The recent DC superhero film Birds of Prey featured plenty of memorable female characters, most importantly Harley Quinn played by Margot Robbie. However, Harley wasn’t the only dame in Gotham who wanted to emancipate, as Harley herself said in the film.
Another hero who was tired of letting people walk over her was Black Canary who originally worked for the film’s main villain Black Mask as a singer and then a driver. She turned against Black Mask in the end and fought alongside the other heroes (and villains) to take him down. Jurnee Smollett-Bell nailed the role and here are 10 reasons why.
She Uses The Canary Cry
Black Canary is very good at hand to hand combat, as the viewers got to see in the film when she took down men who were about to abuse drunk Harley Quinn since she was too out of it to defend herself. But the Black Canary’s main weapon is her sonic cry which she also calls the canary cry in the comics.
It has the power to shatter objects in her proximity and also knock down her opponents, sometimes even knock them out entirely. It takes a while for Black Canary to use her cry in the film but when she finally does, it’s as epic as imagined.
She Kicks Ass
As stated above, Black Canary doesn’t rely only on her sonic cry to fight the villains and to save innocent people from danger. After all, it can get quite physically exhausting to use the cry repeatedly in a short period of time.
While she might not be on the same level as the best hand-to-hand fighters in the Justice League and DC universe in general, Black Canary can certainly stand her ground in a fight, even when seemingly outnumbered. She demonstrates this in the film when she manages to defeat multiple goons alongside Harley Quinn, the Huntress, and Renee Montoya.
She Sings Really Well
Whoever said that superheroes can’t have a day job, was sorely mistaken. Sure, they sometimes struggle with balancing their jobs and their superhero activity, but they usually somehow make it work. Black Canary’s daily job changed throughout the times. In the older comics, she worked at a florist, for example.
However, in the new comic series which was first published in 2016, Dinah Lance worked as a singer for a rock band. The film uses this important aspect of her character and when the viewers first meet Dinah, she sings wonderfully in the Black Mask’s club - something that Harley doesn’t fail to notice and mention to Dinah later on.
She Walks The Line
Unlike some other DC superheroes who always were 100 percent heroic and on the side of good (Superman, for example, or Wonder Woman), Black Canary’s life is a bit more complicated. She started out as a “villain” in the comics since she worked with criminals.
In the end, the readers discovered that Dinah was only pretending to be a bad guy in order to destroy the gangs and other crime organizations. Still, this means she’s slightly morally ambiguous, as the film also shows. In Birds of Prey, Dinah first works for the Black Mask and only turns against him later in the story.
She Works Well With Others
While some superheroes prefer to work on their own or at least they like to claim that (Batman, for example), Dinah usually plays well with others. This doesn’t mean she always sees eye to eye with her superhero colleagues but she does her best to make it work unless things get seriously wrong.
She’s one of the most important members of Justice League International - an organization she helped to create in the first place. She also sometimes works with the original Justice League and was the founding member of Birds of Prey in a few alternate timelines in comic books - just like in this film when she helps to create the team instead of Batgirl.
She Uses Her Head
Black Canary and Harley Quinn make such a potentially strong team because they’re both completely different. While Harley lives in her own head and sees the world around in a different way than most people which makes her behave in an unpredictable and yes, crazy way, Black Canary is much more pragmatic and realistic.
She tends to judge the situations she faces rather than blindly throwing herself into them. And she also knows that sometimes things turn bad no matter what you do. Black Canary is primary a survivor and the film shows this well since she refuses to help at first, concerned for her own life.
She Relies On Herself
Speaking of pragmatism… Even though Black Canary can and often does work with other heroes (and sometimes villains), she still primarily relies on herself. She knows that no-one else will look out for her as much as she does. After all, when you live in a world full of heroes, villains, and monsters, you’ve got to be super careful and alert.
That’s one of the reasons why Black Canary is so distant at first in Birds of Prey and why it takes her a moment to react when she has to decide whether to save Harley from the men who are about to abuse her or not.
She Has Family Issues
While most people wouldn’t dare to say it directly into her face (because she’d kick their ass), Black Canary is actually a troubled person. At least when it comes to her family, especially her mother, who was also a superhero.
In some versions of the comics, Dinah struggles with following in her mother’s footsteps as she fears that she’ll never be as good a superhero as her mother was and she’s also worried the Justice League members won’t take her seriously. In the film, Dinah’s struggle is even worse since her mother died and Dinah doesn’t want the same thing to happen to her.
She Doesn’t Talk Much
For someone who uses the power of her voice to fight her enemies, Black Canary isn’t actually a very talkative character. Talk about irony… No matter whether she pretended to be a part of a criminal gang or worked for the Black Mask in Birds of Prey, Dinah often found herself in situations when it was for the best to stay quiet, talk as little as possible and not to draw too much attention to herself, unless absolutely necessary.
She’s also very good at observing others and reading their emotions. In the film, it’s interesting to observe the contrast between Harley who talks too much and Dinah who barely says anything.
She’s Very Intelligent
Finally, there’s one aspect of Dinah’s character not mentioned before in this list. Dinah is walking proof that you don’t need a Ph.D. in psychiatry like Harley to be very intelligent. This female superhero seemingly has it all - both brains and beauty - and combines all of her features to be the best possible superhero.
She also uses her formidable intellect against her opponents who tend to underestimate Black Canary from time to time since they consider her just another pretty face. Roman Sionis aka the Black Mask does the same mistake in the film when he calls Dinah his pretty bird… only to find out that she’s so much more.
