Sucker Punch (film) - Production - Title

Title

The title Sucker Punch is not explained in the film. Zack Snyder has said that there are two meanings:

There's a mechanism in the movie that sneaks up on you. We sort of plant the seed of this thing, and then at the end of the movie it kind of comes back around. I think that in some ways, that's what the sucker punch is. But also you, the audience, have like a preconceived idea when you look at Babydoll. You think she's innocent and sweet, that she's capable of only a certain amount of things. But I think that's a mistake. So that has something to do with the title, too.

Andrew O'Hehir, writing in Salon, sees the film's title its essential theme:

If you want to understand Snyder's central narrative gambit, it's right there in the title. He gives us what we want (or what we think we want, or what he thinks we think we want): Absurdly fetishized women in teeny little skirts, gloriously repetitious fight sequences loaded with plot coupons, pseudo-feminist fantasies of escape and revenge. Then he yanks it all back and stabs us through the eyeball.

Snyder has stated one interpretation of the film is that it is a critique on geek culture's sexism and objectification of women.