Bright (2017)

[SnoGirl]

Did anyone watch Netflix’s movie Bright? It’s being just murdered by critics...but I really liked it. Don’t get me wrong, it had some definite issues and was by no means compares to Lord of the Rings or Star Wars as far as epic Sci-Fi Fantasy goes.

I thought they did a decent job world-building while jumping into the adventure quest. I really liked Jakoby. I thought it was interesting that Ward went so long and hard about disliking Jakoby...to the point where I thought it was negatively impacting his character. I started disliking Ward bc of how much he disliked Jakoby. I get that if he was human, he and Ward would probably be super close because of how kind and dedicated he was, but man was it jarring. I wish they had talked about Jakoby’s age, I was trying to figure out if they were going with Veteran/Rookie dynamic between the two.

Also liked some of the touches in the background. I saw a dragon flying in the sky at night over a landscape shot of LA, as well as a centaur cop right after Jakoby and Ward cut through Elf Town in the beginning of the movie. They talked about uniting the nine groups in the past, so I wonder if in future movies we’ll see more fantasy characters like witch/wizards, grown faeries (or if they’re just the pests we saw) or trolls or talking animals.

I also wonder if we’ll actually hear the prophecy everyone was alluding to.

[raven]

I watched it.  It reminded me a lot of Alien Nation but without as many likable characters.   The Ward character was all over the place, not liking Jakoby, then defending him.  It didn't help that one of the first things we see him do is kill the fairy; I get they were nuisance pests but I kind of felt bad for it when we see it lying dead.

There were some interesting touches - I also noticed the dragon! and if they expand the world a bit it would help. 

It was OK I guess, just kind of predictable (when that one guy says that Ward is "blessed" you just know he's going to hold the wand) and it went on a bit too long.  I read they're working on another one, I think as a limited series it could work.  There are problems to clean up but Will Smith did a great Will Smith eventually and I liked Joel Edgerton as Jakoby.

[morakot]

I mostly enjoyed it. Definitely appreciated the world-building and would have liked to spend more time there. It would make a great series that would allow that to happen which would make the piece more interesting.  The actual plot of the film was less interesting to me. In particular, the racism by everyone was off-putting and it was difficult to be sympathetic to Ward who was a particularly egregious example of it.

[Lugal]

I think it had a lot of potential.  The worldbuilding was especially interesting, especially the parts about the Dark Lord being defeated 2000 years ago, and how wizards or "brights" fit into things.  I also loved the touches like the dragon flying over the cityscape in the distance.  @raven it also reminded me of Alien Nation as well, and now I have to check Netflix and see if they have the old series.

It had some issues, like the fact that they knew they did not have to answer to Network Standards and Practices or to the MPAA, which is why we got fuck as every other word.  Will Smith was good, but his characterization needed more work, and I also saw it coming he was going to be handling the wand.  The whole movies feels like it could have used just another draft or so to really tighten up the script.

The screenwriter Max Landis has been accused of sexual misconduct.  Not to comment on the specifics of his case, but it sort of shows int he way the female characters are portrayed in the movie, definitely in the background.  Only Leilah and Tikka had any thing to do (and Tikka was definitely on the side)

[morakot]

OT, but Max Landis was pretty fair to the women in Dirk Gently.

[Perfect Xero]

The world building in this seemed kind of ... incomplete. I mean, you've got elves who seem to be set up as the rich people and Orcs as the poor people. But you've still got poor black communities in South Central LA. Also white humans are running around, and Latino and Asians humans. Were elves keeping black humans as slaves in America but not the white ones? Were there still a bunch of rich white human slave owners but somehow white humans aren't in these gated elf only communities? Black people seem to hate Orcs just as much as White people do. Are humans in general 2nd class to elves and then the same human 'racial' divides played out the exact same way and Orcs a rung even lower?

Did the existence of literal different races really have no effect on the human racial constructs and issues?

It's like they wanted to do, "The real world, but with elves and orcs," and didn't actually want to consider or explore what having elves and orcs living alongside modern humans would mean or change.

[morakot]

That's why I would have wanted more back story -- which would be more likely to happen in a series.

[Maelstrom]

I watched this a couple of weeks ago when I visited a friend who wanted to watch it. And if I'd been watching it by myself, I would've turned it off after the first ten minutes. Watching him kill the fairy really turned me off too, Raven. I realize I'm the wrong demographic for this movie, but there was very little here to recommend it IMO. It desperately needed another pass or three on the script.

Despite an interesting premise the movie just didn't pull it off for me - too derivative of other things (Alien Nation, Fifth Element, Defiance, even Guardians of the Galaxy come to mind right off the bat - and at least Guardians didn't telegraph in the first ten minutes that Starlord was Teh Special who would end up wielding the Infinity Stone at the end), too vague on the backstory and world building (Perfect Xero has covered this quite well), too many unlikeable characters (do we root for orc-racist Will Smith or racist Noomi Rapace or the racist cop brigade?), and too many fucks. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the fuck of out of a well-timed bit of profanity for emphasis, but every fucking other fucking word is fucking not emphasis. It's fucking overkill. And I definitely agree that the female characters were not written well by any stretch of the imagination - they were either objects to protect (his family, and Leeloo, I mean Tikka) or gratuitous background eye candy. Apart from Noomi Rapace as the evil Castathan xenophobe, that is.

I did think they did a good job with all of the orc makeup and such, and I found what they did give us on the structure of the orc clans interesting, such as being blooded or not. And I liked the guy who played the lead orc partner (I've forgotten the characters' names already), he did well with the humor they gave him. And the dragon flying above the skyline was a nice touch (though it makes me wonder if dragon-related catastrophes would be up there with earthquake damage as far as the potential dangers of living in SoCal).

So, yeah, not the movie for me at all. I won't be back for however many sequels they manage to churn out unless there's a dramatic improvement with future scripts.

Edited January 1, 2018 by Maelstrom

[piequinn35]

Yes it was obvious when the guy said that Ward is "blessed" that he is a Bright, could Jakoby be a Bright too?

If there's a sequel then bring out the Dark Lord, and probably there are other wands and Brights out there to stop him and more on the story of the Shield of Light.

[Wynterwolf]

3 hours ago, piequinn35 said:

If there's a sequel then bring out the Dark Lord, and probably there are other wands and Brights out there to stop him and more on the story of the Shield of Light.

Bright is getting a sequel sans Max Landis.

I enjoyed it, but killing the fairy in the beginning didn't sit well with me either.  And it definitely felt like the first book in what is intended to be a long series.  I, too, got the the Alien Nation vibe, just with an urban fantasy base rather than aliens, but I love urban fantasy as a genre so I'm willing to go with it and see if it gets better as they flesh out the mythology and get more detail into to the world building.  It's a basic story, but I like Will Smith and if they improve the writing/characterizations it could be something pretty good.  I've waited a really long time for TV technology to be able to do justice to an urban fantasy show.    

[BetterButter]

Bright: The Apotheosis of Lazy Worldbuilding

 

[GaT]

I saw this the other day, I thought it was pretty bad.

[BetterButter]

[Hanahope]

Just watched yesterday.  It has a good idea, but I feel like we needed to know a little bit more background, though I get that's hard to do sometimes. Still, take out one of the many action sequences for a few seconds exposition in the beginning would have helped, imo.  

Agreed it was telegraphed early on that Will was going to wield the wand. And what happened to that Sheild of Light guy?  Did he know what he was saying in orcish to Jakoby?

What I didn't understand was why everyone else was so excited to get the wand.  If you could only wield the wand if you were a bright, that 99% of humans weren't bright, if you tried to wield it without being a bright, you'd explode, that you needed "magic words" to even operate the wand (which no one knew unless trained) and the bright elf, Leilah, was killing everyone to get the wand, WHY would anyone want it?  Why did the 4 cops want it?  Did they think they'd be able to sell it back to the elves?  That seemed a like a huge plot hole.

Maybe we'll get more info in the next "episode".

[shrewd.buddha]

Finally saw it ... ugh. The only thing that saved it from being turned off was that the action picked up when The Wand made its appearance. 
So, with more races, you get more racist assholes. Great. 

[Zuleikha]

I am so late to this, but I just watched this movie.

I had low expectations due to the critical drubbing, and it exceeded them. I liked the Shadowrun-esque vibe to the world, and I didn't think the racial stuff was as hamfisted as reviews showed it. It was overt, but I didn't think it was allegorical and that made a difference for me.

My main problem was that I, too didn't understand why anyone wanted the wand. People believed it would grant them wishes, but how was that supposed to work? You can't get a wish from a device you can't use and that explodes you if you try. But the amount of risk put into retrieving the wand was too much for fairy tales.

I also thought Tikka's unwillingness to speak English made no sense. Trust issues are one thing, but she wanted them to take her warnings about Leilah's approach seriously. How could they do that if only Jakoby understood it and he had no time to translate? It was a poor contrivance to keep her from exposition fairying but some earlier exposition fairying would only have helped. I also think explaining the cost of the wand and her lack of training would have justified her reluctance/inability to use it better and heightened the suspense. I was so confused during the big fight scenes why she didn't just use the wand since she was obviously the Bright from the safe house.

[BetterButter]