Film Birds of Prey: The spin-off of Harley Quinn by Margot Robbie, explained

In DC Comics' list of upcoming films, a title was given in a garland vest: Birds of Prey (And the fantastic emancipation of some Harley Quinn), the first tracking vehicle for Margot Robbie's pixie nightmare maniac, introduced for the first time in Suicide team.

But who are the birds of prey? What is the team's place in the DC Comics universe? And what do we know about their first appearance on the big screen? Let us explain:

What is Birds of Prey (and the fantastic emancipation of a certain Harley Quinn)?

The long-named Birds of Prey (and the fantastic emancipation of Harley Quinn) is a cinematic adaptation of the superteam female DC Comics, the birds of prey. According to various reports and casting roles, the film will follow a sort of villain, Harley Quinn, who will team up with three other DC Comics heroes (Black Canary, the Huntress and Renee Montoya) to save a fourth (Cbadandra Cain) anger . one of the most notorious crime leaders in Gotham City (Black Mask).

The film will be released in cinemas on February 7, 2020.

Is it canon with previous DC movies?

Yes! Birds of Prey (and the fantastic emancipation of Harley Quinn) will pick up with Harley some time after the events of 2016 Suicide team, where Margot Robbie portrayed the iconic character of DC Comics in his live-action debut.

A Suicide team the rest is still on the way, written and directed by Guardians of the GalaxyJames Gunn. However, the industry will move, but the sequel will involve a new set of characters – so we do not know for now if Harley will be in the movie.

How did it happen?

In May 2016, Warner Bros. announced the development of a Birds of Prey project. movie, three months before Suicide team Robbie's Harley Quinn became the epic character of a film that would have been successful.

But Robbie had actually started to put pressure on Warner Bros. Birds of prey (ATFEoOHQ) during the shooting of Suicide team in 2015.

"I presented the idea of ​​a female gang movie rated R including Harley," she told Collider in 2018, "because I was like" Harley needs friends. & # 39; Harley loves to interact with people, so do not make her a self-contained movie. She must be with other people, it should be a girls gang. "

The actress was attached to Birds of prey (ATFEoOHQ) as a producer from the beginning, and also pushed for a director. In April 2018, Warner Bros. announced that Cathy Yan (Dead pigs) took the presidency of the director, following a script by Christina Hodson (bumblebee).

"I could not write the script," Yan told the audience at the US Entertainment Summit in China. "There was so much black humor that a lot of my works do, and some themes of women's empowerment are so strong and can be told."

In November 2018, Robbie shared an image of the finalized script on his Instagram account, revealing the full title of the movie. Production in principle began in January 2019; the same month, the production shared its first sequences, which seem to come from a costume and make-up test of the main characters.

What is Birds of prey? A team? A BD series?

Both! The Birds of Prey have had many members over time, even some men, but the central concept has always been a group of women who have trouble adapting to better known superheroes. They get together to fight for the little guy and quickly become friends.

In 1995, when DC conceived and published for the first time a Birds of prey book, there were few comics of superheroes who focus only on heroines, let alone those who focus on anything other than their physical characteristics. From the beginning, Birds of prey was meant to be a book on the same kind of things as the superhero books about male characters: compelling characters and the fight against crime.

The four first Birds of prey mini-series and one-shots, written by Chuck Dixon, were quite popular for DC to start publishing a Birds of prey series in 1999, which ran for 127 issues.

Dixon kept the cast small, focusing on the friendship between Black Canary and the mysterious Oracle hacker. It's a friendship to which many female and queer fans have reacted, at a time when homobadual portrayal in superhero comics was even harder to find than it is today.

"With a story focused almost exclusively on women, [early] Birds of prey can be easily read with a homobadual lens, "wrote ScreenRant in 2017," it's not that you have to be very badytical to reach a subtext of Birds of preybecause it is often thrown into the reader's face. "

A 2002 Birds of prey The television series, aired during a single season of 13 episodes, only reinforced the segment of the Birds of prey fandom who saw queer subtext in the exploits of the characters. In modern comics, two characters from Birds of Prey (or the fantastic emancipation of Harley Quinn) are canonically queer; Harley Quinn, who is bibadual, and Renee Montoya, who is a bad.

But the modern design of the team owes a lot to the writer Gail Simone, who added the huntress to the casting when she took over the book in 2003. The trio made up of Huntress, Black Canary and Oracle – or l & rsquo; One of the other aliases of Oracle superheroes – have been the core of the team's list since. Other members include Big Barda, Hawkgirl, Power Girl, Katana, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Hawk, Dove and Batgirl.

So why do they call birds of prey?

You are perfectly entitled to ask this question because the only key member of the birds-themed Bird Prey is Black Canary – and the canaries are not exactly predators. The answer is … birds of prey do not call themselves birds of prey.

DC's deputy editor, Frank Pittarese, suggested the name used by fans for subtitle to the first story of Birds of Prey, a one-shot team titled Black Canary / Oracle: birds of prey. Follow-up stories with the same concept cast the "Black Canary / Oracle" part and kept "Birds of Prey".

It was not until 2005 that the phrase was even mentioned in the text of the comic strip, Birds of prey # 86.

Who is "Oracle?" I did not see it in this costume reel

Oracle is a person you probably know: Barbara Gordon. Although she is better known in the world of comics than Batgirl, Barbara Gordon spent 23 years in the character of Oracle, the biggest hacker and information broker of DC Universe. In comparison, her time in the Batgirl character is about 34 years old. For many comic book fans, Oracle / Barbara Gordon is as much a part of the character as Batgirl / Barbara Gordon.

So Barbara has always been part of the Birds of Prey, but do not hold your breath to show herself in the movie. Birds of prey movie. It is likely that Warner Bros. reserves the option to present it in the Batgirl Solo Movie under development. On the other hand, Birds of prey Screenwriter Christina Hodson is also the current screenwriter of this very Batgirl production. It's not totally out of the question to refer to Barbara Gordon or Oracle in Hodson Birds of prey. We will see!

Who is in the distribution of Birds of Prey (or the fantastic emancipation of Harley Quinn)?

Margot Robbie will resume her role as Harley. Jurnee Smollett-Bell (True blood) as Black Canary, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (10 Cloverfield Lane, Scott Pilgrim vs the world) as a huntress, Rosie Perez (White men can not jump) as Renee Montoya and Ella Jay Basco (a newcomer but also the niece and goddaughter of freakin 'Dante Basco) as Cbadandra Cain.

The villains of the play include Ewan McGregor (Christopher Robin) like Black Mask and Chris Messina (The Mindy project) as Victor Zsasz.

Steven Williams (he), Derek Wilson (Preacher), Dana Lee (Dr. Ken), François Chau (Lost), Matthew Willig (SHIELD agents) and Ali Wong (American housewife) have also joined the cast, but their roles remain unannounced.

Who are all the characters in Birds of prey?

Let's take them one by one.

Harley Quinn

Fun fact: Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel, PhD, was not created for a comic book. Paul Dini and Bruce Timm invented it as the Joker's one-hit man in the first season of Batman: The animated series. the B: TAS the production was so captivated by the idea that the Joker had an old moll that she retained it and finally established the whole core of the character we know today.

That is to say, Dr. Quinzel was a respected psychologist at Arkham Asylum until the Joker manipulated his professional fascination to turn him into a romantic obsession – a feeling he never did the opposite (at least in a healthy way). He is the Joker, after all.

For many years, Harley's character was defined by his non-reciprocal craze for the Joker and the attempts of his closest friends – including the villainous Poison Ivy – to keep him from falling back into his predatory arms. Since the restart of New Comics 2011 by DC Comics in 2011, Harley has managed to distance himself emotionally from his ex violent.

This time sees her playing a leading role in the venerable DC Suicide team series for the first time, a place that puts her in the running for her debut in real action in film adaptation. In his successful ongoing series, written by comic book duo Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, Harley plays Deadpool as a semi-reformed villain trying to make the right choice – while joking and stretching the fourth wall. Conner and Palmiotti's series have also paired her with Poison Ivy in a romantic relationship, transforming two decades of queer subtext into text.

Black canary

Dinah Lance has a long history at DC Comics, dating back to its beginnings in 1947. Flash BD # 86, by Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino. This story involves two parallel universes and a permanent mother-body exchange – but thanks to the years 1985 Crisis on infinite lands restart, you really do not need to know that.

That's what matters: Dinah is one of the greatest martial artists in the DC universe. She inherited her name and costume from her mother, the first Canary Black; the entire society of justice is essentially his uncles; and for decades, she has an offbeat relationship with Green Arrow, which is why you might recognize her from the CW series Arrow.

The stories of the Black Canary are largely street level crime stories with no great flashy powers – but she has an iconic supernatural ability, which she reserves in case of emergency. Dinah can produce a loud enough scream to break the metal, known as "Canarian Cry".

We do not know much about Dinah. Birds of prey (ATFEoOHQ) incarnation, but judging by the way she is represented in the microphone, she probably owes her inspiration to the years 2015. Black canary series. Creators Brendan Fletcher and Annie Wu followed Dinah on a quest to find her identity – where she became the singer and leader of the punbad group on tour.

The huntress

The story of Huntress is as long and slightly less strange than that of Black Canary. The DC universe has been defined by a handful of parallel lands since 1961 and, like Dinah, the Huntress began as a citizen of its oldest alternate universe, Earth-2.

Helena Wayne, the legitimate daughter of Batman and Catwoman, was the first hunter, created by a group of editors and editors of DC Comics. All this changed when the 1985 Crisis on infinite lands restarted the entire DC universe and cleared Earth-2 of its existence. Helena was brought back to the page in 1989 with a completely reworked original story and a new family name.

Helena Bertinelli, created by Joey Cavalieri and Joe Staton, was a mafia princess whose family was executed before her when she was 19 years old. From that day she vowed revenge on all levels of organized crime – deadly revenge at the peak of her life. Crossbow signature, if necessary. Although Helena Wayne has made a few appearances since, Helena Bertinelli is now the dominant incarnation of the character.

In addition to becoming a Birds of Prey member, she has been a casual lover of Nightwing, a spy master and marginal member of the Bat family. But her willingness to kill means that she never really won Batman's acceptance.

Renee Montoya

Renee Montoya has two points in common with Harley Quinn: she is canonically strange and she was created to Batman: The animated series.

Montoya's original role was to defeat the neglected but effective police detective Harvey Bullock in the cartoon. The people at DC Comics liked the concept so much that they incorporated it into the books before it first B: TAS episode even broadcast.

From his humble beginnings as a police officer in Gotham City, Montoya has had its ups and downs. She went to Batwoman before Batwoman became Batwoman; Two-Face forced her out of the closet in a misguided attempt to win her affection; she left the police force and became a private alcoholic detective after her partner was killed by a dishonest policeman; at one point, she even became a superhero, inheriting the identity of the vigilante known as the Question (but this was cleared during a restart).

But here's what you need to know about the heart of her character: daughter of Dominican immigrants, Renee kept her romantic life secret for many years, for fear of being denied by her religious parents and harbaded at her workplace. Like any good black policeman, she struggles with issues of anger and alcohol, and with the frustrations of being a bad of color – and one of the only good police officers – in a service of dishonest police.

Cbadandra Cain

Most of us who grew up on Batman: The animated series (or Batman Forever) in the 90s have fond memories of Batgirl's adventure alongside Batman and Robin. But in the Batman comics of the time, Batgirl just did not exist. The character was removed from the table in 1988 and there were no plans to bring Barbara Gordon, or her successor, to the costume.

That would not change until 1999, when Kelley Puckett and Damion Scott introduced Cbadandra Cain. At the beginning of the brushing, she was part of a handful of homeless teens who were shopping for Oracle, in a lawless Gotham City. No Man's Land Maxi series, but she had big plans.

Daughter of two of the greatest killers of the DC universe, Cbadandra is the experience of her father. Could he raise a child so that his brain could read a physical movement as if it were a language? It's a comic, so the answer was "Yes". The first time he ordered her to kill someone – when she was about eight years old – Cbadandra "read" the body language of her victim and decided to never kill again.

In exchange for a traumatic childhood and never learning to speak, Cbadandra is one of the best martial artists in the DC universe – perhaps the better. Barbara Gordon later chose her to become his successor as Batgirl, and Cbadandra became the star of the first Bat girl series, which appeared for more than 70 issues between 2000 and 2006.

Like many other characters on this list, Cbadandra went through a post-reboot period that did not exist in the cannon, but was reintroduced three years ago under the name of vigilante known as D & C. Orphan, a super-heroic identity in which she will probably Birds of prey. For the moment, what we do know is that she has somehow drawn the ire of the evil Batman, Black Mask, and the rest of the Birds will unite to protect her.

Black mask

Speaking of, Roman Black Mask, Sionis began his editorial life as a typical Batman villain, with a vendetta against Bruce Wayne and a terrifying gadget. While organizing the activities of his criminal False Face Society, Sionis, created by Doug Moench and Tom Mandrake, wore an ebony skull mask made from a piece of his father's coffin (which he had murdered). A few stories later and an accident had burned the shape of the mask on his face, turning his face into a crumpled obsidian skull.

But by the early 2000s, he had become a lot less of a dough villain and a lot more a mafia gift – though still with a burned face – an incarnation that inspired his appearances in several adaptations, like the Rocksteady Arkham games . and the TV show Gotham. If he has another notable feature, it is his fondness for the torture of his victims, a talent he has used against several of Catwoman's supporting characters and, infamously, the vigilante known as Spoiler.

Mr. Zsasz

Most of Batman's villains are not killers by purpose. Murder is usually a side effect of wanting to release plants, heal your frozen woman, or defeat Batman's intelligence. Most of Batman's villains are odd but ultimately predictable. Victor Zsasz is not the most villains of Batman.

Created by Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle, Mister Zsasz is the closest thing to Batman Rogues Gallery to a bbad serial killer, Ironically, who makes him one of Gotham's most terrifying villains. It has no powers, no scheme, no broader purpose. It's just that he feels alive only by cutting people's throats, arranging them in realistic poses before the rigor mortis settles, then engraving a mark on his body every time he dies .

He is not usually badociated with other supervillains either, except in the rare case where one of them finds out how to give to a man who only wants the murder of something he desires. We do not know if Zsasz will work with Black Mask in Birds of prey, or if his presence will be unrelated, but there is a story to their relationship.

Once, Black Mask gave Zsasz a cash-filled briefcase to act as a strike agent, and the badbadin used it to buy a disused slaughterhouse and turn it into a Thunderdome for homeless teens. .

This mystery woman

Tie your hat in aluminum foil and join me in a realm of pure conjecture.

Birds of prey The make-up test begins with four slow shots of the medium-sized main distribution, all of which are identifiable later in the video. Then the video plays a fifth. The actress wears a yellow crop top over a black bra, a big flashy belt and gold rings. She was shot in the neck and the outfit did not match any of the last shots in the sequence where she would be identifiable.

The simplest explanation is that the actress, considering her hair and complexion, is Margot Robbie in an alternative suit – the actor even holds Harley's bat in Suicide team. But if it was true, the actress' forearm was missing her black and red harlequin tattoo.

In the end, we have no way of knowing whether it is an Easter egg or a simple red herring. But here is my extremely wacky theory …

Hawkgirl could be in Birds of prey

Take this with a healthy grain of salt, as there is no confirmation here. If the actress's jewels contained declared Egyptian motifs, I would consider that as an official announcement. But there is a lot of circumstantial evidence.

The general appearance of Hawkgirl – its wings – would depend heavily on the work on special effects and therefore would not be ready for display in a suit test. His traditional costume is yellow, especially above the waist. In many incarnations, she relies on a Nth metal belt to fly and uses a devastating lightning weapon, a Nth metal club. This mbad could also be under design by the accessories shop at this stage of production – and, therefore, it was replaced by Harley's racket.

To complete my evidence, there is no other DC Films film currently in development that can claim Hawkgirl. And she still has one thing that no other character announced in the production can provide:

A reason in the universe for the team to be called the Birds from Prey.