Bright has been called the worst movie of 2017. I was planning to watch it anyway. Because of the reviews I made it a whole event. I got out the popcorn, some drinks, kicked my feet up in a nice warm blanket on a snowy day. I grabbed my phone ready to fire off some tweets about how it was horrible, and it just wasn't horrible.
The film centers around officer Daryl Ward and his partner Nick Jakoby. Nick is the country's first Orc police officer. Daryl is just returning from injury. Daryl was shot by an Orc after a robbery and Nick gave chase. Other officers think Nick let the shooter get away because he was an Orc and want him dead. The other officers blame Daryl for not getting him fired and tell him that they have his back on this. However, when Daryl goes to request a partner change he's told the truth, none of the other cops want to work with him either. Nick is the only Orc officer and Daryl is the only black cop on the force. In fact, throughout the entire film, the only police officers that actually like Daryl are Nick and Sheriff Rodriguez who jokes with Daryl about still getting blamed for the The Alamo because he's Mexican.
They arrest a crazy man who speaks Orcish and warns that the dark lord is returning. Nick is freaked out and almost crashes but swears nothing is wrong. In reality he panicked. Nick panics a lot and talks a lot when he's nervous although he doesn't understand sarcasm or irony. Internal affairs threatens Daryl and forces him to wear a wire so that he can set Nick up for letting the shooter go.
On a routine call, they get into a shootout and upon entering the building they find a magic wand and lots of dead bodies. In this world, to touch a wand you have to be a Bright or someone who can use magic. Otherwise you die in various ways. They find an elf girl named Tikka and Nick talks with her and calms her down while trying to figure out what's going on. Some local gangsters learn about the wand and go to call their entire set. They call the other officers as they're supposed to. The officers tell Daryl the plan is to keep the wand and get rich after they kill Nick. They threaten Daryl's family and he agrees. As soon as he walks out of the room, they agree that they're killing Daryl too.
Outside Daryl confronts Nick about the shooting and Nick tells the truth. He grabbed the wrong orc that happened to be a teenager that was only spray painting. He pretended to be hurt and let the kid get away. Daryl then kills the other police officers and they're greeted by Poison, the local gang leader who wants the wand so that he can cure his paralysis and erectile dysfunction so that he can make love to his wife again, his words not mine. Another shootout starts as they flee with the wand. As the night goes on more people get involved. Leilah, who owns the wand that Tikka stole and wishes to use it to resurrect the Dark Lord. She has a crew of well dressed silent killers. The FBI's magic department led by Kandomere and Montehugh who are tracking Leilah and want to kill her before she regains her wand. Dorghu who leads the local Orc clan and wants to murder Daryl and Nick for bringing guns into his party of peace. There's some twists and turns I won't reveal but people die. Good people die and in the end it works out as mostly okay.
The action in this movie is over the top and ridiculous. It's crazy fun to watch with guns, cars, magic, super strength and martial arts. It's great because our heroes aren't exactly great at what they do. They get hurt, a lot. Nick is also afraid to shoot people and the first time he shoots someone it's to save Daryl's life. He then freezes in place and stares at what he's done. He shoots two more people after that and each time he looks more an more disgusted with himself. Character flaws are aplenty and it makes you like the characters. Daryl is a by the book cop with no money, he's broke, he's racist against Orcs but chastises his wife and daughter for their racism. He doesn't actually realize it until a scene where he's yelling at a group of Orcs and demands Nick translate but Nick informs him they speak English. He really feels bad when he learns the story Nick told about the shooting was true. Nick's major flaw is that despite not being part of clan he still has heavy weight of his family on his shoulders. In the war of the 9 races Orcs sided with the Dark Lord. Nick's family isn't part of any clan so they file their teeth, and Nick is a cop because his father always told him about trying to prove Orcs aren't evil. In reality he might not even want to be a cop, as he explains to Daryl that he is a role model and everything he wants to be as a cop, but just isn't.
The movie has gotten a lot of criticism for being heavy handed and forcing racial issues into the plot. That's just not true. Maybe the first 15 minutes can be seen that way, but it was necessary. The duo spends the first few minutes driving through different neighborhoods and showing us how all the races live and there's a lot of races. It's our current world, adding in Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Faries and a ton of other magical user. There wasn't much racial commentary at all, it was simply showing us different cultures and races. It's a two hour movie and they had to show us a lot in the first twenty or so minutes to set up the film. The only other thing is they kept going back to Orcs putting their clan before everything else. They kept wondering if Nick was really a good cop or if he let Ward's shooter go because he was an Orc. But, that's not commentary on race. That's commentary on police. They made that popular, you're a cop before anything else. There were scenes when cops told Daryl he kept refusing to kill Nick.
As far as actual bad things, it doesn't look good. A lot of the movie seems like generic action movie stuff, which is cool, it just wasn't groundbreaking. Their idea of showing magic is always fluid bright lights as if there's no other types of magic. Majority of the settings look similar and there isn't much variation in how the characters dress. Gangsters of all races are pretty stereotypical, FBI wear plain suits, Elves were high fashion with lots of gold, Orcs wear a lot of jerseys; you pretty much know if someone is good or bad based on the way they dress and there is no plot twist. The settings are repetitive, the costumes are dull, and there's no shocking twist. That hardly makes it the worst movie ever.
The first is, this is a film that's right up my alley. I love all this supernatural stuff. I love it in Television. I love it in video games. I love it in books. It's not for everybody, it never has been and it never will be. Superheroes and Star Wars may be cool now, but some nerdy things will just never be cool. You can quote me now, anime is never going to be mainstream outside of Japan. Pro wrestling? That time has come and gone. Orcs and Elves fighting over magic wands, just never going to be cool. A lot of these reviewers thought because they liked Stranger Things this would be all good, especially starring Will Smith. They likely didn't expect it to go all in on Orcs taking blood oaths, Elves being the force of good in the world with secret cults. They didn't expect any of this and they didn't know how to handle this genre of film.
There are two reasons I think this film may be getting a lot of bad reviews. The second is because of it's writer, Max Landis. Max is most known for Wrestling isn't Wrestling writing Chronicle his miniseries Superman: American Alien. With the exceptions of what I mentioned his work is mediocre at best. A lot of his work is rehashing of his father's early work, his parents are likely how he gets a lot of work. John Landis, had a hand in many great series for decades such as House, Blues Brothers, and Beverly Hills Cop. His mother has Deborah Nadoolman-Landis is a costume designer who has been nominated for an Oscar and won many other awards for her work on such things as Michael Jackson's Thriller, Coming to America, and Indiana Jones: Raiders of The Lost Ark. Max in the past has given interviews in which he stated that women should be honored to have sex with him and since he's "a famous director now," they "throw themselves," at him. Unsurprisingly, multiple women have come forward stating that Max sexually harassed or assaulted them. This news dropped around the time critics were allowed to view the film early. It's kind of hard to disassociate the film from Landis when half the results for the film are about his sexual assaults. That's just the way it is sometimes and I feel bad for the actors who probably had no idea. He's only credited as the writer so Netflix probably bought the script and never spoke to him again after the check cleared. By the time the news was out, the film was already out.
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