REVIEW: Bright

Despite Netflix's ever-growing success as an entertainment platform, people can be forgiven for assuming that they'll greenlight just about anything. With the exception of Stranger Things, the streaming service has yet to really set the world on fire when it comes to their own content, and it seems as though that trend is set to continue with their newest effort, Bright. Directed by David Ayer and starring Will Smith, this is easily their most high-profile (and, for lack of a better word, legitimate) effort to date. I've seen trailers and posters for Bright at my local cinema, it's clear that Netflix intends this to be the project which elevates them above being a simple streaming service; they want to be taken seriously as an entertainment empire, rather than an excuse for Tinder hookups, and this was to be the film that would do that. Unfortunately, while I certainly had my fun with Bright, I doubt this is going to be the flagship dynamo that the folks over at Netfix hoped it would be.

The film's setting is arguably its strongest selling point; imagine if the battle for Middle-Earth had actually happened thousands of years ago, with various fantasy races banding together to repel the evil of "the Dark Lord". Flash-forward to present day, and we have a modern society where Elves reside happily among the 1% and dragons are hosted at the local zoo. It's an inspired alt-fantasy concept, in which we follow LADP officers Daryl Ward (a human, played by Will Smith) and Nick Jacoby (the first ever orcish police officer, played by Joel Edgerton). Theirs is an uneasy partnership, as orcs face widespread discrimination after spending the past 2000 years on the wrong side of history. The two will have to learn to work together, however, as a magic wand appears in the L.A. ghetto. Magic wands are essentially reality-warping nukes, extraordinarily dangerous in the wrong hands, and only a select few individuals (known as brights) are powerful enough to wield them without succumbing to the raw power contained within. With a doomsday cult of fanatical elves (led by Noomi Rapace) looking to get their hands on the wand and herald the return of the Dark Lord, it's up to Ward and Jacoby to uphold the law and defend the innocent, learning to work together along the way.

Normally with these types of movies (where the premise can basically be boiled down to an interesting elevator pitch), it can feel as though the concept isn't explored to its fullest potential (usually do to either budgetary or creative limitations). Surprisingly enough, I didn't get this feeling with Bright; it left me wanting more (which is good, considering a sequel has already been greenlit), but it met the bar in a way that didn't leave me confused or lamenting any wasted potential. There's parts of this world that we don't get to see (dwarves are only mentioned and we're given only the briefest glimpse of a dragon), but the parts we do see are all relevant to the plot. There's no meandering nonsense meant to simply pad out the runtime, and the fantastical elements are treated as totally mundane and routine by our characters. This proves to be a bit of a double-edged sword, since it helps sell the reality of the world the film takes place in, but it also means we have to see an uncharacteristically intense Will Smith shouting about orcish race-relations and magical artifacts. 

While there isn't a lot of filler here, the film does fall into that mixed-genre pitfall of not being entirely sure how to sell itself in terms of tone. The concept of Will Smith teaming up with an orc to solve crimes is inherently absurd, yet the film plays itself totally straight. There's a few moments of comedic relief, but they're all very self-aware and silly (such as when Will Smith refers to Icelandic death metal as "orcish music"), so you're left wondering for most of the movie whether or not this is just a big joke. Are we meant to take the drama here seriously? Or is the drama itself the punchline? We have this schlocky setup (in an alternate reality, this existed on video in the early 80's and was called something like "Orc Cop"), but a dead-serious tone, like Men in Black meets Training Day. Again, I didn't dislike my time with Bright, but these aren't the kind of questions one wants to ask, especially when dealing with (possible) satire.

If I'm being honest, I was incredibly surprised to see just how poorly Bright was received by critics (especially since the majority of viewers seem to like it just fine). It's almost like a reverse of The Last Jedi, where the critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes seem to outright contradict each other (at the time of writing, 88% of audience members seemed to enjoy it, while only a pitiful 30% of critics had anything nice to say). Part of me feels like the intense bile being flung at this film has something to do with the recent controversy surrounding screenwriter Max Landis, but I also think (like The Last Jedi) that part of this response has to do with audience expectations not lining up with what the film turned out to be. With a premise like this (in which a cop has to overcome his racial hangups to work in harmony with his unlikely partner), one would automatically expect some sort of metaphor for the current racial climate in America. I've seen so many critics assume that the thuggish, violent orcs (with their tight-knit gang communities and inherent dislike of police) simply must be a metaphor for black people. Ignoring what an implicitly racist can of worms an assumption like that is, we see where the expectations of the audience deviate from the intent of the filmmakers. The orcs aren't meant to represent black culture or latino culture or even white culture (despite their designs incorporating elements of all three); they're meant to represent orc culture.

This isn't meant to be a film about race relations in our America, so much as it is meant to be a film about race relations in a fictionalized, fantastical version of America. You can draw connections to the real world (the same way one can say any politician they dislike is "literally Voldemort"), but it's not meant to be an outright parable. Anyone who watches Bright looking for obvious parallels to Black Lives Matter or the standard buddy-cop moral of "racism is bad you guys" is going to be disappointed. This is, of course, partially the film's fault for building up these expectations in the first place (within the first ten minutes, Will Smith's character delivers the line "fairy lives don't matter"); the people behind this knew exactly what it looked like and exactly what people would expect going in, so you can't fault the viewers too much for being disappointed. I do think, however, that it's not exactly fair to judge the film on what it isn't. Much like with The Last Jedi, there are plenty of good reasons to judge the film for what it is; the tone is all over the place, the cinematography is bland, and there are parts of the plot that feel extraordinarily half-baked. The practical effects are both appreciated and impressive, yet the whole thing is shot in a way that makes it look like an early-2000's television show. There's a reason I described the concept as an "elevator pitch" before, since that's exactly what this film feels like. It just sticks the landing marginally better than most other films in that same wheelhouse. 

Bright is not the worst movie of 2017. Anyone who claims it is is likely just looking for easy clicks. This has been a fairly solid year for movies, especially compared to last year. There was no shortage of obvious whipping horses in 2016 (Suicide Squad, Sausage Party, Ghostbusters, etc.), so writing the annual "Worst of the Year" listicle came fairly easy to a great many bloggers like myself. 2017, on the other hand, was overall pretty solid; if you need a headline with some real punch, you've got two options. On one hand, you could continue beating the mangled pile of horse parts that was The Emoji Movie (and come on, what self-respecting blogger would waste his time seriously dissecting and nitpicking films made for toddlers, anyway?). Alternatively, you could fling a few hyperbolic statements at something like Bright, a film that is, at worst, lazy and mediocre. I found it to be a fun enough cop flick with an imaginative premise that pulled it all off much better than most. I can't say I'm excited for the sequel, but I'm willing to give it a shot. It certainly has its flaws, but I've suffered through worse. If that sounds like enough of an endorsement of quality, then by all means, give Bright a watch. There's certainly worse ways you can spend your time on Netflix.