The Suicide Squad’s ‘Harley Vision’ Will Tap Into Birds of Prey’s Fun

One of the small however attention-grabbing methods Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey was capable of dig into Harley Quinn’s interiority was by letting her madness contour the movie’s actuality in key moments—like when a violent interrogation by Black Mask out of the blue turned a twisted musical quantity solely in her thoughts. While James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad doesn’t instantly acknowledge the character’s involvement within the first Suicide Squad or Birds of Prey, the movie is about to characteristic a sequence that seemingly attracts on components of her previous appearances in an attention-grabbing means.

When io9 bought an opportunity to talk with manufacturing designer Beth Mickle throughout a go to to The Suicide Squad’s set within the fall of 2019, she took a while to clarify the concepts at play in certainly one of Harley’s breakout moments that’s been closely featured within the film’s commercials. At some level, Harley finds herself surrounded and having to shoot her means out of a constructing filled with closely armed folks by herself. Though the scenario is dire, and pushes Harley to whip out her near-inhuman acrobatics expertise whereas her personal weapons are blazing, Mickle defined how the sequence can be a thrill trip for her that visually manifests as what she known as “Harley Vision.”

“[The] idea is that there is a ‘Harley Vision,’ like how she sees the world and how she sees things, and it’s [with things like] animated flowers and tweety birds,” Mickle detailed. “She’s very happy, so we explored some concept art to see what that that could look like, and how we would render it in the film.” The animated birds that Mickle described—virtually two years again—can now be seen in a few pictures from earlier The Suicide Squad trailers the place Harley additionally struts away from an explosion of vibrant flowers that appear misplaced for a grotesque shootout.

Mickle additionally was cautious to notice that The Suicide Squad’s use of Harley Vision is sparing. But the animated birds received’t be the one means that the film brings its incarnation of Harley considerably nearer to her comedian e-book, animated, and online game counterparts when it comes to whimsy. Gunn’s previously spoken about how certainly one of Harley’s new appears to be like in The Suicide Squad relies instantly on her look in Rocksteady’s Arkham video games, and Harley provides a bazooka to the arsenal of weapons she makes use of to dispatch her targets.

These particulars could not have a lot bearing on The Suicide Squad’s plot, however they, together with the inclusion of characters like Polka-Dot Man, Starro, and King Shark, all really feel like purposeful and stable methods of reorienting the franchise. Drastically totally different in tone as Gunn’s The Suicide Squad goes to be from its predecessor, it feels prefer it’s going to be on-brand, narratively, for this particular group.

The Suicide Squad hits theaters and HBO Max on August 6.

Wondering the place our RSS feed went? You can choose the brand new up one right here.