Birds of Prey reaction exposes BIG issues with fandom and media

I’m burned out on the argument about the box office for Birds of Prey(And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn). Seriously.

It all but ruined my weekend, which I spent too much of dealing with trolls, fanboys and flat-out misogynists that wanted to pick fights about why the movie was a colossal flop after 1, 2, and 3 days of release. It’s my own fault for entertaining any arguments about it, but I got sucked in, which of course happens to the best of us sometimes on Twitter.

Well now I want out. Seriously, this is a tiresome battle and it exposes so many things wrong with fandom, conversations and entertainment media in general. I’ve got too many other movies and shows to watch, comics to read and things to pontificate on, so this post is going to outline all of my points about Birds of Prey’s box office performance in one fell swoop. If anyone wants to really know how I feel, you can refer back to this post instead of looking for a Twitter thread about it.

So here we go, without further ado.

“The movie shouldn’t have been rated R because it cutoff young girls from being able to see it.”

Harley Quinn isn’t a kids character just because she started on an animated series. She’s a SUPERVILLAIN in a toxic relationship with Batman’s nemesis, who at some point breaks away from him and finds her own voice in the world of Gotham, which is pretty much still being a criminal, but adding some more morals to it. Great story, very compelling and Margot Robbie does it better than anyone else, but Suicide Squad wasn’t a family movie anymore than Birds of Prey is, even at PG13, so the idea that young girls are cutoff from seeing the film is just lazy. Especially since regardless of rating, those kids can see the movie if they really want. Not every parent that takes their kids to see R rated movies is a bad parent and there were plenty of them in my theater both times that I saw the film. Is it less than it could have? History and the numbers say yes, but acting like Birds of Prey was ever going to be a film marketed for children regardless of rating is disingenuous. Harley Quinn is not a children’s character.

“The marketing for Birds of Prey was awful.”

Two teasers, two trailers, a ton of TV spots, appearances at CCXP and other conventions, Good Morning America, The Tonight Show, posters and videos in the big cities, Twitter Q&A’s with the cast, full magazine spreads, and connection to other successful DC properties like the DCCW, all just off the top of my head here, is “awful.” Yeah, ok.

“Harley Quinn should have been more prominent in the title.”

If you didn’t know from any of the marketing that Harley Quinn was in the movie, I got nothing for you. Holy cow. Moving her name to the top of the title wouldn’t have made Margot Robbie yell any louder that she was in it.

“Birds of Prey is a man-hating, Feminazi piece of crap that deserves to fail, especially since they did everything they could to take the sex appeal away from the women so now I have nothing to look at.”

You balding, neckbearded incel bigots can go straight to hell and let your testicles burn on the way down, assuming you still have them. How much of an arrogant, insecure snowflake POS do you have to be to think that a female-directed, female-led comic book film is some kind of threat to your existence? In an industry that still can’t be bothered to have more female creatives, still waffles at the idea of female-led films, and is still overwhelmingly dominated by male executives and CEOs, you have the nerve to pitch a fit about one movie that isn’t male-centric. Go pound sand, idiots. It’s all you’ll be pounding for the rest of your pathetic lives.

“Birds of Prey is a comic book movie, meaning it should make the same amount of money as the others and if it doesn’t, it’s a failure.”

Lazy and foolish thinking. Not all movies are created equal, even in the comic book genre. Years of seeing Marvel Studios make a billion with its films that were all part of a 23-episode cinematic TV arc for over a decade is not the same as a low-budget spinoff of a film that’s part of a smaller universe. WB didn’t invest as much as they did Wonder Woman, Aquaman or even Suicide Squad. Bigger returns were expected there and are not needed here. Have some perspective, please.

“WB can’t be trusted because they screw everything up.”

You shouldn’t even be having conversations about this because nothing anyone tells you will ever change your mind. You’ve already made it up and you’re set in your ways. That’s your business, no matter how illogical it is.

“Birds of Prey is a failure no matter how you spin it because the numbers don’t lie.”

Why should I care if it fails at the box office or not?

“Because it’s another DC failure and there will be no sequels or spinoffs as a result of it.”

The last time DC “failed” with a movie’s box office was Justice League. All of their other DCEU films have been profitable and Aquaman hit a billion. They’re in a good place and the last 4 DC movies they’ve released, including Joker and Birds of Prey, have all been positively reviewed. Not to mention, HBO Max is months away, which would be a prime place for smaller characters to make their hay even if their big screen appearance didn’t draw in the masses like they hoped would happen.

“None of that matters, it still failed where it counts at the box office.”

Don’t worry, as the traditional market share shrinks in the next decade and goes online, you’ll get the rude awakening. Can’t be stopped at this point.

But while we’re on the subject, why do we care so much about box office anymore? It made sense when we weren’t certain if these movies were even going to be made, but now that we are in a golden age of content for comic book adaptations, what’s the point of stressing over dollars and cents like this? We see none of it as fans, and what ends up happening with Birds of Prey is not going to affect Wonder Woman 1984, The Batman, or the rest of WB/DC’s established slate for the next two years. At worst, we won’t see the Birds of Prey again for awhile, and even then the non-traditional possibilities with HBO Max and even DC Universe are still there.

Yet we still cling to box office numbers like a life preserver. Why? Is it really because we love looking at numbers and analyzing data? Or is it because we love having things to throw in someone else’s face for an argument? What’s more important, whether you enjoyed the movie or not or how much money it made? Even if we never see the Birds of Prey again in the DCEU, aren’t you glad you got to see them once in this film that can’t ever be taken away from you? Or is it just all about thumping your chest at people on Twitter about opening weekends, multipliers and anything else Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter or Forbes tells you that you can use to piss someone else off?

Being happy that the movie you like is popular and celebrating how the box office indicates that is one thing. Using box office as a weapon to tell people that the movie they like sucks or deserves to fail is something else entirely, and too many people are hitting the easy button with these fandom discussions when it comes to a movie’s performance in general. There’s never one reason that a movie does well or does poorly because people are fickle and largely unpredictable, no matter how much people try to predict their behavior. What worked for R-rated films like Deadpool, Logan, John Wick and Joker is not guaranteed to work the same way for Birds of Prey and there is no easy button answer for why as a result of that, no matter how much you try to force that square peg into a round hole in an attempt to find one.

I’m tired of the white noise of everything but the movie itself affecting fandoms. Instead of celebrating a movie most of us enjoyed, we’re fighting morons and each other over how much money it’s not making. We’re literally choosing monetary quantity over subjective quality and acting like that’s a rational discussion to have. The trades feed into it because that’s their source of reporting most of the time, but they editorialize and deliberately say things like “worst opening weekend in the DCEU” instead of “lowest opening weekend in the DCEU” because they know the word “worst” is more antagonistic and attention-grabbing. They manipulate our emotions for attention all the time when they’re really supposed to be reporting what’s going on in an objective manner, but if they simply do their job then we won’t pay as much attention to them and they know this.

At the end of the day, Birds of Prey is a movie that exists, I enjoy it, I like talking to others about how much I enjoyed it, and I will own it for all time when it is available to purchase later this year. That matters far more than proving to a bunch of trolls why it’s not a flop or feeding into lazy narratives that all comic book movies should have the same expectations.

This is it for me. I’m moving on to other stuff. If more positive news about Birds of Prey comes out I will champion it, but the negative stuff is just getting blocked from now on. I don’t need it and it’s just more noise in the first place. I got what I wanted, which was a kick-ass movie in the DCEU that the cast and crew truly wanted to make. No reason for me to be frustrated about that all.