kind of the…I don’t want to say the toughest because all of the girls are tough in their own way. But I love the fact that it’s this total flip of what you would normally expect from that really innocent schoolgirl. She’s totally stoic, tough, and kind of angry. I just like that kind of juxtaposition. I think it’s pretty cool.
Q: You wear a lot of different outfits in this film. Can you talk about what you wear and what was your reaction when you realized the revealing or non-revealing nature of your outfits? Browning: Well, when I signed on the film was still R-rated. There was going to be a scene where I was going to be almost completely nude. So I was sort of prepared for that from the beginning. But I think almost all of the costumes are sort of more intimidating to wear than actually being there topless because everything is so like pushed up, sucked in, and it’s kind of this weird crazy version of it. I felt like a women, which I’ve never felt like before. [laughs] It was this mental thing. I don’t know, it’s kind of fine I guess because the set is so comfortable and it’s so much just part…it’s not nudity for nudity’s sake. They work in a brothel and it’s kind of necessary. I don’t know, it’s ok. Michael Wilkinson, the costume designer, was so careful to make sure that we felt comfortable and that he wasn’t revealing anything that we didn’t want to reveal.
Q: For a lot of movie fans Zack Snyder is the guy who did 300, which is this big testosterone macho dude picture. This is a really woman centric movie with five great lead actresses in it. Were you surprised that Zack was able to get women the way he did or is that something that you think comes natural to him?
Browning: I don’t know. I mean, I think in terms of the emotional stuff and the female relationships – I think that the girls all definitely had an input into it. I also don’t think these are regular every day women. They are kind of just a little different. Yeah, it is kind of surprising that he understands the way that he does. But a lot of times he’s also like…in terms of that emotional stuff, he will tell us to do something and he will be like, “Is that okay?” I think he’s very careful to make sure that we…
Q: So he kind of turns to you guys for the input?
Browning: I think so. I mean, I don’t want to say that we are directing it. But he is definitely really sensitive. If we feel like something is not right, he is totally sensitive to that. It’s pretty cool.

View Quote Q: There are four action set pieces that we have been told about. What have you filmed already and can you talk about it? Browning: The first thing we did was World War 1. I’m filming my sword piece for that right now. That’s what I was doing today. Those guys are all fighting in the trenches and then I go into the bunker to fight the Colonel. They all get locked out. So my big fight piece is in the bunker. That is what I’m doing for this whole week while these guys dance. So there is that and there are these kind of crazy zombie robot Germans, who we fight. Then, we also filmed the dragon world, where we fight orcs and knights. We go and slay a dragon at the end. It’s ridiculous. It’s like nerd fantasy, which is just awesome for me. It’s the most exciting thing ever! Then, the last one is train world, which we don’t really know much about yet, but we are filming in two weeks. I think it’s not so much martial arts. It’s mostly swords and guns. So it will be a little easier to learn. The first sequence is actually me by myself and it’s the samurai world.

View Quote Q: We were kind of talking about this at lunch today. The design of these characters and your character, the dominatrix kind of thing. We’ve heard ‘empowerment’ mentioned in terms of these characters, but they look a little more like ideals… Gugino: Male fantasies.
Q: Male fantasies. Have you talked about that at all? Have you thought about that at all?
Gugino: I think there’s no doubt that we’re paying homage to all sorts of genres, including the girls looking sweaty in tight outfits. I think you can’t deny that…and there is a playful nature to that.

View Quote Q: What are your characters’ relationships to Baby Doll? Malone: It’s all through Baby Doll. I understand my character through Baby Doll; I understand the story through Baby Doll. That’s the eyes that we’re watching the film through; that’s where the fantasy is taking place. That’s the key, that’s the truth . It’s just as simple as the first time Baby Doll saw me, I was in a nurse’s costume. There’s something that takes care; there’s nurturing there. That becomes the archetype that I fulfill in her mind. She creates me in a way.
Cornish: We’re playing these characters, yet you’re seeing these characters through all different dimensions. Trying to come to some sort of understanding of how you create the one character regardless of the world, or creating the through-line of one journey. But it’s also a question of what do you show. I was struggling with that, but then I felt a great sense of freedom. When I was in the psych ward, I could simply be Sweet Pea in the psych ward; when I was in the action-world, I could be Sweet Pea in the action world. I could let myself go in those worlds and trust in the character, and trust in the story. I feel like my character is a cube and each day, I’m turning the cube and looking at a different side.