I wasn't the only dame in gotham looking for emancipation welcome back
Welcome back everyone, it's Charlie. this is going to be my non-spoilery birds of prey review video
I had a chance to see the movie this week so there won't be any big spoilers
in this video I'll be doing an Easter eggs video later this weekend once
everyone has a chance to see the movie we're doing a movie ticket giveaway all
you have to do to enter is be a subscriber and leave your favorite
birds-of-prey moment from anything on the video it could be from the animated
series from the comics anywhere so first things first birds of prey is really
more like a Harley Quinn movie with the birds of prey in it the film does a good
job of bringing the team together so to speak and the characters do have good
chemistry together when they are working as a team but the whole movie is told
from Harley Quinn's perspective in a very Deadpool way as you seen from all
the trailers she narrates her own story just like Deadpool and just like
Deadpool she is an unreliable narrator in that you're seeing events as she
remembers them and not always as they actually happened I told this all wrong
quick history lesson the basic concept of the movie as you've seen from all the
trailers is that harley quinn decides that she can't stand the Joker anymore
leaves him and then without his protection black mask who's the biggest
villain in town next to the Joker played by Ewan McGregor tries to get rid of
her because he's always hated her and it's just always been too afraid of the
Joker to go after her so on her own and on the run John wick style from black
masks there is a lot of John wick going on during the movie that I'll explain in
a second Harley Quinn has to convince the birds-of-prey characters who are
also each on the run from black mask like Huntress played by Mary Elizabeth
Winstead Black Canary played by jurnee smollett Belle in disgraced detective
Renee Montoya played by Rosie Perez to team up with her because together they
actually might have a chance at surviving black mask breath because he
does have a very big gang and he is extremely powerful I know there's a lot
of questions about what's going on with Batman what's going on with the Joker
because you don't really see them in any of the trailer footage but you're in
Gotham so you would expect the movie to at least address them at some point the
movie does address what's going on with them but I think it deals with them in a
really clever way because I don't think anybody ever expected Batman to be a big
character during this small rated-r birds-of-prey movie you also have
a longtime Batman family comic book character Cassandra Cain played by Ella
J Bosco she's actually the real world niece of Dante Bosco so if you're really
big Avatar The Last Airbender fan she is Prince Zuko's niece normally I'm not a
big fan of child actors but she actually did a great job during the film it's a
bit of a different spin on the Cassandra Cain character though usually I don't
mind them changing comic book backstories a little bit to fit whatever
their narrative is as long as they justify it and as long as the movie is
actually good the movie does a good job of setting up all the birds of prey
characters but like I said this is mostly a Harley Quinn movie following
her character around so if you stand some of the other secondary characters
way more than Harley Quinn you might not enjoy it quite as much they've already
kind of explained what they're doing with the sequels so I'll address that at
the end of the video there's a very logical progression for the characters
after this movie Margot Robbie OE shines as a Harley Quinn character she was one
of the biggest breakouts of the first Suicide Squad movie and this movie is
meant to be a continuation of that timeline so the Joker of this movie that
she's leaving quote-unquote is the Jared Leto Joker there were even scenes from
the Suicide Squad movie that they reused and altered just a little bit for this
movie so see if you can spot which ones those were when you go to see it some of
them even found their way into the trailer as part of the intro that she
has setting everything up where she narrates her backstory like this is
where I've been up to this point and this is where the movie begins Ewan
McGregor is great as black mask he's a very different version of black mask
that I've been used to seeing most of my exposure to the character has been
through the Batman Arkham games through the comics through the animated series
so his spin is a little something different but he's the kind of actor
that can work with whatever kind of material he's given he's probably the
best thing to come out of the Star Wars prequels which is why they're giving him
in obi-wan Star Wars Disney Plus series that's going to start filming next year q
every hello there you've got if you've been watching any of the birds of prey
trailers you have a pretty good idea of what's going on with his character in
terms of tone but the movie itself is way better than the trailers made it out
to be which just goes to show you you shouldn't review a movie just based on
trailer footage his right-hand man Victor's Oz is played by Chris Messina
who's also great in this as that character they even gave him the
comic-book markings all over his body he's known for marking himself for every
person he kills Ewan McGregor had great villain chemistry
together and they make for good foils to Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn who spends
a lot of the movie on the run from them John wick style squirming out from
underneath their grasp in fact because of the rated-r hardcore nature of the
movie the fight scenes in the similar story twist I'd say birds of prey is
kind of like deadpool meets John wick in it's no coincidence it's by design the
second unit director on birds of prey was also the stunt coordinator on the
John wick movies so if it feels a little John wick II that's why but the biggest
complaint I think against the movie isn't how uneven the narrative can be
because you're getting everything from Harley Quinn as she narrates the story
first person perspective style like Deadpool she remembers things out of
order so there's a lot of things that happen in the nonlinear way or some
points in the movie where she'll pull a hard stop and quote-unquote rewind back
to the beginning and start retelling the story so if you're not used to those
kinds of narrative tropes the movie can jerk you around a little bit it didn't
really bother me that much but it might be an issue for a non comic book fans or
people who just aren't used to things like that happening in movies it just
pitched it's a really fun smaller team-up story within the Justice League
DC EU continuity of movies and I think the decision to make it rated R really
did help it the same way that doing Joker rated-r helped it become so
powerful but the birds of prey movie is a very different type of movie in terms
of tone what it's trying to accomplish than the Joker movie was that's meant to
be a really serious picture birds of prey is meant to be more of a
wisecracking Deadpool style film and well the Joker movie is redefining what
it is to be a comic book film but it's possible to do with that type of a story
is sort of reinventing what comic book movies are the same way the Deadpool did
a couple years ago the birds of prey movie isn't quite so revolutionary
they're not reinventing the wheel or anything like that so even though it's a
very well made movie is obviously not quite as powerful in terms of cinema as
say something like the Joker and even though it is rated R they didn't make
the birds of prey movie to be part of the DC black label of films that the
Joker is part of those are mostly meant to be todd phillips associated
Elseworlds stories that don't have any real connection to the Justice League DC
EU characters even though now they really are talking about doing a joker
sequel birds of prey is just another ceu movie that also happens to be rated
R in Margot Robbie's Harlequin will also appear in James Gunn's Suicide Squad
movie in the future they're purposefully very ambiguous
about what the actual date is during birds of prey you only know that it
takes place sometime after the events of the first Suicide Squad movie so I'm
assuming the same will be true of the new Suicide Squad movie and because the
Joker won't be in that one either they won't really reference him in a big way
during Harley Quinn scenes just to avoid confusion without getting into spoilers
I'll say there is some clever trickery in the way that they used the Joker
character because he's very fundamental for why Harley Quinn is doing what she's
doing during the course of the film but if you've ever seen Batman the animated
series episode of Gotham City sirens you may also be asking yourself if this was
supposed to be a Harley Quinn movie then why did they decide to put the
birds of prey characters in it and call it birds of prey instead of just calling
the movie Harley Quinn the actual full title of the movie is birds of prey in
the fantabulous Emancipation of one harley quinn margot robbie revealed that
she's the one that made all those choices when pitching the movie to
Warner Brothers after she finished on Suicide Squad she wanted to do another
Harley Quinn movie instead of doing it as Gotham City sirens though with poison
ivy in Catwoman she personally liked the idea of doing characters that were less
popular that's when she decided to do Huntress Cassandra Cain Renee Montoya
and black Canary came in but when asked about sequels during all the press
junkets they did say that they all wanted to do versions of poison ivy in
the other Gotham City sirens characters in future sequels so I just take that to
mean that at some point we will see a birds of prey burst the Gotham City
sirens movie and it'll be their sort of parody spin on Batman V Superman where
the Joker or some other big Batman villain winds up being the real threat
then the birds of prey in the Gotham City sirens will have to team up to take
them down whoever that winds up being they also said that when they made this
they didn't take into account anything that was going on with the new Suicide
Squad movie so if you feel like it's all a little confusing don't worry I'll
start explaining the timeline again when I do videos for the new Suicide Squad
movie but they're still shooting that right now
overall just comparing birds of prey to other recent DC movies and other female
led movies I feel like it was at least as good as Shazam it's rated R so that's
a huge advantage in its favor it's also highly rewatchable
don't think that it was better than Wonder Woman but it'll be fun to compare
it to Wonder Woman 1984 when that comes out later this summer and I definitely
thought it was better than a movie like say Captain Marvel also female lead film
I just think there was more craftsmanship behind birds of prey in
the director of birds of prey was much better than the Captain Marvel directors
I think it always knew exactly what kind of movie it wanted to be whereas Captain
Marvel seemed like it wasn't always sure but once you have a chance to see the
movie just let me know what you thought of it in the comments and what you want
them to do with sequels please don't post spoilers though just because this
is meant to be a non-spoilery video my Easter eggs video will post later this
weekend there were a whole bunch of huge things that happened while I was making
this video Sam Raimi is apparently going to direct Doctor Strange 2 so cue Pizza
time in the MCU Pizza time I'm also working on a new Loki teaser video from
the weekend those will post next so while you wait for everything click here
for my new wandavision trailer video and click here for that new Falcon and
Winter Soldier trailer thank you so much for watching everybody stay awesome
this is the way!