Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, Another Masterpiece after The Joker
By Candy
February 29th, 2020
"Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey" begins with a Flying Policewoman-style animation, which briefly introduces the history of Harry Quinn and tells the audience that she was dumped by the joker. Although as the elder sister of Gotham City, he still has to go through the process after losing his love. After gluttony and hangover crying and buying pets, all the elder brothers ’chickens, ducks, geese, dogs, and cats knew that Gotham City’s neuropathic heroes had no love, so The offending brothers, enemies of Harry, all came to revenge.
Without the joker's shelter, Harry had to face it alone. But don't worry, as a gymnast and a PhD in Psychology, coupled with the protagonist's halo, Harry can easily pack some three-legged cats, and by the way can taste egg sandwiches. Of course, until the black mask played by Ivan McGregor caught her. Hurrying to get out, Harry promised to help the black mask find the diamond he had lost, and thus met the members of the Raptor team: the hunter who used the crossbow to avenge, the black canary who sang at the bar and the boss driver, and the gloomy female detective. Renee Montoya and thief Cassandra Cain.
Harry and her friends
The biggest advantage of the whole film is the "comic sense". Whether it is colorful art design, handwritten subtitle reminders, or exaggerated action design, this comic sense is emphasized. Maybe because of the addition of Chad Stakhsky, the director of the "John Wick" series, the action scene of "Birds Of Prey" is very gorgeous and creative, especially the design of the salute shotgun, which is integrated with the whole film art style. Very well.
As an R-rated movie, Birds Of Prey did not waste a lot of plasma, but it definitely does not lose other R-rated movies in terms of pain creation: Compared to the gunfights in John Wick, Harry and other Gotham villains are Old-School, she prefers knives and sticks, especially Harry's baseball bat. When she hits a person's leg into three sections with three consecutive hits, you will definitely take a breath.
However, "Birds Of Prey" also inherited the shortcomings of "John Wick": In the one-John Wick-many group action action, you will obviously feel that the villains are waiting for Keanu Reeves or Margot. Robbie completes the last move and then moves forward to attack, so it will have a strange sense of funnyness. However, due to the sense of comics, this defect is obviously more acceptable than it appears in the realistic style of "John Wick".
Bold use of color is a bonus for videos
My personal favorite action scene is the first half of the final battle: Harry Quinn and the Birds Of Prey battle with the Black Mask. This part has a strong sexual suggestion. The opponents of the five female protagonists are all tall men, and some are shirtless. Most of them are wearing SM-style masks, plus the design of scenes and actions. It can be said that The erotic meaning is very obvious. But in this atmosphere, the five female protagonists hit the lower body of the male with pain and shot crossbow arrows into the male villain's throat to highlight the encirclement. The image of resistance to patriarchy is self-evident.
Yes, this involves the core of the film-feminism.
I don't know when it will begin, and "political correctness" and "feminism" in the Chinese context have both been derogatory terms. "Birds Of Prey" was controversial because of its feminist theme and role selection at the beginning of the project. "The black canary is played by black people" This stalk has only caused some waves abroad. The most dissatisfied domestic audience is Cassandra Cain's actor Ella Jay Busco. In the comics, Cassandra Cain is Asian, superior in force, and has inherited the name Batwoman. However, in "Birds Of Prey", she is just a street thief, and the appearance of the actor is not in line with the Chinese aesthetics. Like Okafina, the heroine of "Don't Tell Her," many Chinese audiences have criticized such casting as "deepening Asian stereotypes" or even "humiliating China."
Ella Jay Basco controversial over appearance
Regardless of whether there is a mirror in the home of the person who made such remarks, it is strange to just say "deepen Asian stereotypes". OK, let ’s follow the domestic aesthetics. Hollywood chooses people with big eyes, white skin, and awl faces to play Asian roles. Would anyone say that it has no Asian characteristics and is influenced by the white face? What about aesthetics? That must be in line with the aesthetics of the Chinese people and the Chinese style. It is best to use the face of a beautiful lady who can win glory for the country. In that case, only Liu Yifei seems to meet the conditions. You feel your conscience and think about Liu Yifei. How many people are there in the world? How great is the accumulation of life?
In fact, friends who have experience studying abroad should know that many times, you can distinguish between Asian Americans and Chinese students at a glance. Due to different growth environments, the makeup styles of ABCs are not the same as those of Chinese students, and it may be due to the mother tongue of English, and the face shape will also change slightly. So for Okafina, Ela Jay Basco, and guest Huang Ali, although they are not beautiful under the Chinese aesthetics, they are fully qualified to represent overseas Chinese and even Asian groups. Furthermore, there is no stipulation in an actor's business that he must look good, and acting is the first criterion. An actor from Huang Bo can be loved for his acting skills, as is Okafina, who was just after the Golden Globe Awards. What's the matter, looks good, is the acting entirely dependent on the cut-in stand-in, is it very puzzling?
Returning to the movie, it is very obvious that director Yan Yuqian has set five different female dilemmas for the five female characters in "The Birds Of Prey".
Harley Quinn is faced with an emotional dilemma: When a person is overly dependent on or worships the other half in an emotional relationship, then she / he will gradually lose her self, so after breaking up with the joker, Harley Quinn Has been getting rid of the shadow of the joker, looking for myself again.
Female detective Renee Montoya is faced with a workplace dilemma: obviously she has excellent business skills, but she cannot be reused because of sex discrimination. Her own efforts have also been harvested by male colleagues.
The hunter faced a dilemma of self-confidence: Although the hunter was superior in martial arts and wearing a hundred steps through Yang, she still needed to rehearse in front of the mirror and then take courage to tell others what she liked.
Cassandra Cain was faced with a family dilemma: the flaws of her native family made her a habit of theft, and eventually she felt at home in the Birds Of Prey.
Black Canary is faced with a dilemma: in the movie, she is not actually directly attacked by the male villain role, but can be said to be the beneficiary. However, in the course of her work, she encountered Harley Quinn who was drunk and almost picked up, and a girl who was stripped of her clothes by her boss. She has always faced various crimes, some of which she helped and some She could only cover her face and cry, as if one of your girls saw another girl being molested on the bus, did she act out of righteousness? Or are you afraid of retaliation and silent?
Of course, a good design does not mean a good implementation. As the first female lead, Harry Quinn set the tone at the beginning of the film to leave the stupid man, the joker, until the end there did not seem to be any obvious character arc. Moreover, "Birds Of Prey" also has a problem that many feminist movies will appear-the men in it are Dasha X.
This seems to be the tacit understanding of many feminist-related films in recent years, whether it is the award-winning season movie "Carroll" in previous years, or "Send Me to Qingyun" and Hollywood's "New Perak" in Hollywood last year. Men don't seem to have much IQ, and the only effect is to make people disgusted. This is actually a kind of laziness in dramas. After all, the character's behavior needs motivation. The motive of "rebellion against patriarchy" is really complicated, and "rebellion against silly X" is much simpler and more reasonable.
In contrast, ginger is still old and spicy. In 1991, Ridley Scott's "End of the Wild" made a good example. As the pinnacle of feminist movies, it still allowed the good character of detective played by Harvey Keitel to exist. There will also be Brad Pitt's masculine characters, despite their moral flaws.
‘End of the Flower' 1991
"Birds Of Prey" can obviously do better, after all, it is too wasteful to ask Ivan McGregor to play the villain leader. In this film, the two main villains, Black Mask and Victor Zaz, actually have a lot of room to dig. If the Joker is the opposite of Batman, the black mask and Victor Zas are the opposite of the capitalist Bruce Wayne. These two grandpas are both from the upper class and the rich class, but they finally become gangsters and perverted murderers. It can be seen that Ivan McGregor has done his best to perform the irritable and fickle character of the black mask, but unfortunately there is too little space to play. And I don't know why, McGregor's makeup and the interaction between these two villains always give a gay gay feeling. Is it to say that men are not good, even gay?
It is also possible that the black mask with heavy makeup is a tribute to the original comic. Before becoming a gangster, the black mask killed his parents for love, and thus inherited the family's cosmetics company. However, because the effect of his own waterproof cosmetics was so good, causing the user's face to fall off, the defendant eventually went to a crime of no return after bankruptcy. One of the details is quite interesting. The R & D staff of waterproof cosmetics did not agree to get the product to market without testing, but the black mask was very anxious. I told the R & D staff that I want to go on the market now and give you 100,000 US dollars. I'm off! See, the dismissed employee directly sent 100,000 US dollars for 251 days. Who are you not bankrupt?
The last thing to say is the film's narrative method-a large number of flashback episodes, accompanied by the commentary of the protagonist Harry Quinn. Does it sound familiar? That's right, the model of Deadpool.
But this brings two problems: first, in order to let the audience understand what is happening, flashback narratives mostly cooperate with iconic picture nodes, such as the dumplings in "Rescue Mr. Wu" and "Deadpool" The super long fixed-frame picture inside, but "Birds Of Prey" is not, so there will be a sense of confusion, which is also the main reason for the current bad reviews.
Another problem is that in Deadpool, Deadpool explained stories from his own perspective. Even if he could break the dimension wall, he also interacted with the audience and did not have the perspective of God in the movie. The "Birds Of Prey" is different. Everyone's story needs Harry to explain it, which brings confusion in perspective: What is the role of Harry Quinn?
Having said all this, overall I still accept this time the Birds Of Prey. After all, being able to take into account feminine stories while taking good entertainment is a very difficult task, especially for superhero movies where straight men have a larger audience.
The negative example is last year's "Terminator: Dark Destiny". I wanted to use straight boy movies to talk about feminism. I found that straight boys don't like to watch, and girls don't look at you at all. Finding balance in expression and entertainment is always the essence of commercial film.
In the end, as a DC fan, I still hope that DC movies can have more artworks like "The joker". At least, DCEU's works are out of their own style like this "Birds Of Prey". There is no way out for others.
"You are not brave, DC fans are brave."
Egg delivery: The name of this hyena kept by Harry is Bruce
If you are fans of the joker, you may be interested in the Harley Quinn Cosplay Costumes in takerlama.com, Our costumes are the same as the Harley Quinn wear in the movie the joker, you will become joker immediately with our outfits. Double Click the picture and see more.
Previous
Top 10 Low-Cost Cosplay You Can't Miss
Read More
Next
TV Fallout (2024) Costumes!
Read More
