DISCLAIMER: THIS IS PURELY A "WHAT IF" SCENARIO AND NOT REAL. JUST PURE FUN. SO READ, THINK, COMMENT, THEN MOVE ON.
My Opinion of the Movie
I'm going to state this first and foremost that I am a HUGE fan of director Zack Snyder. He may not exactly make the greatest movies in the world but I will never call any of them terrible. Though his original concept film Sucker Punch nearly made me deem it his only true terrible film. I enjoyed the visuals. The anime vibe. The Heavy Metal vibe. The girls. The samurai. The Germans. The Dragon. The Robots. But most importantly of all, the potential story that was there.
It had a good idea: a young girl is placed in a world where she is exploited and uses her imagination to make her strong enough to escape that world. Sounds good on paper. But it takes a lot to pull it off.
So let's Remake It... The Story That Is
The first thing I want to point out is that I had no problem with the cast of the film. I am aware that Amanda Seyfried was suppose to play the main role but was happy that Emily Browning was casted. Mainly because during the year Sucker Punch came out, Amanda was in almost everything so it was nice to see a different girl in this one. So I'm sticking with the cast. Emily Browning (Babydoll), Jena Malone (Rocket), Abbie Cornish (Sweetpea), Jaime Chung (Amber), Vanessa Hudgens (Blondie), Oscar Isaacs (Blue), Carla Gugino (Gorski) and Scott Glenn (Wise Man). I know Jon Hamm plays an integral role in the film and a major role in the film's director's cut, but lets see if this story still needs that role.
The basics
In the original film a girl gets sent to a mental asylum after accidentally killing her little sister during an attempt to stop her evil step father from doing god knows what to them. Once there, the asylum all of a sudden with no explanation turns into a brothel/club that exploits women in numerous ways. She is forced to become a dancer and whenever she dances she enters a fantasy world that reflects what is going on with her at the moment. She plots to escape the asylum, for no other reason than wanting to escape the asylum. She goes about doing this with the help of the star dancer and her sister along with two other girls. The lead girl dances to distract the owners and patrons of the brothel from what her cohorts are doing. Their actions are represented through the fantasy sequences. Things go horribly wrong and most of them wind up dead leaving the lead girl and the star as the ones left standing. She comes to the conclusion that the Star is the one who deserves to escape and sacrifices herself so that the star does so. During that sacrifice it reverts back to the asylum where it is revealed that she has been lobotomized and in a figurative sense has been set free.
That's pretty much what happened in the film. Now, while the fantasy elements do stand out pretty damn well on their own, they seem really out of place in the movie. A lot of pieces are there but none of them actually thought through. Now, let met give a rundown of how I personally would've made the story or would've like to see the story go:
The Remake
The beginning is the same. A mother dies. She is survived by her two children. Daughters: Babydoll (Emily Browning) and Babydoll's sister. Their stepfather believes he will inherit the mother's money only to discover that it will only go to the children. Now, in the original film it was kind of ambiguous as to what he was going to do them. The film suggests rape, but in context that wouldn't necessarily help him take the money. The stepfather knocks out Babydoll and then brings her to a Brothel owned by a mobster named Blue Jones, a man who collects special cases. The stepfather bribes Blue to ensure that she will be incapable of speaking, to which Blue accepts.
The Brothel is revealed to be a meeting point for several worlds. There are fantasy characters, sci-fi characters, and noir characters populating the Brothel. The girls of the brothel all look like they're human but in reality they all belonged to a different world. Babydoll at first believes that she has truly gone insane but becomes completely convinced that it is true when she looks out the windows to see different worlds.
This is where we start to get into the weird realms. From here, it is mainly about Babydoll wanting to escape to get revenge on her Stepfather. That is the key component that I see missing from the original film. She wants to escape, but her reason for escaping is not clearly defined. Her mission should be to escape and get revenge from her Stepfather. From there it could go into this whole "how do I escape a realm that exists outside of reality?" That poses a powerful obstacle for her to go through. That is where the roles of the other girls come in.
They will still play a role in her escape but it would have more to do with discovering how to shift back to their respective realities. One of the girls can come from the Steampunk WWI reality, another from the Heavy Metal Fantasy reality, then the Cyberpunk reality. Part of the plot could be that in order to enter the reality they must get past a security system specifically meant for that reality. Which is where these boss fights will come in. Each boss defeated allows each girl to escape.
When it finally reaches that point where Babydoll gets to escape the asylum it reverts back to her world and she finds her stepfather. She gets her revenge on him in almost a high fantasy battle which ends with the death of her stepfather as well as her recapture.
That is when the revelation shows the big twist from the movie, she has really gone insane but used those insanities in order to stay strong to accomplish her mission. The girls that helped her all escaped the asylum and are living the lives that they see fit.
This is where we start to get into the weird realms. From here, it is mainly about Babydoll wanting to escape to get revenge on her Stepfather. That is the key component that I see missing from the original film. She wants to escape, but her reason for escaping is not clearly defined. Her mission should be to escape and get revenge from her Stepfather. From there it could go into this whole "how do I escape a realm that exists outside of reality?" That poses a powerful obstacle for her to go through. That is where the roles of the other girls come in.
They will still play a role in her escape but it would have more to do with discovering how to shift back to their respective realities. One of the girls can come from the Steampunk WWI reality, another from the Heavy Metal Fantasy reality, then the Cyberpunk reality. Part of the plot could be that in order to enter the reality they must get past a security system specifically meant for that reality. Which is where these boss fights will come in. Each boss defeated allows each girl to escape.
When it finally reaches that point where Babydoll gets to escape the asylum it reverts back to her world and she finds her stepfather. She gets her revenge on him in almost a high fantasy battle which ends with the death of her stepfather as well as her recapture.
That is when the revelation shows the big twist from the movie, she has really gone insane but used those insanities in order to stay strong to accomplish her mission. The girls that helped her all escaped the asylum and are living the lives that they see fit.
Would that have been better?
The remake I suggested sound convoluted but even then, there's no denying that some form of story can be told from this concept. Just because my vision doesn't exactly add up doesn't mean that there is no other way to do it. This is just one of many.
The big question is. If you have to. How would you do it?
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