Sucker Punch (film) - Music and Dance

Music and Dance

"The exploration of how these songs could be used to tell the story and comment on the action has been one of the more unusual and satisfactory parts of this process."

Music plays an integral role in the film. "In the story, music is the thing that launches them into these fantasy worlds", Snyder explains. Composer Tyler Bates said that the songs "function as the subconscious mind of Baby Doll and her journey", and musical producer Marius de Vries considered "an important task of the songs to signplace which particular world you are inhabiting at a particular moment". Music becomes the backbone of the film. They used actual songs for Sucker Punch that would create suitable moods. It plays an important factor in the film and is used as it was in Moulin Rouge!, according to Snyder. Dance choreography was spearheaded by Paul Becker. Emily Browning did the vocals for the songs "Sweet Dreams", "Asleep" and "Where Is My Mind" that are played during the movie. Carla Gugino had to take singing lessons for scenes wherein she plays a choreographer madam in the brothel. The brothel scenario has "sexy" songs, as Jamie Chung described, and dance fantasy scenes. Due to time constraints, Snyder was forced to cut out most of the dance sequences for the theatrical cut of the film, but there is one during the credits. He did mention that for the home media release of the film's "director's cut", the dance scenes will be re-inserted.

In September 2009, Chung reported that they had begun recording tracks for Sucker Punch. Oscar Isaac revealed that the songs used in the film are not original, but are new arrangements of existing music.

Tyler Bates (who composed all of Snyder's previous live-action films) and Marius de Vries (who composed the score for the film Moulin Rouge!) wrote the film score. The official trailers contain samples from the songs "Prologue" by Immediate Music, "Crablouse" by Lords of Acid, "When the Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin, "Tomorrow Never Knows" by The Beatles, "And Your World Will Burn" by Cliff Lin, "Panic Switch" by the Silversun Pickups, and "Illusion of Love" (Fred Falke remix) by Uffie.

Sucker Punch: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was released on March 22, 2011 by WaterTower Music. The soundtrack album contains nine tracks, all covers, remixes, and mash-ups (as the label website says, "wildly re-imagined versions of classic songs") of tracks by Alison Mosshart, Björk, Queen, and performances from stars Emily Browning, Carla Gugino, and Oscar Isaac. The album was praised by music and film critics, as was Browning's vocals.