Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad - The Characterisation

Alright, everyone else on the internet has had their say - now it's my turn.

***SPOILERS in case you actually care***

Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad.

"Now you're playing Harley, I want you to picture your vagina as a clown car..."

We will just talk about her for now, as the stupidity of the whole movie thing cannot be contained to one post.

To be fair, a lot of the reviews that I've read have slammed the movie itself, and then went on to praise Harley Quinn's actress Margot Robbie, Deadshot's actor Will Smith and Amanda Waller's Viola Davis for saving what could be saved of the cheesy, lame, popcorn flick.

"But the trailers were so promising!"

So -  one thing to ask ourselves is... was Margot Robbie in fact worthy of the praise?
Another - is this actually Harley Quinn?

Honestly, I've only seen a few of her movies. Even though I'm Australian, I avoid both soaps Neighbours (that she was on) and it's beachy counterpart Home and Away like the plague on wheels.
She was good in Focus - alongside Will Smith and I saw her in a bit part in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot where she was frankly a backstabbing bitch.

THE CHARACTERISATION

I've been told she was great in the Wolf on Wall Street so good for her! Because of this I went in with an open mind when I watched the Suicide Squad film, but if I hadn't been aware that she was supposed to be Harley Quinn, I would have not known otherwise. People keep saying that she killed it as Harley Quinn in this role but in my opinion.. there were a few bit parts that resonated with me as Harley Quinn and the rest was just over-sexualised, generic,  unfunny bullshit.

It kinda reminds me of all the group or quartet sort of shows you see growing up - where there are so many boys and usually only one girl. It's her job to be a lot of roles because we just can't have too many main female characters, ya'know. So she ends up being among other things - the love interest, the sex symbol, the ditz, the brainiac, the "mom" or if we're very lucky, a strong female character.

Belonging is fun!

In this case - instead of the relatable, dorky character I fell in love with in my youth, it seems like this version of Harley Quinn is more similar to the preppy 'popular' girls at high school. You know, too much make-up, wearing trashy outfits, coming off as a bitch to everyone they don't like, acting better than the average person and making everything all about them.

Frankly, it seemed like they were trying to make Harley too much of everything, and in doing so failed to make her much of anything. They spent so much attention on her - she had so many lines and fight scenes, so much backstory/introduction that I just wanted to scream at the screen - PLEASE SHARE THIS TIME WITH THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE SQUAD! They got all of five minutes between them which defeats the point of a team up movie if you barely know half the cast! I mean, seriously. every other thing she says could have been re-assigned to another character and then it might appear that they have a personality instead of being part of the background decor!

They also kept telling us how much badder and fearless (unless there's water involved because apparently she can't swim now) she is, so much more kick ass than the Joker... and it was like... umm? Alright DC, you just underwrote your (I daresay) biggest and most popular baddie in favour of his (technically former) sidekick? I know you're trying to sell this character in like a million comic books and tons of merchandise but this is ridiculous! Especially when you tell us (briefly in a 'blink and you'll miss it' written introduction) that she killed Robin.

This is where a lot of criticism has come in  about the movie - you can't just toss that in there like no big deal. For one, you need to show not tell us what happened, and another.. that should be an actual DC movie! Not this casual one liner in this film, and a sad Batfleck in his film! I hate to bring up the comparisons but Marvel would have made a whole film about this that tied into the others, and showed us the lead up, the event and the aftermath and would have made it watchable!
Honestly, the more Marvel movies I see the more I think DC is literally stumbling around in the dark making these things because lately all of their movies have been terrible.

I mean, if they were afraid we'd hate Harley after hearing this, then why even leave it in the film?

She has this whole level of the jail to herself apparently in a massive cage (all the better to do gymnastics half naked my dear), she gets wheeled out in a freakin' Hannibal Lecter style restraint, has to be beaten down and electrocuted because she apparently put some guards in hospital. I get that they're trying to show how bad ass she is but geez, if it were me I would have just tasered her through the bars. Constant improvement with your work, guys! Aim to work smarter, not harder.

This is annoying because they're making her the obvious threat and 'bad ass.' What I thought was great about her in the comics was that she was definitely a threat but no one treated her like one. She was always overlooked and underestimated in favour of the Joker. Then Harley would sucker punch them fools. I mean, she's stronger than the Joker, has generic female villain gymnastic skills and is quick on the ball. She's always ready to throw someone off their game psychologically and if she puts her mind to it - her schemes are generally more successful than the Joker's.

Harley just struts through this movie, is constantly eyed up by everyone, including the cameras, is adored by the Joker for some reason, acts like a dopey teenager, whining about things she has to do and is obsessed with her phone and bubblegum. Which by the way, has been in that trunk of hers for who knows how long before being twirled around on her fingers covered in spit so yuck.

The baddest thing she ever does is steal a handbag. She alternately gushes around Joker - which is actually a bit sad to see in a grown woman - or acts cool around him but either way she comes when she's dog whistled for.

I don't know if it's meant to be a nod to her now apparently canon bisexual nature but in the movie they have her dancing on another lady but I'm not sure if it's because she wants to or because she know Joker is watching. Just another thing the movie is ambiguous about.

Either way that scene could have been removed from the film and they could have added one that actually enhanced (or added, rather) the plot. It made me miss her dancing from the animated series so much!

How Harley Quinn dances - quirky and lovably dork style

How any almost literally any girl in a club dances

Similarly, they just had to add a scene of her dressing. I mean, we skim past Deadshot and everyone else who apparently got dressed in 2 seconds flat even though they're wearing sooooo much more than she is, but the camera lingers on Harley getting changed into her crappiest T-shirt.

Fan-service logic.

She's then like.."what?" Here, I eye-rolled so hard that my husband and some folks beside us were injured simply because they were sitting near me at the time. Yeah, great movie Ayer, you can tick that cliche off now.

Ayer, presumably.

Afterwards, she spends a lot of time talking to Deadshot and getting excited about how people were going to die. This didn't ring true for me. Yeah, she's crazy now and has a much 'tougher' persona but that's not Harley. She was one of those grey characters who never sought to kill people just because - she was usually a good baddie but now she's totally getting off on whacking random people?
She did kill of course but it was either with the Joker on one of his schemes, or if someone tried to kill her, which in the case of her original comic shows that because of her mental state, she doesn't actually realise these people are dead.

Everyone on this set could learn something here. #crappiestarcheologistever

It's kind of annoying when movies use 'crazy people' as an excuse to murder folks.. especially when you come face to face with real life mental illness, see what it's really like and then Hollywood ignores everything and sends out a damaged dolly sex-bot who bends over on command and giggles about mental illness every half an hour in case we forget her main character trait.

She doesn't really get much interaction with anyone else apart from Deadshot which again - everyone keeps trying to make a thing. STOP IT. Stop trying to make fetch happen!!

At the end of the day, I was incredibly disappointed with her lines.. they just weren't funny and I can't understand that because her whole thing is hanging around with the Joker and becoming a Harlequin.


Apart from that, the rest of her lines were just very out of place and flat.

Do you even read your insurance  PDS? Do you? DO YOU?! 

"Are you the devil?" Still not sure why she said this? Was it just to sound cool?
"Hahaha it's the voices!" Obvious crazy joke is obvious.
"Own that shit!" Screw your pain, we're better than everyone else, the world didn't give us anything! (Oh, so, no purple lambo then?)
"Pussy!" oooh, so tough Harley. Although I can heard the spit flying when you try to say that...
"We're bad guys! It's what we do!" *cue massive eye-roll*
"I sleep where I want, when I want with who I want." Well actually, you'll sleep in your cage, by yourself but sure, you sleep whenever you want you burden to society, you.
"What is that, the stench of death?" As if you would know what that smells like, you paper tiger.


The parts that did seem like Harley Quinn?

1) When she was sheltering with Deadshot during the Joker's attack, he gives her a look as if to get going with their escape plan and she shoots back a "whaaaat? something on my face?" sort of look.

2) When Enchantress tells them all it's safe to come out, Harley just goes "oh, okay" and makes to head over before being restrained by her team mates.

3) The gang is walking out and find Harley (posing on a police car? She needs help to get down but got up there alright! What is she, a cat??) who quickly hides her tears and appears to be all sunshine as a front for her pain.

4) The getaway drive, cursing Batman for ruining date night.

5) The pinky out while drinking coffee - very Harley as she tends to shoot with her pinky out also.

6) Basically saying "aww, crap" when Enchantress joins the fight - knowing she's outmatched.


So in my opinion, while Margot is probably a great actress she did not become Harley Quinn enough to "kill it". She became a version of Harley Quinn, that could realistically be ANY other person in the movie universe and be great at it but honestly I do not think she deserves as much attention and praise as she has been getting for this role. That said, she was definitely a better actor than nearly everyone else in the movie so she's got that on her side. She's easily the most watchable thing on the screen, but that could be down to how she's the one colourful (literally) character in this bleak and dark movie and how much attention (and butt shots) are lavished on her - leaving the viewer no real choice to ignore her.

It's like she's super imposed or has her own lighting staff!

Personally, I feel the character was misused, wrongly promoted as a sex symbol in a #relationshipgoals scenario and badly written so the fact that she's a popular actress will probably help Margot carry on to better things instead of being given even further shitty roles in similar bombs.
Meanwhile, I hope the writing (and costumes) improves dramatically when we're given the inevitable Harley Quinn solo movie trilogy.

I guess it just pisses me off when I keep hearing about the character performance bits in this movie... Jared Leto sending his gross used condoms to people along with rats and what not, Margot reading up on all the Harley comics, Cara running around in woods nekkid, Will just played himself but he still got to run around with guns etc..... The rest don't warrant any special character time in the movie so they also miss out on real special time but hey, they got a shitty tramp stamp for it!

It's like... where was the pay off? Why did you go to such extremes if you're playing such bland, banal characters that no one gets to actually see properly?
It's the kind of movie that had shelves full of merchandise out before the movie came out - it's not unheard of these days but this one was overkill - and you just know DC doesn't give a toss about it's money makers as long as it makes money.

The rating for this movie is so low it's not visible on the gif