Zack Snyder takes aim with “Sucker Punch;” “Superman” is next
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Director Zack Snyder is hoping viewers will be caught unaware by his new movie, “Sucker Punch.” That’s partly why the movie is named for a strike made without warning.
“If you have a preconceived ideas about what you think the movie is, or what the idea is, or how movies are put together, that’s what the ‘Sucker Punch’ is all about,” Snyder said.
Snyder came into directing with a sucker punch himself, a fast-paced, well-reviewed remake of George Romero’s horror classic, “Dawn of the Dead.”
He’s since adapted two graphic novels: “300,” based on the Frank Miller Dark Horse Comic about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.; and “Watchmen,” based on the miniseries by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons that had long been considered unfilmable.
In 2010, he made an animated film called “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole,” based on the children’s book.
With “Sucker Punch,” Snyder and Steve Shibuya wrote the screenplay about a young woman in an insane asylum, who escapes in her mind to other worlds while trying to bring about her escape from the asylum.
He says that gave him a lot of ownership in the property but not necessarily more pressure.
“I want people to love the movie, and I think it’s a fun ride, but I feel the same pressure as I’d feel with anything,” Snyder said while promoting the film. “Through the process of making the movie, just like I did ‘Watchmen’ or ‘300′ or any of the movies I’ve made, once I say this is the movie I’m making, it really becomes personal anyway.”
Snyder said seeing sets created that sprung from his mind and never existed before was a novel experience, but that creating the film didn’t have the same kind of scrutiny from fandom as “Watchmen.”
“That’s probably more pop-culture pressure than this movie could ever get, in the sense that it already had a pedigree of unmakeability to it,” Snyder said. “That’s like, ‘Oh, I decided to make this thing that no one can do.’ That’s a great idea. Or is it? That part … it’s different when you’re like, oh, you wrote a movie, so of course it can be made.”
Forming the vision
The idea for “Sucker Punch” came from a screenplay Snyder had written in the 1990s. In part of the script, a girl, while dancing, has visions of wild adventures. That part of the screenplay was resurrected for “Sucker Punch.”
Follow
