The Harley Quinn Movie - Feb 6

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, pure and simple, and your family tends to make it worse – and it is also simple. So, let us talk about something more complex – the latest DC movie – instead.

Why it is a more complex subject? Because in reality, it is two movies stitched into one – first, we got ‘Birds of Prey’, (BOP), which deals with a group of anti-heroes, led by Harley Quinn, in a fight against a crime boss named ‘the Black Mask’, (DC’s answer to Marvel’s Red Skull, BTW), and the second is ‘the fantabulous emancipation’ of the same Harley Quinn as she gets over the Joker, (Jared Leto’s version). Pause.

Now, this is not the first case of two movies being stitched into one – I personally remember the ‘Lost World: Fallen Kingdom’ film, which was two films – the first being the team Owen/Claire (OC) teaming up with the minions of the Evil E to rescue several dinosaurs, (including Rexy and Blue), from the exploding island; and the second being team OC infiltrating/getting captured by the Evil E’s minions to get into the Lockwood mansion and stop the Indoraptor from…something – yes, it’s a killing machine, but nothing more; the movie heavily anthropomorphized it, but it still was nowhere as formidable as the I-Rex from the first ‘Lost World’ film was, and plenty of dinosaurs got out into the world… but we digress.

…And the second film was the SW8 movie, where everything from Rey and Ben’s final confrontation in the ex-Snoke’s throne room feels like a tag-on from an entirely different SW8 film – maybe it was borrowed from the original SW8 script? Or something? Hard to tell, and we have discussed the SW8 & 9 films before, so let us get back to the DCEU.

Did DC succeed with their latest film? As people have acknowledged, it’s no ‘Joker-2019’, and indeed, when the discussions about BOP-emancipation began, ‘Joker-2019’ was avoided. Not surprising, since on one hand, ‘Joker-2019’ is an outlier and not a part of the DCEU per se, and as such, it is a completely different film from the DCEU ones… and it had also won an Oscar. Not surprisingly, then, that team DC does not known as to what to do about ‘Joker-2019’ and tend to avoid it in their discussions, especially unofficial ones.

That said, ‘Joker-2019’ did try to discuss important social issues in real life…and the Harley Quinn double-whammy tried to be feminist! Feminist! Feminist! In addition, girl power! Rawr! …Did it succeed?

Leaving aside the impressive interweaving of the two films, BOP and ‘the fantabulous emancipation’, done in a way that would make Marvel’s Deadpool, (especially the MCU version), proud. That said, since people treat it as a single film instead, well… it is done by the book – women are good, men are bad, (or outright evil), and women are beating them down as soon as they are done being oppressed by them. Just look at Greta Thunberg, back in real life.

…What is this? Now that the initial shock value is gone, Greta seems to have met only a limited success – people are indulging her, going along and pretending that she matters. Since none of her efforts seem to have actually amount to anything beyond making this or that public statement and talking to this or that leader of some country or another… Greta is beginning to feel like a trained parrot that everyone loves but will forget as soon as the entire out of sight out of mind situation occurs – and this, atypically, brings us to Cassandra Cain.

Why? Here is the thing. Margot Robbie’s Harley is consistent with her depiction in 2016’s ‘Suicide Squad’ film. Dinah and the Huntress look nothing like their counterparts in the DC ‘Arrow’ TV-verse (or the original BOP TV series), but DC is inconsistent like this, so that is acceptable. However, for both Renee and Cassandra, this is their official entrance into the live-action DC depiction, (especially for Cass), so what, and who, was thinking? They took ‘Orphan’, one of Batman’s most formidable lieutenants, and turned her into a plucky extra from ‘Ocean’s 8’!

…Actually, the entire movie has a strong feeling of ‘Ocean’s 8’, especially in regards to girl power – ‘Ocean’s 8’ was ‘Ocean’s 11’ albeit gender-flipped and more edgy. Alas, as the ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot showed, gender flipping a movie plot is not always enough, (both it and ‘Ocean’s 8’ are largely forgotten by now), and as ‘Like a Boss’ proved, girl power on its own isn’t a miraculous money-maker either.

Does the Harley Quinn movie has anything else going for it? It is bright, it is loud, it verges on the absurd, and the good guys – that is, girls – win in the end. It is not trying to be intentionally deep if you move away from the titular heroine as she goes on a journey of self-discovery and the rest of team BOP is going for the ride as they need to work together to defeat the Black Mask and Zsasz. The latter are completely unsympathetic, (especially Zsasz), nonredeemable, and are killed at the end. 

Sigh. Even Marvel/MCU is moving past killing every villain in their movies – Loki is back and being redesigned, so’s MCU’s version of Zemo, (and maybe others?). Seeing how DCEU is trying to ape MCU still, maybe it is time for them to stop killing-off their villains… oh, right, Joker. Pause. Never mind. This version of the Black Mask was decisively influenced by the comics’ Joker, and it shows – the movie’s villains have actually more time on screen than its’ heroes – aside from Harley, and this brings us to Cass, but also – to the hyena.

Cass is simple – Harley decided to make her her protégé or something. Ask Harley. Maybe she knows. But the hyena is something else. True to the DC canon, it is a spotted hyena, which is the biggest modern hyena species, and the strongest. It can literally rip a person apart with its’ bone-crushing jaws, so seeing Harley interact with her new pet is something else. I really hope that she had picked-up her comic-book counterpart’s hyena managing skills, because otherwise, there will be trouble!

…As it is, there may be trouble already, as the movie shows no sign of a Poison Ivy. These days, in most incarnations, Ivy and Harley are a couple, a duo, a team – Ivy helps Harley the way that Joker did not, would not, or could not – take your pick. They are also a couple, the same way that Willow and Tara were on the BtVS TV series, for example, so her absence in the movie is glaring, and also telling.

In ‘Frozen 2’, there was Honeymaren, Elsa’s new potential love interest, and yet nothing came of it. Why?

Because Disney does not like to make statements that hurt it in the wallet; it does not like to be hurt in the wallet to begin with: their ‘damage control’ in the SW9 film is the latest evidence of that. Only, in SW9, this ‘damage control’ didn’t succeed, so for now no more SW movies, and especially trilogies; ‘The Mandalorian’ and the like will need to carry the SW-universe forwards for now.

For Disney, their ‘Princess’ series are even more important than SW is, so they have no intention of rocking the boat by getting either the same-sex issues or the sexuality issues involved. Yes, there is many fanworks that do just that, but they do not matter, especially not to Disney, whereas DC…

…Well, in DC, there is the current Harley Quinn cartoon series, which seems to be going precisely in that direction, by the means of an endgame. Yes, DC is not putting all of their eggs in one basket, and the HQ cartoon series is different, and much more balanced, than the HQ movie is, but the signs of this were there in the last trailer, so we were warned. Anything else?

No, not really. ‘The Fantabulous Emancipation’ gave a new dimension to the movie, which otherwise would have been just a more violent and psychedelically crazy ‘Ocean’s 8’. The gangster setting…well, ever since the Superman/Batman animated series of the 1990s, the gangster setting was the default for Gotham, which only served to make the Black Mask and Zsasz even more formidable. The fights themselves were nothing special, certainly not in 2020, and they were not any more feminist than the ‘Like a Boss’ movie was. So, yes, Harley Quinn saved the movie and the day, just not how she probably intended to… i.e., this her normal M.O., especially without Ivy around to ground her, cough. Hint-hint. Regardless, go Harley!

…This is it for now, see you all soon.