John Bernardy
I like the joke. Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) holding out her arms like wings and her sparkly shawl is draped over her arms like feathers, as if she’s telling everyone “I’m definitely a bird, too.” She doesn’t say anything with words, just holds wine in her hand —the real reason why she’d be able to “fly,” no doubt.
Besides that, this wasn’t a trailer so much as Dramatis personae. There’s no action, no scenes from the movie to be had. It is meant to be dissected second by second to figure out who’s in this thing. The new Birds of Prey trailer is 20 seconds long. It shows a quick succession of the main movie characters with their signature props, walking or standing in a wide open room with white fabric draped over the walls. In the same room is Harley, laughing and looking all flirty, holding her wings out for everyone to see while the words “see you soon” appear over her. Then the image cuts to black and a cartoon image of a lipstick kiss.
I already knew the movie was going to stray far from the original spy story premise of the Chuck Dixon-written Birds of Prey comic book where Black Canary is the field agent and Oracle is communicating with her over a satellite feed working Intel from afar. I’m not going to be disappointed about that, but I’ve been curious whether Harley would be working with the Birds or against them. If the wings are any indication, she’ll be part of the team. At least as long as it holds her interest.
As I said, Black Canary was an OG member of the team, and she’s in the trailer (played by Jurnee Smollett-Bell). So is regular member Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who’s not that far off from Harley with her moral code if I’m being honest, though Huntress is definitely much more serious.
Here are the other characters seen in the trailer:
Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), an awesome character who communicated through body language rather than word. During the No Man’s Land storyline of the late 90s she was being trained as an assassin before she chose to join the good guys and Barbara Gordon herself gave Cassie the blessing to be the new Batgirl.
Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), a good cop —and Harvey Bullock’s partner in Batman: The Animated Series— before she became The Question. In this movie, I bet she’s all law enforcement, or she was just kicked off the force.
Besides Black Canary —though she always had a feisty streak— all of these characters have an edge to them where they don’t necessarily play by the rules. This actually makes for a good mix with Harley, in a “We’re not so different, you and I” kind of way. I expect heroes and villains won’t be so far apart this time around.
I’m good with Black Mask (Ewan McGregor) being a major villain because he’s a Gotham City crime boss. That matches well. I’m not one way or the other on Mr. Zsasz (Chris Messina) the serial killer and assume he’ll have a small lackey roll in the grand scheme. And it’s not lost on me at all that the ladies are on the side of Right and the patriarchy and toxic masculinity of the male villains are in the Wrong. This has all the makings of a feminist action film just as much as it’ll be a fun action flick. It can have a lot of fun sending its message.
