With “Sucker Punch,” visually inventive director Zack Snyder (“300,” “Watchmen”) presents his first film based on his own original idea — and original is putting it lightly. The film follows a group of girls trapped in an insane asylum who use their imaginations to escape their dark reality, transporting themselves to battlefields where they dispatch enemies with stunt-filled fury. But Snyder admits it wasn’t easy to bring his vision to the screen.
You make very original movies. Do you ever get much interference from the studio?
Oh yeah. That’s the danger. They have preconceived ideas about what a good movie is or what you should be doing, and in the end you just have to be true to yourself. This movie pushes the envelope in all of its facets. It has a dark ending that’s not necessarily what [the studio] would’ve hoped for. Trust me, they did not like the ending. You just have to fight the fight.
You made “Sucker Punch” while completing “Legends of the Guardians.” How did the two differ?
“Guardians” was politically difficult because when it comes to children’s films, there’s all these preconceived notions about, “What is a children’s film? What can you do in a children’s film?” I wish “Rango” had come out before “Guardians.” When you see “Rango” you realize that they didn’t give a s— about the kids at all and they just made a cool movie.
Was there talk about making “Sucker Punch” 3-D?
This Korean company that was going to do it for “Sucker Punch” did a conversion of a five-minute sequence of “300” that was amazing, and I was like, “Wow. If they can do that level, maybe we can do something cool.” But to do it over the course of a whole movie is just not that easy. The field is going to be leveled soon by cost versus return. Right now the studios are just spending millions and millions of dollars to make a 3-D movie — like, $30 million more than it would cost to make a 2-D movie. So eventually someone’s got to go, “OK. Is it worth it? Are they getting that money back?” You really start to wonder, is it worth the fuss?
