Warner Bros.
Birds of Prey is good. I had some minor surgery last week and wasn’t able to participate in the standard weekend degeneracy with my friends, so I literally walked my ass across town (because I had nothing better to do) to the Hoboken movie theater to see Birds of Prey at like 3 p.m. on Saturday. And guess what? I enjoyed it! It was good. Better than Aquaman but not as good as Spider-Man: Far From Home — somewhere in that range.
Seriously, tons to love: overwhelmingly fun, dismissal of 3-act structure, action & humor, Margot Robbie giving a literal cartoon character some nuance.
But they spent the entire movie pronouncing main villain’s name wrong. It’s Roman SiONis, not SiOWNis. Holy shit. Yikes. pic.twitter.com/PkGC129I1k
— Eric Italiano (@eric_ital) February 8, 2020
The movie is fun and loose and quick and action-packed and just an overall good time — it’s what the movies are supposed to be.
Yet, despite the movie’s apparent quality, the theater I saw it in was relatively empty — especially considering it was the first Saturday that the movie was in theaters — as I shared the cinema with about 10-15 other people. Not great.
In fact, Birds of Prey is doing to poorly at the box office — it made $33 million domestically in its opening weekend — that the studio behind the film, Warner Bros, has straight up just decided to change the movie’s name.
Previously titled Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), Warner Bros. has now decided to title the film Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey in an effort to make more people aware of what the movie is actually about. AMC, Regal, and Cinemark‘s websites now all currently display the new title.
As my buddy Observer reporter Brandon Katz points out, this is an almost unprecedented move as movies are rarely, if ever, retitled while they’re still in theaters. As he points out, the most recent example is the Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt action flick Edge of Tomorrow, which was renamed Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow when it was released on digital.
Everyone replying with Edge of Tomorrow. I should clarify: I meant while still in theaters (Edge retitled in US when it hit home sales)
— Brandon Katz (@Great_Katzby) February 11, 2020
Regardless of the film’s title, I promise you: if you like comic book movies, you’ll like this one. It’s good. Not great, not awful, but good.
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Eric is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t quite sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter @eric_ital for movie and soccer takes or contact him eric@brobible.com