I mistook your meaning.
I saw the movie today with my 13 year old daughter. She liked it, but didn't love it. I'm really glad that this movie was made. Black Canary was wonderful, Huntress (in a sort of backdoor pilot origin story) was intense and messy. I found the choice of Rosie Perez as Montoya a little strange. Perez was good, but I've always thought of Montoya as a younger woman.
For me, the movie suffered from DC's desire to jump to a payoff they haven't earned. I'm not invested in this version of the Harley/Joker romance, so it was hard to care too much about it at the beginning of the movie. This was a team up movie of heroes I don't know (I know them from other media, but not these versions), so I felt like all of the characters got short shrift.
Ultimately, I think it was a strange vehicle for a Harley Quinn movie. I would have preferred a BoP movie with just the other three, or a Harley Movie where she was just John Wick-ing her way through Gotham.
"Cassandra Cain" could have been in either of those movies and been fine.
I do find the use of that name unforgivable. I don't mind when you change a character for a movie, but this Cassandra had nothing to do with the comics character, so I don't know why they used that name.
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I liked Montoya as older and hard-boiled, especially as a contrast to the other characters. But I understand your point.
It's interesting as this project on one hand felt very much like a Margot Robbie project and was gonna be what she wanted it, and on the other hand it seems like DC is still trying to speed along too fast to establish a bunch of characters in its world so it can have more crossovers (still hoping for a successful Justice League esque movie even if Justice League let down some folks [I am a rare weirdo who liked it, but I have never ever claimed to have good taste in movies.]).
Ultimately, I think it was a strange vehicle for a Harley Quinn movie. I would have preferred a BoP movie with just the other three, or a Harley Movie where she was just John Wick-ing her way through Gotham.
You are definitely not the only person who feels that way. However, Harley is a character whom I like, but she can be a LOT. I think if it had been totally solo I would have gotten really sick of her. Having people to bounce off of, of varying degrees of morality and lack thereof, makes her far more tolerable to watch, IMO. And while I absolutely would have preferred a Birds of Prey standalone movie, preferably with Oracle in it, that wasn't going to happen for two reasons--WB would be too afraid to led the more obscure characters lead a movie on their own, and apparently according to stuff I have read they refused to let Barbara Gordon be available as a character for this movie. I think the only way we were gonna see BoP was like this, and as a BoP fan, I'll take it.
The other thing is, the exact way they did this movie... they are now fully set up for a sequel that is Gotham City Sirens versus Birds of Prey and it could be kind of awesome. I recognize the current box office may not inspire any sequels, but I am naively hoping word of mouth and the good reviews that are out there will boost it in its second week. Heck, I feel like even a lot of its negative word of mouth will help it--while there is some absolutely legit criticism of the movie out there, right now it is being utterly buried by BasementBros who are apparently mad that Ewan MacGregor called it a "feminist" movie and this is apparently the most horrible thing that has ever happened in the world since Brie Larson. And I figure the louder those little boys whine, the more people will consider seeing the movie just to spite them.
The other thing is, the exact way they did this movie... they are now fully set up for a sequel that is Gotham City Sirens versus Birds of Prey and it could be kind of awesome. I recognize the current box office may not inspire any sequels, but I am naively hoping word of mouth and the good reviews that are out there will boost it in its second week. Heck, I feel like even a lot of its negative word of mouth will help...
I'm not holding my breath. :(
Warner Bros. is still trying to rush things too much.
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Could ya not take the wind out of my sails just YET? How about next week? You good with crushing all my hopes and dreams next week? :p
The silver lining is that they were actually #1 in sales at the box office... it's just those sales were far lower than expected. (Apparently "Joker" gave them higher hopes, but despite being DC and about the other half of the crime couple in question, I understand had an entirely different focus and tone.) Maybe nobody was going to the movies this weekend. The weather was awful. Yeah, that's it. That's it...
Warner Brothers having stupid executives is nothing new. They've been screwing this s*+& up for decades.
Sounds like many chains are changing the name from "Birds of Prey" to "Harley Quinn; Birds of Prey". Hoping that helps get folks out.
Apparently the marketing has not been very wide so yeah, hopefully that will help. I always thought the title was a poor decision.
This is also "write off" time of year, so the film had a rather large hill to climb.
I will probably be taking my daughter back out to see it again, we both loved it.
On a personal note, I was really happy to see so many people from the third season of Fargo in it.
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Could ya not take the wind out of my sails just YET? How about next week? You good with crushing all my hopes and dreams next week? :p
BTW I hope the facetiousness came through.
After the week I am having, and it's only Tuesday, I am almost certainly going to go see it again at the end of the week just for pure violence catharsis.
Could ya not take the wind out of my sails just YET? How about next week? You good with crushing all my hopes and dreams next week? :p
BTW I hope the facetiousness came through.
After the week I am having, and it's only Tuesday, I am almost certainly going to go see it again at the end of the week just for pure violence catharsis.
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Was even better on second viewing. The story gelled much more. Picked up on some little details that helped things come together better for me, and Harley's arc actually seemed more clear to me, where it is easy to see where she has actually grown a little by the end.
Really noted this time through how much I enjoyed the fight choreography and cinematography. A lot of seamless shots and acrobaticness.
Re-appreciated also the incredible sets and soundtrack.
It is a very unusual movie for a mainstream comicbook film--it's just got a different tone and really is more a criminal exploit/action film with comic book characters than the Everybody Fights the Big Blue Sky Beam sort of movie people expect. The characters are more obscure and the humor is very quirky. A friend of mine posited it was just made for a very specific audience of basically me. Although word of mouth and critics seem to also have a lot of good to say about it.
The box office coverage of it is weird. It didn't make what they expected, sure, and its intake so far is disappointing (although other seemingly big movies with the same budget have done much worse). Yep, it is lowest ever for a DCEU film (but has there been any other DCEU film that opened in February? It's been f@*%all cold and rainy of late and nobody's going out around here for any reason). But it's like... no, Harley Quinn isn't anywhere near going to get the same audience as Justice League or one of the Big Three. And a criminal shenanigans film that's Rated R isn't going to have the same draw as a kid-targeted film like Shazam or the SFX powerhouse that was Aquaman. It was still #1 at the box office last week, and has already made back its budget (and will probably break even by the time it opens in all international markets, which it hasn't yet). Yet I saw a headline that Sonic "blasts away" BOP this week... with a box office lead of 10 or so million less than what BOP earned last week (and of course final numbers aren't in). The media seems to have decided it was unsuccessful, and somehow if it suddenly earned 11 billion dollars by the end of its run people would just shrug and not mention it. (For the too literal and/or context-challenged weirdos out there: it is not going to earn 11 billion dollars, I am being silly.) Honestly in the end, I am delighted by the film and it was actually far, far, far better than I thought it would be and honestly even more successful--which might suggest I had extraordinarily low expectations. But this movie exists, and it was so very awesome, and that is enough.
I read someone somewhere that the one thing that would have saved a lot of people's gripes about "Cassandra Cain" was if she had been named "Stephanie Brown" instead. I know she wasn't originally a thief either, but I could accept her waaaaay more as a version of a young Spoiler, especially if you just threw in that she had run away and/or learned some of her criminal ways from her terrible dad. Yes, the Basement Trolls would have been mad about the racebend, but they're mad about the movie anyway because there's girls in it.
Despite Birds of Prey's quality, from a Marketing standpoint, Gotham City Sirens was still the better Harley Quinn centered movie to make. This is mostly from the standpoint of name recognition. And Catwoman is almost as popular is Harley Quinn; no bad thing when you want "butts in seats" for your film.
Then do Birds of Prey as a follow up.
With the reality we are in, we can still have a Gotham City Sirens movie. And I would actually argue that to the mainstream, Catwoman is far more recognizable and popular than Harley, so BOP's box office (which there are now takes that people have overstated its situation) doesn't have to be an argument against it. Comics fans forget that outside us, no one has any f@!*ing clue who Harley is. Catwoman has been around since the 40s and has had many live action iterations already. GCS would work well as a vehicle for her, with Harley along for the ride as an established character.
What annoys me is we're not getting Catwoman or Ivy in "The Batman." Introduce them in that, then do GCS. With the now-established BOP as the good guys they have to evade.
Yes, it was mentioned upthread several times she was originally from TAS. Though her high-selling comics are part of why she continued to be recognized after the 1990s by superhero-following-nerd-geeks (is that a more acceptably accurate term?). The point is Catwoman is a more recognizable character in the mainstream. Now Harley's also going to be in the new Suicide Squad movie as well so she might eventually catch up.
KahnyaGnorc, I haven't read up a whole lot on The Batman. Looking it up, you are right. In the little I'd seen prior, I hadn't seen Catwoman mentioned. I did see I think Penguin, Riddler, and Carmine Falcone mentioned, so it's going to be a busy movie!
I was just watching an interview with Margot Robbie and she mentioned she is filming the new Suicide Squad. I wonder if/how it will pick up from BOP (e.g., does she ditch the kid?).
TAS?
The Animated Series. As in Batman: The Animated Series. Where both Harley and Montoya have their origins.
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Why Paul Dini isn't in charge of the DCEU I'll never understand.
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Why Paul Dini isn't in charge of the DCEU I'll never understand.
Actually, Patty Jenkins would be an even better choice.
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Why Paul Dini isn't in charge of the DCEU I'll never understand.
Because it would make sense and we can't have that^^
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So, looking at the total silence in here since February 19...
I caught this flick last week (FINALLY- it was thirty below in town for a good long while, and while I can handle that if I must, it really is an "if I must"), and... liked it a hell of a lot.
Coulda used more Huntress, but then again, she really only started firing on all cylinders when she had the others to bounce off of.
I do think we can add "the entire marketing department Warner uses for this stuff needs to be skinned" to our list of gripes, because, well.... none of the trailers I saw indicated how (delightfully!) dark the movie would be in places. In fact, if you blink during a lot of the trailers, you can miss that the movie is R-rated.
The use of Cassandra Cain's name doesn't fuss me much, because I know these Warner schmucks. They see her first and foremost as "a Batgirl" irrespective of literally everything done with her since, and they've determined that Barbara Gordon is to be the One True Batgirl, so Cassandra and Stephanie will be forever second bananas, used in other ways by guys who don't grasp the characters. The use of the name in this movie feels like a fan knowing they'll never get their Cassandra Cain movie and fitting the name into this script as an homage.
Despite being a clear sequel to Suicide Squad, you can feel the DCEU being Superboy-punched into a new shape, just like you could with Shazam! and Aquaman.
For an R-rated February release, yeah, it's not Deadpool at the box office- but what is?