I thought on it recently and I think I've realized how they could've fixed this movie with a bit of restructuring.

I think from the outset the biggest thing that breaks the movie is that the dream sequences are so disconnected and never have any consequences (no one dies), so you're not invested in them at all. Now early on in the movie, this makes sense from a story perspective because it wouldn't make sense for the girls to get killed in real life at that point, since it would pretty much have put a halt to the whole escape plan. The train sequence actually introduces stakes, since we see Rocket die, but the problem is its far too late in the movie, and only happens at the end of the last dream sequence.

And yet, it occurred to me that the one place where they legitimately could've used the dream thing and had characters getting killed off is the escape from the asylum itself, since you could represent a character getting caught/killed during the escape as a death in the fantasy sequence, and you could cut between reality/fantasy in those instances and the connection would actually make sense, unlike the random dancing metaphor.

What they should've done is gotten rid of one of the fantasy sequences from the middle of the movie, since they're just essentially fetch quests and serve no story function. Keep the samurai stuff, and lose either the WW1 or the middle earth set pieces. Do the train sequence and end it the same way, that's good because it establishes stakes. Then, instead of having Mr. Blue randomly kill off 3 of the main characters, just go straight into the part where baby doll stabs Mr. Blue and we start the escape. Now the escape itself should be the final big fantasy sequence. Our remaining girls do everything they can to escape the asylum, using the items they've already acquired, and we get an amazing corresponding fantasy sequence to close the movie out. The fantasy sequence would also incorporate all the items that had already been acquired, but in a fantasy context, and we'd get the same 3 girls killed off, but during the course of the fantasy/escape sequence itself.

Thus we'd actually get a final awesome action sequence that we cared about and had real stakes, and you can end the movie the same way with the sacrifice thing (if you really have to go there Snyder), but minus the retarded voice over.

There, movie fixed, learn screenwriting hollywood.

Yeah. That was an imposingly long post.