~No one does it better than the Birds of Prey!~

[spindizzy]

Lex and I went on a date(!!!) to go and see Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of one Harley Quinn and I think I loved it? And I managed to avoid EVERY SINGLE TRAILER because I was going to see it anyway and didn't NEED to see the trailer, and thus I got to be FANTASTICALLY SURPRISED BY EVERYTHING!

(And because I've had it in my head for like a week and a half: here's the Birds of Prey song that is about 97% dick jokes.)

As always: spoilers behind the cut!

• My corner of twitter had some Ongoing Discourse last week that felt like everyone was subtweeting something about messy/dark/violent queer fiction that I hadn't seen any context for because SUBTWEETING IS UNHELPFUL, but now I've seen Birds of Prey and I'm kinda going "... Wait? Was it this? Is the discourse about how DC are somehow beating Marvel and Disney by having two explicitly canonically queer main characters but those main characters are terrible people?"


• I love the cartoon opening, that's excellent and really cute-looking even though holy shit Harley's life was horrible. BUT LOOK AT THAT ESTABLISHING THAT HARLEY IS BI! Love it! Plus, it ties in with the cartoons that we see her watching! Characterful on multiple levels!


• I like how even though Harley isn't with the Joker anymore (and hi, I'm VERY PRO him not showing up in this story that's about her being free of him), she's still not a good person? Like, she's charming and charismatic, but also broke a guy's legs for calling her stupid?


• Her outfits are fantastic by the way. I love the silver sequin coat she wears at the club, and the gold dungarees are very her! I think when the first set photos started circulating I saw someone caption them with "How you dress when you leave your shitty boyfriend and can finally start wearing what you like again" and they are NOT WRONG.


• Look, I have never met a straight woman who does roller derby, I'm sorry. Even if they cut out that slot machine to appease bigots, they can't cut that!


• ... Harley got a hyena, because of COURSE she did. AND IT'S CALLED BRUCE! That is the sort of thing I would expect in an Unpretty fic, excellent, love it.


• THANK YOU FOR REMEMBERING THAT HARLEY QUINN HAS A PHD BECAUSE I THINK I RAGE-QUIT THE ARKHAM GAMES WHEN BATMAN CALLED HER STUPID, SO LIKE FIVE MINUTE IN.


• NON-LINEAR STORY-TELLING, MY FUCKING WEAKNESS. Like, my FAVOURITE kind of non-linear storytelling, where it explicitly doubles back on itself and goes "Wait, fuck, I forgot to explain this," because hello, this is how we do it.


• I love all of Harley's outfits. My favourite is probably
  
• I DIDN'T KNOW BLACK CANARY WAS IN THIS! That's EXCELLENT, shine on you talented diamonds.


• (Is this a fusion of Gotham City Sirens and Birds of Prey? Again, I don't know enough DC canon to say for sure, but I'm intrigued!)


• "You're the singer that nobody listens to."
  "You're the asshole that nobody likes."
  Fucking SAVAGE!


• FUCKING RENÉE MONTOYA, THE HOT MESS DYKE OF MY HEART!!!!!!!! I didn't know she was in it! I'm really hoping that that schmuck of a captain isn't her partner from the comics because I may have forgotten that guy's name but HE WOULD NEVER FUCK OVER MONTOYA LIKE THAT. HE WOULD NEVER.


• I love that Montoya does the full eighties detective thing. Like, looks at a crime scene and instantly susses out what happened, flashback with perfect accuracy of the killer doing the thing. And she IMMEDIATELY gets what Harley was aiming for with blowing up the factory! "She's called open season on herself," is a great way to summarise that.


• Me: I forgot that Ewan McGregor was on the posters so he showed up and I was like "Wait, what are you doing here?"
  Lex: Devouring the scenery.


• Every time Harley verbally dissects someone I feel joy in my soul. Like, she's the least ethical of all psychiatrists, but I LOVE her reads on people.


• Also this is your reminder that Margo Robbie is so hardcore that she trained as a gymnast to be able to pull off Harley's nonsense and it SHOWS. Look at the stunts she does! Her fights are BEAUTIFUL. And the stuff she does with the bike and the car at the end!


• CASSANDRA CAIN! I've not read many of the comics where Cassandra Cain's Batgirl but I've seen enough to go "!!!!" at the bit where they tried to trick us into thinking she couldn't talk.


• I love how Harley is SO BRACED for Cassie to give her shit about her flat, and Cassie is actually just like "... Can I be you when I grow up?"


• Are we doing a countdown until Some Dude on the internet says that Zsasz a) not letting Dinah do her job, b) ignoring her being competent, and c) fucking up the task he wouldn't let her do is unrealistic and no dude would ever do that? How about until someone says that Sionis humiliating and violating Erika because she might be laughing at him came out of nowhere? (I genuinely thought she was going to be killed by the end of that scene, so if you do see any dudes being like "????" about it we need to bury them in the statistics of "women killed by fragile masculinity.") (And don't get me FUCKING STARTED on her boyfriend helping because I GET IT but also holy fuck and also those two were probably only alive because Dinah drew fire by trying to leave.)


• Harley is apparently capable of pinpoint accuracy, but she looks so bored and annoyed that she's been reduced to that!


• I described Harley as having the same superpower of "Only when it's funny" that Roger Rabbit had and I do not accept criticism.


• Huntress is the most dorky sweetheart in this movie. She is Good At Murder and bad at pretty much everything else! Like, she clearly tries! And she wants to be cool! But it is NOT her skillset. ♥


• Huntress practicing her intro in the mirror and everyone in the party saying that she is REALLY BADASS is great, I love it.


• Harley storming the police station like a one-woman parade is great. She's just having so much FUN! (And someone pointed out that the smoke in the background as she goes is in the bi pride colours, which is yet another thing that I hope makes it through whatever censorship Marvel/Disney insist means they can't have more than two seconds of queerness in it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


• I hate Sionis, btw, in case it wasn't clear. He has good suits and is an awful person. And I THINK him and Zsasz are supposed to be queer coded, maybe? But I'm not sure and even if they are, fuck it so is everyone else. (Also I am INTENSELY SKEEVED by everything he does, up to and including his trying to keep Dinah as a pet, but ESPECIALLY THE FACE THING AND THE SNOT BUBBLE THING OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS DUDE.)


• Montoya picking up brass knuckles from the box of violence is incredibly her.


• The way that either Harley's narration or the characters will lampshade something ("When did she have time for a shoe-change?" and "Everything always gets serious after the cop hands in their badge!" for example) brings me joy.


• ... Seriously every time I close a bullet point I think of another thing that I love. The way the fight scenes are simultaneously brutal and funny (Harley's face when she's in the cloud of coke, the clanging when her and Montoya crash into the carnival games), the fact that tropes are subverted over and over (the guy who owns the restaurant being like "I love you but that was a LOT of money" is the one that I keep thinking of but there are SO MANY), that it's a film full of queer women who are VERY GOOD AT WHAT THEY DO... *dreamy sigh*


• That scene where they're fighting in the ring of hands and passing Cassie from one person to the other to protect her is so good. Especially because it's followed by a scene of each person doing something to get Harley closer to rescuing Cass! I LOVE THIS STUFF, IT IS MY CATNIP, GIMME. Montoya taking a bullet in her fucking bulletproof bustier because comics are Like That, Dinah being the one character in this movie with actual superpowers, Huntress and the motorbike!


• Also THE HAIRTIE MOMENT, I know everyone is mentioning that but SERIOUSLY THAT IS A THING THAT WOMEN HAVE BEEN POINTING OUT FOR YEARS.


• "I stole your ring." I love Cassie, I love her so much.


• Harley Quinn has been left in charge of an impressionable teenager who thinks she's simultaneously a dick AND the coolest person in the world. This will end well!


• I would like appreciation of the fact that I didn't come out of this film and immediately go full Misandry Action Hour and talk Lex's ear off about how look! It's possible to make a movie about beautiful women kicking arse and not make it male-gazey as fuck! It just takes, y'know, HIRING WOMEN BEHIND THE CAMERA AS WELL. (My standards are INCREDIBLY low, admittedly, I will take "The camera doesn't leer at women who are being assaulted for some fucker's amusement" as progress.)


• I feel like maybe I'm supposed to come out of it feeling a bit Misandry Action Hour though? Like, Sionis is explicitly a misogynist (being steered by a DIFFERENT misogynist), who underestimates women and makes appeals to the "Men of Gotham." We see MAYBE two female police officers who aren't Montoya, and I wouldn't even swear to that. Most of the women at the club are staff. And nearly every asshole dude we see either dies or gets their head kicked in by a woman – I think MAYBE the only exception is the police captain? Maybe? It feels... I dunno, it feels like it's an old trope, like, late-90s/early 2000s girl power, but I don't know if it's just because I haven't consumed much "UGH, MEN" related media in a while. And fuck it, even if it is a trope isn't dead until marginalised communities have taken it away and made it our own!


• These thoughts are all muddled, I know, but listen: I kinda love it. Like, I probably love it more consistently than I love Wonder Woman, but the scenes that I love in Wonder Woman I love more? Like, there are two scenes in Wonder Woman that make me cry, but I like most of Birds of Prey! If 2020 continues 2019's trend of MULTIPLE women getting to be action heroes who are disasters or terrible people, then maybe I won't cancel it after all.

Comments

[scarimonious]

I just want to wail about Socially Awkward Huntress getting a new group of friends/family WHO THINK SHE'S THE COOLEST. (She is the coolest).

Also I love Harley so very much and everything about this movie.