“Sucker Punch” opens tomorrow, and reviews are beginning to trickle out this morning. While you’ll have to wait a bit for our full assessment we’ll say this: we agree with the general consensus out there. But for better or worse, the film is a Zack Snyder fantasy writ very, very large but even he has to play by the rules. With the studio requiring a PG-13 rating for the film, it was inevitable that the helmer would have to make cuts to get it there. As Emily Browning recently revealed, a steamy scene between her and Jon Hamm got the axe for being too sensual, but it appears that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
We caught up with Zack Snyder’s wife and his producing partner Deborah Snyder during press rounds for the film, and she revealed they had to make multiple edits to the film to get it squared away with ratings folks adding, that some big sequences didn’t make the theatrical version of the movie. “There’s 18 minutes of extra footage,” Deb Snyder said. “A lot of more battle sequences, a lot of content things — we had to go back to the MPAA like five times — we were able to put back. The biggest thing we took out of the film, in the credit sequence we have the [musical montage] of [Roxy Music‘s] “Love Is The Drug” (sung by Carla Gugino and Oscar Issac) and that was actually conceived as a glimpse of what life was like in the every day brothel world and the shows they put on. It was actually at the beginning of the movie in its entirety, but we took it out because when we put it in the film it just looked like the place was too much fun and there wasn’t enough jeopardy. It was really elaborate and beautiful and in the next sequence Baby Doll [Emily Browning] is crying to get out and [it didn’t work tonally].”
Speaking with Collider, Zack Snyder elaborates on how the tone was a difficult, but reveals that cut footage will be on the eventual director’s cut of the film. “They were just like, ‘It’s too creepy, it’s too dark,’” Zack said. “We cut a bunch of violence — on the BluRay there’s more action — [because] you can only kill so many guys [before] they go, ‘No, it’s rated R.’ Even if they’re robots or whatever, they’re not into it. There were a couple scenes that crossed the line for them, even if nothing happens in them. Just the tone was wrong.”
Also removed from the finished film are all the dance sequences that had been planned, but that can still be glimpsed in the film’s closing credit sequence. “…it’s something we really liked so we thought wow, we can use it in the end titles,” Deborah Snyder told us. “But so much work was put into it and the girls really loved it because they had to learn these big elaborate dance numbers that we felt like could live on in the extended cut.”
But before Snyder fans get too bummed out, there is plenty of spectacle in the movie so don’t worry about not getting enough bang, fishnets, robots and Nazi zombies for your hard earned buck. “Sucker Punch” opens tomorrow.
