Birds Of Prey (*cough* new title) turned out to be a decent movie with great action and stunt work, even if it wasn’t the Harley Quinn movie that comic book fans as a whole wanted to see right now. Yeah though, the action scenes were well choreographed and verged on exhilarating in bursts. One of my favorite moments of the whole movie revolved around a particular beat when Black Canary paused briefly (while beating up Black Mask’s goons) to accept a tiny-but-important offering from Harley: a hair tie. Then the women continued their mission.
The hair-tie thing may have seemed like a frivolous insertion, but trust, this should be a consideration in more action movies. On social media, women stopped in their tracks over this moment and held it out as an emblem of female friendship and something even more pure than Harley’s quest for an egg sandwich. Writer Christina Hodson spoke with Hollywood Reporter to explain why she decided to include that bit of realism:
“[M]y sister did inspire the hair tie moment which, apparently, people seem to like on the Internet … [we] always joke about the fact that women in superhero movies — or action movies generally — are always going into battle or doing this big crazy epic thing with beautiful flowing hair perfectly quaffed, when both of us wouldn’t even consider eating a sandwich with our hair untied. So, yeah, it had to go in there.”
“Eating a sandwich” … an egg sandwich, perhaps? Hodson also spoke to how she wanted to keep the movie feeling street-level with action and character moments that felt “a little more tangible” than the usual superhero fare. On that note, the film succeeded, as did most of Black Canary’s story and the arc of Renee Montoya. Hopefully, some more people will get out to see the film this weekend and appreciate the realness inside these characters’ journeys, including the hair-tie moment. A more modest budget would have helped offset those box-office woes for an imperfect comic book movie that is still, underneath it all, a joy-filled, escapist romp.
(Via Hollywood Reporter)
