With less than a week to go before the movie hits theaters, the women of Birds of Prey continue their international press tour for the hotly anticipated film. In a video interview with Capital FM, Margot Robbie and Mary Elizabeth Winstead discussed working on the film, and its relation to 2019’s smash hit Joker.
When asked if Robbie’s Harley Quinn would ever pop up in the Joker universe, Robbie responded “I think they exist in two very different worlds, Todd Phillips’s Gotham and this Gotham – very different. I don’t know how you’d bridge that gap. She’d drive him insane, … She’d be on the other side of the fridge, like ‘here.’ ‘J-puddin, whatcha doin?’ And he’s like ‘’I just need a minute, I’m going through a lot of shit.'”
It’s hardly a surprise that the cartoonish Harley Quinn wouldn’t mesh well with the gritty, serious Joker. But it is a difference that dials into what is so exciting about the current incarnation of the DCEU. Mainly that it is more focused on the DC than the EU of it all.
In the early days, DC and Warner Bros. were looking to take a page out of the Marvel playbook with a series of solo superhero films that would culminate in a team-up movie. And why wouldn’t they? Marvel and Disney have seen tremendous record-breaking success with that formula. And Warner Bros. experienced their own sprawling franchise success with their Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts franchises.
But the DCEU was beset with problems from the jump, as Zack Snyder brought a grim and self-serious palate to the series, culminating in 2017’s lugubrious Justice League. While the film made money, it was a loss of over $50 million for Warner Bros., and something had to change. Only Wonder Woman distinguished itself from the pack by delivering an original, winning entry into the DC film canon.
Since then, Warner Bros. and DC have largely scrapped the interconnected films for something bolder: artist driven superhero vehicles. And it’s safe to say that this mandate has paid off. Both Aquaman and Joker have grossed over $1 billion dollars at the box office, even though they couldn’t be more tonally different.
Birds of Prey offers yet another avenue for original and kinetic filmmaking by telling a singular story that isn’t beholden to the mythology of its predecessors. This new slate of DC films are successful because the eschew the formula of the MCU, and place an emphasis on character and singular vision over the constraints of plot mechanics.
Robbie said that Birds of Prey is, “giving people something they haven’t had yet, there’s obviously a huge amount of comic book films coming out constantly, and we’ve seen a lot of different versions of Gotham, but we haven’t seen Gotham like before, and we certainly haven’t seen a comic book film with a female ensemble before and at the helm a lot of female energy behind the camera too, and it just gives you a different fresh experience.”
For comic book movies to stay relevant, they have to give us new stories and experiences. Here’s hoping that’s what we get with Birds of Prey.
(via io9)
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