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.”
