Weird Reasons Actors Turned Down Major Roles + Oscars Winners Reactions + Recap + Birds of Prey: Movie Review

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mix Movie Podcast. I am movie mic on Twitter and Instagram at Mike Destro and today I am talking about weird reasons that actors turned down major roles. Now, none of these will have to do with scheduling conflicts or anything like that, because that stuff is kind of boring because pretty much every time an actor was offered a role, it was probably offered to like three other actors before them. That's just how movies work, that's how scheduling works. So I'm not looking at anything like that where it's just like, oh, well, I was doing this other movies, so I couldn't do that movie. That's kind of boring. What I'm looking at is where actors were pretty much given a role that was going to be a grand movie and there was something wrong within the script or with the character or something they wanted to change, and they gave just this really weird reason of like, no, I'm not doing that movie because of this. So we'll get into a bunch of those roles. Also give my reactions to the oscars last night. I got a lot of thoughts on those, and I also have a review of Birds of Prey, which is the Harley Quinn movie I saw over the weekend when didn't really do well at the box office, and I was kind of surprised by but I think there may be a reason for it, so I'll get into that again. Thanks everybody for being here and listening to the episode. If you don't mind, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, leave a five star review because it helps a lot for me to kind of bump myself up there in the ratings. And for other people who maybe they don't know me from the show I'm on the Bobby Bones Show, or that the show that I produced, the Bobby Cast, they'll see it in their feed, come up and be like, oh, what's this movie mix movie podcast about? Maybe I'll give it a listen. So that means a lot when you hit the five stars or hit a review on that or wherever you're listening. If you're listening on my Heart Radio, just hit that follow button so you get brand new episodes every single Monday. And thanks to everybody again who participated in the Oscar contest. If you're listening to this on Monday, I will announce the winner of that fifty dollar gift card and movie prize pack on my Instagram story today at three pm Central times. So there's a bunch of entries in that. Thanks everybody for doing that and for listening to the podcast. So without further ado, let's get into this week's episode. Here we go in a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking on MTV with classes from the Nashville Podcast Network is movie movie podcast. So today I'm looking at weird reasons why actors turned down a major roles. Now, I am not going to include any actor who turned down a role because of a scheduling conflict, because I feel like that happens all the time, because the first time they picked somebody for a movie, it's probably not their first pick. They've probably had like two or three or four or five people in mind for the role at any given time, So you could say anybody was offered a role before it ultimately gets to the person who ended up playing them. Because I think maybe the one of the most popular ones is that John Travolta was offered the role of forrestco but he turned it down to and Debt instead do Pulp Fiction, which was also a big hit. They both ended up being nominated for Best Pictures. So you kind of see it as like, oh, he could have been Forrest Gump have been even more memorable. Well, he actually ended up doing a pretty good role, but all of that was because of scheduling conflicts. What I'm looking at our movies that just have weird reasons for an actor turning down the role because they were given the script and either they don't like it, they don't get it, or there's something they want to change and the directors or the writers won't budge on it and they end up saying no, and ed role ends up going on to be a pretty big deal. So I got the idea for this because of last week, this story came out about Jessica Simpson saying that she turned down the role of the Notebook because of a sex scene. So she wrote in her recent memoir called Open Book that she was up for the role of Ali Hamilton's which ended up going to Rachel McAdams, who started the movie with Ryan Gosling, and she was offered the role and she kind of tried to like negotiate and budge with them that, hey, I'll do the movie if there's no sex scene in this, because she was uncomfortable with it. Again, at the time, Jessica Simpson was pretty much just known as the singer hadn't really been getting into movies yet. She was in like the newly Ed Show with Nicholas on MTV, but she hadn't really started a movie yet, so she was kind of getting into it. So she ended up saying no, and then later said she was let down a bit when she found out Ryan Gosling was cast in the film, because apparently that was like one of her first crushes. They both auditioned for The Mickey Mouse Club together, like back when they were twelve. So, but that's just an example of someone turning down a role for kind of a weird reason, aside from just there being a scheduling conflict. So what I went through is just found a bunch of actors who were offered roles and turned them down for various reasons. So looking at the first one, which is a pretty big one as far as how much it could have changed this actor's life, but I think they ended up having a good reason for Um turning down this role that they eventually talked about, but when they when it was first just kind of revealed that Will s this was offered the role of Neo, who has ended up being played by Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. He turned it down pretty much because saying that he didn't really get the script when it was pitched to him. This was at a time when Will Smith was like the biggest thing in Hollywood. He had just done Independence Day. He gets the script and this offer for The Matrix, and his first idea is I'm not going to do this, mainly because it's another He thinks it's another alien movie. He just not an Independent Day, which is all about them Um fighting aliens. And then he gets offered this Matrix thing, which is very sci fi, and he's like, I don't want to be known as the alien guy. And he ends up doing Men in Black after that, and in Black is a big hit and he's coming off of that, and then he gets now he gets pitched for the Matrix, Like, he actually goes in with the directors and again he just doesn't get it. So it's not the fact that he thinks the bad script. It's not the fact that he thinks the movie doesn't work, because I can kind of see it when you're pitched a movie that's so kind of out there and different at the like at the Matrix, you don't know that it's gonna be a big hit it and having a director kind of tell you all these crazy concepts, it's probably weird. So Will Smith actually did this video last year where he explained why he didn't take the role of the Matrix. But there's a fine line in a pitch meeting between genius and what I experienced in the meeting. So this is the actual pitch that they made for The Matrix. Like, imagine you're in a fight and then you're like jump. Imagine if you could stop jumping in the middle of the jump, Sam say that again, but then people could see around you three sixty while you're jumping, while you're stopped jumping, right, and then we're gonna invent these cameras when people can see the whole jump while you stopped in the middle of the jump. The funny thing after this, though, is that he ended up doing that movie Wild While West after this, which was a pretty big flop for him. He didn't really know that at the time that movie was going to be so bad. But I think the other interesting and he kind of made with this is that if he would have been cast as Neo, that they would have changed Morpheus as well, because Morpheus was played by Lawrence Fishburne. He said since he was black that they would have changed Morpheus, and they actually had Val Kilmer and to replace Morphous if that would have been in the case. So essentially Will Smith says he saved the Matrix. If he would have started it, it would have been not the same movie and maybe not have done as well. All Right, I want to stay on Will Smith because there's another role that he passed down, which was Django Unchained, which ended up being played by Jamie FOXX. But Quentin Tarantino came to two other people first before he came to Jamie fox Actually he went to Michael Kay Williams who was in the Wire, but it was really pitched to Will Smith and will Smith ended up saying no. Because he has a kind of specific way that he picks movies, especially during this time when this movie was being made, is that essentially Will Smith wants to be the lead, Like he doesn't really start in many movies where he's a side character or where the movie's focus isn't just directly on him. So Will Smith when he read the script and was talking to Quentin Tarantino, he was like, I think there's another character in this movie that's essentially the lead. He also kind of wanted to change the script up a bit and give his character just kind of a bigger presence and also like have a bigger fight scene at the end, and he just didn't think the script was all that brilliant and not for him. What's looking back on it now is a bit of a bummer because I mean Jingle and Chain went on to be nominated for like five Oscars, one of Quentin Tarantino's probably best movies, and the movie that Will Smith ended up doing after this was that one with his son called After Earth, directed by him not Shamalan, which did pretty bad. So I think Will Smith has kind of changed a bit how he takes roles now. I mean, he was in Suicide Squad where he wasn't the main character in that also didn't do a little. It had relatively good box office numbers, but overall critically, he didn't get a whole lot of praise for that, and he's not gonna do the next one. I'll kind of get into more about Suici High Squad later in my review of Birds of Prey, but I think he has changed a bit of taking on roles where he's not the lead. But I think that's the one that actually may have worked. Like Will Smith is Jango Unchained, I think would have still been a pretty good movie. This next one, however, This next one, however, I'm pretty glad that it didn't happen because Tom Cruise was initially offered the part of Andy Dufrain and the Sea Shank Redemption, and the only reason he turned it down is because he was uncomfortable with the director who was It's his first time ever directing. Now, I've heard a lot of interesting things about how hard it is to work with Tom Cruise, not because of like he's a jerk or anything, but he is like so serious and so like like he is a straight on, I guess, a controlling actor, and he's very particular of how he likes things, and he goes in and he's all business. And he was coming off the movie A Few Good Men, which was just like nominated for a bunch of Oscars the year before, so he was hesitant to come into somebody who had never directed a movie before and get such a big actor like Tom Cruise, And even after being offered tons and tons of money, he still said no because he was uncomfortable working with this director. A big miss on Tom Cruise's part, because it ended up being nominated for like seven Oscars. It pretty much made Tim Robbins career. And I'm pretty glad he didn't do it. I know, I'm just not a big Tom Cruise fan and I could not see him in that role. This next one is kind of funny because kind of along the lines of the way Will Smith didn't want to be known as the alien guy. The same thing kind of happened with Russell Crowe when he was offered the role of Wolverine. So he was just coming off of doing Gladiator, which was a big success for Russell Crowe, and he was offered the role of Wolverine and the new X Men movies like the very first ones that came out, and he was the director's first choice, like way before it even got to Hugh Jackman. But since he was so close to coming off of Gladiator, he felt that it was a bit too similar to his character Maximus in that because he said, at the beginning of Gladiator, his character, you know, he had a wolf with him and he didn't want to be known who's the wolf guy, which he thought Wolverine was some kind of wolfman, and by doing the world of Wolverine and then being in Gladiator before that with a wolf, that people were gonna be calling him the wolfman. And obviously Wolverine has nothing to do with wolves. That's just the name of his character. Yes, like the razors and stuff come out of his fists, but overall, he doesn't turn into a wolf at any point. It has nothing to do with him really being a wolfman, aside from maybe his facial hair. And this is actually what Russell Crowe said. He said, now, I'm no Mr Wolfman. I can't do movies that only have things to do with wolves. But it is the way he thought it was a wolfman. So we told the director he would not do it, and he ended up missing out on a bunch of money because they did a bunch of sea wolves. And I really think it would have been a lot harder to warm up audiences with Russell Crowe as Wolverine because Hugh Jackman just he's one of the very few people who is that role. Like, I don't think they could do another Wolverine with any other person. And I think a lot of that has to do with Hugh Jackman's personality and how he played Wolverine. So maybe even those first X Men movies, which were a big success, would not have been the same with Russell Crowe. And yeah, maybe he didn't lose that on that payday. So Sean Connery, who did James Bond movies, has been in a bunch of older movies. So going back to the matrix for a bit, I talked about Morpheus, who ended up being played by Laurence Fishburne. Well, that role was initially offered to Sean Connery, before it even got to Laurence Fishburne or even Val Kilmer was considered for it. And in addition to that, I'll do a double here because Sean Connery was also offered the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. But he gave the same reason for both of these movies why he didn't take the roles. He read the scripts and after reading them, he simply said I don't get it. He didn't get the world of the Matrix and he didn't get what they were trying to do in Lord of the Rings. And even after Peter jack Sen convinced the producers of the film to offer him ten million dollars for every movie they were going to do for The Lord of the Rings, as well as a fifteen percent cut of the trilogy's box office, he still said, you know what, I don't understand the script. I don't get it. It's not for me. I won't do it, So just off the Lord of the Rings movies alone. He would have made four hundred million dollars by taking this role. I mean he's still were like a hundred million dollars, but next ra four hundred million dollars and the legacy of the Lord of the Rings would have looked pretty good for all. Sean Connery, I just think it's so interesting when actors are offered just like pretty much like movies. You know we're gonna be hits, Like you know, when they're making The Lord of the Rings, like that's not a risk to take. You have like a great director like Peter Jackson and a book franchise that's already successful. You know, those who are going to be great, So why would you read that script essentially telling them that, oh no, these books are terrible, like highly successful books. And he still says that he doesn't get it. So he essentially had all this money just teed up for for him to hit out of the part and said, no, how hard it is for an actor to get like a successful role, even at the caliber of where Sean Connery is in his career. But just pretty much be handed a role to you, like, just play as a part in this movie and it's going to be a guaranteed hit, and you still don't take it. Oh man, that's a lot of money. I gotta call myself down here for this next one. But Christina Applegate, who you know from Mary with Children, She's been in a bunch of other things, but she was coming off from doing that show while she was offered the role of l Woods and legally Bond, which ended up going to Reese Witherspoon. Now I kind of think that Christina Applegate has a pretty good reason for not doing this movie. I still think it's a little weird. I don't really get this concerned that actors have a being type cast, like, I don't think that's a I feel they think it's like a like a bad thing to be type cast as a specific character. But I think even for audiences, I think it's not the worst thing in the role to like kind of know what an actor is kind of gonna be on on screen and what kind of characters they play. I don't think that's a kill all for for actors now. But she was coming off of that that TV show and she was offered this movie and she just didn't want to be the ditzy blonde. She said she had spent like a decade playing Kelly Bundy, un married with children, and she was worried that taking this role would just be leading her to just be typecast in movies and always just taking roles at the dumb blonde, which I get for her. Maybe on script that legally blonde character was just seen as maybe a dizzy blonde, but it kind of glosses over the fact that I think the movie ended up not being that exactly. I think Reese Witherspoon ended up fighting like a smart way to play the character almost relatably to where you don't just see I mean, you don't just see Reefs Witherspoon as a dumb blonde during this movie, and even afterwards, Christina Applegate was like, Yeah, that was probably a stupid move on my part to miss out on such a big paiday for that. And by the way, they are making a Legally Blonde three. There's still no official release date, but Reese Witherspoon is posted about it on her Instagram. There's no real word I want to leave in hit theaters, but I think right now they're saying pre production is about to start here in May, so a new Legally Blonde on the way to that's something to look forward to, all right, So I have one more here for you. So Ralph Maccio, who you know as the Karate Kid, and pretty much that's it. He was offered the role in Back to the Future, so he wasn't initially the first pick for this movie. Like they already wanted Michael J. Fox to play Marty in Back to the Future, but unfortunately he had some scheduling conflicts while he was shooting Family Ties. So they were thinking of the scheduling of Michael J. Fox and Family Ties filming wouldn't line up with Back to the Future. They were gonna find somebody else to play Marty McFly. So they went and talked to Ralph maccio, gave him the script and he didn't get it. Again, I don't understand these actors who don't get scripts. He said, the movie is nothing more than a kid, a car, and plutonium pills, and he declined the role of Marty McFly and back to the Future, which was probably pretty tough for Ralph Macio, who at the time kind of never really replicated his success from The Karate Kid. He's kind of one of these actors really just the one hit wonder actor, which is something maybe people don't really talk about a whole lot, but there are actors who have pretty much just been in one starring role and have never really replicated that success again. And I think Ralph Machio as the Karate Kid is probably one of those. I mean, he has come back on like YouTube with the Cobra Kai series, which a bunch of people like, but still he's still this the Karate Kid. All right. So that is it for actors who turned down major roles for weird reasons. Next, I'm going to get into my reactions from the Oscars last night. I got a lot to say about those, and also I'll get into my review of Birds of Parade, the new Harley Quinn movie. All that coming up later in the episode. Alright, so let's talk about the Oscars last night. I thought, overall the show was pretty good. I was really excited for all these movies, probably more so than I've been in a while, so I was enjoying it just for that reason alone. But I do think it's a little weird when they don't have a host. This is like the second year they haven't had a host, and I think the show loses a bit of I mean, there's no cohesiveness to it. It feels a little disconnected between segments. I think having that host, you think it's not a big deal, but when you watch this award show, it really feels like it needs that host. So I thought they could have used somebody. Overall, I thought it was pretty good. I liked the musical performances were okay. Um. I thought Eminem coming out and I expectedly doing Lose Yourself for from eight Mile was pretty cool. I liked the whole little musical montage they had leading up to that Billy Eilish. I thought her performance was all right. She looked a little confused during the ceremony like she didn't really know like why she was there. But let's get into the biggest categories, the ones I was the most excited for. We'll go through Supporting Actor Actresses. UM, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director and Best Picture. UM just kind of recapping who won. So for Best Supporting Actors, he had Laura Dern for Merrit Story, which was my pick for who I thought was gonna win. I thought she had the strongest performance out of all the other movies. And I thought that movie on its own was just a really great, powerful movie that made you think about divorce in a way that I've never really thought about before. It was just really it's a really raw movie. There's no bills and whistles to that movie. It's just straight on acting. And I thought her performance kind of stick out, um from really anybody's in that movie. So that was cool to see her when she gave a really great speech last night. Best for Supporting Actor, I also nailed that one. UM. It was Brad Pitt for Once upon a Time in Hollywood. I just think he was the standout in that movie. More soule than Leonardo DiCaprio like his character, and that was just really cool. I kind of had like this whole ominous vibe, like what his backstory was thought overall, he was really what made that movie and what made that movie enjoyable for me. So it was really cool to see him when first his first ever oscar as an actor, because he's one as a producer before he was a producer on tob Just a Slave, which won a few years back, maybe four or five or so. So to see him go up there and win that as an actor, I think that's really great for Brad Pitt. That was cool to see. And then getting into Best Actress and went to Renee's cell Ledger for Judy, which I thought was a pretty interesting win for her. She did win the Golden Globe, and that movie it didn't really make a whole lot of like a whole lot of noise with like critics or even like audiences, so I thought that was a bit of surprise. I think when you you play a character based on a real person, I think it gives you a stronger chance to win. And then we get to Best Actor, which I was gonna throw a chair if Joaquin Phoenix didn't win for Joker, and to see him go up there and accept that award was pretty satisfying just because how much of an impact that movie had on me. And I think he is the best Joker overall. Like I know, Heath Ledgers performance is probably more iconic, and it's hard to say that it compares to his because of what happened surrounding his Ledger and all everything around that movie. But I think when you put Joaquin Phoenix in this role and has an entire movie to develop the Joker's character, I think it really outshone any other person who's ever done the Joker before. So, um, He's Ledger one Best Supporting Actor for the Joker back um when he did that in thousand and eight, and this is the second time an actor has one playing the Joker, but this time for Best Actor. That was cool to see him win. He went on a really big speech afterwards, and um, yeah, I thought Joker was gonna win a lot more awards. They were nominated for the most out of anybody, but I think Joaquin winning this one was just a really big win overall for that that movie and then the final two we go into Best Director Bong Jiho for Parasite, which was really cool for him. I just to see how excited he was at these awards, like he would he would go up there and he would speak in Korean and then have somebody translated, and even like after he won, um it was for Best International Film. After I saw of them win that, I was like, they could have a chance, and um he was even like he said a bunch of cool things, like he would split the award with the other people in category. He was like, I'm gonna go party after this. And this was all before we get to the final one. But I think he's a really great director. I think his vision in that movie was spectacular, and he told a really unique story in a really cool way that like moved audiences that don't speak Korean. You. I mean, he had been advocating for people to kind of open up their mind to foreign films and to not be scared to go see a movie because it has subtitles. So I really liked all the things he said leading up to this, and to see him win was really cool. And then we get to the final category of Best Picture, which was a shalker to me that Parasite won for Best Picture. I love this movie, and I did see it before I made my pick of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But I remember leaving the movie theater. I came on here and reviewed that movie right afterwards, and I was so excited about that movie, mainly because I had very little expectations going into it. I almost went into it like I go into homework, like, Okay, I have to watch this movie because it's nominated, but it's in subtitles. I'm probably not gonna enjoy it. I had kind of a skewed view on it because I thought it was gonna be a scary movie, and it ended up not being that at all. If you haven't seen it, or listen to my review on it, it's essentially a story about this really poor family in South Korea. I was just struggling to get by, and they eventually turned into this group of con artists that work their way into all finding a place in a position to work for this really wealthy family, kind of by a winter of trickery. But it's really a great story about class and just about like this ruggles you go through when you're poor, and if you can socialize with people who have more money than you, and like where you fit into society. And you get all of this from a foreign film. You're sitting in the theater reading the subtitles. You're able to connect with these characters unlike I've connected with any character in a very long time in a movie. I was really excited for them to win. They ended up winning four awards over the night, and really this award the Oscars this year came down to nineteen seventeen and Parasite, which were two really great outstanding movies. Um. I think it's a really big win for Parasite and really for foreign films, because no other foreign film has ever won for Best Picture, and it's it ties for the most amount of Oscars that one single foreign film has won. So I think people are probably gonna go and watch this movie now, and people are pretty much probably gonna say, like, what is Parasite? I've never heard of it before. It's a foreign film. But I'm just saying, give this movie a chance. Um, you can probably you can stream it now. Just sit down and give yourself some time to watch it. And I think you will enjoy this movie. I know it's it's weird to watch some things with subtitles and you think you're not going to understand the language, you think you're not going to get the humor. But really it's a really great movie and it's a really novel idea, and I think that's really what you have to consider when you think of what deserves to win Best Picture. It's not what the most popular thing is, which a bunch of people complain about the Oscars saying that, oh, it's a bunch of movies that no one has ever watched. Well, it's because they're supposed to make movies that are outstanding and they're supposed to be unique in their own way. That's what's great about the Oscars. It's not just what the most. It's not a popularity contest. It's about what movie cut through the most and kind of identifies that year of movies. So that's what all the movies in this category did. I think the biggest shocker out if everything, was Toy Story for winning for Best Animated of Film, mainly because I didn't think that was the strongest movie in the franchise, and it's really hard for a Part four to win anything. My biggest letdown was probably Scarlett Johansson not winning for Marriage Story. I just thought her acting was so great in that I really loved her in that movie, and I really would have liked to see her win just because, um, I think her acting was just so straightforward to that movie and so raw. But I guess a bunch of people have just thought that movie was a bunch of yelling. So maybe that's why she didn't win. But that was the Oscars last night. Let me know what you thought about the winners, all right. Going to get into my review now of Birds of Prey, which is the Harley Quinn movie. I just going to preface thissterview by saying, I am not a d C comics fan. I'm pretty much all Marvel. I do like Wonder Woman, of course, Batman, and then I kind of wanted to like The Suicide Squad, but every other movie has really just kind of let me down. And I went into this one wanting it to be good because I didn't really love Suicide Squad. But the one kind of redeeming quality of that movie was Harley Quinn. I'm a big Margot Robbie fan, so I thought this movie would be pretty good of her just kind of exploring that character and exploring that role hasn't really done that great as a box office So we'll get into all of that. But here's a bit of Birds of Prey. This was started when the Joker and I broke up. It was completely mutual and I was back on my seat ready to embrace the fierce goddess within. Are we ready to? So, first of all, everything you read online right now is saying that Birds of Prey was just a really big flop. So let's just clear that up. It's really not a flop. I mean, it happens to be the lowest box office numbers ever for a DC, opening at thirty four million dollars, which it was expected to make about forty five, but it's not a flop thanks to the million dollar budget that the movie was under, and it will eventually make that money back over the week's coming and of course with them ticket sales worldwide. But it was just didn't meet expectation. But it's not really a flop, and I think overall it's a pretty good movie. The action is really good. They actually work together with the director of John Wick to kind of work on these action sequences which are pretty brutal, like there's a lot of bones breaking, not a whole lot of bloodshed. Really, I think it's a little lighter than that, like the John Wick movies would be, but it's a lot of cracking of legs and stuff and limbs. So it is an R rated movie, which maybe it heard it a bit because the kind of cool thing about this movie it's it's all centered around female characters, and maybe it could have been a movie for young girls to kind of go see and be like, oh, there's a superhero movie where they're all female, which Harley Queen is actually kind of anti hero. She's pretty much like she's essentially a villain in a way, but you kind of root for it, so it's an antihero. But the fact that it's an R rating it keeps kids out of the theater, so that's a big kind of number. Maybe you're losing out on a bit. I think the movie is kind of just struggling to find its audience because I mean, I'm just a big comic book movi be nerd, and I'll go pretty much watch anything that just looks appealing to me. And I think the movie has a really great aesthetic, but I don't know if this movie was really particularly made for me. I think it's just struggling to find its audience and who they're trying to get into the theater for this one. Maybe it's even that people aren't that familiar with Harley Quinn because I know the story of Harley Quinn because I grew up watching the Batman animated series which Harley Quinn was in that she actually wasn't even in comic books before she was in that show, but she was with the Joker and her story was kind of told throughout that cartoon. But I think overall audiences and probably you they're listening to this right now, don't really know much about Harley Quinn, so maybe to give her her own movie is a bit of a risk at this point. So for that reason, I think maybe they could have teamed her up with somebody else, like Poison Ivy or a catwoman and made it more of like characters or villains that people were a little more familiar with, and pitched it as that kind of movie. Because I know what they're trying to build up too, is the suicide squad that they're making in one which Harley Quinn will be back in that, so I don't know, maybe introducing more characters would have been bad for that. I also think maybe that d C has just kind of burned audiences movie after movie. Like I said, I was done with DC after Batman Versus Superman. Now, I've never walked out of a movie before because hey, I've paid money for a ticket. I'm gonna stay and watch the whole movie, no matter how bad it is. But after that movie, I fell asleep during that movie. It was so boring and it was just so bad. But even after that, I still went back for Justice League, and I, like I said, I loved Harley Quinn and Suicide Squad, so I was excited for this one. But I think there is a fact that just audiences have lost confidence in d C movies. But it is a pretty good movie, Like, not only is it getting good reviews from critics, but everybody who's going to see it is actually enjoying it. But I think the people who have been burned and have been just kind of tired of getting bad movies from DC aren't going to see it. So that's kind of where they're losing out on this one. Overall, I thought the movie was fun. It was funny without being corny. I really liked the aesthetic in this movie, like the colors in the US, the costume design. It just has a unique feel to it towards It's very quirky and just fast paced, and the action is just very brutal and head on, just the action movie. I love all the characters in it. All the actresses in it are just amazing together and it just has you like rooting for Harley Quinn in this one and you kind of get to know her story a little more. I think maybe they could have just marketed this movie just a different way, because I like, even just looking at it. When I look at movie times on my phone, you see Birds of Prey and you don't see Harley Quinn's name even in the very beginning of this. So maybe people are just scrolling through looking at things and you don't even know what it is exactly, or you just don't know enough about the character to want to go watch an entire movie about him without really knowing what it's going to be about. I do like the fact that they stay away from the Joker in this one. They didn't try to bring back like Jared lettle Is having a cameo in it. There's like one scene maybe where it's like an older kind of flashback where you just see his back, but there's no face of him in it. And there are also no really ties to Batman and or anything in this one. So I like that they just focused on Harley Quinn. So overall, I give it a three point five out of five, which is a pretty high rating for me to give a d C movie. I think it's a fun movie. I think it's a really well done movie. I love that it has a female director and that Margot Robbie produced a movie that's awesome. It's not up there with Wonder Woman by any means, but I think it's a good step for d C in the right direction. Maybe one you don't have to go see in theaters. But I think later down the line, if you're interested in Harley Quinn's story before a new Suicide Squad movie comes out, I'd say check it out. Then. I've just become a really big Margot Robbie fan. I guess from once upon a time in Hollywood. I just realized, Hey, she's a really great actress. I really just like her as a person. When I see her in interviews, and the fact that she was a producer on this movie. I really wanted to see it do well for that reason alone, and the fact that I saw it kind of underperforming and getting slammed online, I kind of felt bad for her. So I just liked it a lot more than I was expecting to and was just sad to see it not do as well. All right. So that's my review of Birds of Prey, all right, And that's gonna do it for this week. But before I get out of here, I gotta get my Instagram shout out, which I do every single week to what are you guys listening? And to this week it goes to Who's Your Mama? Underscore a k a. Leslie Arnold, who said that she was catching up on the podcast and she was actually listening in her car, and she took a picture of her like her screen where you can see my logo and the name of the episode, which I thought was really cool. Like when you listen in your car and have my picture on in there, that's pretty cool to see. So that's another way to do it. But all you have to do to get an Instagram shout out is just screenshot wherever you're listening to it, and then post it in your Instagram story and tag me, and I'll repost a bunch of those throughout the week and then i'll give somebody a shout out. But if you're listening in your car and my artwork comes on in your car, that's really cool for me to see, so I'll definitely shout those out. So if you have that feature in your cool car, so yeah, you can follow me on Instagram at Mike Destro or on Twitter at Mike Destro as well if you want to see all my tweets from the Oscars last night. I had a lot of thoughts on those, so go check that out and I will see you next week on another edition of Movie Mix Movie Podcast Later m HM.