Full title is Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

Here's a production teaser:
https://youtu.be/ptLZlrE8MrQ

Line-up is:
Harley Quinn
Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Huntress
Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Black Canary

And Ewan McGregor as Black Mask.

Rumored to be featuring Batgirl to launch her solo film.

Hope this shit is good. Looks like they took a lot of the face tattoos off of Harley.

With Gotham City Sirens next.

Also this will have Cassandra Cain, Chris Messina as Victor Zsasz, and Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya.

They've set Harley up as one of the single most important characters in the entire DC universe.

I was just reading heroes in crisis, and they have Harley taking a batarang off of batman in a one on one hand to hand situation. That's fucking preposterous.

I get it, the vision is set, you gotta keep Margo robbie happy, and diminish the joker angle as much as possible. Its ridiculous, but I get it.

Poster: https://twitter.com/birdsofpreywb/status/1173990046237519874?s=19

Teaser in theaters only.

Margot Robbie was the only other redeeming quality of Suicide Squad (next to Will), so sure, I'll go for it.

They won't do this, but it would be fun if they went Rob Zombie and made Harley Quinn batshit crazy like Baby Firefly in the Devil's Rejects. Let's see a totally unhinged Harley.

...just know they exist and that they're furious.

From black Black Canary to Harley being in focus to Huntress having a slightly different origin. Furious.

The group and particularly Oracle's (Barbara Gordon) role in it was pretty groundbreaking from what I understand. I was reading the title when Gail Simone was writing it and it was consistently one of my favorites from month to month. That was before DC blew the whole universe up and undid Oracle's paralysis and kind of changed the entire premise of the group.

I also completely understand the Harley Quinn fatigue. It looks like they're trying to make her the Wolverine of the DCEU.

A lot of people are also complaining about Ewan's Black Mask design too.

And the poster is terrible.

The only DCEU movies I've seen are Man of Steel and Wonder Woman. A more faithful Birds of Prey would have been on my must watch list but this...not. With Suicide Squad 2 and a solo movie coming this absolutely didn't need to be a star vehicle for Harley Quinn/Margot Robbie.

LOL she's only been in one movie. Damn that didn't last long.

It doesn't seem like there's any middle ground (like in most things). Fans are either sick of her or want her to lead the Justice League, Avengers and the Rescue Rangers.

She's incredibly popular right now, much to the chagrin of... I'm gonna say old-schoolers.

So I identify with its fans. But a lot of them are assuming it to be a much more precious property than it actually is.

Seems like Margot Robbie got a little too full of herself in regards to the character. Everything about this screams corny star was given too much control

https://twitter.com/birdsofpreywb/status/1179064087566618624?s=09

I'll watch it. It looks better than Suicide Squad, which isn't saying much. Margot Robbie and Will Smith were the only redeeming qualities of that movie, and honestly Will was acting for a different movie. Let Robbie go wild in this one and I can see an entertaining ride at the very least.

And I'm going to be that guy and say it: I hope Jared Leto's Joker is in it. I feel like he got done dirty the last time around. People were ready to hate on him just based on his look. When the movie came out, he didn't stand a chance. AND HE WAS ONLY IN THE MOVIE FOR LIKE TWO MINUTES.

I give him credit for going way, way away from Heath Ledger and Nicholson. He's not like them. He's not the Joker from the comics. He did something completely different, and most of it was left on the cutting room floor. I thought he had potential if you didn't just go into it expecting a certain kind of Joker.

I can point at plenty of reasons to hate that movie. Leto wasn't in the movie enough to be one of those reasons.

>People were ready to hate on him just based on his
>look. When the movie came out, he didn't stand a chance. AND
>HE WAS ONLY IN THE MOVIE FOR LIKE TWO MINUTES.

Leto's just such an insufferable method asshole. People were mad at the casting before they even *saw* the picture, because it was him.

This isn't really disagreement, but I do remember backlash against Heath Ledger pre-Dark Knight, and while I don't remember this, I saw this WhatCulture Youtube thing claiming that there had been backlash against Nicholson before the Tim Burton Batman.

In fact, although people are taking issue with the movie, lol it seems like Phoenix is the first Joker to not get pre-hated on since Caesar Romero...at least I hadn't read any trolling against him specifically.

I guess in Leto's case, the very small screen time he had didn't change most people's minds.

But ultimately there wasn't much of him in the movie, and what we saw matched the "oooh, look how Edgy this is!" tone that bogged down much of Suicide Squad at the end of the day, so folks were happy to double down on their pre-viewing skepticism.

Pretty hilarious that the current Joker is getting maybe the worst backlash of all, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the actor itself.

https://youtu.be/x3HbbzHK5Mc

Now remember, Suicide Squad also had a great trailer

I'm not a fan of any of this shit but I do hope they make a good/great film just as a further fuck you to Suicide Squad, David Ayer and the WB flunkies who fucked the initial run of their films into a cocked hat.

of being a horrible movie.

My condolences and prayers to Birds of Prey comics fans.

>https://youtu.be/x3HbbzHK5Mc

>My condolences and prayers to Birds of Prey comics fans.

I die a little inside every time the trailer comes on.

So, I dunno.

Only BOP fan bitching I see is the 'not like the comics!' kind, with a little bit of, 'Why is Harley?'.

Other than those guys, most fans I've encountered are cautiously enthusiastic about what they've seen.

>So, I dunno.
>
>Only BOP fan bitching I see is the 'not like the comics!'
>kind, with a little bit of, 'Why is Harley?'.
>
>Other than those guys, most fans I've encountered are
>cautiously enthusiastic about what they've seen.

Nobody asked for some damn cross-sectional analytics. Don’t care.

Like most I hated Suicide Squad.

But I think the consensus was that Margot Robbie was the one "redeeming" quality of the movie, despite, well, an accent that comes and goes.

If they gave her a whole movie to just take it to an 11, that might at least be amusing. Plus it looks like they got McGregor chewing up the furniture. It could be a fun 90 mins "theme park."

DC is on the right track back. WB has seriously fumbled out the gate with its shared universe. I still can’t get over how much of a shrug Justice League is. With, WB willing to go to places that Disney won’t with its Marvel properties, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is another (flawed) step in the right direction. And from here on out, I’ll strictly be referring to this movie as Birds of Prey.

Following the events of Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) is now on her own after the Joker throws her literally to the curb. Before thinking it through, she publicly declares her and the Joker are done. With it being open season on her, Harley must team-up with police detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and the Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) to save young pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) from the crime lord Black Mask (Ewan McGregor).

Now let’s get this out of the way. Yes, this is a sequel to Suicide Squad, with the events of that film heavily referenced, and clips from it shown in this film. And yes, Birds of Prey does curb the character introductions from that movie. The big difference here is that it works and doesn’t come off cheesy and sloppy. However, this film stands on its own two feet and if you come into this blind, you would not be lost. And that’s by design as DC is making it clear that they’re doing standalone films. For the time being anyway. Right the ship first then gather everyone together again. It truly says something when this film and Shazam! does more world-building than films that your main heroes are in.

Look, portrayal aside, I’m glad they gave Harley her own movie away from the Joker. No offense to Jared Leto, but I wasn’t feeling gangsta Joker. Plus, Harley’s abusive relationship is probably not one you’d want to showcase and immortalize in a movie. But then, this where the problems come in.

Look, I love Harley as a character and Margot was born to play her (you can tell she loves playing the character and is having a total blast), but with that having her be front and center, she gets to be a bit much after the first two acts.

And that’s primarily the movie’s biggest fault is the script. Christina Hodgson can’t pace this thing to save her life. It tries to be clever playing with time and breaking the fourth wall in a very Tarantino/Guy Ritchie style that really doesn’t work. So while you get big bursts of energetic scenes, that momentum is killed by hopping back in time to more exposition. For a film called Birds of Prey, they don’t really get together until the very last bits of the third act. Seeing them all together is honestly the best part of this film besides having Ewan going H.A.M. as DC’s best villain so far. And I get that this is a feminist superhero film, but the movie lays it on thick that every guy in this movie sucks. Like seriously, the men in this movie are constantly beating the women down in different ways from start to finish whether its attempted date rape, sexual humiliation, or a betrayal. Seriously, Christina, we get it.

Really what makes the film soar is the talented cast who all brought their A-game to the proceedings. Jurnee was the stand out to me as Dinah Lance aka the Black Canary. I really can’t wait to see more of her as this version of Dinah with her hopefully teaming with Olivier Queen aka the Green Arrow, in addition to further Birds of Prey adventures. The same goes for Mary Elizabeth as Huntress.

The film’s secret MVP is Ewan McGregor as Roman Sionis aka the Black Mask. Black Mask is a notable Batman villain and Ewan is so good here that I wish he was saved for a Batman movie. Ewan plays him so menacingly and so unpredictably that you don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Black Mask is a bipolar narcissist as his mood swings happen at any moment with violent outbursts that get more extreme and brutal as the film moves along.

Director Cathy Yan is extremely talented. I love her use of zooms in this film as well as a couple of slick POV shots. The way she shoots the action is impeccable too. Seriously a lot of these action scenes pop in ways that haven’t before in DC films. Part of that is the R-rating, which certainly helps, and the other is Cathy knows when to get out of the way and shoot the action choreography in great ways so that you can see everything. Speaking of the R-rating and Cathy’s direction, this brings a certain danger and grit to Gotham (excluding Joker as that’s its own thing) that these big-budget DC films have been missing since Nolan stepped away.

Look, Birds of Prey works more often than it doesn’t. With a much, much better script this would’ve been a home run for sure. But still having Renee Montoya and Cassandra Cain in a big-budget live-action movie is unexpected. Never in a million years reading these comics would I have thought that these two characters would grace the screen. The same goes for having a potential Birds of Prey franchise.

Decent movie. Good choice to make it rated R.
Really awesome fight scenes. I was surprised at that.


>Full title is Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation
>of One Harley Quinn)
>
>Here's a production teaser:
>https://youtu.be/ptLZlrE8MrQ
>
>Line-up is:
>Harley Quinn
>Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Huntress
>Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Black Canary
>
>And Ewan McGregor as Black Mask.
>
>Rumored to be featuring Batgirl to launch her solo film.
>
>Hope this shit is good. Looks like they took a lot of the face
>tattoos off of Harley.

I never saw Suicide Squad but man did its whole vibe scare me off ever watching this. Felt like quarantine had been kind to this movie though and I randomly noticed it had a 3.3 on Letterboxd so I thought, eh, what's the worst that could happen? I'm the kind of masochist that HATES Justice League yet has seen it four (four?!) times!


And I think the best take is that a better script, more streamlined and 10-20 minutes shorter, would've been an A-tier live action comic book (NOT superhero movie). Here's what I thought last night (bonus thought: Black Canary having a superpower right at the very end is maybe the, ehem, canary in the coal mine that this script is half-baked):

Damn you, Suicide Squad, for preemptively convincing me to not even give this pic-cha a shot! IsBirds of Prey a perfect script? No - in fact, I'm surprised I don't see more complaints about it's record-scratch structure that promotes mystery that's not mysterious in favor of performances that are truly hypnotic. Early on you wonder if they're just trying to front-load the movie with some action, but then you're given the "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" music video and realize it's just a mistake.

I hadn't seen Jurnee Smollett since her turn as a female athletic trainer on the Friday Night Lights TV series and she is GREAT. This performance of Victor Zasz is, dare I say, brave? He's such an unsubtle character that pulling him from a cartoon or video game and attempting to ground him in a superhero movie without* superpowers is dope. Harley's a tough character to like, especially in this weird pastiche of Blade Runner fashion and Bonnie Rotten chic, but Margot Robbie's clearly having more fun than anybody but Downey translating comic panels to film stock (or H.264 files or whatever).

Cathy Yan proves that blending the tones of Deadpool and John Wick is both superbly challenging and that she's game for it, most of all when she drops the needle on "Black Betty" in a movie otherwise full of game music choices and forcefully overcomes that big bad idea with dozens of small fantastic ones.

I won't even mention Ewan MacGregor 'cause...y'all said it all already. I get that this is a Hollywood movie and somebody somewhere wanted audiences to relate to Harley and Cassandra at least as superficially as possible, but when you've got this many actors having as much fun as they are and a cohesion between cinematographer, stunt coordinator and director to die for, the movie doesn't really need to digress into the sort of movies Big Daddy already tried to skewer 20 years ago. Or, at the movie's absolute nadir, "if you've ever watched any cop movie, EVER."

If the Sandman couldn't resist sentimentality when acting and jokes do fine (and the Nice Guys/Other Guys combo took care of the rest), I guess you've gotta just choke that stuff down. Sooner or later Mary Elizabeth-Winstead might just show up speaking Taiwanese and reassure you everything's gonna be just fine. Well, for the moviegoer, anyway. Pretty much everyone that surrounds Harley is still going to suffer one way or another. Hopefully Cathy and Margot can team up outside of intellectual property and truly let loose.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

First off , it's a comic book movie. I like that.

Second, it's filled with SUPER HOT BABES - I like that too.


What's really really bad:
The "Action" sequences are like a Benny Hill sketch on uppers. So many people standing around and waiting their turn to fight. Hits with hammers and bats that have 0 impact. It's like watching a Power Rangers film in a lot of scenes. it's literally people jumping on trampolines for 80% of it, followed by weak 'hits' that clearly miss by a mile.

Then they tonally shift to Deadpool territory with her jackal eating a dead body as a joke.

Just too inconsistent.

Oh, Corridor Crew had a stuntman on to talk about it in "Stuntmen React To Bad & Great Hollywood Stunts 19"
: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbxF-s5dvCQ

It's definitely worth watching all those Stuntman react videos, lots of fun.

I like the Harley Quinn cartoon *a lot* more.

I'll always have a soft spot for truly bad fight scenes, and that final sequence really reminded me of the ice hockey fight from Batman & Robin.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

>I'll always have a soft spot for truly bad fight scenes, and
>that final sequence really reminded me of the ice hockey fight
>from Batman & Robin.

:)

I too didn’t like it. But at least some of the actors (Ewan, Winstead, Messina) got to ham it up nice and good.

>And I think the best take is that a better script, more
>streamlined and 10-20 minutes shorter, would've been an A-tier
>live action comic book (NOT superhero movie).

Agreed, but I also didn’t need it to be A-tier. Could’ve been more cohesive for sure, but it is a Harley Quinn movie so fuck it.

>Damn you, Suicide Squad, for preemptively convincing me to not
>even give this pic-cha a shot!

Definitely hurt the movie. If Suicide Squad didn’t have such a bad reputation there would’ve been a lot more love for this. Also I thought the retitle (Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey) was more accurate than the original confusing ass title. They should’ve ran with that in the first place. I’m sure there was a lot of discussion about it during production.