‘Birds of Prey’ fails to take off at the box office

February 19, 2020

“Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn” premiered Feb. 7 to very little fanfare and a pitiful $19.8 million opening weekend.
Telling the story of Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) after the events of her debut film “Suicide Squad,” “Birds of Prey” shows the audience how she gets on with her life after the Joker broke up with her.
Along for the ride are various other women of Gotham City who are looking for redemption or validation in their lives.
Together they work together to defeat Black Mask (Ewan McGregor) and save the day in typical superhero movie fashion.
At its core, “Birds of Prey” is nothing more than a cheap knock off of Marvel’s “Deadpool.”
DC has no idea what they are doing when it comes to deciding on what tone their movies should take.
After “The Dark Knight Trilogy” took the world by storm, they decided that dark, gritty movies were the way to go.
When their gritty reimaginings of old comic characters fizzled out, they decided to copy what Marvel was doing with their hit films.
They then spit out “Suicide Squad” in an effort to cash in on the “Guardians of the Galaxy” craze that was going on to no avail.
Somehow, they caught lightning in a bottle with “Wonder Woman,” “Shazam” and most recently “Joker.”
But there is absolutely no consistency with any of their mainline “DC Extended Universe” films, which “Joker” is not apart of.
“Birds of Prey” didn’t fail at the box office because of sexist movie goers not wanting to see a female-led action movie. It failed because it has no original ideas to bring to the table, and all of its “jokes” fall completely flat.
Keeping all that in mind, there were multiple other reasons that “Birds of Prey” did terribly at the box office, none of which involve any kind of misogynistic tendencies of American moviegoers.
The marketing that surrounded this movie was abysmal. If you weren’t a fan of DC and were anticipating this movie coming out, there is a poor chance that you saw any promotional material for this movie.
If people don’t know a movie is coming out, they’re not going to see it. It’s as simple as that.
On top of all this, the movie has an atrocious title.
“Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn” is the full title, and if anyone can remember that full thing, they deserve an award.
It’s just too long of a title, but even if people just call it “Birds of Prey” they have no idea what that means.
By contrast, practically nobody knew who the “Guardians of the Galaxy” were before the movie came out, but the people at Marvel are experts in marketing, and made sure that the cast of characters were at least known by name before people came into the theaters.
One thing that “Birds of Prey” has going for it is the way that Black Mask is killed at the end of the movie.
That may be a spoiler, but if you can’t guess that the bad guy is going to die at the end of the superhero movie, then you must not have seen any superhero movie that has ever been made.
That aside, Black Mask’s death has to be one of the most satisfying villain deaths in all of cinema history. The movie is worth seeing just for that.
All in all, “Birds of Prey” isn’t a terrible movie. In fact, it’s very watchable and pleasing to the eye with a stylistic production design, and McGregor’s performance as Black Mask was excellent. He’s a fantastic actor, and it’s nice to see him branch out into roles that you wouldn’t traditionally see him in.
That being said, all its positives can’t outweigh the negative.
If you’re in the mood for a movie about a sarcastic anti-hero that breaks the fourth wall, just watch “Deadpool” and thank me later.