Well, if you put out more merch for a character, than relentlessly put her in literally everything you do, (well, it certainly seems like it), and push her more than almost any other character, you're probably going to sell a lot of merch. Though I question if she does indeed sell more merch than the rest.
And Harley does have plenty of critics among the....critics. For obvious reasons, which are pretty valid IMO. But still, Harley Quinn and Some Other Characters Who Aren't Important And Who You Wouldn't Recognize If You Read The Older Comics failed, and it was a movie that Robie called the shots for. She's had how many turns at the role so far, 666? It seems like that many at least. Still no evidence at all that Robie puts butts in seats, and they still let her run that movie and put her in this one, where I fear she'll hog the screen time, or take it up from other, potentially more interesting actors and characters.
DC has put in an enormous amount of effort to sell Robbie's Harley merchandise and it's still going strong since her debut in Suicide Squad. This is what Hot Topic is selling today of her rendition, if they had doubts by now they wouldn't be doing this.
https://www.hottopic.com/pop-culture.../harley-quinn/
Harley Quinn did fail financially, but it did retain high scores on Rotten Tomatoes (78%) and to know WB's final decision will wait until after Covid. It's hard to say what they'll do but they do have faith in Robbie since she's in the next Suicide Squad. If that does well, Robbie may get another bite of the apple so I wouldn't count her out yet. Gunn's good at ensembles, and she didn't steal the screen time from Ayer's film. Robbie's been Harley twice in the DCEU, The Suicide Squad will be her third outing. Which will match Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman. She's hardly putting in numbers like Robert Downey Junior's Tony Sark.And Harley does have plenty of critics among the....critics. For obvious reasons, which are pretty valid IMO. But still, Harley Quinn and Some Other Characters Who Aren't Important And Who You Wouldn't Recognize If You Read The Older Comics failed, and it was a movie that Robie called the shots for. She's had how many turns at the role so far, 666? It seems like that many at least. Still no evidence at all that Robie puts butts in seats, and they still let her run that movie and put her in this one, where I fear she'll hog the screen time, or take it up from other, potentially more interesting actors and characters.
Robbie has been in 2 movies. Suicide Squad, which despite the comic book audience rejecting it outright, was a massive success financially, Harley Quinn was well-received, it garnered a large audience among teenage girls - including my sister who hates comic book movies-, and Harley Quinn has consistently been one of the most popular Halloween costumes ever since that seems to transcend race and gender - a lot of gay men and boys love to dress as the character, as well.
Birds of Prey - which was a box office failure still seemed to do okay in the ancillary market, and Harley is once again one of the most searched for costumes for Halloween this year. I would argue Birds of Prey failed for a lot of reasons including Robbie not understanding why Harley is such an appealing character but not because of the character herself.
Merchandise sales because there is a market. If DC is continuing to make Harley merchandise, that means there's a market for Harley merchandise. A movie failing and a character not being popular aren't always connected.
Birds of Prey had a lot of poor decisions that went into its conception and marketing, but she's still a more popular character than anyone else on the Suicide Squad by a considerable margin.
I wonder if we'll see a flashback of Superman catching him, like Flash's cameo in the first SS movie. I remember Fandome talking big about how Bloodsport is "the man who shot Superman."
Deadshot is still going to be one of the four main characters of the video game. I don't expect a possible Kate Kane situation where Floyd loses relevancy in all media just for Will Smith skipping the sequel.
Funnily enough Rocksteady actually did something similar. Their game is set in the Arkhamverse where Deadshot was white, but they racebent him and retconned him to have always been black. Shame they didn’t wait until Gunn revealed Bloodsport, would’ve been nice to have a damn Superman Rogue on the Squad in a game set in Metropolis (King Shark doesn’t count he’s more of an Aquaman Rogue these days despite his roots as one of Kon’s Rogues). Ah well hopefully they’ll add Bloodsport or Metallo with DLC.
And if they’re actually keeping Deadshot dead in the comics, finger crossed they introduce Bloodsport to the Suicide Squad as a replacement. I’d love to see him get used more.
Last edited by Vordan; 10-25-2020 at 05:48 PM.
I’m looking forward to the moment the other members of Task Force X ask Bloodsport “what are you in for?”.
Bloodsport is a pretty clean slate with a great actor in the role. I hope they get creative and don’t just make him yet another gun for hire. Maybe make him someone who specializes in hunting down meta humans.
What I love about Gunn's Suicide Squad is how deep a bench it is that doesn't just rely on Batman's rogues or the traditional Squad members.
You've got virtually every major DC heroes' rogues reflected here and some are just so gloriously lame in the same way that Ostrander picked the lamest villains to knock off.
Looking forward to this and Wonder Woman 1984 the most...and the fact that they're the only two movies that are guaranteed to be released
He kinda is already? At least power wise. I don’t mind that being his starting point if they explore what makes him different, the Suicide Squad was meant to be where the “lame” villains basically had one last shot. Give Bloodsport and the Suicide Squad to someone like Priest and I think he could definitely establish some differences, especially given Bloodsport was driven by ideology whereas Deadshot only cared about the money and his family.
He can teleport any type of weapons into his hands iirc. Mostly they stuck with human weapons which obviously didn’t really pose much of a threat to Superman (Kryptonite bullet aside). But man if they could scale up that power to give him access to any kind of weapon, including alien weaponry or weapons from the future or alternate universe weapons, etc, Bloodsport could definitely be a huge threat. If they’re going to just stick with him pulling AK-47s and what not though, that’s still a hell of a power to have on a black ops team.
He's still basically just Deadshot in the movie because Will Smith had to pass on this movie and WB didn't want to recast him
I'd give WB more credit if they just cast Elba as Bronze Tiger but I guess the typical father daughter storyline doesn't work with him like it does with Bloodsport, Sportsmaster, Deadshot, etc
Why are there so many villains with daughters now? Its like a trend