Why Birds Of Prey Just Disappointed At The Box Office

3. The Suicide Squad Connundrum

There are some who will say that comparing Birds Of Prey and Suicide Squad in particular is unfair, given the former's smaller budget. But we're not talking a micro-budget film here and we're not talking about Warner Bros consciously pulling their punches. This IS a huge brand for them. Harley Quinn IS a huge brand for them. They put money behind her emancipation and marketed the hell out of it. It's not a matter of scaling back expectations from blockbuster territory.

Part of the problem with Birds Of Prey, somewhat ironically, is its relationship with Suicide Squad. And if that film hadn't been so bad, we might have been looking at a more substantial win for its spin-off. Just not in the way you'd probably think.

Birds Of Prey has been marketed as not just a spin-off to Suicide Squad but an answer to it. A rebuttal, taking apart all of the issues with the David Ayer-helmed monstrosity. It's a conscious opportunity for Warner Bros to say that they made a mess of Suicide Squad - just as bringing James Gunn in to replace it with a rebootquel is - but there's something fatal in that thinking.

Go back to Suicide Squad's release and Warner Bros were taking a completely different position. Suicide Squad was not bad - the critics were wrong. This was a film made for fans, after all, and OF COURSE the critics wouldn't understand it. That message became such a part of the marketing campaign, in fact, that they effectively weaponised the Critics Vs Real Fans dynamic more than any other film in modern times.

Fans weren't just coming out to watch a film, they were coming out to thumb their nose at critics - those pumped-up, pompous parasites who didn't care to make things for themselves but would happily sit and pick apart someone else's hard work. It worked an absolute treat, no matter how you feel about using that sort of toxic fandom to capitalist benefits.

Anyway, the issue here is that suddenly turning against the whole logic that underpinned Suicide Squad and consciously positioning Birds Of Prey as a reclamation of Harley Quinn as a victim of that movie was always going to alienate the fans who went out to see Suicide Squad. Or an element of them, anyway.

Imagine the conflict of being told that Suicide Squad is great but then also that it wasn't all that great and THIS movie was going to fix all of its issues... It's not just hard to keep up with that logic, it's profoundly insulting.

Couple that with the people who felt that Suicide Squad was an irredeemable mess that didn't DESERVE a spin-off or a sequel and you can probably account for a good deal of the initial audience of Suicide Squad not buying tickets for Birds Of Prey.

There are other things to explore here, of course, as well...

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