History for Sucker Punch (with diagrams!)
So, to use one reviewer's metaphor, Sucker Punch is like Inception + Kill Bill. The Kill Bill aspect is pretty straightforward, but the Inception part is a bit more complex. Sucker Punch takes place on roughly three planes of reality or dreamworlds. There's the real world, where "Babydoll" (real name unknown) was committed to an insane asylum, the dream world of the brothel, and the various fantasy worlds. So to use a table example, the worlds of Sucker Punch can be encapsulated like this:
Insane Asylum
Brothel
Fantasy Worlds
And for the purposes of writing this history, which world each section takes place in will be monochrome-color-coded. The asylum is black, the brothel is gray and the fantasy worlds are a lighter gray. So without further ado, this is the plot of Sucker Punch!
The story begins at an nondescript time in the 1960s where a woman has just died. Her two daughters are set to inherit their fortune with not a penny at all for their abusive* stepfather. In a rage, the stepfather beats the older of the two sisters before locking her in her room. He then moves onto the younger of the two sisters and kills her before the older can intervene after escaping through the window. She points a gun at her stepfather, but is unable to shoot him. He uses the opportunity to have her committed to an insane asylum both to push the blame of the younger sister's death onto her and to make sure that he receives the hefty fortune.
As the woman goes through the process of being comitted, she notices several things along the way that could help her escape, but she has a short time to do so. Her stepfather pays off one of the orderlies to get her lobotomized in five days. She notices the other girls in the institution, and when she begins her therapy, she retreats into a dream world.
An orphan girl arrives in a brothel, as brought by a corrupt Catholic priest. The brothel is owned by the mob and has a wide variety of very rich clients that come and visit, including the High Roller (the surgeon that will perform the lobotomy) who is buying her virginity. She is given the name Babydoll, and from there, meets the other dancers of the brothel. Rocket and Sweet Pea are sisters, and Blondie and Rocket are the two other girls that she befriends. Babydoll is cleaning the brothel when she overhears a comottion in the kitchen, and saves Rocket from being raped by the cook without any hesitation, which is the trust that she needs to start her plan.
But before she can tell the other girls about her plan, Babydoll has to dance. Madame Gorski (the therapist) is the dance instructor and Blue (the corrupt orderly) are there to see what the new girl can do. At first, Babydoll is reluctant to dance, but once she begins her fantasy, she can dance.
The first of the fantasy worlds is a feudal Japan, where Babydoll meets an older man (The Wise Man), who tells her that she must collect five items to escape: a map, fire, a knife, a key, and a fifth, unrevealed item that would require "a deep sacrifice". He also gives her a katana and guns, telling her that she must fight. She fights three enormous stone samurai and defeats them.
Her dance impresses not only Madame Gorski and Blue, but all the other dancers gathered as well. Her dance is never shown in the movie, but it's described as very sexual, including gyrations and moaning. Just in my personal opinion, I also envision it as a more stylized version of her fighting, since fighting is often compared to a dance. But that's just my thought, haha. But with the Wise Man's "weapons," Babydoll tells the other girls of her plan to escape the brothel. With Rocket's trust from Babydoll saving her, the other girls (albeit reluctantly, in Sweet Pea's case) decide to join her to help each other escape. The plan is essentially to let whoever has the item that they need to watch Babydoll's mesmerizing dance while another girl steals the needed item. So, the first one is the map.
The map is in Blue's office, so Sweet Pea goes there to tell him that Baby Doll is dancing again, so of course, he goes to see. With him distracted, Sweet Pea makes a copy of the map.
The girls are on a fantasy version of a WWI-era war front. They're briefed by the Wise Man to get the map out of the bunker, and that these German soldiers are far from normal. They're reanimated people, powered by steam, of course. Steampunk Nazis! They nearly don't get the map, but do manage to get it after all.
However, even though they do get a copy of the map, it doesn't go as perfectly as they think. When Blue returns to his office, he feels the heat of the copier and realizes that the map was copied, but decides to let events proceed.
Next, the lighter. The mayor of the town that the brothel is in is coming to visit, and they know that he keeps a lighter in his breastpocket for his cigars. Amber is his favored girl, so it's up to her to get this from him.
In a Lord of the Rings-esque world, the girls need to take two stones from the neck of a baby dragon that produce a magnificent fire. With Amber piloting a war plane, the girls a dropped to storm the castle, and they suceed in taking the stones, but wake and anger the mother. The mother dragon chases both parties on ground and in the air, but Babydoll manages to kill it.
After Babydoll's outstanding, raw performance, the girls celebrate in the dressing room for being halfway there, but they're interrupted by Blue, who has definitely caught onto their scheme and threatens them for it, but does nothing other than threaten them. Frightened, they lose their resolve since girls are killed for insubordination, but both Rocket and Babydoll are still determined to leave. Sweet Pea leaves the plan, but the rest of the girls decide to go through with stealing a knife from the cook.
As they all work kitchen duty, they're unsure as to continue, but Sweet Pea appears, saying that she couldn't just do nothing. So they take the radio and set the cook up for a dance.
A train is zooming towards a futuristic metropolis where a bomb will neatly destroy the city. The train is populated with terrorist robots** and it's the girls' job to deactive and take away the bomb. They're dropped into the train and manage to deactivate the bomb, but a robot that wasn't properly killed reactivates it.
Back in the brothel, this event is mirrored by the cord of the radio shorting out because the exposed wire came into contact with water. Sweet Pea had almost retrieved the knife, but the cook comes out of his trance in a rage and takes the knife to stab Sweet Pea. Rocket leaps in front of her, and the music starts again.
The robot is quickly dispatched, but the girls have the problem of what to do with the bomb. Rocket's jetpack was damaged in the fight, and as Rocket and Sweet Pea have a conversation in the train, Rocket asks for her sister's forgiveness for what she's about to do. With that, she activates Sweet Pea's jet pack and Sweet Pea rockets away into the sky. Rocket can't leave the train, so with her on board, it detonates and destroys the city.
Rocket is stabbed by the cook, and with her dying words, asks Sweet Pea to tell their mother that she loves her once she gets back home. Blue enters the scene and Sweet Pea is locked away in solitary in hysterics, but the rest of the girls have to prepare for their show that night for the High Roller.
Amber did manage to take the knife used to stab Rocket, however, and only the key is needed, but getting that seems impossible. Babydoll is somewhat resigned to her fate, but Blue enters the dressing room before the show to tell the dancers about the five girls' plan, which Blue bullied Blondie into relaying. He makes examples of the girls there by killing both Amber and Blondie, and the rest of the dancers are sent out, leaving Babydoll and Blue alone.
Blue attempts to rape her, but after pushing her up on the desk where they had been hiding their things, Babydoll grabs the knife and stabs Blue in the collar and takes the key off his neck. She runs and frees Sweet Pea, and they begin their escape plan together. They start a fire and use the map to navigate to the mechanized entrance of the brothel. Once the fire alarm sounds, they sneak through, and find themselves outside the brothel, looking at the gate where a group of henchmen are gathered.
Thinking about the fifth item the Wise Man told them about, Babydoll realizes it's herself, that she must act as bait for Sweet Pea to escape. Sweet Pea protests, but Babydoll confronts the henchmen as a distraction while she slips away.***
With a click, the surgeon sets the ice-pick like device into the girl's skull, which lobotomizes her. He looks on with wonder, wondering about her expression ("like she wanted me to do it") and expresses his amazement to Dr. Gorski. Dr. Gorski laments that this procedure was done at all, since she felt that she was making improvements, despite her destruction throughout the week. Through the conversation, she finds out that her signature was forged to authorize the procedure.
Meanwhile, the orderlies that had taken the catatonic girl away bring her to Blue, who attempts to assault her out of anger. The police apprehend him, however, and "Babydoll" is left in her own fantasies.
However, "Sweet Pea" is at a bus station, ready to board to go home, or anywhere at all. She's briefly stopped by the police, since they're looking for the escaped asylum inmate, but the bus driver (who is the Wise Man) vouches for "Sweet Pea," telling the police she's been on the bus the whole trip. She thanks him for his kindness, but he brushes it away, saying that she still has a long journey ahead of her.
* As said by Emily Browning in an interview. The reason that Babydoll creates the brothel as her escape from the asylum is because of the implied sexual abuse from her stepfather. The brothel is frightening because a place where her sexuality is on display and exploited is the most frightening thing to Babydoll. To go along with this, the brothel world first appears when Babydoll seems to be going through some counseling/therapy.
** Interestingly, according to the animated shorts, they're terrorists searching for equal rights for humans and robots.
*** In the extended cut, the scene that follows this one is a sex scene between the High Roller and Babydoll, which is why the surgeon in the asylum says that she had a look like "she wanted me to do it." Without that scene, that line is a bit odd, but there you go. I've not seen it myself yet because Blu-Ray is a bag of dicks, but according to Emily Browning, this scene does not have the "feeling" of being a rape scene as compared to the one with Blue.