Birds of Prey

[Deadpulse]

34 minutes ago, Bullet Club said:

That's a target audience.

The apt comparison would be calling a movie a feminist horror movie and marketing it as such despite horror being watched by more males than females and R-rated movies being watched by more males than females. That's fine if your a niche movie I guess. I don't think that's what Birds of Prey wants to be. Maybe I'm wrong.

I dont understand why feminists are not a target audience

[43M]

3 hours ago, seminoles1 said:

Every movie has an agenda, man. If you don't want to see a movie about a theme or agenda you don't care about, then don't see it. This movie isn't targeted at you anyways.

I mean do you guys not think these issues are brought up in the comics at all?

I dont disagree, but its so much worse than its ever been.    

In the past, most seemed primarily focused on entertaining, while putting their message into it in some way without necessarily bludgeoning you with it..

Nowadays, pushing an agenda is the first goal while the entertainment aspect is secondary. 

And crap like this shouldnt have to be announced as part of the movie.     The fact that THAT is the main thing about the movie he wants to point out and NOT the aspect of portraying the DC Universe in a positive way is what annoys me.   I love the DC Universe.  I want to see it done right....but clearly, thats not the focus.

Youre right, this movie isnt geared towards me, and thats perfectly fine, but I miss the days when the story telling and entertainment were the main priorities.    If that was the case, I might actually be interested in seeing this movie on home video.    

[43M]

2 minutes ago, Deadpulse said:

I dont understand why feminists are not a target audience

They can be, but alienating the primary demographic for comic book movies just to cater to them isnt exactly smart.

Time will tell if its a good strategy.    I can pretty safely say, its not.

[43M]

2 hours ago, Fl0nkerton said:

lol always look forward to grown men pissing themselves when they're told that they aren't the target audience for a movie.

They can target whoever they want.     But in the end...its a comic book movie. They should be TRYING to appeal to as many people as possible

But hey, guess we will see if the strategy pays off.

Edited October 7, 2019 by FourThreeMafia

[Mox]

34 minutes ago, animaltested said:

So your issue is with the marketing, no the content? This is odd considering you seemed to be interested in the movie while the trailers were out, and lost interest when you heard the content could touch of themes you don't want to see. Maybe I misread?

Also, there seems to be a specific theme in marketing you have an issue with. Why is that particular marketing so problematic? Is it you just don't want to see it?

Mostly, yes. My first post today is purely market based. Then this whole thread started by my reacting to another poster saying "this movie isn't targeted at you anyway" which is more marketing. I did throw in a sarcastic post taking a shot at the movie itself which probably blurred the lines.

I think you may have misread though. I hated the trailer. My interest was high when first announced, then higher when I learned Robbie was coming back, MEW was cast as Huntress and Ewan was Black Mask. Everything since then I've hated.

I know you are insinuating that I have an issue with feminism/tackling misogyny but if a major movie I wanted to see coming out was marketing as being MRA/tackling misandry I'd say the same thing. That would never happen though because marketing a movie like that would be stupid.

[Mox]

36 minutes ago, Deadpulse said:

I dont understand why feminists are not a target audience

I don't think the feminist comic book movie niche is nearly as big as you do, clearly.

[Fresh Prince]

1 hour ago, FourThreeMafia said:

They can target whoever they want.     But in the end...its a comic book movie. They should be TRYING to appeal to as many people as possible

But hey, guess we will see if the strategy pays off.

Grown men might not be the target audience, but for CB movies I would say they bring in the most money.

[43M]

40 minutes ago, Fresh Prince said:

Grown men might not be the target audience, but for CB movies I would say they bring in the most money.

Agreed.   .

Like I said, I wasnt really interested in this movie regardless of who its geared towards, only because Im not a huge fan of any of the Birds of Prey characters.   I like Harley, but not as a main character.   Seeing how they portrayed Black Mask was the only thing I was ever interested to begin with, and even that looks like it got f'd up.

THAT BEING SAID, I feel like they couldve easily made a great comic book movie with strong female characters that appealed to a broader audience.    If they want to target that specific group, so be it....but if the goal is to make as much money as possible, then this isnt the smartest way to go about it.

[BroncosFan2010]

The ironic aspect of this is that the majority of the money this movie makes is likely because Margot Robbie is outrageously attractive. I would wager that brings in more dollars than the opposite of subtle 'tackling the patriarchy' theme.

My issue is that these SJ movies are so heavy handed. They appeal to the lowest common denominator and have little if any shades of grey. They are catered to the types that post angrily against the inequalities of gender on twitter and facebook to gain virtue points and to me, those are some of the least interesting people on this planet and the entertainment they consume is just boring AF.

There can be great feminist leaning films that are (arguably) heavy handed, Erin Brockovich would be one. But the trend recently seems to be so vanilla and safe. This film will be like that.

[AlexGreen#20]

20 hours ago, animaltested said:

Since we are in a comic book movie thread, gonna assume you enjoy those movies so..

Like I said previous, the Marvel-DC movies all for the most part put forth the "evil is individuals not systems" narrative. That's an agenda that touches both politically and economically. 

Marvel-DC are steeped in American Exceptionalism, and the view of a few being the only ones powerful enough to protect to world from both itself and outside threats (those two go hand in hand).

Batman in general has very political viewpoints regarding surveillance, vigilantism, and the entire "ends justify the means" narrative. 

In all the DC-Marvel movies, the government is seen as wholly, corrupt, incompetent or at the very least, and roadblock for the heros to overcome. That's a pretty straightforward agenda. 

 

Just a few. Again I am assuming a lot here (movie you enjoy). Now, I'm not saying these are bad, but that these are all an agenda, and they are pandering to people who have similar views. My point is, in general, people don't feel these are "forced" agendas, even though they are agendas, put forth by the creator for the audiences consumption. So why aren't they seen for what they are? And if someone has issues with "politics" or agendas in their entertainment, why do they consume so much entertainment with agendas and politics?

 

 

"Evil is individuals not systems" is a flawed concept when the chosen individuals are either represented to select a system or as an obstacle for character growth. Iron Monger in Iron Man 1 is clearly a representation of the almost radically militarized industrial complex. The message in that movie is very clearly that this thing is bad. Captain America Winter Soldier doesn't really have an individual villain, it has an overarching Hydra group that uses Winter Soldier as it's hand to commit actions. If you squint hard at Thor 1 you can pull out the narrative that the sons of successful fathers who've grown up sheltered and wanting for nothing grow up to be self obsessed and make terrible leaders, something we see frequently across sports leagues and the world in general (New York Knicks, North Korea).

I guess I'm missing the American Exceptionalism angle in Marvel. In most of the movies, the US Military is either incompetent, entirely absent, or downright nefarious. There's a strong argument to be made that the Marvel people really don't like America when they created a fictionalized African society with universe breaking technology because they wanted to highlight (I hesitate to use the word fabricate?) African American exceptionalism.  The Marvel movies are incredibly critical of the United States government as a whole.

As far as the few being the only one's powerful enough to make a difference, well **** it's a narrative media. That's not Marvel movies, that's every book, movie, and play ever created.

+++

As far as being critical of the feminist messaging, we've come to expect a number of painful things when we see that narrative:

• The portrayal that most/all men are evil, greedy, self-obsessed, lustful, gross, whatever, that just about always comes with it.
• The routine take down of existing favorite characters just to establish that a particular character is legit. Often an establishment that has no basis in existing lore.
• The lack of flaws of the women characters, almost always with the message that, "You just have to believe in yourself, and stop letting the men in your life hold you back and you'll be amazing."

The other thing about women characters in movies like this is that it's often times very jarring to watch combat scenes. It's less obtrusive when it's something like Captain Marvel where she has super abilities, but watching Hollywood's favorite kind of woman (5'3 105 pounds) beat up a group of guys that are 6'0 200 that are supposedly trained fighters is just bizarre to watch, because you instinctively know that Scarlett Johansen (and this is the least offensive of them considering often how acrobatic and how hard Black Widow works to make these fights semi-realistic) doesn't have knockout power. And I totally get the argument for suspension of disbelief, but I know for myself it's immersion breaking. 

 

[AlexGreen#20]

22 hours ago, Fl0nkerton said:

lol always look forward to grown men pissing themselves when they're told that they aren't the target audience for a movie.

In fairness, if we went the opposite direction and produced a Batman movie where all the women in the movie where shallow gold diggers, or incompetent, or evil or whatever, and then told the women who brought up that was bull****, to shut up because the movie wasn't for them, wouldn't that be problematic?

[Fl0nkerton]

15 minutes ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

In fairness, if we went the opposite direction and produced a Batman movie where all the women in the movie where shallow gold diggers, or incompetent, or evil or whatever, and then told the women who brought up that was bull****, to shut up because the movie wasn't for them, wouldn't that be problematic?

I mean, it would but what part of Birds of Prey is offensive to you?
In your scenario, you're enlisting boring misogynistic tropes that would almost certainly be called out for.

I think saying "it's not meant for you" is the least offensive thing up there.

I guess I just don't understand why people have to be negative about a movie because of one common denominator. Like this, Star Wars, Captain Marvel, Ocean's, Ghostbusters. It's just a weird thing to be contrarian about imo.

I also don't want to derail this or get it locked so anyone can PM if they want. I'm interested in learning from other's perspectives.
 

[Calvert28]

5 hours ago, BroncosFan2010 said:

The ironic aspect of this is that the majority of the money this movie makes is likely because Margot Robbie is outrageously attractive. I would wager that brings in more dollars than the opposite of subtle 'tackling the patriarchy' theme.

My issue is that these SJ movies are so heavy handed. They appeal to the lowest common denominator and have little if any shades of grey. They are catered to the types that post angrily against the inequalities of gender on twitter and facebook to gain virtue points and to me, those are some of the least interesting people on this planet and the entertainment they consume is just boring AF.

There can be great feminist leaning films that are (arguably) heavy handed, Erin Brockovich would be one. But the trend recently seems to be so vanilla and safe. This film will be like that.

Yea I wouldnt call Erin Brockavich heavy handed. I thought it was very well done even if the story itself is a little questionable. 

[BroncosFan2010]

Quote

Yea I wouldnt call Erin Brockavich heavy handed. I thought it was very well done even if the story itself is a little questionable. 

Ya, you know I worded that pretty erroneously when thinking back. I should have said that it would have been really, really easy to make that film in a heavy handed way but they did not. If that was remade today, it would likely be garbage.

 

[Calvert28]

21 hours ago, Deadpulse said:

Am I? When you make a Horror movie are you not targeting the Horror audience? 

Horror audience is a very large audience though. But a horror that says this is only to scare those between the age ranges of 12-14 gender male, more preppy type then others. With each new demographic you state that it's for the others who view themselves in the other categories will be less willing to see it.