Understandably envious of Marvels movie success DC comics and Warner Brothers sought to use the somewhat successful Superman reboot to jump-start the DC movie universe to Avengers status. Mistakes were made and they are currently retooling. The new DCU shows signs of promise with Wonder Woman and Aquaman successfully started rebranding the DC universe away from the Zack Snyder’s dystopian vision.
One of the early mistakes was Suicide Squad, with some qualifications I liked it, however the poor performance was the first sign of failure for the upcoming Batman Vs Superman.
Water under the bridge, DC and WB have picked up the pieces using the few bright spot from the early DCU movies. One of the bright spots was Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn appearance in Suicide Squad. Quinn was received by the audience well enough to survive the jettisoning of Meth Mouth Joker when Jared Leto made himself persona non grata on the WB DC movie sets. Reportedly his agents also made vailed threats about the Oscar winner’s future collaboration on WB movies when the studio gave the green light to Joaquin Phoenix’s one off Joker origins movie. Green lighting the Joker movie without Leto turned out to be the correct decision on WB’s part, the movie made $1 billion dollars with a production budget of $70 million on the high side. Joker (2019) is an Oscar contender and the most profitable comic book movie adaption since the original Deadpool movie.
Speaking of Deadpool, those large profit margins with such a small budget (for Hollywood) were the envy of the business. Everybody wanted to emulate that success. Eventually DC tried to and succeed with the Joker movie, in a way it is their answer to (FOX) Marvel’s Deadpool, strongly pandering to that audience. What I didn’t expect the influence of Deadpool would reach the Birds of Prey, which became girl’s night out, girl power, version of the raunchy Deadpool kind of comedy.
To be brutally honest I know nothing of the Birds of Prey comics and have no frame of reference to compare the characters and their stories. However I can’t help but feel the concept was watered down to make it a Margot Robbie Harley Quinn vehicle. Indeed it is right there in the title.
Not a bad decision by a long shot, people know who Harley Quinn is and have no real expectations of Birds Of Prey.
Birds of Prey the movie is kind of a mixed bag, trying at first to justify the existence of the characters only to give up part way through. With nobody except Harley getting fair treatment.
When the story begins Harley is on her own (after WB & DC 86’ed the meth mouth Joker). She has montage of girl’s night out after a bad break up except add in ten pounds of extra crazy for good measure. She is Harley Quinn so it has got to be mayhem mixed with loud club music pounding in the background.
The rub is Harley is not well like by the rest of her underworld peers, eventually they find out the Clown Prince of Crime is no longer her paramour and that is all permission the bad guys need kill her off. Not that they needed much encouragement to begin with.
Harley is out of luck and on the run, crossing paths in a bad way with the gals who will eventually come together to make the Birds of Prey. Each member has a small backstory given the lightest of treatments, but for the most part are likeable with understandable motivations.
Perhaps the best of the bunch is the Huntress, who is really likeable and with a great back story. If only DC saw fit to give her an origin story instead of being a backdrop for a Harley Quinn adventure. They didn’t and all we get is a short glimpse of good character.
One of the most notable changes to the DCU is the adaptation of humour to the scripts, Marvel used it to good effect merging different comic universes where each character would be unable to function in a mixed universe without humour to burr the seams between the worlds. The same thing happens here with the girls calling each other and everybody else out on the things they find strange. And it works for the most part. The audience is in on the joke so calling out someone talking like a bad 80’s television cop help lend legitimacy to that character even tough on the face of it they should be ridiculous.
The movie eventually find its heart late into the final act with all the women for different reasons deciding to protect the life of a little thief who is on the run from the “not Joker” but possible just as crazy bad guy played well by Ewan McGregor, who will stop at nothing to get the McGuffin tying the movies storylines together.
Over all the movies works as a raunchy foul-mouthed romp, definitely not the family friendly fair (Disney) Marvel has churned out for years. Birds of Prey is a girl power ego trip but it is not a bad ride.
It will be interesting to see how the larger audience reacts. Will the over powering militant feminist themes turn away larger crowds or will they be able to go along with the joke?