Birds of Prey Discussion (with SPOILERS)

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Out Friday!

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Every actress who has ever played Harley Quinn

I enjoyed it a lot. The plot was a bit too stuffed (Huntress was great, but didn’t really need to be in the movie), and I wish the characters had all gotten together before the big final battle. It was fun to see all the dynamics play out between them.

I don’t know if the Harley/Joker breakup stuff needed to be in the movie either, especially as it draws attention to the fact that the Joker is nowhere in the movie. The Harley animated show handles it all much better too.

Overall it’s a lot of fun though, and probably the second-best of the new DC movies. I’ll definitely watch it again when it comes out on video.

It’s a lot of movie for 100 minutes and I was entertained the entire time.   I like how they were kind of in each others orbit the entire time.  They all knew of each other, or each other’s work and it was fun watching them work around those bumps whether they were mistaken or earned.

Apparently, not everyone liked it:

Where Is the Oscar-Worthy, Female-Fronted Comic Book Movie?

I’m not interested in it, but I’m not really sure who its intended audience is. It’s not like the comics. It’s not like the Arrowverse, and, apparently, it’s not like Suicide Squad that it’s spinning off from.  It’s trailer makes it look like a Deadpool rip-off starring Tank Girl. It’s R-rated and most of the characters don’t look like superheroes.

I just don’t think there was anything in the sales pitch to compel people to give it a chance, but there was a lot in the marketing that would turn a lot of people off.

[SteveUK]

I enjoyed it.

90% of the cast is very well chosen and the last one is my personal opinion. It has a villain problem, despite giving the bad guys some reasonable screen time to establish their scariness. This doesn’t kill the film but it does undermine some of the drama.

Tonally it’s mostly light, and then some of the darker bits don’t mesh as well as you’d like.

A friend I saw it with believes that by going into development before Warner Bros ditched everything from the Suicide Squad movie, it left the film with a legacy issue that, should it get a sequel, it can move past. This Harley can evolve and establish a new version of the character in a new version of Gotham and the world.

But that will depend on how well this film does?

For me; 7/10.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by SteveUK.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by SteveUK.

This may be my own television viewing habits being a factor but I really didn’t see a lot of advertising for it. Maybe the advertising was not placed in the right areas?

Also, could the lack of Joker appearing in the movie be impacting its box office? It’s my understanding that Leto’s Joker was not well received but with a Joker solo movie having been made (after the fact becoming successful), could that be keeping people away. He’s mentioned but not seen is my understanding. Maybe Joker should have been the antagonist in the film?

Saw it last night with my girlfriend. It was a fun movie. Much better than Suicide Squad. My girlfriend really enjoyed the action scenes. Said the one in the fun house might have been her favorite action scene in awhile. Kind of a shame that it’s not doing super well at the box office, but not that surprising either. I honestly didn’t know it was coming out this week until about 10 days before its release.

It’ll be interesting to see how Suicide Squad 2 fares whenever it gets released.

Ah, CBR:

Birds of Prey Is DC’s Gayest Movie Yet (Yes, Gayer Than Batman & Robin)

Gail Simone (2003 Birds of Prey writer) giving her thoughts on Margot Robbie’s Birds of Prey [a long-long-long threat on her Twitter]

Okay, I want to have a talk about one aspect of the WB’s Birds of Prey movie that I was withholding judgment on, that did bug me. I think it’s pretty obvious I loved it, but I do have a sizable gripe. However, that is only meaningful in a larger context. So mute this, maybe. :)

All right. I am looking at this from an unusual pov. When I wrote BOP, I was so obnoxiously and fiercely protective of the characters that I likely made editors want to look for new careers. I would fight if they were portrayed even REMOTELY off-model, even in major crossovers. And to this day, these characters are so important to me that I buy every action figure, I still have a little warm feeling every time I see even a drawing of any of them.

In that regard, I am a bad potential audience member for a movie that changes everything. And some of the initial stuff I saw did not feel very BOP to me, just like many of you. I have not tagged on people who want it to be comics-accurate. Because I get it, and I have felt that many many times with characters I care about deeply. Someone saying, ‘I want it to be like the comics,’ in a way, that is just saying they loved the stories we all told, from Chuck to Jimmy and Amanda, to me (hopefully). And that is definitely a compliment. So yes, a part of me is that reader, for sure.

I will also say that some of the insider stuff was even further from the finished film, some changes were made to bring it more in line. And some of those were a bit hard for me to take because I felt they were missing some of the power behind the concept. But thankfully, they made those changes and it really shows. Okay, so I get it. It would be lovely to have Barbara, it would be great to have Zinda, all that stuff. But here are some things to consider. And at the end, I will say the one bit that does still feel like a missed opportunity.

Now, here is how I feel about different takes on these characters. This will take a bit. Strap in. :)

When I was a kid, I was a fan of pulp adventure series novels. And there were essentially two kinds…static and open. The static series were essentially the same book over and over…most Avenger novels are basically the same status quo. I loved them, but they were. More interesting to me were things like Conan and Tarzan, that skipped around in the timeline. You had Young Conan and old man King Conan. All valid, all parts of his timeline.You had Jungle Tales of Tarzan, which shows him as a boy, and others where he is a grandfather. This is how I think of most iconic chapters in comics…you go from Wolverine Origin to Old Man Logan, it’s all different points on the timeline, all valid.

You go from Batgirl Year to Oracle. We messed that one up, but you can still place my Batgirl run on the timeline between. MOST of the changes in the movie DON’T clash with the iconic versions, the core characteristics, of these characters. It’s just very early in the timeline, when they are still figuring out who they are. And the end points that they are headed towards something more recognizable. And I am okay with that, I embrace it. Because why? Because I believe the truly great characters are elastic. You can pull them and bend them, you can stretch them. The great ones snap back. We all know what their core is. They snap back. And if you know that,mid you know the comics are always there, then it’s not an abomination when someone stretches them a new way, it’s a journey, it’s a ride, and we all get to have fun watching. I actually love that. I love that there are a hundred versions of Superman. I love that there’s cartoon Batman and Dark Knight Batman. We’re used to that, we are completely accepting. It’s harder when a character, say, Huntress, only has one big screen showing, we want it to be ‘right.’ I didn’t go to the movie expecting my Bop, or Chuck’s Bop, I wanted to see the vision of Cathy, Christina and Margo. You don’t hire an artist and then tell them to do someone else’s greatest hits album. You hire them to bring something to the table.

If you hate that Barbara isn’t in it, and she was never going to be because she’s spoken for elsewhere, would you rather there be no bop film at all? That’s fine, it’s valid. But we would be missing a lot of joy over something the filmmakers couldn’t change. I want the film. My core Canary is not a series of continuity connections, she’s not a roadmap. She’s a force of personality. My question for the film was, does she have heart, does she put others’ safety above herself, does she kick ass and smile after. And the answer is, damn right she does. My feeling is, with Canary and Harley and Huntress, they gave us fresh, updates takes layered on top of EXACTLY what I love in the comics. Is Huntress quirky from years of isolation? Does vengeance leave her empty? Yes. That IS Huntress. Her awkwardly making friends IS Helena. What costume she wears pales in importance in comparison. These are icon characters. We have seen a lot of slavish adaptations fail. I say, give the characters to people with vision and see what comes up. That’s what has made ALL the most memorable films AND comics.

I hear people say, ‘well, that’s not MY Bop’ or ‘that’s not MY Superman,’ and I get it, I think it’s awesome that we all of us care, that we love something so much we feel proprietary. But I wanted to see the characters’ hearts up there, which is their true core. We did. I would say they triumphed in that regard. The complaint that it’s a Harley movie seems weird to me, I do pr think they ever said otherwise. But Margo was incredibly gracious both behind the scene and onscreen giving everyone a chance to shine. And they did. :) so much. Truthfully, I feel a little bad if people won’t go see it because it’s not the comic, exactly. They are missing a ton of fun, and grit, and heart. I get it, I have been that person. But I would rather have something in exact that makes me cheer than something exact that bores. There are different versions of these characters. It’s a good thing.

Then Gail criticizes the portrayal of Cassandra Cain, the second Batgirl

All right, so, to the thing that does stand out, that I wish had gone another way? It’s not Barbara. The Birds of Prey can function with different line-ups. And she was never going to be in this film, it just wasn’t in the cards. It’s Cass.

I have held back commenting on this, mostly, because I wanted to see for myself. But essentially, this Cassandra Cain is a new character. I like her, she’s fun to watch, the actress is adorable (Ella Jay Basco) is great in the role. But she bears no resemblance to Cass. I don’t think of it as an insult so much as a missed opportunity. Like basically all of the Asian martial arts characters of that era at the big two (I do not exclude myself from this at all), there’s stuff in her early stores that reeks of exoticism and more. Fair enough. But she became so much more. She was also one of the first truly successful solo Asian heroes at either company. Her struggles with speech and reading and socialization were hugely meaningful to so many people. I love Cass dearly, and this is not a Cass I recognize. I think it was an easy fix, just give her a different name. It’s possible that they didn’t want another voiceless Asian flawless goddess assassin, and that’s perfectly fair, but it would have been the same movie character if they had names her Nancy Floogenbottom, not Cass. So that was my only major gripe. I love Cass, I think she’s very special and precious as a character. However not everyone writes her well and the first TWO times I wrote her, I messed it up completely (bugs me to this day). Which leads me to my final point…

There’s more she’s posting, but i think it’s the best that you should go read her tweet by yourself  because holy crap that’s a long text.

I agree on the Cassandra Cain point. The movie character is a fun character, but should have just been an original character. Because she’s bears zero resemblance to any version of Cass that I’ve ever read. And it’s a waste of the Cassandra Cain character, in that regards.

I thought this movie was fun. I wasn’t fully onboard at points, but the cumulative effect won me over. I can finally say that Margot is a good Harley, and I really enjoyed whatever the heck Ewan McGregor was doing.

The action really popped, especially for a film that is as close to a comedy as these DC movies have seemingly come. Turns out the second-unit director is Chad Stahelski and suddenly those fun sequences make sense, with the police station raid possibly being the highlight.

Oh, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead was great as Huntress. I loved what they did with her, with lots of moments to make you think of Kill Bill. It made me wish that we’d gotten her own movie, honestly.

 

I’m glad you had fun, Ross.

Stahelski – he was Brandon Lee’s mate. Plus he was Neo and Angel and more.

Stunt guys should get more credit. Where’s the Oscar for Best Stunt?

I’ve met a few. They have some cool stories.

[Jon]

It seems to be doing very badly… apparently worst opening after Jonah Hex…

Can’t say I’m surprised… just from the trailers, the movie seems like a step backward =/

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Jon.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Jon.

Yeah, I’m thinking, if you really want a movie in the DCEU to succeed, taking cues from one of its most panned movies isn’t the way to go.

Which of its most panned movies is that though?

One thing I didn’t understand is… why didn’t they remove some of the more idiotic tattoos from HQ? I mean, if they’re just gonna go and kill Leto’s joker in such a dismissive way, why not just ignore SQ all the way? Would anyone care about or even notice the tattoos’ continuity? =/

Kind of a mess, for sure… they wanted to have their cake and eat it… guess it didn’t work.

Anonymous wrote:

Which of its most panned movies is that though?

I was thinking Suicide Squad.

‘Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey’: Here’s What Went Wrong, and What Went Right

Damn I’m curious to see if BoP… erm excuse me HQ:BOP… will do any business this weekend, because there’s been quite a bit of buzz around the Sonic movie… mind you the buzz is: “Sonic, wow it actually doesn’t blow chunks!”, so it’s not like a massive seal of approval either, but the point being, there’s gonna be competition this weekend, and Sonic could potentially be the final nail in BoP’s coffin…

If I were DC, I would’ve rushed a HQ:BP PG13 movie for this weekend, I mean I don’t know how long it would take to replace the movie with a PG13 movie, but surely it wouldn’t take too long to remove a couple of bits and replace a couple of swears… I dunno…

Jon wrote:

BoP… erm excuse me HQ:BOP…

As I understand it the name hasn’t been officially changed, it’s just cinemas listing it with that title to aid in online search functionality.

So anyways since they released it early, I just saw this… it was totally fine… costumes were a bit shit, tbh, but eh whatever, not a deal breaker…

My only real issue was the girl… there was ABSOLUTELY no need to call her Cassandra Cain and she’s got nothing in common with the CB CC… I mean, other than being an asian girl. She could’ve been any other randomly named character and it would’ve been fine… better, in fact, since they could’ve used the opportunity to create a Harley Queen sidekick character… so that was a double waste, basically.

The rest of the characters are okay… Huntress is okay, sure she doesn’t look exactly like the CB, but that’s just a matter of costume, she kicks ass very well. Montoya is a bit different, but the core of her being a bad-ass cop is there… and Canary, I mean, I don’t know why they went with the daughter angle, but whatever… she was fine too… Somehow I’ve never read to many Black Mask stories, so I actually don’t know him that much, but he was also fine… McGregor sure was enjoying himself, so that’s a plus.

Other than that, it’s an okay movie, it kinda sags by the 3rd act a bit, but it was basically okay. So you really have to wonder: Why did it flop so hard?

Well, it’s pretty much what we were saying… calling it “Birds of Prey” was just a stupid, stupid decision… this is clearly a Harley Queen movie… if anything, they should’ve Called it “Harley Queen & the Bords of Prey”, not that stupid silly try-hard title they went with.

So that was the first mistake, but for sure, the biggest mistake was making it an R movie… This movie didn’t need to be R… shit, in fact, I completely forgot it was an R movie while watching it… there’s like just a couple of gory scenes that they could’ve just cleaned up a bit to bring it down to a much more suitable PG-13… This was a wonderful movie for teenage grils to go out and see… Making it an R was basically Box Office suicide.

I don’t know whose bright idea it was to make these two decisions that reek of corporate mandate (how unusual, corporate idiocy from WB), but at least I hope they’ll learn the right lessons from this. The problem wasn’t the movie, it was the marketing, basically.

I do wish we’d seen Leto’s Joker… I know I’m in the minority of people who actually enjoyed what he was doing, but either way, he’s kind of a big presence in the movie, so it’s just weird that he’s just mysteriously absent… It’s already bad enough that there’s not even a mention, nevermind a cameo, of Batman, considering we’re talking about Gotham, but oh well… (maybe they should’ve moved the story to Bloodhaven or something).

What a shame though, let’s hope WB won’t pussy out AGAIN and drop Margot Robbie and Harley Queen… I’m not too hopeful with their horrible track record, but hey… maybe they’ll finally learn…

Also, kind of a bummer this tanked and Capt. Marvel made a billion… this one was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than CM… like, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better.

Was this movie…

…good? Noooooo.

…fun? YES!

 

I agree with some points upthread that Cass should’ve been dropped from the list of characters. They could as well just have gone with anyone. I didn’t see much semblance of any DC characters in this movie, apart from the modern (non-TAS) take on HQ.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Rocket

Anonymous wrote:

Cass should’ve been dropped from the list of characters

at the very least, she should have been renamed. something like generic Asian girl.

Rocket wrote:

like generic Asian girl

Generic Asian Girl #1 in case they need to fit more diversity into a possible sequel.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Todd, Rocket