Summary: Since poorly-made films (like Captain Marvel) get a billion-dollar box office, Hollywood no longer even tries to make good films. Birds of Prey is dreck. Its target audience is women of all ages who enjoy seeing women beat up men. Past films have shown this to be a big market in America, so expect to see more of these.
“A harlequin’s nothing without a master.”
— Harley Quinn says this at the beginning. The film spends 109 minutes proving it.
Review of Birds of Prey:
And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.
The latest feminism parable from Hollywood is Birds of Prey. Directed by Cathy Yan from a script by Christina Hodson, and produced by Margot Robbie. It tells the adventures of five young women who have been wronged by men. One was dumped by her boyfriend. One was cheated of credit by her male boss. One had her family killed by a man. One works for an evil criminal. Their primary characteristics are victimhood and love of violence. They are cardboard flat and boring.
In the center ring of the film is Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), an invincible cutesy kooky psychopath with a PhD. She is shallow, barely a character, without goals or motivations. She breaks legs for fun. Of course most of the reviewers love her: she is fourth-wave feminism in action: rule-breaking, selfish, purposeless, and violent.
“Women have a lot to be angry about: harassment, pay inequality, bad boyfriends – and that list is barely a black-glitter-nail-polish scratch on the surface of our grievances. …I just kept wishing the movie could be wittier as it goes about its vengeful business.”
— Stehanie Zacharek at TIME. Like Harley Quinn and other fourth-wave feminists, she sees only her side. With no awareness of, let alone empathy for, the problems of men. Victimhood defines feminist critics’ world view, and gives them belief in their moral superiority.
The plot is an incoherent mess. They chopped it up into flashbacks so you won’t notice (so they hope). The rapid-fire repartee is repetitive and quickly becomes boring. The detective’s speech is accurately described in the film as “lines from every bad ’80s cop movie.” The dialog of the rest is no better.
Many superhero films resemble video games. Birds is a long music video: excellent cinematography, great sets, some good acting – and substitutes style for drama. To prevent the audience from getting lost in the mindless action, Harley’s voice-over narration makes plot points that in a good film emerge through action and dialog.
“If you found yourself internally screaming for Ryan Reynolds to shut the hell up during Deadpool, then the relentless, zany narration of Harley Quinn will likely send you gibbering and ruined towards the emergency exit after, oh, 23 seconds.”
— Tara Brady at the Irish Times.
The other leads are an alcoholic tough-gal cop (Rosie Perez), the crossbow-wielding (?) vigilante assassin “Huntress” (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and the singer-superheroine Dinah Lance – Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell). Perez and Smollett-Bell are good in their roles. Winstead is a block of wood. The bad guys are played as rug-chewing mindless evil bores.
“Judging from the audience reaction at the showing I attended, the killer moments here are the killer moments here – applause and laughter at this leg snapping, that body exploding.”
— At Movie Nation.
The film gives us the now-familiar Hollywood story showing evil men, women’s anger, and feminist solidarity. Plus the usual hyper-graphic violent fight scenes in which outnumbered women easily beat up much larger and more-experienced men – because grrl-power. Without getting a scratch, aided by the men who generously don’t use guns. They look like dances. This is not a film for anyone who feels empathy for the male cops, male guards, and bystanders (men, women, children) injured or killed in Birds’ fun fights and chases.
“‘Nothing gets a guy’s attention like violence,’ Harley says, and the action consists largely of female combatants breaking the limbs of hapless males and clobbering them in the groin. Thoroughly deserved, I guess, and about time, too …”
— Anthony Lane in The New Yorker.
Even if you like the first fight scene, you might be bored by the twelfth. Only the Huntress (back left in below photo) looks able to last ten seconds in a fight with a (one) male thug. Robbie is model-thin. Perez looks ludicrous in the fight scenes; she is 56 and (to be charitable) not athletic.
No pandering to the male gaze in Birds of Prey.
Before the modern era, Batman comics showed a Gotham overrun by criminals. Now Gotham looks like LA (unlike the vivid unique Gothams in the Batman films) but an LA besieged by psychopaths like Harley and film’s villains (who slice off people’s faces for fun). An LA where small-time crooks steal with impunity. Batman is not even an imaginary solution for this hellhole. Paging Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil) and Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines)! Please come to Gotham and organize death squads. Perhaps a sequel will show the citizens rebelling – and restoring order by force.
“Like Joker, Birds of Prey is sincere in its commitment to nihilism, but coy about the implications of that commitment.
— An apt observation by A.O. Scott in the NYT.
Feminist film critics (an almost redundant adjective) loved Birds of Prey.
“YAY for girl power! …To add to the female dominance, BIRDS OF PREY is directed by Cathy Yan and written by Christina Hodson. Two of the producers are Robbie and Sue Kroll – so take that all of you Academy members who won’t nominate women!”
— Jeanne Kaplan at Kaplan vs. Kaplan.
“The film is a triumph of female-led filmmaking …”
— Chris Knight at the National Post.
“This is a first: a Hollywood superhero movie written and directed by women, featuring a multi-racial female cast, with no male sidekicks or love interests, and a theme about learning to live without a man. It’s groundbreaking, it’s long overdue, and it’s bound to inspire a generation of girls.”
— Nicholas Barber at the BBC.
Inspire girls how? To do what? Barber doesn’t say. These reviews contrast oddly with those for Joker. Back then critics worried (or eagerly anticipated) that Joker’s mayhem would provide incels with a role model and incite them to violence. Today they are unconcerned that the more positively shown casual violence in Birds might incite violence. None mention the danger that films like Joker and Birds glorify anarchism, whose violence from 1878 – 1920 did immense damage. Are these films corrusive to our culture?
Mick LaSalle at the San Francisco Chronicle, where “normal” is only a setting on a dryer, provides a sensible summary …
“{Birds} is more than horrible. It should not exist. Money should never have been raised for it. The screenplay should never have been filmed. Margot Robbie shouldn’t have produced it. She certainly shouldn’t have starred in it. It’s just a terrible thing to inflict on audiences, who, after all, didn’t hurt anyone and just hoped to have a nice time. The movie …has style problems, story problems, plotting problems and tonal problems …”
Millions of kids will see Birds. It won’t help them become better people. It also will have a large adult audience. The combination probably means big profits. Historians will have the final word on whether that is a good thing.
Thought experiment
Imagine living in Harley’s Gotham City. It is a vision of a future for America. Take a tour of Gotham. It might encourage you to work for a better future.
Imagine the Birds of Prey, Harley, and Cassandra in ten or twenty years. What are their lives like?
The new Harley Quinn annimated series is worse
It is much worse. No sane parent would let their children watch this – excerpt in ClownWorld America!
If you have not seen it …
See the film: Joker
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about heroes, about reforming America: steps to new politics, and especially these…
- Are our film heroes leading us to the future, or signaling despair?
- We like superheroes because we’re weak. Let’s use other myths to become strong.
- We need better heroes. They are there, in our past.
- Where we can find the inspiration to fix America?
- The sad reason we love superheroes, and the cure.
- Male and female heroes: separate but no longer equal.
- Women superheroes are Cinderellas.
- Fourth-wave feminism on TV, shaping a new America.
The big book about heroes
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
By Joseph Campbell (1949).
This is the book that sparked serious research in to the function and significance of myths. See Wikipedia. From the publisher.
“Since its release in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faces has influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell’s revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. In these pages, Campbell outlines the Hero’s Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation that runs through virtually all of the world’s mythic traditions. He also explores the Cosmogonic Cycle, the mythic pattern of world creation and destruction.
As relevant today as when it was first published, The Hero with a Thousand Faces continues to find new audiences.”
