The Dark Knight (2008)

The DC Extended Universe (DCEU) has had a rough go of it from its inception. Man of Steel debuted with mixed results. It attempted to emulate the success of The Dark Knight…something that doesn't entirely work for a Superman film. Then, Batman v. Superman came out and attempted to rush up an entire universe to compete with the Marvel Cinematic Universe…and ended up doing poorly with critics and audiences alike. To make things worse, Suicide Squad followed, and though Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn was a better part of an otherwise awful movie, the movie was still awful.

Thankfully, that is not the case with Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). But sadly, the movie doesn't seem to have reached its reported break-even point of 250-300 million dollars, earing around 205 million dollars. This make it modern cult classic that was initially a box office bomb. While yes, the fake controversy around a diverse cast and the simultaneous spread of the Coronavirus might have pushed away a few moviegoers, my theory is that DC fans have been hurt too many times before, and it’s hard to care about an extended universe when DC’s answer to Avengers was the hauntingly bad Justice League. The recent Shazam! also didn’t fare as well as expected, but I’m not too worried about the DCEU’s prospects anymore. I think Birds of Prey and the other recent movies have showed signs of finding a creative voice and not being afraid to have a little fun. The pretentious brooding and need to be dark really hurt the DCEU, but I think they’ve learned their lesson by now.

So, what is Birds of Prey about? To be fair, it really is more of a Harley Quinn movie. The film very loosely follows the events of Suicide Squad and does not even show Jared Leto’s dreadful Joker (good). Harley and the Joker breakup, and she celebrates her newfound freedom by getting into a lot of shenanigans. Eventually, she finds her way to a club run by crime lord Roman Sionis, AKA Black Mask (Ewan McGregor) and manages to get tangled up in a convoluted deal with him. Long story short, she earns his wrath, along with several other notable people in Gotham City. The Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), and Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) all manage to irk Sionis in some way, and all them decide to come together to stand up to the crime lord.

The film is narrated by Harley and is loosely constructed in a nonlinear order. There are also possibly too many characters introduced at once. Or rather, either the structure or the characters had to be trimmed a little, or the film instead tried to tackle both and bit off more than it could chew. The comedic flourishes and immense performances coming from this talented cast saves the entire show here. Thankfully, there is clearly passion and purpose in this film, unlike Suicide Squad, which simply seemed to be a forced attempt at looking cool. While Birds of Prey can have forced humor at times, or attempt to ape on the success of Deadpool at times, it’s never boring, and never inherently offensive or stupid.

The film’s shock humor and violence are its core components. The action is top-notch. Birds of Prey had some of the best stunt work and choreography of 2020, and was the most fun I’d had in an action film since John Wick 3. Seeing a cocaine-fueled Harley Quinn break legs with a baseball bat sounds like it would be a messy affair, but the film makes it look like an art. And unlike Suicide Squad, where most of the action was shot in pitch blackness or dim lighting, Birds of Prey keeps everything neatly lit and allows every broken bone to be seen.

The Dark Knight is widely considered to be the best comic book film of all time. Be it the poeticism in the screenplay and the visuals, or the unforgettable performance of Heath Ledger as Joker, it’s unquestionably a milestone in superhero filmmaking. So when one more Batman film was announced, I was a little skeptical. Honestly, there have been too many renditions - not that I’m complaining because I love the character and what he symbolically stands for - but there hasn’t been much uniqueness, apart from the Christopher Nolan trilogy. Still, the trailer had the color palette that felt like it was right out of a David Fincher crime thriller like Se7en or Zodiac. So, I naturally got stoked because if it was truly Fincher-esque, it would be a treat to the eyes and the mind, and I’d always wanted a Noir style film about Batman. The character is a great detective and the older comic books look and feel like the Noir movies from the 60s or 70s.

And Matt Reeves’ The Batman sequel delivers on that front! As a superhero nerd and a childhood fan of Batman, the film is like a dream come true. The Gotham presented in the film looks exactly like what one would imagine a live-action version of the comic books would look like. It’s a stale lifeless toxic dumping ground of criminal activity in a maze of sprawling skyscrapers that obscure the horizon from the eye and shield their inhabitants who apathetically enjoy the pleasures of being rich, oblivious to the suffering of the citizens of the place they call home. There are a few good people looking to make an honest living, whom Gotham will deny thanks to a corrupt police force and an abundance of hooligans, petty thieves, and highly skilled assassins. It’s a nightmare of a city, with the architecture looming like buildings out of a Gothic horror, providing shelter to the dark forces under the shadows they cast at night. And yet, it’s those shadows which the criminals themselves are afraid of. The very same spaces that allow the proliferation of delinquency also harbor the famous Caped Crusader.

Opening on a Halloween night drenched in rain, Gotham is presented to the viewer through a voiceover by Robert Pattinson who introduces it as a breeding ground for everything evil. After a montage of delinquents running away from any place in the shadow once they see the Bat-signal in the sky, The Batman himself enters the scene with Michael Giacchino’s brilliant score reaching the crescendo. And his suit is again right out of the comic books. Ben Affleck’s Batman from Justice League had been said to be very comic-accurate, but Pattinson’s Batman is even more so. In fact, the striking similarity goes beyond just the look. Actually, anyone who has played or seen walkthroughs of the Arkham video games based on the titular character of batman the animated series will realize how much the film draws inspiration from that. There are some buildings in the production that are literally lifted from the Gotham in the games, and the lighting and color palettes also seem to be inspired by the video games’ looks.

And the similarity doesn’t just end there. Pattinson’s body language as Batman himself is strikingly similar to the video game version of Batman. The combat motion especially seems to follow in the footsteps of the Arkham series. The stances and the movement when he kicks or delivers punches make The Batman feel like a live-action rendition of the video games. That makes it all the more a dream-come-true for any fan of the character. And on top of that, the gadgets being used are also a relief from the older versions of Batman we’ve seen in live-action. Tools like the grappling hook and the Batclaw are rarely seen outside the world of animation and video games - especially the Batclaw features heavily in the combat of the games, so seeing him use that in this movie was a rather special surprise for me. Outside of fighting, when he is lurking in the shadows or carefully surveying a crime scene, he uses the contact lens which doubles as a camera, and such surveillance is exactly what you’d hope for from a Batman who’s starting out.