Review | “Birds of Prey” had the potential to be a feminist blockbuster

While the film’s budget was $84 million, it only made $33 million at the box office during opening weekend according to Box Office Mojo. “Birds of Prey” was released on Feb. 7 and is still in theatres as of Feb. 16.

I love superhero movies. It is, by far, the nerdiest thing about me and I can geek out over Marvel and DC comics for days. I’m not even that picky. I can prove it, because I thought “Suicide Squad” was pretty okay and I’ve seen it more than once. “Suicide Squad” has a 27 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes on and the New York Post said “If it has a genius for anything, it’s disorganization: What promised to be a Super Bowl of villainy turned out more like toddler playtime.”

That being said, I went into “Birds of Prey” with pretty mediocre expectations because of everything I had heard about it beforehand from a friend who saw a pre-screening. Still, my expectations were too high. “Birds of Prey” had the opportunity to be an Avenger-style antihero badass feminist blockbuster, but ended up being a convoluted mess of under-developed female characters and motives that drove the plot to an un-satisfying end.

Let’s take it back to the beginning. The Joker and Harley Quinn have broken up. Like any break-up, Harley sets the chemical plant that they fell in love in on fire. This signals to the rest of Gotham that she is no longer protected by the Joker and consequently, everyone she’s ever messed with wants to kill her (one guy sites his grievance with Quinn as: voted for Bernie, which is just the beginning of how cheesy this movie gets, although I was happy to learn that she was registered to vote).

The problem remains that three other main characters are introduced with their own origin stories, personal motives and vengeances, all while combining their timelines and teaming up against one villain in a run time of only one hour and forty-six minutes. To be fair, the movie felt a lot longer than that.

Black Canary is one of the main characters that we never really learn enough about, and her reason for being in the film is never explained her choices are all made for her. We know she is a singer and has a dark past, but that’s about it. Oh, but she did have her time to shine. After the epic final fight that was just okay, the team of three women who make up the “Birds of Prey,” Harley Quinn, and a young girl that they are protecting leave the scene only to be trapped by more bad men outside. The classic “I’m out of bullets” and “Me too” shouts are made – the staple of any classic action movie – and then my jaw dropped because a main character yells “Canary, you know what you have to do.” I grabbed my friend’s arm, terrified of what would happen next.

She steps forward and belts out a high note that turns into a sonic boom and directs her voice to all of the men with guns and they all drop dead. I could not believe it. After the entire movie of bad guys and fighting and killing, she really had the ability the entire time to just hit a killer note and never did. My friend and I couldn’t stop ourselves from laughing. Despite our laughter, few were in the theatre with us because “Birds of Prey” did not meet its budget at the box office opening weekend.

I’m not saying I don’t love Margot Robbie or this is the worst movie ever made because those things aren’t true. I am saying, however, that “Birds of Prey” tried to do a whole lot that they just weren’t capable of doing. Mostly, I was thinking how it tried to copy Deadpool to create a cool, R rated, dirty antihero, but they couldn’t get there. Take down the violence and profanity a couple notches and it could have been a perfectly mediocre PG-13 teen blockbuster that would have maybe made a lot more money opening weekend.