Alleged Birds Of Prey Plot Details Surface After Test Screening
Has the plot of the next DC movie been... emancipated?
Reddit user Slade_Wilson recently took to the subreddit r/DCEUleaks to post a blow-by-blow account of the entire plot of Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), along with detailed character descriptions. The info was allegedly gleaned from a test screening.
Before we get into the leak, a couple of things. First, this information is in no way confirmed; it may be entirely accurate, but it may also be total guesswork. Second, there still exists the chance that spoilers for Birds of Prey may follow.
Now that that's out of the way, let's first dive into those character descriptions. They contain quite a few interesting details that haven't been made public if they're accurate, and we're of the opinion that they would add some nice texture to the proceedings, along with opportunities to mine both comedy and drama.
Harley Quinn: Everyone's favorite mallet-wielding head case (Margot Robbie) has just broken up with the Joker, and resolving to get on with her life, she buys a hyena. (We've all been there.) Near the beginning of the flick, she's hired to track down a young girl by the gangster Black Mask (Ewan McGregor).
Black Mask: The crime lord and nightclub owner is flamboyantly gay in this depiction, and he's into his right-hand man and enforcer, Victor Zsasz. He has a thing for expensive art, and he really, really hates being told "no." This will become important.
Dinah Lance/Black Canary: In this iteration, Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) is a retired vigilante who now toils away in one of Black Mask's nightclubs as a singer (of course). She retains her signature superpower, the canary cry.
Helena Bertinelli/Huntress: An employee of Black Mask, Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) turns against the gangster when she discovers that he was responsible for her father's murder. Notably, she's described as the Mask's "main enforcer," despite Zsasz also bearing that description.
Renee Montoya: Obsessed with taking down Black Mask, Montoya (Rosie Perez) is described as a gay, alcoholic cop who was kicked off the force after refusing to go along with the corruption of her superiors.
Got all that? Great, because here's where we get into the meaty details of the plot as described by our intrepid Redditor. Once again, this account should be taken with a grain of salt — but we'd like to reiterate that if you happen to be really invested in avoiding potential spoilers for Birds of Prey, now would be a good time to stop reading.
According to the leak, the flick opens with Harley performing a musical number, halting the proceedings to do a little fourth wall-breaking "wondering how I got here?" deal. The movie then flashes back to the beginning of the story, with Harley's narration continuing throughout.
Harley is hired by Black Mask to find Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), a street orphan who is in possession of a USB drive that the Mask desperately needs returned to him. Harley has no trouble finding the young waif, but when she does, she discovers that Cassandra has swallowed the drive. Of course, the Mask's goons are insistent on retrieving it the quick and easy way — by cutting the young girl open. Finding herself unable to participate in that, Harley decides instead to protect her instead.
Meanwhile, Montoya learns about the drive and resolves to recover it in the hope of using it to bring down Black Mask, while Huntress and Black Canary both run afoul of their boss. Huntress' discovery about her father, and Canary's discovery that... well, that Black Mask is a bastard prompt them to refuse orders from the gangster, and since Mask simply can't abide being refused, he puts out hits on the pair.
Harley's refusal of the crime lord's order to gut Cassandra to retrieve the drive prompts him to kill our hero's hyena in retaliation, at which point Harley decides to take him down. Learning that Huntress and Canary are both in the Mask's sights, she recruits them to join her. They launch an offensive against the gangster's operations, attacking his nightclubs and causing general mayhem, but Harley is captured in the course of these activities.
Mask tortures her for information, and here, it's revealed that the flick's opening musical number was a fantasy that Harley is indulging in while being brutalized. Her capture ends up somehow being part of the Birds' plan, as Huntress and Canary swoop in to rescue her, and the trio lure Mask to a final confrontation at an abandoned amusement park.
In the ensuing melee, Zsasz is killed and Black Mask is severely disfigured. He's arrested by Montoya, and the USB drive is retrieved. Now, apparently, it's then revealed that the drive contains photos of... well, of Black Mask's private parts, of which he was single-mindedly possessive. Our Redditor asserts that the test audience hated this reveal, so even if all of the above info is spot on, this plot point may not make it into the finished film. (At least, we can hope.) Huntress and Canary then decide to keep doing the vigilante thing together, while Harley strikes off on her own after arranging for Cassandra to be adopted by an upstanding family. That's all, folks!
Is the leaked Birds of Prey plot accurate?
Obviously, we have no way of knowing just how accurate this synopsis is. It's even fair to say that the whole enchilada could have been pieced together from the first full trailer for Birds of Prey, which does feature several of the pertinent details: Harley appearing to recruit Canary (who is indeed a nightclub singer), Harley as protector of Cassandra, the assaults on Black Mask's nightclubs, the abandoned amusement park setting, and of course, that seemingly out-of-place musical number (which was heavily influenced by Marilyn Monroe's show-stopper in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes).
There's also not a heck of a lot in the trailer to contradict the synopsis, beyond a few minor details of the sort that could simply be chalked up to different shots being used in various cuts as the film goes through the editing process. In this age of the Intentionally Misleading Trailer, though, this doesn't mean much.
At the end of the day, we're just going to have to wait until we can check out the film for ourselves before we can judge the accuracy of this leak — but for now, we're going to go ahead and file it under "Questionable, but somewhat plausible." If it does turn out to be accurate, though, we can say this: thank goodness for test screenings, because that reveal at the end would have landed us in the emergency room, having our palms surgically removed from our faces.
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) hits the big screen on February 7, 2020.