New Birds of Prey trailer shows Harley Quinn "looking for emancipation"

A new Birds of Prey trailer has dropped, showing us a fair few new sides to Harley Quinn. "Psychologically speaking, vengeance rarely brings the catharsis we hope for," Harley reminds us midway through the brand new, adrenaline-packed Birds of Prey trailer. Despite this rather lucid realization, Harley and her crew are still going to get revenge – check out how just how much in the trailer above.

Harley, fresh off her "break-up" with the Joker, is healing by gorging herself on string cheese and gathering a group of women vigilantes to fight a bad guy. The villain in question is Ewan McGregor's Black Mask, who has a personal vendetta against every woman in the crew: Black Canary betrayed him, Renee Montoya is investigating him, Huntress killed his BFF, and Cassandra Cain stole from him. That means they need to work together to take him down, and the trailer gives us some great examples of how that action will play out.

It's apparent we're getting a hard R-rated flick from the scene shown roughly a minute into the trailer, when Harley's cornered by a bunch of Black Mask's thugs in a room full of cocaine. Just when it seems like she's done for, as the thugs fire away at her cover behind a stack of the white stuff that swirls around her, she inhales... deeply. When Harley emerges from behind cover, she lays waste to the thugs with ease. I wonder why?

Visually-speaking, this already looks like it's going to be fantastic. It's not easy to make such a vibrant, kinetic film that's perfectly legible to the human eye, and the cinematography looks excellent. It's also a great shift for Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn, who was metaphorically and (somewhat) physically tethered to Jared Leto's Joker in Suicide Squad, but there's no sign of him here.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) hits theaters in a cloud of technicolor and other illicit substances on 7 February 2020.

For more colorful visuals and less drug references, stay tuned in to the Wonder Woman 1984 news.

Alyssa Mercante used to be a features writer at GamesRadar and is now a freelance writer and editor. Prior to entering the industry, she got her Masters's degree in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Newcastle University with a dissertation focusing on contemporary indie games. She spends most of her time playing competitive shooters and in-depth RPGs and was recently on a PAX Panel about the best bars in video games. In her spare time Alyssa rescues cats, practices her Italian, and plays soccer.