Now that Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is out on Video on Demand, the irreverent and action-packed film is being experienced by a new audience. The R-rated DC film features Margot Robbie’s return as Harley Quinn, and goes to some pretty creative lengths to showcase her fighting skills. One of the film’s most buzzed-about moments is Harley’s fight scene in the GCPD headquarters, which ultimately leads her to being chased by goons in the evidence locker. While Harley uses a series of found objects – including a metal bat, a lighter, and a lot of cocaine – to get the upper hand, it sounds like the sequence almost went in a whole other direction. As Birds of Prey director Cathy Yan recently explained to Empire Magazine (via Digital Spy), the concept of the evidence locker fight led to some creative ideas — including a sex toy potentially entering the fray.
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“When you set an action sequence in an evidence room, it’s really fun and you can come up with so much stuff,” Yan revealed. “We had so many different ideas. At one point [screenwriter] Christina Hodson wanted a giant double-ended dildo that [Harley] had to fend off. I wanted her to have a big fluffy bear stuffed with drugs that she used as a pillow to fight with. We had to show some sort of restraint. It’s a cheeky movie – unapologetically so.”
While that certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a sex toy creatively factored into a DC Comics adaptation, you could definitely argue that including it in Birds of Prey would’ve taken away from the awesomeness of the fight scene itself. Either way, it’s safe to say that Birds of Prey – and Yan and Hodson’s approach to it – was a success.
“We explored so many different directors,” Robbie said during a visit to the film’s set. “I said I really want it to be a female director if that’s how it kind of comes together. But of course I don’t ever think you should force that, either. At the end of the day, it’s whoever’s the best person for the job. And we met with directors, both male and female, and Cathy gave the best pitch. She came in, she understood the piece, she elevated the ideas that we’d been working on and kind of took them to a place. And that’s kind of what you need your director to do, to take what you have and then elevate it to another level. And she did that. And I remember writing copious notes every time we spoke to someone, and Cathy came in and my page was like just a big smiley face. I was just like, ‘It’s perfect. She’s perfect for it.’ Yeah, so it was really exciting, that initial conversation.”
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is now available on Digital. Other upcoming DC movies tentatively include Wonder Woman 1984 on August 14th, The Batman on June 25, 2021, The Suicide Squad on August 6, 2021, Black Adam on December 22, 2021, Shazam! 2 on April 1, 2022, The Flash on July 1, 2022, and Aquaman 2 on December 16, 2022.
