Once upon a time, the prevailing wisdom in Hollywood was that people don’t watch R-rated comic book movies. At best they become cult classics, and at worst, they flop. And if you have paid through the nose for the rights to a major comic book title, that just isn’t going to cut it.
Then, in 2016, after a years-long campaign by Ryan Reynolds and test footage that Ryan TOTALLY didn’t leak, a cute little Valentine’s weekend release called Deadpool hit the theaters.
No one was prepared for how well it would do. Especially not the theaters, which were horribly understaffed. (Trust me, I started working at a movie theater two months later and heard the horror stories.)
Still, in the four years since then, no one (except for Deadpool himself) has tried to replicate success of that movie. Yes, we’ve gotten Logan and Joker since then, but those were both R-rated comic book dramas. Instead, the two comic book properties most suited to being R-rated action movies in the years since, Venom and Suicide Squad, were both PG-13. And, while both were successful at the box office, neither was particularly well-loved by critics or audiences (though Venom definitely fared better in all respects).
Then, almost exactly four years after Deadpool wowed us, we got the first attempt we’ve seen yet for someone to try to replicate the success that the Merc With The Mouth has found twice now. The movie to try was Birds of Prey: And The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.
There are a lot of reasons why this movie should have been a smash success. Even though Suicide Squad was panned by critics and the public alike, lots of people saw it, and pretty much everyone’s favorite part was Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. Now, we are given an R-rated, highly stylized spin-off movie about Ms. Quinn, who has been a fan favorite since before Suicide Squad. It got mostly positive reviews, outscoring every DC movie in the past 7 years except Wonder Woman and Shazam on Rotten Tomatoes.
So why is it underperforming?
There are a few possible reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the movie.
First, one of the reasons the studio thought it was underperforming was the title. Because of this, they had theaters change the listed title after that first disappointing weekend to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, so that when potential viewers look up ‘Harley Quinn movie times’ online, they’re more likely to find what they’re looking for.
Second, there is the very real possibility of comic book movie fatigue setting in. We have gotten a glut of comic book films over the past twelve years, and a lot of people have gotten tired of them. Even people who want to see them have a harder time getting as excited about comic book films as they used to. And DC in particular has burned up a lot of good will in that regard. So maybe a lot of people just weren’t excited enough to see another DC movie in theaters, instead opting to wait until it landed on one of their streaming services.
Third, maybe there really are enough chauvinist pigs in among the ranks of comic book movie fans that if they all decide to skip a comic book movie with a girl power theme, it can actually take a bite out of the box office total.
But regardless of what exactly has caused this lackluster performance in the box office there is still one important question: Is Birds of Prey worth seeing in theaters?
I would say yes…ish.
It is a solid action comedy that clearly is trying to mimic Deadpool with the narration and the fourth wall breaks. But where Deadpool managed to etch itself into pop culture (mostly through a string of truly amazing one-liners and Ryan Reynolds’ amazing charisma), Birds of Prey is not nearly as memorable.
Still, Margot Robbie shines as the main character, embodying the spastic insane exuberance of Harley Quinn so completely that she now owns the role. Her performance alone is worth the price of admission. Pair that with the stunning fight choreography and the well-executed ensemble character arcs, and you have a recipe for a good time.
One thing holding it back from being an even better time, though, is the cinematography. Now, I have not studied cinematography, and I generally don’t take notice of it unless it is doing something really interesting or really distracting. In the case of Birds of Prey, there were two negative aspects of the cinematography that stood out to me.
The first was the color palate. This is a movie about Harley freakin’ Quinn. The colors in this movie should be an absolute assault on my senses, mirroring Harley’s own demeanor. Instead, the colors felt washed out, even in scenes clearly intended to be colorful (see: the scene with Harley in the police precinct). This weird visual choice of washing out and muting the colors in a movie about Harley Quinn bothered me.
The second problem I had was the camera work, specifically in the big group fight scene near the end. Instead of having exciting camera work that added to the kinetic energy of the scene, we got a bunch of mid-range shots with the camera either still or moving slowly. Characters in the middle of a fight would move in and out of frame. One time, a character flips and their legs go completely out of the top of the frame. It was very distracting, which was unfortunate given that the choreography of the fight was SO MUCH FUN. Seriously, the choreography for this movie was like Deadpool meets Pirates of the Caribbean.
Still, even if the cinematography would have been better, I wouldn’t categorize this as a great movie. For that, it was missing something. And I think I know what it was.
(This next part contains what I will call a negative spoiler. That means I will discuss something that absolutely isn’t how the story of Birds of Prey is resolved. If you don’t want to know even how it doesn’t end, skip to where it says: NEGATIVE SPOILER ENDS HERE.)
Throughout Birds of Prey, people treat Harley Quinn like she is stupid. Sometimes they even call her stupid (or a moron, or some variation thereof). When this happens, she is usually quick to point out that she actually has a PhD. And in case Harley telling you she’s smart isn’t enough to convince you, she regularly has these highly insightful comments about the psychological state of the people she is interacting with.
Now, the proper way to make this pay off would be to have Harley win in the end by using her smarts to outwit enemies who underestimate her intelligence. It would have given the movie the core through-line it needed to be a particularly memorable story. But, while her enemies do underestimate her, smarts is not how Harley and her allies succeed.
NEGATIVE SPOILER ENDS HERE.
All in all, I would say that Birds of Prey is definitely worth seeing in the theater, but it is not a must-see. If you are looking to go out and see a movie, I recommend it, but if you want to wait until it is available to stream, I don’t think you’ll lose too much in the experience (those problems with the cinematography prevent me from calling this a theater movie).
Birds of Prey tried to be a Deadpool, shaking things up in a movie universe that needed something new. Instead, it landed somewhere closer to Solo: A Star Wars Story; a fun spin-off movie of a major franchise that wasn’t quite good enough to contend with the fatigue and controversy said franchise was facing at the time of its release. (But with a better lead; seriously, as I said before, Margot as Harley by herself is worth the price of admission, especially if this is a movie you wanted to see in theaters but were made uncertain by its lackluster box office performance.)
Have you seen Birds of Prey? If so, what do you think? If not, are you planning to go see it, wait to stream it, or skip it? Let me know in the comments down below!