![]() ![]() Without missing a beat, I chose the latter. When I was 17 and taking my end-of-high-school exams (the French equivalent of the SATs), the examiner asked me whether I identified more with Emma Bovary, the protagonist of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (the story of a woman tragically bored with her banal life) or that of Flaubert’s L’Éducation Sentimentale (the tale of Frédéric Moreau, a tortured, romantic young man coming of age during the 1848 French revolution). Growing up, we’re taught to identify with male characters, regardless of our gender, because their experiences as perceived and presented as universal. Female friendships tend to be depicted (when they are depicted at all) as competitive and all sorts of complicated, while male friendships get to be uplifting tales of camaraderie. But while we are taught from childhood to care about stories about male friendship (from, say, Lord of the Flies to Ocean’s 11), the same isn’t true of their female counterparts. Now, don’t get me wrong, as far as I’m concerned, this sounds like an exciting story. I wanted a fresh start, but it turns out I wasn’t the only dame in Gotham looking for emancipation,” Quinn narrates as images of her new (female) battle partners flash on the screen. Harley Quinn’s tale in Birds of Prey has very much been sold in promotional materials as a female empowerment narrative. To be a woman is to be a woman – meaning your experiences are understood and analysed only within the confines of your gender, usually by other women. In the world of fiction, to be a man is to be a person. ![]() The new title makes it a bit more obvious that the film is, in fact, about Harley Quinn, who became an immensely popular character after the aforementioned Suicide Squad (just think of how many people rocked shiny mini shorts and bicoloured pigtails for Halloween that year).īut none of this accounts for what might be the most influential factors of all, which is that narratives about women aren’t widely perceived as being universal. Warner Bros, the studio behind Birds of Prey, seems to think that the film’s title is to blame: they’ve changed it from Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) – fun, if somewhat lengthy – to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey. It premiered during the weekend of the Oscars, when pretty much every seasoned movie-goers’ eyes were turned away. I personally think that the timing of its release played a part – Birds of Prey came out in early February, known as the kiss of death as far as movie season is concerned. Some have blamed its R rating for its perceived paltry performance (with the reasoning that it cut off valuable potential viewers, namely young teens and families. This somewhat mitigates the apocalyptic reports of a box office flop, but sure – even I will admit it: Birds of Prey still hasn’t entered blockbuster territory. ![]() Pre-order my new sci-fi novel Herokiller, and read my first series, The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook. But there is a lot working against making this film a huge superheroic hit, and I am a bit concerned to see how the box office pans out in the end.įollow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I hope that at the very least, Margot Robbie’s Harley survives this film to appear somewhere else in the future, either in another starring vehicle or elsewhere in the DCEU. And so it’s more just like “What if Suicide Squad wasn’t a total trainwreck?” and that just doesn’t seem to be good enough. It’s not absurdist enough to break out like Venom or Aquaman (which were scored lower), it’s not dark and high concept enough to be like Joker. There are fifteen different MCU movies rated higher than that, and even if you disagree with RT scores, fundamentally Birds of Prey is good without being “recommend it to everyone you know” good. But the movie is at an 81% on Rotten Tomatoes, which might be good for say, a horror movie or romcom, but in the superhero genre, that’s not all that special. It is four times better than Suicide Squad, though that’s a low bar. Look, don’t get me wrong, I liked the movie. Yet again, if Venom can make a billion dollars without Spider-Man, I maintain this is not the main issue with the film, but I think it’s just another factor. Instead, you have Harley backed up by no one but a bunch of C-list heroes and villains. Similarly, a cameo from Batman or Robin (Robin has an amazing episode in the Harley animated series) would have gone a long way too. While Harley is absolutely the star of that show, the Joker is still a part of it, and it seems weird to have a “Harley Quinn gets over Joker” movie without Joker appearing at all. ![]() I spent a good portion of my initial review comparing Birds of Prey to the Harley Quinn animated series on DC Universe which is a much better use of this concept. ![]()
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