Sucker Punch (2011)

It's divisive. Only 65% of audiences liked it, by Google's archived audience score. Critics scored it lower at 28%, but audiences disagreed.

A young woman, institutionalized by her abusive stepfather, retreats into a vivid fantasy world where she envisions a plan to escape. Gathering a group of fellow inmates, she embarks on a quest to collect five mystical items, blurring the lines between reality and imagination. Wikipedia ↗

Sucker Punch is a 2011 American action fantasy directed by Zack Snyder. Emily Browning stars as Babydoll, a young woman institutionalized in a 1960s mental asylum by her abusive stepfather, who retreats into layered fantasy worlds to cope with her reality and plan an escape. In the first fantasy layer, the asylum becomes a brothel where the inmates are captive dancers; in deeper layers, Babydoll and her fellow inmates battle samurai warriors, steampunk German soldiers, dragons, and robots in elaborately designed, music-video-style action sequences.

Zack Snyder's visual imagination was at its most maximalist and unrestrained — each fantasy sequence was designed as a distinct visual world with its own aesthetic, and the action choreography combined anime, video game, and music video influences. The film divided audiences sharply between those who found its feminist themes empowering and those who felt the heavily sexualized depiction of its female characters undermined its message. Sucker Punch earned $89 million worldwide on a $82 million budget.