Birds of Prey Is Currently On Course For Worst DC Opening Weekend

[clearspira]

I have a genuine question for y'all: who was this film made for?

- Its not made for kids or teens as it has an R-rating. All of those girls who cosplay has Harley cannot go and see this.
- Its not made for comic book film fans because Suicide Squad left a bad taste in many mouths and was part of the mostly failed DC shared universe, with most fans being of the opinion that it was average to terrible. Will Smith, widely considered to be the best actor in the first film, is not in it. It is hard to imagine that too many were clamouring for this film to be made.
- Its not made for traditional comic book fans because these are not the characters that people who follow the books know.
- It is not made for general audiences because general audiences do not know who most of these characters are. That is why when Marvel introduces a relatively unknown character they usually have them cameo in another (more popular) film first.
- Its not made for people who turn up just for the celebrities because the cast is mostly lacklustre, made up of only two big names: Margot Robbie and Ewan McGregor. And the latter was barely in the promotional material at all.
- It SEEMS to have been made for the fans of ''female empowerment movies''. I say SEEMS, because the female reviewers I follow who like such films have labelled claims of empowerment on offer not going much further than ass-kicking and ''edgy'' jokes.

Was this film ever actually likely to succeed?

[Mecha82]

My guess is that it was made for fans of Margot Robbie and her take on Harley Quinn. After all this movie was her passion/vanity project. Something that she wanted to make.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

WB/DC puts some effort into mining their comic universe for adaptive stories for the large or small screen. That tends to also be the case the cartoon movie lineup that comes out to about 3 films a year under the broad DCUAOM which includes the DCAMU.

My guess is that WB/DC saw Robbie/Quinn as a hot enough ticket to bring up the 3 birds of prey characters along with Cassandra Cain to hopefully get their own spinoff. This movie had elements that reminded me of the Netflix MCU series in terms of low stakes and street level aesthetic and appeal with a key difference being Margot Robbie being regarded as a cinematic A-Lister since she hit it off with Wolf of Wall Street whereas Marvel Studios never seemed to consider the Netflix MCU as movie quality.

[ProfessorDetective]

Honestly, this one looks semi-decent, but I'm too short on cash to go see it. Definitely looks better than Steel or BvS or JL.

[CmdrKing]

On paper, the answer is "same one that watched Deadpool". This has clearly not entirely panned out.

I've been assuming Robbie took a big pay cut in exchange for a producer credit on this film, and she's been working her ASS off for WB, so there's probably more than a little hollywood studio politics behind why this exists.

it's worth noting that the film has a relatively modest budget for DC fare (the number I ran into today is ~100 Million), so the odds it truly bombs are low. Whether it makes enough to justify a sequel who can say, but the fact it's taking some risks that most DC films don't (R-rating, headlining character is more of a solid B-tier, more focused on comedy than pure spectacle) are somewhat offset by that fact. Of course, those are also the exact same things Deadpool did so they may not have thought it was that much of a risk and are still direly disappointed by this more modest performance.

- It SEEMS to have been made for the fans of ''female empowerment movies''. I say SEEMS, because the female reviewers I follow who like such films have labelled claims of empowerment on offer not going much further than ass-kicking and ''edgy'' jokes.

eeehhhhhh I disagree actually. BoP definitely has some valid feminist bonafides, but it's more rooted in very early second wave ideas of mutual healing and support than in more academic forms of feminism. Black Mask is also some sort of platonic ideal of the Abusive Boyfriend and it's both impressive and vaguely terrifying.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Not so much broad empowerment (no pun intended!) but just girlfriends in a Meg Ryan 90's rom com movie.

[Darth Wedgius]

When was the last successful Will Smithless sequel to a film featuring Will Smith? It's like a curse of some kind.

I suspect the R rating and Suicide Squad probably hurt BoP more than the culture war, and it probably didn't help that this BoP was missing Batgirl/Oracle, who is kinda sorta important to BoP in the comics. That's a little bit like doing a Justice League movie based on the Detroit era.

[excalibur]

Case in point with Captain Marvel. An obvious female OVER-empowerment movie which distracts us on the fact that Captain Marvel herself isn't that good of a character compared to other Marvel origin stories and only made big bucks because it ties into Endgame a little and most of us want to at least get to know her character before her cameo in Endgame...which was kinda disappointing. It's almost like Marvel created an OP character and realized she'd end the story if she was in the whole movie.

With Birds of Prey, a movie no one asked for and plenty of other movies that forced the female empowerment up to 11, it's starting to dawn on people that these are really not good movies and most WANT to support on the basis of the agenda it's trying to push....and not because of good writing and directing. This has been going on for several recent movies with female leads pushing the agenda of women are overpowered and men suck

[clearspira]

Case in point with Captain Marvel. An obvious female OVER-empowerment movie which distracts us on the fact that Captain Marvel herself isn't that good of a character compared to other Marvel origin stories and only made big bucks because it ties into Endgame a little and most of us want to at least get to know her character before her cameo in Endgame...which was kinda disappointing. It's almost like Marvel created an OP character and realized she'd end the story if she was in the whole movie.

With Birds of Prey, a movie no one asked for and plenty of other movies that forced the female empowerment up to 11, it's starting to dawn on people that these are really not good movies and most WANT to support on the basis of the agenda it's trying to push....and not because of good writing and directing. This has been going on for several recent movies with female leads pushing the agenda of women are overpowered and men suck

The problem for me with these type of films is that they want the women to be ass-kickers but they don't want those women to have their ass-kicked - making the film uninteresting because there are no true stakes. And we have seen this in the past with men but never this prevalent: it is the difference between a Steven Seagal character and John McClane in Die Hard.

The most interesting hero story is always the one where he gets knocked down (or starts knocked down) before getting back up again. A hero who remains on top and stays largely on top is boring.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

As someone who doesn't really know a lot about DC characters outside the obvious ones, I feel like this one was likely a failure in marketing. The trailers weren't really impressing me and the style doesn't look to suit my tastes, but even the title itself leaves the casuals hanging as to what character (other than maybe Harley Quinn) they're supposed to be caring about here. It might be different if other recent DC movies weren't so hit and miss lately, both in terms of quality and box office return.

For people wanting a female-centric superhero hit, Wonder Woman 1984 has a chance to be the biggest film of the year at the box office.