I feel like this movie wasted a lot of its potential

Rating: 6/10 (27 March 2011)

This is a movie I really wanted to like. I own all of Zach Snyder's other films and have always been happy with his ability to make to make great movies from simple concepts.
Sucker Punch did not feel as tight or well organized as his other films. I will try to explain this with minimum spoilers, but I know a few minor ones will slip in so consider yourself warned.
I went into this movie with hesitation, which was all but gone when I saw the opening. The part explaining why she's in the asylum was amazing.
I stayed completely interested until they got in the main fantasy world, though I'll admit it's probably a personal bias since I find the idea of people messing with your mind in an asylum far more terrifying than having to sleep with people in a bordello. Still, at this point in the movie there was nothing that I really disliked, but I didn't think it matched the quality of the opening.
The first two action sequences were cool, though having watched a lot of anime and live action Japanese movies I found the graphics to be cool, but not revolutionary.
From here on out, I thought that the action sequences got worse. This wasn't because of the enemy, I like dragons and robots far better than samurai and reanimated corpses, but they weren't as engaging. Up until this point in the movie there had been a stress on family, yet I thought the third battle contradicted this a bit. The danger of the fourth battle seemed forced, and the zooms, pans, spins, and slow downs against the robots made the battle feel more disjointed and chopped up rather than more epic like in 300.
I liked ending of the movie and didn't have a problem with the tone or the events as I've read other reviews complain about. Still, it wasn't so great that it made me forget about my issues during the middle of the movie.
I would disagree with the reviews saying the story was weak or the themes were non-existent. There are several themes touched upon that were not explored as deeply as I would have liked, but I can see how people that loved this movie can argue that the movie was deep. Still, I did thought the way the movie tried to tell the story and showed the themes felt a uneven and disjointed. There are parts of this movie I'd really like to watch multiple times as short films, but I found the overall film to be inconsistent. Maybe the director's cut will be better?