David Ayer and Margot Robbie helming all female villian DC movie

[MikeandRaph87]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Why are you posting a review for the TMNT comics here in a movie thread about Birds of Prey? I know you’re trying to make a connection but a lot of people here don’t follow the IDW comics so they won’t get what you’re talking about.

Maybe, but I suspect there is more crossover than you believe there to be. I just could not help, but feel I was getting an unwanted message thrown in my face and any urge to see Black Mask and Mr. Zsasz on the big screen dissipated with that one issue.

The best Black Mask is shown in two episodes of The Batman, his first foray into other media.Some could argue Under The Hood since it is taken from material during his three year hold on the Gotham underworld. Again it could be my preference of which characters are used such as Robin and Batgirl being featured vs Black Mask. Yet in the character Black Mask comes across as a threat in his assault on GCPD, enough to make Bruce cautious and know Sionis is dangerous.

[raph27]

So I finally saw this a few days ago... and I haven't been this torn about a DC movie since BvS. A lot of little things that I loved, but the overall picture got too jumbled up.

What I liked:

- Margot Robbie is once again fantastic as Harley. (Which makes me think if they wanted to feature her so heavily that it should have been a straight-up Harley Quinn movie, but I digress.)

- Contrary to many, I really enjoyed the character designs. Are they accurate to what I would see as the "correct" costumes? No, of course not. But I've gotten to the point where I like to see reinterpretations of these characters as they are translated to different media, and it worked well here.

- I will admit, I don't know a whole lot about Black Mask, and maybe that makes me part of the problem here. But I loved how twisted McGregor got.

- Fight scenes are energetic and fun... at first. I'll bring that up again.

- Some fun character moments, such as Harley and Cassandra in the apartment or the Birds getting on Huntress for her anger issues.

What I didn't:

- Pacing was all over the place. The fractured chronological order was overused for sure. By the time they got to the funhouse, I was ready for the movie to be over already.

- The fights went too long in certain instances. Specifically, the police warehouse and funhouse mirror fights were great going in and just stretched too long. Guess DC went back to the Man of Steel approach?

- What happened to Cassandra Cain? How does someone put her in a big-budget, live-action movie and make her a kid pickpocket instead of Batgirl? That would have sold tickets, Bat-family has name recognition like no one else.

- Zsasz got shafted. I was shocked when they said his name, I wasn't sure who it was for the longest time.

Honestly, my biggest problem with the movie is that it had so many ideas that were great and first and then ran into the ground they got used so much. Examples would be Harley's narration, the time-jumping, slowmo during the fights, and the pop-up words on screen. At the beginning, these are fresh. Unfortunately, they ended up just dragging the movie down.

It's a shame, this movie had some decent potential. And with its box office performance, its unlikely that there will be a sequel to fix its issues.

[MikeandRaph87]

There were two Justice League episodes that had to be rewritten due to characters being off the table. To Another Shore wrote around the lack of Aquaman for the worse, but after watching the video I think Double Date turned out better. I would rather have not had Dick Grayson rebuff Barbara Gordon that way to make way for the Birds of Prey one-off.

[Autbot_Benz]

“I put together a sizzle reel,” Yan recalled the other day, sipping a matcha oat-milk latte in a coffee shop near her apartment, in SoHo. “But it was not your typical sizzle reel.” To a homemade remix of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” Yan set a collage of clips that embodied the worst of modern womanhood: “Like, scenes from ‘Bachelor’ proposals, the De Beers diamond commercial, Kim Kardashian’s vampire facial, Fox anchors talking about women, Trump saying ‘Grab ’em by the pussy’ ”—stuff that might make a girl want to smash the patriarchy. “After I showed the video, there was just silence.”



https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...l-movie-career

No wonder this movie did terrible at the box office if this was her sizzle reel to convince warner's to let her direct it

[Leo656]

Because when you wanna stick a face on your "Fight The Patriarchy" movement, you immediately think of a Stockholm Syndrome victim in pigtails and clownface. Harley Quinn is SUCH a role model for women and female empowerment, you guys! Because nothing says "empowered" like "F*cking your way through college and then getting bamboozled and brainwashed by a notorious super-villain because you think you're gonna 'fix' him."

Harley f*cking Quinn is like, the worst possible character you could choose as the face of such a movement. UNLESS you remove all of her many years of established backstory and character development and just jump to making her a one-dimensional Manic Pixie Dream Girl who's just trying to get over her abusive ex by having a wacky and over-the-top Girls Night Out romp with her buddies, as this movie did.

I liked the character a lot when she wasn't supposed to be the "Star" of anything. She wasn't created to be a role model or even a "good person", and that was the entire point of her. She was a bad person (in deed if not always in motive) and an idiot who made the absolute wrong decision roughly 100% of the time. I'm not saying characters can't evolve over time, BUT 1. The movies skipped all of her development and jumped from A to Z so fast that it doesn't even register, and 2. She still shouldn't be portrayed, I feel, as a "good guy" because she's done a LOT of awful things on her own even removed from the Joker, in most versions of the continuity.

Venom Syndrome all over again. A character starts selling too many T-Shirts and then they start getting virtues ascribed to them that were never supposed to be there.
------------------

Also, Harley aside, the Birds Of Prey were never about "smashing the patriarchy" either, they were about catching bad guys in general, some of whom happened to be male but not exclusively. Obviously there's going to be some "Girl Power!" stuff inherent to any team of women in a predominantly male field, but once you start beating people over the head with it, you lose people. People don't wanna be preached at, they want to be entertained.

[Andrew NDB]

Precisely. Though as you might disagree... while BvS sped us through what should have been like 10 years worth of movies ridiculously, the Harley Quinn business shortchanged her (and audiences) like... everything. Suicide Squad, OK, that's a decent introduction, warts and all. Now you need to have her pop into a Batman movie or two with the Joker, then grow her more into a spinoff (something with Poison Ivy where she grows out of the Joker thing) and THEN you can have a movie like this. Only not at the cost of all of the other characters that people like.

[Leo656]

In THIS continuity, she's listed as "Accomplice to the death of Robin". As in, she aided and abetted the murder of a minor. That's kinda worse than anything she's done in ANY other continuity that I'm aware of. She's a child-murderer, or at least a willing accomplice.

No version of Harley Quinn should be a f*cking role model, but THIS version, especially, should not be.

BUT HEY, she's hot and Hot Topic got shirts to sell, am I right?

[Sumac]

Originally Posted by Autbot_Benz

“After I showed the video, there was just silence.”

I think they were silent because they thought "OK, we've found a perfect person for representation for blue checkmarks and leftards in social media, which'll give us media head pats, but let's pretend she revealed some HIDDEN TRUTHS".

I don't think HQ can't be symbol of female empowerment, characters change and all, but there's certainly should be some development. Just skipping from her being Joker's ****toy to "I'M A MY OWN GRRRRL PERSON, RWAH!" makes the whole think look awkward. Like the whole character evolution happens behind the screen and all we see is the beginning of it (in ****** movie) and the end of it (and even shittier movie).
But it DC, such things are to be expected from them.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Leo656

In THIS continuity, she's listed as "Accomplice to the death of Robin". As in, she aided and abetted the murder of a minor. That's kinda worse than anything she's done in ANY other continuity that I'm aware of. She's a child-murderer, or at least a willing accomplice.

No version of Harley Quinn should be a f*cking role model, but THIS version, especially, should not be.

BUT HEY, she's hot and Hot Topic got shirts to sell, am I right?

I think they just look at 'girl left abusive guy and is do much better off without him' aspect and forget all the details. They kinda ignore the horrible things Harley did under the Joker and the mayhem she continues to cause after did. Harley didn't become a hero or whatever, she's still pretty much a villain that borders on antihero, just without the joker.

I kinda think many girls look at Harley and see the 'break all the rules, do whatever the **** you want, you can do anything you want without consequence' aspect of her character and 'girl power' it.

[Sumac]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

'break all the rules, do whatever the **** you want, you can do anything you want without consequence' aspect of her character and 'girl power' it.

Modern "feminism" in a nutshell.

[Leo656]

A handful of people on FB said that they were sold on it when they saw her getting coked-up in the trailer. "Okay, now I'm DEFINITELY going to see this!" I'm like whaaaaaat.

People are silly.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Leo656

A handful of people on FB said that they were sold on it when they saw her getting coked-up in the trailer. "Okay, now I'm DEFINITELY going to see this!"

That was probably the only scene I laughed out loud at. Though they didn't do enough with it... kind of like Hit Girl's "emergency syringe" in Kickass 2, too. I was hoping for something more like a comedically dark version of Wolverine at the end of Logan.

[LeotheLateBloomer]

You know, I'm wondering if they'd introduce Punchline into the DCEU. Too soon since she's a brand new character. She'd only be introduced just to fight Harley.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by LeotheLateBloomer

You know, I'm wondering if they'd introduce Punchline into the DCEU. Too soon since she's a brand new character. She'd only be introduced just to fight Harley.

All depends on if Punchline actually remains a permanent thing or is just there for that one story arc.

I'm not 100% sold on her until the next time Joker comes back and she's still around.

[Leo656]

I just read an article which reminded me that the hack who wrote this pile is also writing the Batgirl movie.

Good thing it's an already-announced DC movie, which means it won't ever actually come out. Otherwise, yikes, that'd be awful.

[raph27]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I just read an article which reminded me that the hack who wrote this pile is also writing the Batgirl movie.

Good thing it's an already-announced DC movie, which means it won't ever actually come out. Otherwise, yikes, that'd be awful.

Is the Batgirl movie still in the cards? I thought that got dropped after all the Whedon allegations.

[Andrew NDB]

Which is still amusing. The Batgirl movie only ever existed in a pre production sense because it was something Whedon wanted to do... then he was run off with pitchforks and it's become this hot potato thing.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by raph27

Is the Batgirl movie still in the cards? I thought that got dropped after all the Whedon allegations.

That Version of a Batgirl movie was cancelled, but they still want to do one anyway, eventually.

Again, it's WB/DC, so expect it to finally hit theaters in about ten years once everybody's stopped caring. Probably a month or two after "Green Lantern Corps" and right before the Flash movie.

[MikeandRaph87]

Originally Posted by Leo656

That Version of a Batgirl movie was cancelled, but they still want to do one anyway, eventually.

Again, it's WB/DC, so expect it to finally hit theaters in about ten years once everybody's stopped caring. Probably a month or two after "Green Lantern Corps" and right before the Flash movie.

Will I ever get Robin or Batgirl portrayed on the big screen again? Just to clarify I am talking Mr. Grayson and Ms. Gordon. No substitutes.

[Andrew NDB]

We might get Grayson in The Batman.

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/249...bin-appearance