Birds of Prey Trailer Thoughts

Let’s talk about this new trailer while I try to get a handle on some middle-form blogging.

One of the pleasures of Facebook I’ll miss, I admit, is its capacity for middle-form blogging. Twitter clearly cornered the market on microblogging, and if I ever wanted to write a really long blog, I’d usually post it to my personal website or CC2K. (Though sadly, I still posted some really long entries directly to Facebook becuase (1) I was too lazy to open up my old blog and (2) I figured I’d get more engagement on Facebook. Sadly, I was right.)

But for the purposes of this new blog — and hopefully, this new stage of my life — I’d like to post the occasional (or not so occasional) middle-form blog. More than 240 characters but less than ten thousand words.

To kick things off, let’s check out the newly-dropped trailer for the upcoming DCU flick, Birds of Prey. I’ve written ad nauseum about comic-book movies for as long as I can remember. I like the DC movies fine, though pound for pound, the Marvel franchise (comparatively and relatively) works better. (Though again, that’s a relative statement. I love the Marvel movies, but Martin Scorsese was right when he described ‘em as theme park rides.)

But I digress. The DCU movies have been tracking a course away from their desaturated, ponderous, and Christopher Nolan-inspired early movies (Man of Steel, Batman versus Superman) and toward more colorful — and in the case of Birds of Prey, neon-soaked — fare.

Suicide Squad was imperfect but engaging, with some strong performances, particularly from Viola Davis as all-time great DC villain Amanda Waller; and Margot Robbie as a fiery Harley Quinn. That movie was still hampered by Nolan-era slate-gray overseriousness (Jared Leto’s Joker notwithstanding), but you could start to see DC shifting its look for Gotham City in a more retrowave-y, Miaimi Vice-by-way-of-Blade Runner direction. I dig it.

Birds of Prey, which’ll feature a host of female greats from the pages of DC comics, builds on this look, coupling it with a kind of gutterpunk/Sex Pistols/roller derby vibe. As a longtime comics geek, it’s cool to see some of the lesser-known members of Batman’s rogues gallery onscreen (Black Mask, Victor Zsasz), along with the Huntress. (Though I wonder which, if any, known version of the Huntress we’ll be getting?)

I might have to write more about Scorsese’s comments about comic book movies and cinema at some point, because while I adore comics and comic-book movies, I largely agrees with Scorsese’s sentiments.