Birds Of Prey Was A Premature Cure For Superhero Fatigue
A fantabulous look back.
Margot Robbie is used to being the face of pop culture. Her big grin and eternal tiptoe in Barbie became the calling card for summer 2023, but she’s just as well-known for her bat-swinging portrayal of Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad and The Suicide Squad. But in between those movies, she starred in a superhero film that was quickly forgotten, even though it was just what the genre needed.
Birds of Prey, which sports the lengthy subtitle (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), hit theaters five years ago today. A love letter to Harley from director Cathy Yan, it follows our heroine in the wake of a nasty breakup with the Joker. Like many women, she deals with it by cutting her hair, adopting a pet, and focusing on herself. It just so happens that Harley’s pet is a hyena, and her hobby is revenge.
When Harley is threatened by Black Mask (Ewan McGregor), she has to recruit a supersquad of women who also have beef with him, including nightclub singer Dinah Lance, aka Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett), Helena Bertinelli, aka Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and Gotham City cop Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez). But the plot is really just a vehicle for the movie’s unabashed joy.
Too much Harley, who’s usually the comic relief, could become exhausting, but Birds of Prey uses its side characters to balance Harley’s overstimulating personality. There’s also a real sense of the film knowing its audience: Birds of Prey is a movie made by women, for women. That’s made clear in both the set pieces, like an extended Gentlemen-Prefer-Blondes-inspired hallucination, and the little details, like when Harley hands Black Canary a hair tie mid-fight. It’s never pandering, just relatable.
Harley recruits a team of female vigilantes for her mission.
It’s difficult to pinpoint why Birds of Prey didn’t become a hit. Its February 2020 release certainly didn’t help, as it became the last superhero movie to hit theaters before theaters shut down. Its R-rating probably didn’t help either, as there are moments when it vacillates between feminine-rage sleepover classic and empty gorefest, with its true potential lying in the former.
Ultimately, Birds of Prey may have just arrived too soon. It’s a cure for superhero fatigue that came out before the symptoms really started to show. But it still has a great sense of its own identity and message: sisters are doing it for themselves, “it” being toppling a Gotham crime ring and unseating a supervillain.
