By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Movies & TV - Birds of Prey - 82% RT, and good audience reception

Just watched the movie.

Definitely a fun flick with an amazing cast. Won't be remembering for very long, but it was a joy from begging to end.

Not a fan of the soundtrack, even if it does fit the world and the movie.



Around the Network

Any idea how well it did this weekend? I'm hoping it makes a profit since (from what I hear) Margot Robbie put up a lot of her own money. She believed in this project and it's sad that it didn't find an audience.



d21lewis said:
Any idea how well it did this weekend? I'm hoping it makes a profit since (from what I hear) Margot Robbie put up a lot of her own money. She believed in this project and it's sad that it didn't find an audience.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2020/02/16/box-office-harley-quinn-birds-of-prey-barely-recovers-as-bad-boys-for-life-tops-matrix-and-john-wick-3-margot-robbie-will-smith-keanu-reeves/

So not great, but not awful. Hopefully the next weekend doesn't have a major drop either.



d21lewis said:
Any idea how well it did this weekend? I'm hoping it makes a profit since (from what I hear) Margot Robbie put up a lot of her own money. She believed in this project and it's sad that it didn't find an audience.

I'm kinda glad it didn't find an audience. It irks me to no end when moviemakers decide to just slap the name of established characters into some random actors that don't resemble the source material not even a little bit. Like, the only thing that asian chick has in commom with Cassandra Cain is that they are both asian. That's it.

And although the race-bending thing has worked in some cases (Nick Fury, Aquaman, KingPin) I still find it to be highly distastesful when not done correctly. Like, if you want to have a white actor on screen, then take a white character from the comics; if you want to have an asian actor on screen, then take an asian character from the comics, and if you want to have a black actor on screen, then take a black character from the efffing comics! How hard is that? There is already a bunch of diversity in the comics to chose from!

And then they didnt even try to resemble their iconic customes!



Moren said:
d21lewis said:
Any idea how well it did this weekend? I'm hoping it makes a profit since (from what I hear) Margot Robbie put up a lot of her own money. She believed in this project and it's sad that it didn't find an audience.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2020/02/16/box-office-harley-quinn-birds-of-prey-barely-recovers-as-bad-boys-for-life-tops-matrix-and-john-wick-3-margot-robbie-will-smith-keanu-reeves/

So not great, but not awful. Hopefully the next weekend doesn't have a major drop either.

Thanks for the article. Good read. I'm hoping it hangs around. I wanted it to be a huge success (after finding out that it was actually a good movie--before the reviews, I thought it looked terrible). I'll be happy if it's not a big money loser. Looks like all is not yet lost.

Still have to see it one day this week. Darn work schedule. I'm tempted to pirate it but I always see comic book films in the theater.



Around the Network
SuaveSocialist said:
Eagle367 said:

Your weird metric aside, go watch Joker NOW. It's one of the movies of the year. It's not even DCEU so your metric shouldn't stand in this case. Of you didn't watch joker, are you gonna skip out on all of the animated DC movies? And all of the WB movies?  I would say you are only hurting yourself here by skipping out on enjoyable movies and again, go watch Joker NOW. You won't regret it. 

No.  I'm not going to watch it.  I already explained what needs to happen first.

Yes, I'm going to skip out on them.  DC movies are DC movies.  Snyderverse, animated, WB...makes no difference.  If I'm to choose between one continuity and another...I'd rather not choose at all. 

No, I'm not hurting myself.  I am perfectly capable of enjoying my free time without setting any of it aside for DC.  There are a great number of enjoyable movies that I can watch instead, and the experience of watching them is not diminished just because I'll choose them over DC movies.  To the contrary, my decision seems to be hurting you.  For some reason, you appear to be more emotionally invested in which movies I don't watch than I am.

Again, no.  I'm not going to watch it.  Typing this comment was worthy of time.  DC movies are not worthy of my time, and they won't be for at least another year. 

Ok don't enjoy cool movies then. Just to clear, all DC movies are WB but not all WB movies are DC. Other than that, whatever. You're missing out on great movies and I was just trying to convey how great Joker is. At the end of the day, whether you watch them or not doesn't matter to me.



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also

Eagle367 said:
SuaveSocialist said:

No.  I'm not going to watch it.  I already explained what needs to happen first.

Yes, I'm going to skip out on them.  DC movies are DC movies.  Snyderverse, animated, WB...makes no difference.  If I'm to choose between one continuity and another...I'd rather not choose at all. 

No, I'm not hurting myself.  I am perfectly capable of enjoying my free time without setting any of it aside for DC.  There are a great number of enjoyable movies that I can watch instead, and the experience of watching them is not diminished just because I'll choose them over DC movies.  To the contrary, my decision seems to be hurting you.  For some reason, you appear to be more emotionally invested in which movies I don't watch than I am.

Again, no.  I'm not going to watch it.  Typing this comment was worthy of time.  DC movies are not worthy of my time, and they won't be for at least another year. 

Ok don't enjoy cool movies then. Just to clear, all DC movies are WB but not all WB movies are DC. Other than that, whatever. You're missing out on great movies and I was just trying to convey how great Joker is. At the end of the day, whether you watch them or not doesn't matter to me.

Yeah, I don't even know why you're still conversing with this guy. "They OWE me three good movies blah blah..."

Just ignore him.



d21lewis said:
Eagle367 said:

Ok don't enjoy cool movies then. Just to clear, all DC movies are WB but not all WB movies are DC. Other than that, whatever. You're missing out on great movies and I was just trying to convey how great Joker is. At the end of the day, whether you watch them or not doesn't matter to me.

Yeah, I don't even know why you're still conversing with this guy. "They OWE me three good movies blah blah..."

Just ignore him.

That was my last exchange with him/her. I mean, do they feel WB and DC owes them anything? It's all pretty unreasonable



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also

Considering what I heard from some people that watched with similar taste I'll avoid this movie.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

Jaicee said:
shikamaru317 said:

Yeah, it doesn't seem to be quite that bad, 6.8 on IMDb for Birds of Prey compared to a 5.2 for Ghostbusters. Still not great user reviews though, and I can see why the person I heard that from compared them, the whole all-female main cast, girl power thing. No idea why movie studios keep doing these girl power movies when they've mostly been flopping and reviewing poorly, Ghostbusters 2016 started the trend, and it has been continued by Ocean's 8, Charlie's Angels 2019, and now Birds of Prey, all of which got bad to meh user reviews, and the Ghostbusters and Charlie's Angels reboots were box office flops as well (with only Ocean's 8 managing to break even). Seems like Birds of Prey may continue that trend, first weekend estimates are coming in about $20m below pre-release projections in the US and $10-20m below pre-release projections internationally, and the break-even point is being estimated at $235m by Box Office Pro.

*sigh* There always has to be one of you on every thread. (And usually there's more.)

The fact is that female-centered movies are averaging higher ticket sales and revenues than are male-centered movies these days, overall. Without pre-judging Birds of Prey without having yet seen it myself, it's VERY selective to only highlight Ocean's 8 and the Ghostbusters and Charlie's Angels remakes when there have been, in the last decade, such pictures as Mad Max: Fury Road, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gravity, The Hunger Games, a few Star Wars movies (the first three of which at least were not flops anyway), The Bridesmaids, Hidden Figures, The Hate U Give, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel, and those are just some of the better-known examples. Another film that users created a thread about here on VGC to crap on in advance was Greta Gerwig's film adaptation of Little Women, which has gone on to become a critical and commercial smash hit (especially relative to its budget), in addition to being nominated for six Oscars. Also, in animation, there have been such success stories as Inside Out, Finding Dory, Moana, and Zootopia, as well as both Frozen movies, all of which have been well-received. (Yeah, that's a Disney lineup, I know: they're basically the only company that does animation for girls.) Most of these pictures could be described as pro-feminist and three (The Bridesmaids, Little Women, and Hidden Figures) use all-female casts of protagonists. A few of them even had female directors.

In addition to the above commercial hits, I would point to a number of other examples of female-centered pictures that impressed me over the last decade, including the lesbian romances Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Carol, as well the Studio Ghibli picture The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and one of my personal favorite movies of the last decade, Winter's Bone, because all of those are objectively solid films even though they didn't make the most money in the world. Also Lady Bird and I, Tonya.

Not that I'm counting on Birds of Prey to be a masterpiece of cinema or anything. My expectations of it are moderate. Critics and audiences are scoring it better than predecessor Suicide Squad, but not to a degree that suggest it to be anything really special. I'm expecting a passable-but-not-special, goofy, heavily stylized celebration of female friendships...which is fine by me. But we'll see.

My point though is that, regardless of this particular movie, while you might find "girl power" frightening and objectionable, the fact is that large numbers of people are interested in stories about girls and women, and not just in seeing them sexualized and turned into naught but helpless, hapless victims all the time like you'd prefer. And also that, frankly, many if not most female-centered movies being released today really do have some artistic merit. One really has to reach to find only the lesser examples. That takes conscious effort.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, in that there needs to be more stories centered on women and also trans women, the latter facing an even bigger problem when it comes to representation I fear