Sucker Punch is Zack Snyder’s (300, Watchman, the forthcoming Superman) first big-time movie not adapted from something else. With nothing to be faithful to, Snyder has let his imagination run away with him: Judging from this trailer, as with the movie’s first, the results will look and sound cool and possibly make no sense. The movie is nominally about a girl known as Baby Doll (Emily Browning) who is institutionalized in a horrible, horrible place where women are molested, have to scrub floors, and, it appears, spend hours every morning getting their eyelashes perfectly coiffed. Inspired by an insane speech given by a Bond-girl-accented Carla Gugino, Baby Doll recruits four of her fellow inmates (Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, Jamie Chung) to go on a quest in a fantasy world that may just help them break out of their horrible real-world situation. In the fantasy, there are, of course, dragons, blimps, ninjas, robots, futuristic tableaus, WWII-era tableaus, and many other awesome-looking, fever-dreamish items rendered in various shades of gray and fire that the ladies must fight while wearing high heels. The quest itself — to find a map, fire, a knife, a key, and one fifth mystery object — is simple enough to give us a smidge of hope that the movie might, in fact, have a narrative arc. If no, there will at least be girls in skimpy outfits using samurai swords to slay giant metal beasties.
