Birds of Prey Review (No Spoilers)
Last night, Anna and I went to see Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, and we had a blast!
Some spoiler-free comments:
- It was very empowering - I felt like I totally could've gone to rob a bank after that!
- I loved how much screen time there was of Harley kicking ass. After a very limited action screen time in Suicide Squad, this was a welcome change, and she really owned it
- There was some very inventive action, which kept it quite different and definitely not boring!
- Harley got lots more character development, which did her justice as a more human character than you would see in some interpretations
- She was shown to actually be the brains, rather than being often seen as a bimbo / "Joker's chick"
- I enjoyed there being no Batman or Joker in the film, really allowing us to focus on her, and some of Black Mask, giving her and her supporting crew time to shine
- I really enjoyed Ewan McGregor's interpretation of Black Mask. Having primarily seen him played through the Batman Arkham games, I had a specific view of what he was like, but I really enjoyed his view on it. I especially enjoyed that he was the most emotional and unreasonable person in the movie - flipping a common misconception that women are like that
- I didn't realise until quite late in the movie that Zsasz was the character supporting Black Mask, and felt that he had a little less character development than I'd seen in the games
- I must say I did smile when they appeared in a familiar amusement park for Gotham - we've not seen it in the films before, and it was yet another thing that made it feel like being in the Batman universe, rather than the rest of the universe we've seen with DC.
- It's been reported that "most of the negative reviews are from men", which kinda makes sense. Lots of the story was all about women being sidelined such as not getting promotions they deserve, or Harley's struggle with being a harlequin without a master, and not feeling like she can stand on her own without Mr J.
- For a lot of the men watching, they likely can't empathise with the situation, which likely leads to them thinking it a bad movie, vilifying men.
I would definitely recommend a watch if you've not seen it yet - I know we're looking forward to going to see it again. If more of the DC films were like this, they would be making a killing.
