Zack Snyder is not so much a director as he is a curator of cool-ass vibes, at least when it comes to something like Sucker Punch. A platinum-blonde Emily Browning leads a tight-knit group of baddies to freedom with a samurai sword and a dream, mowing down giants in temples and robots on bullet trains. As the croon-y cover that opens the film implies, sweet dreams are made of this. But 15 years ago, the whole world was inclined to disagree with Snyder’s proto-feminist manifesto.
“Sucker Punch is probably the most obvious example of straightforward, pure satire that I’ve made,” Snyder told Total Film in 2023. “And I still think I didn’t go far enough, because a lot of people thought that it was just a movie about scantily clad girls dancing around in a brothel.”
