Birds Of Prey Is Nothing Like Other Superhero Movies (& That's Great)

There's a lot more going on in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) than meets the eye compared to other superhero movies. Debuting in theaters just ahead of Valentine's Day, the movie had a disappointing commercial performance. However, the critical and audience reception indicates that this wasn't a result of Birds of Prey being poorly received.

In fact, the film has received heaps of praise for its hard-hitting action scenes (to which Chad Stahelski of John Wick fame contributed) and overall bonkers tone, along with Margot Robbie's performance as Harley Quinn. However, when peeling back the surface, Birds of Prey is also a much more subversive superhero movie than it appears at first glance. In fact, for most of its running time, the idea of superheroism is almost completely inapplicable to the movie.

Some might argue the movie functioning first and foremost as a Harley Quinn story is the primary reason behind that, but simply placing a well-known villain at its center only scratches the surface. It's becoming more common today for comic book movies, especially those produced by DC, to focus on the protagonist's journey to become the hero audiences know them as. However, Birds of Prey takes an even more unusual route to get there with the heroism that emerges being mostly accidental and driven by self-serving motivations, but in a way that's a natural extension of how it establishes the core characters of the movie.

The Story Isn't A Typical Good Versus Evil Conflict

After Harley's break-up with The Joker, her motivation in Birds of Prey is predicated entirely on her own self-preservation. Following her capture by the gang of Black Mask (whose grievances with Harley are seemingly endless), Harley takes up the mission to retrieve the Bertinelli diamond for Roman Sionis. However, her drive to do so is purely in the interest of keeping him from enacting his vendetta against her rather than any desire on Harley's part to keep him from achieving dominance over Gotham City's criminal underworld. Harley then later elects to trade Cassandra Cain (who has undergone her own character makeover for the film), who had swallowed the diamond earlier, over to Sionis in exchange for having the target on her back removed.

The movie also bluntly shows the other characters aren't much nobler than Harley, either. Black Canary works directly for Sionis, and is tasked with retrieving Cassandra from Harley, while Huntress spends most of the movie picking off her family's killers, and only finds herself on his radar after killing Victor Zsaz. Only Renee Montoya has any interest in putting a stop to the rise of Sionis in the criminal underworld, and it isn't until the movie reaches its climax that any shift in that perspective begins to occur.

Birds Of Prey Only Ventures Into Heroism In The Final Act

Black Canary spends most of Birds of Prey as an anti-heroine whose only selfless act comes in rescuing Harley from her alleyway kidnappers, but her overriding concern remains simply surviving on the streets of Gotham. While she spends most of the movie in the employ of Sionis, her mindset changes when she finds herself unable to stand by as Harley prepares to hand Cassandra over to him. She and Harley are then forced to band together with Huntress, Cassandra, and Montoya in the climactic circus ground battle, but as Harley's monologue before the showdown begins demonstrates, it's still largely in the interest of each now having incurred the wrath of Sionis in different ways.

However, Harley's outlook also shifts in the finale. Despite having been fully prepared to trade Cassandra for her own freedom, Harley simply can't watch her fall into the clutches of Sionis. Nevertheless, when the smoke finally clears, Harley, and for that matter, Cassandra, still haven't abandoned their amorality, with the two taking off in Black Canary's stolen car, much to her chagrin. By the same token, it's only after the fight for their own survival that Black Canary and Huntress are on the same moral wavelength as Montoya and realize the good they can do in Gotham, with the titular Birds of Prey finally being formed in the movie's closing moments.

Why This Made Birds Of Prey A Great Movie

The way in which Birds of Prey tackles the idea of heroism shows it shares the same DNA as Suicide Squad. With the latter being all about criminals being coerced into a government fighting force, Birds of Prey is all about the criminal element in an unrestricted environment. Harley is still the same Harley she always was, and Birds of Prey shows her softer side goes just far enough that she can find it within herself to save a life, but she's also not going to abandon her attitude of throwing caution to the wind that emerged from her time with Mr. J. She may rescue Cassandra from Sionis, but she's perfectly happy with both of them going right back to living the very criminal life that the Birds of Prey will now combat.

The actual Birds of Prey, meanwhile, form completely by accident, with the unlikely confluence of a dedicated cop, a gang enforcer with a growing conscience, and a revenge-minded killing machine preferring to work solo. Not only that, but the movie puts a spin on both the team's comics origin and the well-known plot device of having heroes and villains join forces when the chips are down, to that very kind of team-up forming the genesis of the Birds of Prey. With that, the film presents a bizarre twist of superheroic origins, with a well-known villainess switching sides just long enough for a disparate trio on varying degrees of the moral spectrum to realize their true potential in fighting the very criminal underworld that she was once a part of and remains at least tangentially connected to.

With Harley riding off into the sunset in Black Canary's stolen car, how the movie connects to next year's The Suicide Squad is still uncertain (though the ties existing between it and the original are now undeniable.) However, what Birds of Prey represents is the middle ground where villains briefly become just heroic enough and inadvertently bring about the emergence of the heroes who will stay in the game. With superhero movies on top of the world more than ever, Birds of Prey shakes up to the formula with an origin story based almost entirely on survival and making actual heroism the unexpected side-effect of an unlikely team-up.

NEXT: Birds Of Prey Gives Real Meaning To Black Canary's Name