A lot has been said about DC’s latest film, Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, but now the Cathy Yan-directed, Margot Robbie-starring film is getting the Honest Trailers treatment and, surprisingly, the humorous critique of the “girl gang” film is a lot more positive than one might expect. The roughly five-minute video repeatedly notes one of the most common complaints about Birds of Prey, but also highlights quite a bit of positive — all while taking potshots at Jared Leto’s Joker. You can check out the full video for yourself above.
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“In a world where Warner Bros. wishes Jared Leto never existed.. in fact, where all of Suicide Squad was a lie; Forget it ever happened. The one part you liked about the film has been plucked from an early grave and given her own squad,” the opening voiceover says before jumping into the video’s central complaint: there’s not enough “squad” in Birds of Prey.
The video make note of the lack of real girl gang action quite a few times, ultimately putting a timestamp on screen to show just how long it takes for Robbie’s Harley to team up with Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead,) Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell,) Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez,) and Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco). It also claims that the characters are, in their opinion, under-developed, but praises the film’s performances and fight scenes — even if it doesn’t fully understand why the film needed an R-rating.
One thing of interest in the Honest Trailer — outside of the lack of discussion of the film’s box office performance which has been a hot button issue for many — is that it references the film’s most disturbing scene twice without seeming to understand the context. That scene is the chilling moment in which Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor) forces a terrified female patron of his club to dance on a tabletop, ultimately humiliating and terrorizing her by making her do so nearly naked. It’s a chilling scene in the film and while the Honest Trailer almost makes light of it, the film’s director recently explained how she fought for the scene to remain in the film because of how important it was.
“I’ll be honest: We had to fight to keep that scene because it was uncomfortable. It was risky, and we had to fight to keep it at all,” Yan said. “There are cuts of the movie without it. I’m really glad that we kept it because I think it’s important. I think that a lot of people have been very impacted by that scene.
“I think it’s a huge turning point for Roman; it’s a huge turning point for Canary, and the way we shot it was hopefully not about the sexual violence upon the woman. It was more about Roman, what he’s capable of and Canary seeing him for who he really is for the first time,” she continued. “Now, she can fully cut herself off from him, and I thought it was a really important scene. So, we fought for it.”
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is now available on Video on Demand.
