![bird of prey destiny 2 bird of prey destiny 2](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/k2M-G5GuxSY/maxresdefault.jpg)
A central tension within Birds of Prey is the question of whether Harley even can tell her own story.Īfter all, Harley is best known as the Joker’s primary henchwoman and love interest. Even in Suicide Squad, Harley was defined by her presence in “the island of misfit toys” in the context of the larger shared universe. Harley has always been a sidekick and a companion, a secondary lead. Harley is trying to tell her story, but keeps stumbling because she has never had to provide a narrative account of her own adventures.
#Bird of prey destiny 2 how to#
She doesn’t know how to build a narrative. Key to the disjointed time-shifting narrative of Birds of Prey is the implication that Harley doesn’t know how to structure a story. The clever part is its emphasis on Harley’s lack of narrative experience. However, that’s not the clever part of the film’s structuring. Harley is psychotic and erratic, and so it makes sense that Birds of Prey adopts a similar structure. However, part of it is also because this disjointed structure reflects its protagonist, and in more ways than are immediately obvious. The story is just an excuse for the film to indulge in various action sequences and jokes, and to spend time with these characters and themes. Part of this is because Birds of Prey isn’t a film that relies on its narrative in any meaningful sense. This isn’t as big a deal as it might seem. Every time it looks like Birds of Prey might build up some momentum, it grinds to a halt to go back over the characters in play. The film very cleverly allows these individual stories to overlap and intersect with one another, positioning them cleverly in relation to one another in terms of the film’s continuity, but it often feels like the film is stopping and starting. The actual narrative of Birds of Prey advances by inches in the first hour, because it is constantly pausing the action in order to go back and retroactively flesh out character motivations.
![bird of prey destiny 2 bird of prey destiny 2](https://bookzangle.com/images/books/00395/509036.jpg)
However, this plays havoc with the movie’s pacing and structure. So Birds of Prey is aware that it can never drift too far from her. The character is hugely popular, and Robbie does good work in the part. However, Birds of Prey understands that Harley is the centre of attention, and justifiably so. Indeed, Warner Brothers originally wanted a solo Harley Quinn movie, and it was Robbie who pushed the film into ensemble territory. She features prominently on the poster and appears in the extended title. After all, despite its title, Birds of Prey is a Harley Quinn movie. It allows the film to introduce its core players – Renee Montoya, Dinah Lance, Cassandra Cain, Roman Sionis – over the first hour without ever drifting too far from Harley. “I’m telling it wrong.” On a purely functional level, Hodson and Yan use this approach to allow Birds of Prey to cover necessary narrative ground without ever losing focus on Harley. The film constantly pauses the action so Harley can elaborate on a previously underdeveloped detail, tripping herself up as she realises that a beat requires more context. At its worst, as in The Gentleman, it can feel like an attempt to pad out thirty minutes of material to fill about two hours of screen-time, like watching a clumsy magician attempting to distract an audience with unfinessed sleight of hand.īirds of Prey lands somewhere between the two extremes. It has the effect of making a fairly straightforward hustle seem much more complicated and nuanced than it might otherwise be, inviting the audience to revel in the small complications that pile up around it.Īt its best, as in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch, this approach serves as a commentary on the chaos of everyday existence, the manner in which the small inconsistencies and contradictions inevitably build up to create an unlikely comedy of errors that inevitably complicate even the most simple of plans. It’s a familiar approach, one most obviously and heavily indebted to Guy Ritchie movies including the recent The Gentleman.
![bird of prey destiny 2 bird of prey destiny 2](https://gamestanza.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Destiny-2-Bird-of-Prey-Exotic-Quest-e1611215784364.jpg)
The biggest problem with Birds of Prey is the way that writer Christina Hodson and director Cathy Yan try to obscure the relative simplicity of that central driving plot by constantly doubling back over it. In an era where superhero movies are defined by weapons of mass destruction and bold existential statements, there’s something almost refreshing in the fact that the antiheroes and outright villains of Birds of Prey are constantly feuding over money – whether the bounty on Harley’s head or the millions of dollars tucked away in a dormant account. There is a macguffin that everybody wants, and the various characters align and intersect in the battle for possession of that macguffin. The actual plot of Birds of Prey is remarkably simple as these things go.