*Man of Steel, Batman
v Superman, and Suicide Squad had huge opening weekends followed by
steep drops. Wonder Women had a shallower decline, indicating that
audiences liked what they saw.
**This isn't true if you adjust for inflation. With
that adjustment, The Exorcist is
untouchable. One of the biggest hits in box office history of any rating.
A while back, I did a study of the performance of
sequels, and it confirmed a pattern that I intuitively knew. Sequels open based
on how liked the last movie was. The Hangover was loved, so The
Hangover: Part II opened even bigger, even though that movie was garbage.
If the previous movie barely earned a sequel, that sequel doesn't really stand
a chance. Just look at the way the Divergent series tanked by the third
movie. Even when just looking at franchises, this tracks. Remember how Solo:
A Star Wars Story under performed after The Last Jedi had a divisive
reception? Those mixed results also led to The Rise of Skywalker opening
significantly lower than The Last Jedi. And there's the counterpoint
with Rogue One. It ended up being the biggest movie of 2016, mainly
because The Force Awakens was so well-received that people were just
excited for anything Star Wars followed up with. Audience momentum is
slow but hard to change. Think about Pixar. How many bad movies in a row would
they need to make before each release stopped being gurateed hits? Or look at
Matthew McConaughey. He had such a reputation for being in bad movies, that had
had to make about half a dozen good ones before people believed in the
McConaissance.
I say all this, because I want to make sure that
people don't learn the wrong lessons from the underwhelming box office returns
for Birds of Prey. It's a bad opening by virtually every definition. It
opened on too many screens. It fell under industry and studio predictions. It's
on pace to barely cover its budget with the full domestic box office run. It's
not fairing much better internationally. But that has more to do with all the
moves DC made before it than the quality of the movie itself. The movie is
pretty good. I hope DC continues to make movies like this and not blame it for
the rotten position it was in.
Birds of Prey takes Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) out of the Suicide
Squad (and out of the short shorts) and makes her the lead agent of chaos in
her own movie. It begins by explaining that she and the Joker broke up.
It doesn't ever get more into it than that. They broke up, and the movie
repeatedly underlines that the Joker is not going to be an active player in
this movie. Neither Joaquin Phoenix nor Jared Leto show up in this movie, so
don't look for them. It turns out that Harley Quinn has taken for granted how
much protection she got from being with Mr. J. So, once word gets out of their
split, a lot of people want to kill her and feel emboldened to finally go after
her. One is local crime boss Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor). The actual plot of
the movie has something to do with a diamond that Sionis wants and a young girl
pickpocket (Ella Jay Basco) who has is. This story causes Harley Quinn to cross
paths with Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), a detective who is after Sionis, Dinah
Lance/Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), an employee of Sionis' who is
working as a mole against him, and The Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who
is pretty much in her own movie the whole time. They eventually all team up
against Sionis, and that's the movie. Fun stuff.
The movie really enjoys using Harley Quinn as the
narrator. I can see how it could annoy people, but I liked it. She's a bad
story-teller. The screenplay uses this to juggle the order that events are
told, which it uses for dramatic effect. Margot Robbie is one of Hollywood's
brightest stars right now, and she has absolutely no trouble moving to the sole
lead of this movie. They make smart character tweaks from Suicide Squad.
They clarify some details about her backstory and change her wardrobe. Harley
Quinn manages to be menacing without being nefarious in a way that doesn't
leave the audience confused about if they should be rooting for her. She the
hero of the story but not heroic.
The rest of the cast does well grounding whatever
craziness is coming out of Harley Quinn. I like being reminded every couple of
years that Rosie Perez is always a delightful screen presence. It's weird that
this is the first major movie role I've seen Jurnee Smollett-Bell in. It's been
nearly a decade since Friday Night Lights. You'd think someone would've
realized she was an asset before now. She's the most important complement to
Harley's energy. Mary Elizabeth Winstead gets a really odd role that hits some
awkward punchlines. It's almost all reliant of her either being awkward or
looking good with a crossbow. In the gender divide of the superhero movies
started out 50/50 instead of women having to catch up, Winstead would've had
her own franchise a decade ago. Ewan McGregor isn't particularly great in this
movie, nor is he trying to be. Roman Sionis is supposed to be insufferable,
pompous, and entitled. McGregor doesn't try to shade him any more than that.
I'm super impressed by director Cathy Yan's work in
this. She's one of those indie filmmakers who got immediately promoted to a
major action movie, and she nails it. The staging of action sequences has been
a consistent problem with a lot of these indie directors taking over franchise
movies. Working with actors, finding the humor, and handling the story are all
things that transfer pretty well at any level of filmmaking. All the moving
parts and resources involved in a fight or action sequence is something a lot
of people have to figure out over time. Yan already has that skillset though
(or knew to hire the right people). The wacky production design of the movie
certainly helps this. Everything is inherently jokey, so she doesn't have to
abide my normal physics in the way that a John Wick movie does. I was
pleased by some the the complex and energetic staging.
[Note: I wrote that last paragraph before realizing
that the director of John Wick took an
uncredited role overseeing some of the action sequences in this movie. This
doesn't diminish my appreciation of Cathy Yan's work one iota. You know what's
just as good as being the best? Realizing you aren't the best at something,
calling in the best for help, and presumably learning from the best so you can
do it yourself later.]
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It's what I'd hoped
Suicide Squad would be. The R-rating is nice. Even though the movie
isn't excessively violent or profane, there is an ease to all the scenes. PG-13
movies have a calculation to them that you can sense in the editing. I didn't
need more evidence that Margot Robbie is already one of our top tier movie
stars, but this further solidifies that fact. I could find a lot of smaller
things to pick at in the movie, but I'd rather not ruin my good mood.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment