Birds of Prey Will Flop, Yeah...Sure

Birds of Prey is soon upon is and already a narrative is forming, calling the film a flop. How can this be you ask? How can what essentially be a Harley Quinn film be on the path to box office dud? First, this is really speculation. Rumors and insight be damned though, this speculation is sexist, misogynic fan boy wishing for a commercial failure. Our first totally female driven comic-book film is upon us, where men and fan boys have to sit back and cry over it.

Journalist Matt McGloin points out the low-ticket pre-sales. He goes by what he sees as a lack of seats being bought up on apps like Atom or on the Fandango website. Yet, we are still roughly a week out from the release of Birds of Prey. Do many people buy their tickets this early? Who can be certain they will not have work that night? In our busy, go-go culture of always being on the run and busy, who has time to makes plans for next week? Difficulties arise in scheduling around your friends’ times in order for you all to see the movie as well. Hence, safer and better to wait until that night if not before. Ticket app Atom claims the film is outpacing both Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman. Yet, Matt McGloin goes into why this is probably not true and just slams them with charges of ‘fake news!’ Nothing makes you look less objective than a catchphrase invented by the Man Child in Chief.

People right now are still recovering in January. We came off of our holiday shopping and must prepare for paying taxes. Sure, a movie ticket is not that costly, but it is hardly a priority in your pocketbook. He goes as far to claim that its $50 million opening weekend is too high. Personally, I find this to be way too low. February is by no means a month associated with going to the movies as say summer or the holidays. Yet, there are some examples such as The LEGO Movie with $69 million. You have the Rated-R Deadpool debut opening to over $132 million and Black Panther opening with over $202 million. Granted, these two are huge deals, one being the first Rated-R mainstream comic book character debut, and a Marvel character at that. The other being a Marvel film with an ensemble black cast, helmed by a black director. Birds of Prey almost delivers on both of these aspects. Harley Quinn is this huge mainstream character with her own comic book series, animated series, merchandise galore and with a pension for meta-humor as well. This film was written by a woman, produced by a woman, Cathy Yan sits in the director’s chair and the film stars an ensemble cast of women.

Plus, a film’s opening is not everything. DCEU films average a 2.9 multiplier for their films. The lowest goes to Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Wonder Woman has the highest multiplier of four! The film will mostly likely earn up to $150 million. We must keep in mind the foreign market as well, in showing a domestic weekend opening is not the decisive factor. As far as we can all remember, ala the days of Super Friends, Aquaman is a punching bag for all jokes and mockery. His films opened in December 2018 to $67.8 million. The fish talking superhero would go on to make over $1.14 billion worldwide! Whereas Suicide Squad made over $700 million worldwide, without China!

Charlie’s Angels gets flung around us evidence that the film is a guaranteed flop. Charlie’s Angels flopped due to the sheer lack of marketing for starters. Many of people hardly knew the film was out this past November. A film based off of a forty-year-old T.V. franchise from the era of second-wave feminism is hardly going to churn out a new audience. Charlie’s Angels still holds onto the premise of ‘look at us, a team of female spies, isn’t this so cool’ as a novelty if anything. No real character or story exists. During second wave feminism you can get away with this, put out a series with main characters portrayed by women and you will satisfy them or at least silence them. Times have changed! We already have a reboot of the franchise nearly two decades ago. Both successful series...for their times and that’s the killer right there, they only thrive in their own respective times and do not age well. Besides, are today’s women going to take lightly to a team of young women taking orders from some dude?

Matt McGloin argues that this film will flop due to it being a woke film. Go woke and you end up broke, or so he argues. Browse through social media and you can find this argument anywhere and everywhere. One YouTuber claims the film will flop due to the lack of The Joker, saying it needs keep him as a central part of Harley Quinn. Almost everyone decrying this film, saying it will fail is a man. Ridiculous complaints are made such as the women do not look sexy enough. Captain Marvel was sexualized little to none and made over $1 billion worldwide. You can find a plethora of actresses with films and roles that dial up little to no sexuality. Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley hardly resembles the a-typical, Hollywood model type yet her character is beloved, with several films with average to great box office returns. Yet, you can do a hyper-sexualized approach, like Sucker Punch for example. This is only on the surface level that the film comes off as overtly sexual, when it really is not. Put this truth aside, why did men not line up to the theaters for this? Why was almost every walk of life bashing this film? Sex sells they say, but not all the time.

We certainly do live in a hyper-aware culture, partly due to social media and revolution in sex and gender. People are finding there is more than heterosexual and homosexual. Ideas of binary roles are being challenged and people want that reflected within their entertainment. Over a century now, women have had the right to vote, yet there are still treated and seen as eye candy mainly. Believe it or not, roughly 50% of the movie going audiences are women. Women do not just sit home on the phone, eat cookie dough in their slippers and paint their nails. Doom sayers speak of how DC/WB is leaving out its main core audience. Impulsive, whiny men? Data shows that roughly 37% of comic book sales are from women! Roughly 24 million people on Facebook identify as comic-book fans. Dig deeper and it turns out almost 47% of those comic-book fans are women, egad! Let it be known, the majority of fans kicking and crying over Birds of Prey are white men, with a few exceptions.

Let’ stop kidding ourselves. This idea of the film flopping is the wish fulfillments of prepubescent men who hate that the film delivers no ridiculous boob jokes and ass shots like Joss Whedon’s adolescent material. The establishment is being challenged, the no girls allowed sign on your comic book club needs to come down, in fact, it already should be down.

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References

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/10/20/63-of-comics-bought-by-men-37-by-women/

https://www.comicsbeat.com/market-research-says-46-female-comic-fans/

https://cosmicbook.news/birds-prey-tickets-fake-news-suicide-squad-wonder-woman

https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/domestic/all-movies/biggest-weekend-by-month/february

https://womenandhollywood.com/mpaa-report-2016-52-of-movie-audiences-are-women-other-takeaways-12320da989b4/