I Like Birds of Prey and I Want You To Think About Why You Don’t

Prologue: DC and the Incorrigible Pickiness of the Comic Book Fandom

Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn is my favorite DC Film. Specifically, it’s my favorite DC film from their current film continuity, but to say that invites a lot of snarky comments from Marvel stans or general DC haters who will tell you “iS tHAt ReaLlY sAYinG a LoT?”

Frankly, if I opened it up to the wider superhero film genre, I would probably rank this film higher than a lot of them, even counting the MCU. But why would I do that? Why does anyone want me to do that? Seriously? Birds of Prey isn’t a superhero film. Harley Quinn isn’t a superhero. She’s either a villain or an anti-hero vigilante depending on the era.

I think that’s the biggest curse of being a comic book movie. Everyone will just compare you to superhero origin films, team-ups ranging from colorful to dreary, or whatever the fuck Batman vs Superman was supposed to be (I still enjoyed it though tbh). People want to rank the DC films but then a hot take is invalidated because – suddenly – none of them are really that good?

How about this: I consider Birds of Prey to be the best comic-book-based film from DC within the cinematic initiative started in 2013’s Man of Steel. This is not limited to just stuff within a shared universe. This includes stuff like Todd Philip’s Joker and the upcoming Matt Reeves film, The Batman.