Spoilers Birds of Prey and the Spoilertabulous Grading and Discussion

Just to be clear, the Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey thing is just for ticketing sites, it's not the official title, that hasn't changed.

 

What?! They're NOT releasing a 'Ver. 2.0' digital print to theatres with a new title sequence and updated VFX??!!...

 

That lightsaber VFX with Ewan McGregor needs to be fixed too

 

Definitely agreed about Zack Snyder. His movies are flawed but are at least interesting.
Suicide Squad, while messy, is actually my favorite DCEU movie. I like the acid-soaked style and nearly all of the individual character bits.
I absolutely loved Shazam! It's fun but also has some heartbreaking emotional depth when you look close at all the stuff with Billy's mom.
I enjoyed both Wonder Woman and Aquaman even though they're a bit obvious in terms of which MCU movies they're ripping off.

I'll probably complete my DCEU Blu-Ray collection with this movie too but I'm in no hurry. I don't currently have Aquaman or Shazam! either and I like them both more than this one. I'll probably wait for a Black Friday sale at Best Buy or something.

Yeah, but Joker made it very obvious through all of its marketing that this was going to be a very dark, disturbing movie and it attracted an audience accordingly.

With Birds of Prey, I went into it assuming that it was a PG-13. When I saw that hyena gnawing on a guy's severed leg, I thought, "Woah! The MPAA really will let the major studios get away with anything." It wasn't until I started counting all the "fuck"s that I realized, "Wait, is this an R?" But the thing is, much like Venom, I don't think that making this movie an R makes it any better. It's not like the unrelenting darkness of Joker or the juvenile crassness of Deadpool. Birds of Prey doesn't have all of its R-rated material sewn into its DNA.

That one got screwed over by the studio thanks to she scheduling. They should have put it out in October to get the Halloween horror audience. I guess Warner Bros. put it out later so that it and Joker didn't step on each other's toes but Doctor Sleep needed that Halloween push way more than Joker did.

 

Saw it for myself last night. Flaws and all, I had fun watching it. Yes, Harley's an Unreliable Narrator Par Excellence, I'm okay with that. Yes, almost everyone with speaking lines was swearing a blue streak, also okay. It felt like I was in Gotham.

 

Saw it last night. It was a fun follow-up to Suicide Squad. Nothing too memorable (except the Huntress name gag) but an enjoyable 2 hours.

 

So. They filmed this in Los Angeles?

 

Also, for @The Borgified Corpse ? The MPA dropped the second "A" from their name, apparently...? And the "R" rating in the USA was something Robbie and company were aiming for.

 

In Canada, ratings-wise, most provinces are going with a "14A - Brutal Violence + Language" tag. In Canada, movie ratings are a province-by-province thing.

 

Yes. According to Wikipedia they were originally supposed to also film in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia, but they ended up just doing the whole thing in LA.

 

Yeah..... that's going to take me a couple decades to get used to and I still might not bother. (Heck, it's only been very recently that I started calling him "Dwayne Johnson" instead of "The Rock" and even that's 50-50.) Given that every other country has its own separate rating system, I'm not sure why they bothered dropping the "of America" anyway. (Also, as far as I'm concerned UNIT is still the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce.)

Lately, it seems like every big movie is filmed in just about every single country imaginable, even when we're talking about studio & backlot stuff, not location shooting. Is that just a ploy to get every single tax break imaginable?

 

I meant Atlanta and Savannah in the state of Georgia.

 

It really felt "LA", all the convertibles didn't hurt.

 

Well, Ottawa wants a piece of that studio/backlot money too. Not just via federal payroll taxes either, because we're actually getting a soundstage complex built on Woodroffe across the street from the Nepean Sportsplex. Which, if Marvel ever does an Alpha Flight movie with the classic version's series premise, will hopefully get a workout.

 

Back to the movie under discussion: I'd say "summertime in the North Gotham Island neighbourhoods" in particular. References to the East End, and Amusement Mile in particular...?

 

I am actually rooting for this movie despite the poor opening. Is there any chance it is getting positive feedback outside of our community? I will be watching the numbers this weekend to see how much of a drop it has.

 

Box Office Mojo at the moment:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3640886785/
Grosses
Domestic (27.3%)
$42,158,302
International (72.7%)
$112,159,388
Worldwide
$154,317,690

I think it has a decent chance to make money on its budget of 84 million. It likely would have done better had it started out titled as a Harley Quinn film and the rating under R and such but I think it can make its money enough that the concept as a vehicle for Harley and a spin off film for the Birds of Prey is viable for more films.

 

Spreading the word on my home ISP's "Speakers' Corner" discussion group, then, in hopes of getting more butts in cinema seats...

 

Back to Gotham as depicted in the DCEU: we've now seen bits of Detroit (Batman v Superman, Justice League), Toronto (Suicide Squad) and Los Angeles (BoP/HQ) used on-screen for Gotham, right?

 

The way I see it, you can't just set up shop in any old urban center and expect Gotham City to just happen. A proper Gotham City has to be timeless and have a slightly otherworldly feel to its dinginess. IMO, Batman v. Superman, Suicide Squad, and Justice League took their depictions of Gotham City as far towards reality as you possibly could without spoiling the illusion entirely. Birds of Prey was a bit more intermittent. The stuff at the beginning with the chemical plant and at the end with the docks & the abandoned amusement park all felt like proper Gotham to me. But a lot of stuff in the middle just didn't have the right vibe. It felt more like real-world New York or L.A. than the nebulous neverwhere of Gotham. (Reminds me of the Christopher Nolan trilogy, which absolutely nailed Gotham in Batman Begins but got progressively sloppier with each installment, to the point where I could pick out distinct parts of the L.A. skyline in some scenes.)