Before he was the director of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Zack
Snyder weaved worlds within worlds in Sucker Punch.
Its twisted final act that was left open to interpretation and deemed incomprehensible
by many, but we’re here to help with the ending of Sucker Punch explained.
Whose story is this?
One of the key points of contention in understanding Sucker Punch is determining whose point of
view the story is actually being told from.
The first and most straightforward idea is that this is a story about Babydoll, who's
locked in an asylum and teams up with four friends to escape.
In the process, she imagines herself as a burlesque dancer, and her "dances" within
the fantasy as elaborate battle sequences.
Babydoll doesn't escape, in the end, but her fantasy helps tell the story of how she got
her friend Sweet Pea out in her place.
The second interpretation posits that all of this happened as well, except the fantasy
is in Sweet Pea's head, as she imagines her friends who saved her as great warriors in
an epic story.
The third, and most complex, is that almost nothing in the film "really" happened, and
that it's all a fantasy unfolding in Sweet Pea's head as she's about to be lobotomized.
When watching the film, it's an interesting exercise to keep all three possibilities in
your head.
All the world's a stage
Though many of the fantasy visuals in Sucker Punch are there simply because they look cool,
a few of the details hold a deeper meaning, including the very first thing the film shows
us.
Snyder opens by showing us a child's bedroom set on a stage, then dissolves that set into
Babydoll's bedroom during the death of her mother.
When Babydoll arrives at the asylum, we see another stage in the room where Dr. Gorski
encourages her patients to act out their trauma.
"This is what we call the theater.”
It's there, sitting on the stage on a bed with a striking resemblance to that first
shot of Babydoll, that we see Sweet Pea for the first time.
It's also there that Dr. Gorski tells Sweet Pea she's in control.
The recurring motif of the stage plays heavily into the film's running theme of performance
as salvation, particularly when Babydoll "dances" to get what she needs to escape.
But what if it also signals to us that this is all part of Sweet Pea controlling her little
world, including the opening sequence in Babydoll's bedroom?
What if that's Sweet Pea reliving her own trauma, while the club fantasy is Sweet Pea
working through it?
Teenage Lobotomy
The "real world" of Sucker Punch seems to show us only one lobotomy: Babydoll's, with
the prelude in the opening minutes and the aftermath coming at the end.
There is, however, a second lobotomy sequence at the very beginning of the club fantasy,
which Sweet Pea interrupts to argue against performing a mock lobotomy onstage, and refers
to herself as the star of the show.
Once again, we’re offered two versions of the same story.
We can choose to believe that this is the story of Babydoll, that she created the fantasy
world, and that her lobotomy puts a stop to it as she sacrifices herself to allow Sweet
Pea to escape the asylum.
That's a simple enough answer, but it's not the only one.
By showing us Sweet Pea stopping her own lobotomy, the film offers up the idea that she is, at
least in her own mind, changing the way her story is told.
Instead of a mental patient going under the knife, she's a warrior fighting to be free,
and the wig is a hint that Babydoll is in fact not a separate person.
Instead, she’s a rebellious persona Sweet Pea has created as a coping mechanism.
Though she's ultimately lobotomized anyway, Sweet Pea is "free" because the evil Blue
can't reach the real her anymore.
A tale of two sisters
The parallels in Babydoll and Sweet Pea’s stories continue with the revelation that
Rocket is Sweet Pea's sister, and Sweet Pea is in the club, and by extension the asylum,
because she went after Rocket when she ran away from home.
Babydoll was committed to the asylum in the first place by her violent, money-grubbing
stepfather because she accidentally killed her own little sister while trying to save
her, which he then used as the pretense to have her locked up.
In other words, both Babydoll and Sweet Pea got where they are because they went after
their sisters.
Sweet Pea even loses her own sister when Rocket sacrifices herself to save Sweet Pea’s life.
The parallels are all there, bringing Sweet Pea and Babydoll closer together, and perhaps
indicating that they’re one and the same.
This might even explain why Dr. Gorski never mentions Rocket’s death, or the deaths of
Amber and Blondie: they’re imaginary.
The Wise Man
Virtually every character in Sucker Punch with a speaking role exists both as a persona
in the club fantasy and as a person in the asylum, with one very notable exception: The
Wise Man.
He first appears in Babydoll's Japanese battle sequence and exists solely in the fight scenes
until the ending, in which he's revealed to be driving the bus that takes Sweet Pea west.
We're never given any context for who the Wise Man really is, but he only appears in
the "real" world after Sweet Pea is free of the asylum and the fantasies concocted there,
which leads to two different interpretations of his place in the story.
Sweet Pea's narration throughout the film, suggests that she's telling the story from
the future.
If that’s the case, the Wise Man is just a kindly bus driver she met during her journey
to freedom.
The other possibility is that he's an invention of her mind, a kind and nurturing man who
speaks in fatherly platitudes dreamed up by a young woman who's never known anything but
cruelty from men.
A one-way trip to Paradise
In the final scene of the movie, we get one last clue to the mystery of whether all of
this is happening in Sweet Pea’s head, or if she really did escape the asylum.
As the bus she’s riding on drives away, it passes a billboard for the "Paradise Diner."
Back when Babydoll arrives at the asylum, Blue mentions that’s exactly where she’ll
be after her lobotomy.
“There won't be any of that for this one.
She’ll be in paradise, if you know what I mean.”
If you believe this is all happening in Sweet Pea's head, the reference to Paradise could
mean that Sweet Pea herself is somewhere in her own mind where she's finally free, after
the Babydoll persona she created sacrificed herself through the lobotomy.
Or, perhaps, Sweet Pea is just remembering her friend, and heading off into the sunset
to live a full life of paradise on her behalf.
We’ve gone through the clues, but it’s up to you to decide for yourself.
“It’s like we talk about.
You control this world.”