Zack Snyder's upcoming Sucker Punch has a confusingly intriguing story that no one seems to be able to properly explain. Snyder has simply called it "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns." Emily Browning says Sucker Punch works on three levels: "a reality, a sub-reality," and a "dream world."
Sucker Punch's story, which follows an institutionalized girl who retreats to an alternate reality to plan her escape, does sound surreal. Browning's co-star, Jamie Chung, is the latest to try to explain the movie, spilling a few details when she spoke to ComingSoon:
[Sucker Punch] takes place in the 1950s and it's a story about a girl who's put into an insane asylum against her will by her evil stepfather. And she goes into these fever dreams to escape. Somehow her alternate reality affects her reality, just like in Alice in Wonderland. All of the characters in her fever dreams are from her real life. And the girls plan to escape and they come up with a plan and things go terribly wrong and it really does affect her reality. It's a great story and there's amazing, amazing fight sequences. It puts 300 to shame!
Chung could not describe her character, but did say that she and her fellow inmates will essentially play two characters, one in the real world and one in the alternate reality — or was it the dream world? Chung also says that Sucker Punch will be "very dark" despite its PG-13 rating and that the title will make sense for the movie. Chung also called Sucker Punch "one of those smart movies that I hadn't seen in a while."
Smart and dark, but PG-13? Seems improbable, though Snyder isn't worried, stating in July that "if you can make Taken PG-13, you can make [Sucker Punch] PG-13."