Birds of Prey is Mayhem at its Finest!

“It turns out, I wasn’t the only dame in Gotham looking for emancipation.”

If you take Deadpool 2, Snatch and Kill Bill, mash them together and add the style of Guardians of the Galaxy, you’ll get Birds of Prey. The hyper fem glitter bomb of girl power is here, and it’s amazing.

WB dropped the ball with marketing. Hard. And it seems to be their new trend (Joker trailer, anyone?). I got on Twitter today to see WB frantically reaching to “save” this movie. They’ve decided to change the movie title from Birds of Prey to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey for SEO purposes for vendors and theaters. And it’s not just the marketing that ticks me off, it’s the fuckboys who wanted to see this movie fail.

Margaret at Cinematic Corner sums it up perfectly, “You cannot tweet about Birds of Prey without some guy with Joker (the shitty one, not Heath’s) avatar replying and being overjoyed this film won’t do huge box office numbers. We have to sit there and watch as a movie about a straight, white man being treated “unfairly” is getting major marketing push from the studio, 11 nominations and billion dollar box office as its stans go out of their way to find us and gloat about that.”

I’ve been talking to a lot of friends about this, and had to ask what defines success for a movie? If we’re talking numbers and attendance, $33M opening weekend isn’t a flop per se, it’s just not what a lot of comic book movies make. It only needs $250M worldwide to break even, and I think it’s got a shot despite the closure of theaters in the Asian markets.

The last time we saw Harley Quinn on the big screen was in 2016 with the disastrous Suicide Squad. Now the cupid of crime anti-hero (aka Joker’s girlfriend) is back. Director Cathy Yan’s ultra-violent DC comic book spin-off finally gives the best character from Suicide Squad her own movie, and she owns it. Cathy Yan is the first Asian woman to direct a superhero movie. She is second woman to direct a DC film after Patty Jenkins.

After splitting with the Joker, Harley Quinn joins superheroes Black Canary, Huntress and Renee Montoya to save a young girl from an evil crime lord.

Early reviews say this is one of the best DC Comics adaptations yet, with electrifying action sequences and a charismatic Margot Robbie in the role she was born to play. Movie-lovers, my friends, and I all agree – it’s AWESOME.

“Rather than the paint-by-numbers girl power of Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey presents flawed, multi-faceted women as more than an afterthought in male-driven narratives.” via Hannah Woodhead, Little White Lies

Martin Scorsese famously shit on modern film franchises because they don’t address “the complexity of people”. Big LOL.

“Ironically, the flawed, sporadically intellectual, emotionally volatile Harley is far more complicated than the woman Robbie played in Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street. And Harley, The Huntress, Black Canary and Renee are all harder to second guess than the adult females in The Irishman, eg Peggy Sheeran, not so much a person as a moral compass in a dress. You don’t have to choose between Scorsese and superheroes. Let go of the guilt. Feel free to embrace these lesser spotted birds.” via Standard.

This may be a superhero movie that might actually be more enjoyable for viewers who haven’t read a single comic. We lost a lot of serotonin in 2019’s Joker, but Birds of Prey is here to give it back to you. GO SEE IT!!